The Inevitability of Nuclear War

GeneralGreen · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 8:24 am Post subject: The Inevitability of Nuclear War

The Present Situation
The situation has changed now. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there remains one world superpower, the United States. Both sides are in the process of reducing the sizes of their nuclear stockpiles from the current level of 36,000 warheads (19,775 operational) to just a few thousand.
From the points of view of the United States and Russia, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have reduced the risk of a deliberate nuclear war, since much of the animosity is gone. Looking at the world as a whole, the situation is more dangerous than ever before. The number of nations possessing nuclear weapons has increased by two, with the addition of Pakistan and India. The level of control over the weapons of the former Soviet Union has been reduced. The level of control over fissionable material from which nuclear bombs can be made has also been reduced. With each passing year, the amount of fissionable material in the world increases. With each passing year, the resentment of the world’s poor nations and cultures for the rich nations increases, as they realize that they will never catch up. With each passing year, the anger of Islamic nations and cultures against Western culture grows. Terrorism is increasing. Although the risk of a large-scale ballistic missile war may have decreased, the likelihood of a small nuclear war appears to have increased dramatically. Motive, means, and opportunity. All three prerequisites for action are set.
The atomic bomb was used as soon as it was available. In fact, it was used by the US at a point in World War II when the war was clearly won. In view of the fact that a “moral” nation such as the US had no compunctions about using nuclear weapons “just to bring the war to an end a little quicker,” it is obvious that any nation that is in serious danger of losing a war would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against its enemies, if it had them.
I believe strongly that a nuclear war is inevitable. The reason for this conviction is the “politics of envy” – the desire of a “have-not” group to destroy an opponent that is better off, even if by doing so his own position is unchanged or even worsened. The politics of envy is a principal motivation of terrorist groups who attack the United States. With the proliferation of nuclear-weapon technology and weapons-grade fissionable material, it is just a matter of time until a terrorist group decides to use nuclear weapons against US cities. The US has lost control of its borders, and has accepted immigrants from all cultures into all levels of its society. It is very vulnerable.
It is not very difficult to make a plutonium bomb. It is not simple, but any dedicated group with funding can acquire the engineering expertise to accomplish it "Iran'. In today’s world, building the bomb is the easy part. The most difficult part is obtaining the fissionable material (plutonium or uranium) for the bomb. Although still difficult, this is becoming easier and easier. Libya and Iraq have made concerted efforts to acquire plutonium for nuclear weapons. It is just a matter of time until they succeed.
On January 13, 1999, the documentary television program 60 Minutes II broadcast a program about the manufacturing of plutonium in Krasnoyarsk-26, Siberia, Russia. Krasnoyarsk is an underground complex – hidden deep in a mountain – containing a nuclear reactor that produces a half ton of plutonium a year. It is not the only such facility. One-half ton of plutonium is an amount sufficient to make 100 nuclear bombs a year, or one every three days. Since its inception, the Krasnoyarsk facility has produced 40 tons of plutonium – sufficient to make 10,000 nuclear bombs.

Low-Intensity Nuclear Conflict

By the term “low-intensity nuclear war” is meant a war involving 1,000 or less nuclear bombs – a small fraction of the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by the world’s nuclear powers. This size war could readily be accomplished, for example, by a “rogue nation” or terrorist group of small size, using 1,000 suitcase-sized atomic bombs.
The details of the global nuclear war analysis that are included in the complete book are not presented in this abbreviated version. The main conclusion of the chapter is that, with a relatively small nuclear attack – 1,000 atomic bombs – it is possible to destroy a large proportion of Earth’s city population. Several different types of attacks are examined. These include a “population” attack, in which the objective is to maximize the total population destroyed; an “energy” attack, in which the objective is to maximize destruction of commercial energy consumption; a “biodiversity” attack, in which emphasis is given to destruction of population in countries having high biodiversity; and a “combination” attack, which emphasizes destruction of large cities in countries having high commercial energy consumption or high biodiversity.
For a “population” attack (which is designed to destroy as much human population as possible), an attack of this size would destroy about three-quarters of the planet’s city population (of capital cities and cities of size over 100,000). The other attacks, which are not directly aimed at population, also destroy a large proportion of the total city population.

