What would all-out nuclear war have looked like 50 years ago? It would have been fought with thousands of missiles and jet bombers sortieing from hundreds of airbases controlled by teleprinters, conference calls and video-link. Data would have been assessed on giant white boards and summarized in face-to-face briefings. At least one vision of how it would have played out is depicted in the 1958 Strategic Air Command simulation of a central nuclear war with the Soviet Union, which you can view after the Read More.
Most viewers will be surprised to learn how many nuclear weapons it takes to “kill” a large country. It is a much larger number than the man in the street would think. SAC had an estimate of what it would take to finish the Soviet Union and as the simulation shows, had central nuclear war actually been fought at the height of the Cold War, it would have used quantities of firepower that would boggle the mind. American strategy was simple: nuke the enemy air and all its vestiges into ashes and then incinerate all of the country that remained.
It was terrible resolve and meant to be terrible. It was so terrible that only the language of religion seemed suitable to it. There was a mystical aura which surrounded the whole business of nuclear war, because it dealt with events that were literally unthinkable. Its actuality surpassed the power of the normal human mind to conceive. Its very scale made detail unimportant. Individual human fates simply vanished into insignificance amid reports of thousands of bombers launched, dozens of cities destroyed, tens of millions of people dead. This had an abstracting effect on the normally messy business of war. Strategy was tidied by the simplifying effect of the critical factors: times, distances and megatons.
The modern intellectual will probably feel a visceral horror at the idea that such strategies and devices once existed upon a time, a horror that may only be tempered by the possibility that he owes his physical existence to the strategy’s success — up until now, for the devices which existed still exist and the potential for far greater weapons is easily within reach.
The men who produced the simulation unwittingly left a testimonial to their greatest achievement, which, in retrospect, at least rivals the achievement of the Greatest Generation. It was the generation that successfully did not fight their war. We have not had a general war in nearly three generations. In the last reel, one of the fictional generals says, “we failed in our primary mission, but succeeded in our secondary mission, that of destroying the enemy.” In actuality, their achievement was far greater. By luck or skill, they led us through the valley of the shadow of death to the 21st century.
They did it in part by staring unblinkingly at the facts; by refusing to boggle at incredible quantities and incalculable dangers and refusing to hide them. The men of 50 years ago all knew that to keep war in bounds you had to keep death plainly in sight. You had to leave a giant memento mori, in the shape of a special colored phone, on the President’s and Premier’s desk. A reminder against the possibility they might forget and grow proud; when sweet words like R2P and kinetic military action, not terrible war, would creep into their speech. Deterrence succeeded in part because it never lost sight of what the professionals always knew: the root of war was in the heart of man. It was never in the weapons.
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While people think of 1950’s and 1960’s general nuclear war in terms of a “nuclear spasm” it was not that simple. As detailed in Herman Kahn’s book “Thinking the Unthinkable” mentioned here a number of times before, there were certain principles inherent in any nuclear strategy.
Counter Force targeting meant that you aimed your nuclear deterrent at the enemy’s offensive strategic arsenal. This was the approach taken by the USSR, or at least what they claimed.
Counter Value targeting meant that you aimed your nuclear deterrent at the enemy’s cities and industrial capabilities. This was the approach taken by the US, or at least what we claimed to do. Any suggestion that we might go to counter force targeting caused the Soviets to get excited, presumably because they thought we were getting serious about fighting a war.
Launch Under Attack meant that you only launched your offensive forces once the bombs starting bursting over you country. This was the posture adopted by the U.S.
Launch On Warning meant you launched based on radar and satellite warning of an incoming attack. It meant that you could not survive the initial stages of an attack well enough to get off your offensive response. Based on what I have heard If we had adopted this approach we probably would have blown up a good portion of the world on multiple occasions. In the 50’s there was even one case in which our interceptor fighters actually were scrambled to meet what was thought to be an incoming attack and the pilots were ordered to ram the enemy bombers once all their armament had been expended.
I think we need to revisit all these ideas in the light of the WoT. If nothing else, the discussion will make the Islamic Fascists know we are serious.
… ever topical …
Op-Ed: Bibi to World–Swap This!
Victor,
On several occasions, I have referenced your claim that there are autopsy reports on ObL – seen by you. No such reports have been made public (assuming they even exist … doubtful, given the time the body was available for analysis). Therefore, I must conclude that you were caught up in the moment and vented hyperbolically. This does not reinforce integrity.
wretchard,
The men of 50 years ago all knew that to keep war in bounds you had to keep death plainly in sight.
More weapons, properly secured and controlled, are more stable than fewer. The disarmament enthusiasts have reduced the US strategic arsenal to the point where an adversary such as China can rationally calculate that we may not be able to respond to multiple threats and that they could win a war. That makes the near future more dangerous than the past.