Country Case Studies

The preceding chapter showed that a low-level nuclear attack can destroy a very large proportion of the world’s city population. This chapter examines what is left, after such an attack. The key issue to address is how many functioning countries remain, after the attack. The attacks of the preceding chapter did not take into account the country affiliation of each city; there was no direct attempt to destroy countries (e.g., by destroying a certain percentage of each country’s population).
The purpose of this chapter is to impart a sense of the level of destruction of the global economic system. To that end, it examines the damage to the major world countries, and summarizes the damage to each country.
Appendix I (“Attack Summaries”) presents a list of all 229 countries, with an indication of the amount of damage from each of the four attacks. The list includes total number of cities, total city population, the number of cities targeted under each attack, and the proportion of the city population destroyed under each attack (amount and percentage).
The chapter describes the situation in several countries with respect to the “combination” attack. Of the 229 countries, 103 of them are attacked in the combination attack. The presentation identifies the population levels that could be supported in each country by primitive agriculture and by hunter-gatherer lifestyle. It also discuss the racial, religious, linguistic, and cultural homogeneity of the countries, before and after the attack.
The situation varies substantially from country to country. In some cases, the remaining population is sufficiently small to be supported at a low level of agriculture, but in others (e.g., Brazil) the remaining population is still too great to be supported by the land. In cases where the minorities tend to live in cities, such as in the US and Canada, the population is more homogeneous culturally after the attack than before. In others, such as Brazil and Russia, the cultural situation would not change much.
Following the combination attack, a large number of countries would still have large remaining populations, but not necessarily so large that the remaining populations could not be supported by low-level agriculture on the country’s arable land. The import of this is that if a single country is to prevail after a minimal-regret war of just 1,000 nuclear bombs, it is going to have to face a lot of formidable adversaries. In particular, China’s population remaining after the attack is still massive (892 million), even after 270 of its cities are attacked.
In summary, the situation is as follows. Although a low-intensity attack of 1,000 atomic bombs can destroy a large proportion of the world’s city population, after the attack there is still a large population remaining. It would represent a formidable challenge for any single country to attempt to assume world control after this low-level attack. The country having the best chance of doing so would be China, with a postattack population of almost 900 million.

What to Do after the War?

After a 1,000-weapon war, a substantial population remains, and that a larger-scale war is necessary to accomplish defeat of all of the world’s countries. As discussed earlier, nothing changes in the long run unless a single nation or group takes charge after the war, and moves to maintain global population at a low level. After the nuclear war, the key issue to address is whether a single nation or organization could prevail over (i.e., defeat) each and every one of these remaining countries.
The prospect of conventional war with one or several or all of these remaining countries is rather sobering. If these countries realize what is happening, they will surely ally in an attempt to destroy any single nation or group committed to the elimination of economic activity. To reduce or eliminate this possibility, one approach is to target one nuclear weapon on each of these countries, or at least to each one with population in excess of a specified size, such as one million. With this approach, all of the potential opponents to the single nation are weakened, and the likelihood of success is substantially enhanced.
One of the countries surviving the “combination” attack, of course, could serve as the single nation in charge of a minimal-regret population. In order to be sustainable, the single nation must be homogeneous with respect to race, language, religion, and culture. Russia scores high on these factors, as does China. Although the US does not at the present time, it would after a low-intensity attack. A list could be constructed of ethnic homogeneity scores, but that would require a data collection effort that was beyond the time and resource limitations placed on this book.
Of the several countries examined, at the present time only the US and Russia have the wherewithal to accomplish the objective of becoming the single industrialized controlling nation. China will, too, before long. A problem that arises for any of these is that they all have large populations, and are historically committed to large populations. Not one of them fits the concept of a “single industrialized nation of five million people,” that was mentioned earlier in the discussion of a minimal-regret planetary population concept. If any one of them were to manage assumption of world control and then continue to promote a highly industrialized level of living for its own large population, the situation would not be much improved, if improved at all, from the current situation. This aspect is not addressed here, and warrants further consideration.
Assuming that a single nation or group is successful in defeating all others after a nuclear war, the issue arises concerning the elimination of economic activity worldwide. Following the attack, some countries will still have very large residual populations. Except for China, it is out of the question to attempt to defeat these countries by means of conventional warfare. This probably means that the single nation in charge will have to possess a strong air force, missile force, or a strong space-based military capability.
Two promising new technologies on the horizon may play a role in the maintenance phase. The space-based laser mentioned above is one of these. Few people realize that a major factor in the decision to abandon work on the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) was the inability to process the massive amount of information about a missile attack, once the attack has been launched. The enemy can not only launch multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, but decoys as well. Until they are slowed down by reentry into the atmosphere, these decoys are essentially indistinguishable from real warheads. The problem of attempting to correlate and track all of the ballistic missiles and discriminate decoys from real warheads in a large-scale ballistic missile was not solvable, even with all the computer power in the world.
Furthermore, even if the correlation/tracking and discrimination problems were solved, the attacker may employ a “ladder-down” attack. In such an attack, the attacker explodes a nuclear weapon in space, to destroy nearby communication satellites. Also, the ionized-gas “fireball” or “cloud” completely blocks out communications, even for surviving electronic systems. The attacker’s missiles fly through the fireball. As soon as they come through, a second nuclear bomb is exploded. This process is continued, generating a sequence (“ladder”) of fireballs that mask the attack all the way down.
The space-based laser uses a radically different approach. Under this concept, the system destroys all missiles as they take off. No missile is allowed to leave the ground. The intractable problems of correlating and tracking large numbers of missiles and decoys, and of “ladder down” nuclear blackouts are simply eliminated.
The space-based laser can play a role in eliminating economic activity after a nuclear attack. Global surveillance systems can detect such activity and destroy it. The space-based laser system can help push the industrial world “back to the Stone Age.”
A second new development that holds promise for the maintenance phase is that of very large-scale dirigibles. Once the threat of conventional response (surface-to-air missiles, aircraft) has been eliminated, dirigibles offer a very efficient means of patrolling the planet, and destroying any signs of economic activity.