SAC was a separate world from the combat forces of the Army and the Navy. Its rise and fall was only tied to that of the other services and the Air Force tactical capacity by budget constraints and the response of the political system to events not tied directly to the strategic needs of the nation. Also it never included the Navy’s SLBM force.
The generation who built the Strategic Air Command and contained the Soviet Union were sober serious professional adults. In every way they were different than the feckless children we now have in charge. They were both Republicans and Democrats who created something that was not just expensive but that was worth the money. When we dismantled their work we destroyed real wealth. Unfortunately the debacle of our retreat from Vietnam, itself unrelated to the role of SAC, resulted in the triumph of ideologues determined to destroy that legacy. Arguably the communists saw the strategic forces as the greater threat and used Vietnam to leverage a general retreat in our political will and reduction in strategic capacity.
There is an intellectual thread leading from the disestablishment of SAC to Cash for Clunkers.
The situation required the thinking that expending one or more atomic bombs to knock down single fighters armed with nukes to protect a carrier or army group had to be in place. The damage to the surrounding enviroment and it’s inhabitants were simply ignored, the weapons systems and Ground formations had to be protected. At all costs.
That about says it all when you launch a missile with a 1 Kt warhead to shoot down an A-4 Skyhawk sized aircraft with one pilot and one bomb.
But then again That’s why the battle plan was called M.A.D.
RWE:
“If we had adopted [launch on warning]….”
It would come as a surprise to me that we didn’t, once the ICBM threat had matured. Are you saying we were committed to Launch Under Attack throughout the Cold War?
Granted, we didn’t launch on just any old warning, and neither did the Soviets, and we both had some unnerving false alarms. It was my impression that had those false alarms not been identified within a few more minutes, each side might well have responded before that (phantom) attack hit home.
What a stark reality war planners were faced in the aftermath of WWII. The Soviets and the Chinese grew isolated in the paranoid gap of fear and escalating technology. No man has ever willfully shirked the call of military superiority, let alone parity. It is indeed a singular human achievement that such superiority could be maintained with the sole desire of peace. That it came to peace for so many years – nothing short of a miracle.
H.G.Wells, a progressive in his own day, thought that a distant future might bring a different end, a post apocalyptic end that created an idyllic world shrouded in a dark mystery. Today, the Eloi are in office but the Morlocks are not far under foot. May the brave do heir duty and may the foolish quit meddling with the entangled stings of international power. Balance can be achieved through a hard indifference to evil and a soft nod towards freedom.
Hey Blast… your moniker seems particularly appropo to this thread!
I urge BC’rs to read “Nuclear War Survival Skills” by Kearney.
http://www.oism.org/nwss/
He has an excellent discussion of civil defense, and notes that the Soviets and Chinese made extensive preparations to protect their populations. Some of his advice for fallout shelters and finding uncontaminated water are based on Chinese methods.
The US made no effort to protect average Joes because it would be “destabilizing” to pretend we could survive a nuclear exchange. The ruling class had their bunkers in WVA and underneath the capitol of course. Apparently the Russians and Chinese didn’t think it would be destabilizing. Of course the Soviets deployed ABM systems around moscow to destroy out first wave so they could get into their prepared positions. But our ABMs are “destabilizing”.
5. HEP-T
“The situation required the thinking that expending one or more atomic bombs to knock down single fighters armed with nukes”
I have a friend who was an engineer in San Diego 50 years ago, who noted that the military (Navy maybe) had deployed anti-air artillery cannon with nuclear warheads. Obviously meant to eliminate bombers using gravity bombs.
The soviet ABM system used a nuke to hit nukes. They say they changed the warheads to conventional, but Russian has not demonstrated the ability to intercept missiles with the accuracy needed. I bet they still deploy the nuclear ABMs.
I have come to believe that if the US keeps getting itself in the middle of every international entanglement, every tut and scuffle, that we will end up in the unenviable position of being a referee in a nuclear street brawl. Perhaps our betters will nuke one of our own cities as a sign of good faith or the next best thing, open our borders completely. You cannot entangle your nation in the world’s woes without first forsaking your own citizens.
JPS #6:
I don’t think that there was any specific announcement about moving to Launch on Warning but I don’t know of anyone in the USAF who thought we would ever adopt that philosophy.
Before the Peacekeeper missile was deployed there was some discussion that the increased vulnerability of our strategic forces to the later Soviet ICBMs would force a Launch on Warning approach.
In reality the world situation would determine much of what would happen. Today I can’t imagine Launch On Warning occurring. But if in the 70′s and 80′s we were in the midst of some kind of specific confrontation with the USSR, such as a Soviet invasion of Iran or Saudi Arabia or Soviet threats that we better stay out of an Iraq-Kuwait conflict, with increasing DEFCONs occurring I can imagine a Launch on Warning decision if it looked like a major nuclear attack were underway.
A fellow USAF officer once told me of an incident where a computer at a site he was at in Alaska got stuck in a Do loop and counted one radar track, probably a meteorite, over and over, reporting thousands of incoming missiles to NORAD. And then the comm to NORAD went down. He finally got through via an alternate path to tell them of the problem, but no doubt Cheyanne Mtn had other sources with which to confirm what was going on, SAMOS, and other ground radars.
In the 80′s they recognized that one vulnerability was the POTUS. Get him and we potentially were hamstrung. Studies and tests were underway for a limited ABM system (and a really cool one by the way) to protect DC but the ABM treaty shut that down. Too bad; just the test program would have been the stuff of legends.
Few things show the difference between now and then than does the fact that Cheyanne Mtn is shut down and in caretaker status, with NORAD operating out of a much softer facility.
Question:”Do you intend to launch on warning, under attack, or do a preemptive launch?”
Answer:”Yes.”
The Soviets were never quite sure exactly what the US was going to do. Paranoia cost them a lot of money. They never quite believed our stated tactics because someone was always leaking something different.
The art of confusion to the enemy has been lost apparently. The confusion is mostly in Obama’s Administration. Sometimes the ultimate propaganda tool is silence.
Jay, beltway @9:
“the Soviets and Chinese made extensive preparations to protect their populations.”
There were never provisions (or hope) that they would save the entire population; they just needed to save enough of “the serfs” to rebuild, after they annihilated the governments of the West. The marxist theory of historical materialism was on their side, after all…but most of all, they feared the technology of the West, especially when it came to targeting systems.
Besides, they never revealed their preparations for survival to the world, one of the benefits of a “controlled press.” It would have been impossible for the US to accomplish similar preparations for any sizable portion of its poulation in secret, since there was still a “free press” that reported such things.
We are forgetting that the men who built and ran this system were the same men who accepted the reality of day and night raids of German and Japanese cities. The same men who invented the tactic of creating fire storms on major urban areas. And I’m not just writing about the generals/admirals, but the political leaders who accepted these tactics. Men who learned that General Sherman was right about the horror of war, but that it must be prosecuted vigorously.
There was no alternative. They did the best they could.
I recall those days, discussing the concept of deterrence with liberals. When i talked about “acceptable damage” to the Soviet Union–the presumed opinion of the Politburo, they couldn’t, or pretended they couldn’t, see the difference between what the Sovs might accept and what they, the preening, morally superior liberals would considerable (zero).
The Sovs lost 20 million people in WW II. Much of their infrastructure in European Russia was destroyed. Huge swaths of fabulous agricultural land had been laid waste, or deprived of its farmers. They won, but with the US as Big Dog anyway.
What would they pay, considering WW II as the baseline, to come into a world where they are the Big Dog and we are no more?
Combine that with the Moscow ring of AD and ABM defenses and the bunkers protecting the Politburo and the top of the nomenklatura and that’s destabilizing.
ra/16; couldn’t agree more. Folks such as Obama who take the position that the strategic weapons are evil so let’s get rid of them, are purposely avoiding mention of the peacekeeping function, as well as the fact that of the thousands of cities destroyed through history, only two were by nukes –and they ended a war that alone had killed dozens of cities, and in our living memory to boot.
It has been a long, winding, Gramscian road from 1958 to today. The popular culture and media have been marinated in the mockery of that generation. Dr. Strangelove to Atomic Cafe, SAC’s mailed fist of lightning has been transformed to a kid glove grasping legal briefs.
Buddy. In discussing such things, do you ever find yourself wondering, “Is he really so stupid as to believe what he’s telling me?”? I go back and forth and it’s only after knowing someone well that I am confident about one or the other.
Those videos are amazing. For reasons that go well beyond the intended message. Even the little things (choices of words, cinematographic style, “primitive” technologies, everybody lighting a cig as they initiate TEOWAWKI). I also remember when the B-47, B-52 and B-58, the Snark and Regulus, were the sexiest things going; and I remember the glue-smeared simulacra in my bedroom. Each, a totem of that power.
I can’t add much to W’s point, that “the root of war, is in the heart of man. It was never about the weapons.” The weapons are sign and instrument of what the heart would do. And since we are all fallen, the best we can hope for is uneasy equilibrium, weapons counterbalancing weapons, which both forces (and enables) the real rivalry to occur in more peaceful arenas. But as many others have said, how do you construct a deterrence strategy against people who seek death?
RWE, #12: Thank you for a fascinating response. In my question I wasn’t arguing with you, just curious, and there’s a lot in your answer that I didn’t know.
The destructive power of an individual nuke is exaggerated in most people’s minds, even a 50 megaton monster.