bonehead

I can guarantee one thing,whoever starts it will say God's on their side and try to sensor the images of all the corpses.I believe in God but i piss on religion.
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socrates1fan · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 04, 2008 Posts: 284

I've stated before that the only countries at risk are those without nuclear bombs.
One country with nuclear bombs would not bomb another country with nuclear bombs because then that country would lauch their bomb and you have two utterly destroyed countries which eleminates the interest of the people firing the bomb to begin with.
That doesn't eliminate risk but the idea that people are just going to randomly fire off bombs or even in warfare is crazy. People would much rather use smaller bombs such as those used in Europe during WWII then something that would completely wipe them both out.
Of course if you get a nut case incharge who doesn't really think then you might have a bigger problem.

bonehead

Yup,the nutcase will be easy to spot,he or she will be the really religious one.The anti-christ hiding behind religion with millions of followers trampling on everyone else.This is the most likely scenario and not really farfetched when you look at history.
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socrates1fan · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 04, 2008 Posts: 284

kpeavey · Expert Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 1235

got a link?
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bonehead

The U.S President:"With faith in God and a resolve born from a belief that our cause is right i have set in motion the following measures..."
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SoylentGreen · Heavy Crude Joined: May 25, 2008 Posts: 168

the Chinese seem to be focusing on Africa's resources and the US on Arabia. I can see a nuke resource war with Europe and the US against China. I believe you could see low yield tactical nukes being used against Iran's uranium enrichment facilities in just a couple months.

Dreamtwister · Fission Joined: Feb 06, 2006 Posts: 2195

bonehead

I get it Dreamtwister,population has to come down.Ironic that we'll be taking the place of mother nature on this one.Lot of radioactivity to deal with for any survivors,though.
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evilgenius

I can see eventual nuclear war over control of the Middle East. I have been saying for a long time that what the US is doing, angling to carve out a swath of control, will eventually bring about confrontation with Russia. As for what the Russians will do, the US thinks they will lay down and take it because they will be afraid of annihilation. I think they will likely try to use a proxy to fight invading US ground forces in either Iraq or Iran. There is no way they will allow said proxy to have control of any nukes, but it would be easy enough to obfuscate the origins of a nuclear attack on invading US ground troops, however, should the balance of action make it necessary.

Using nuclear weapons in self-defense, on a country's own soil, against an invader calls into question the moral right of a country like the US to simply use ICBM's as a counter. It would be a real situation if the US were to lose 100,000 men in a few minutes and then find that the whole world was against them when they wanted to blunder into an all out nuclear counter strike because the country that used the weapons did so in self-defense. It becomes even more murky when you consider that the enemy that used nukes in self-defense might be undefineable given the fog of war, the availability of rogue 'suitcase' nukes and the complexity of the region.

In addition there is the real possibility that a US counter strike (or for that matter nuclear bunker buster first strike) on a country like Iran, an ally of Russia, could engage alliances and trigger strategic thinking that might cause the Russians to consider a massive counter strike using their nuclear forces against the US. That is the WWI allegory, that once started the whole thing would quickly get out of control and soon nations would see their own interests at stake and the barriers to certain actions lowered beyond what anyone today imagines. Under such a scenario excuses of all kinds can be found for action and even history would have a hard time figuring out what the true reasons were.
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Tyler_JC

And why would anyone want to kill off most of the world's population?

Wouldn't the destruction of industrial civilization wipe out the country that did the attacking too?

I'm not buying it.

I put this in the same bin as Bird Flu conspiracies and alien invaders.

Interesting to read about but not to be believed.

That being said, I would like to read that book.
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wisconsin_cur · Moderator Joined: May 10, 2007 Posts: 2918

SoylentGreen · Heavy Crude Joined: May 25, 2008 Posts: 168

Russia has all kinds of natural resources, I dont see them in it . China against India ,the US and Europe is the most probable scenario.

socrates1fan · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 04, 2008 Posts: 284