What I just said sounds ridiculous on the face of it — understandably, but as Wretchard said, it takes a lot of nukes to take down an enemy, especially a big one. But even little Israel would not be “destroyed” by a single nuke or even two, a conceit that Iran may have. Anyone who — even successfully — drops a couple of modest yield nukes on Israel will be countered by an arsenal of scores of retaliatory nuclear strikes with a bunch more to spare.
I remember having one of those “guy” discussions in a gym many years ago where I explained, FWIW, that even a major nuclear war wouldn’t destroy all life, including human life. The other guys refused to believe me. I finally brought them around when I pointed out that what mattered was: the life after such a war would be diminished, stark, and savage. But you know? Even a major multilateral nuclear exchange wouldn’t necessarily destroy all civilization or poison everything. It’s a remarkable modern human conceit that we somewhat overstate our capabilities for destruction, whether we’re talking about nukes, or environmental issues — global warming in particular.
None of what I said is meant to be a cavalier acceptance of the viability of nuclear war or rampant pollution and other degradations; I don’t want that any more than most people do.
I remember working on the F-102′s as part of a contractor ground support group doing I.R.A.N. for a National Guard outfit back in the 1970′s. The planes were getting a bit long in the tooth even then and the contract was canceled before all the planes were complete, the fuel crisis had busted the Air Force budget. I remember though a discussion about ramming after you had expended your missiles and free flight rockets. Would you ride it all the way in to contact or would you try to punch out at the last few seconds. Was it even possible to react that fast?
It seems that all the Century series fighters had “quirks”. The F-102′s didn’t like low speed high angles of attack and if you stalled out close to the ground…..Of course that was what made night landings with a full ordinance load after an intercept so much fun.
20. oMan “But as many others have said, how do you construct a deterrence strategy against people who seek death?”
You don’t, you grant them their fondest wish.
W: “It was so terrible that only the language of religion seemed suitable to it. There was a mystical aura which surrounded the whole business of nuclear war, because it dealt with events that were literally unthinkable. Its actuality surpassed the power of the normal human mind to conceive.”
At least at that time people thought seriously about nuclear war and its possible effects. Now, however, there’s barely a peep about nukes. Maybe the scale of things is indeed too big for a normal human mind to conceive. What’s a megaton? Or a trillion dollars?
Maybe now that the left is in power, the old rule applies: no criticism on the left. Economy, military, culture, education . . . nary a significant ripple of discouraging words. Those who believed that liberal democracy/socialism was the end of history seem determined to believe it has been achieved, even as the foundations, especially the financial foundations, crumble. Very bad things are almost certainly going to happen, including nuclear weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. The silence about the crumbling foundations and the potential threats is disturbing, but pervasive.
The left complained about Bush’s imperial presidency. But the left really meant that it wanted an imperial presidency of its own, a delegation of rule-making and social control to an executive. Now the morlocks are in considerable control of the state, Titanic though it be. The eloi are serviceable as food, or Sofitel chambermaids, or whatever.
In the movie ‘Wall-E,’ the machines are more human than the humans.
I found interesting that Paul Ryan submitted his budget plan to the Council of Bishops, which endorsed his endorsement of ‘solidarity’ and ‘subsidiarity’ as the foundations of government:
“As is so clear from your correspondence, the light of our faith – anchored in the Bible, the tradition of the Church, and the Natural Law – can help illumine and guide solid American constitutional wisdom. Thus I commend your letter’s attention to the important values of fiscal responsibility; sensitivity to the foundational role of the family; the primacy of the dignity of the human person and the protection of all human life; a concrete
solicitude for the poor and the vulnerable, especially those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty; and putting into practice the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, here at home and internationally
within the context of a commitment to the common good shared by government and other mediating institutions alike.”
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/DolanResponsetoRyan5_18.pdf
The bishops have been as much to blame as anyone for the fuzziness of thinking that pervades society. Ryan is a serious man, and he’s evoking a serious response. They talk as if, you know, people were capable of responsibility and maybe even ultimately mattered.
SAC’s strength was its readiness, discipline, and ownership of the aerial refueling force. Relentless exercises and study of Command and Control Procedures by SAC air and missile crews were how it was done. Level to which that atrophied was clearly illustrated by the loose ALCM’s sent To Barksdale awhile back. USAF has undertaken mighty efforts to get at least that discipline back in its nuclear force, but probably will not again achieve similar levels of readiness. Perhaps that kind of hair trigger is not necessary anymore, but the ability to contemplate a spectrum of responses is still quite important.
10)Jay,
“I have a friend who was an engineer in San Diego 50 years ago, who noted that the military (Navy maybe) had deployed anti-air artillery cannon with nuclear warheads”
I question that.
ra/19, for sure. Even when you justifiably trust this person’s intent and motive, hell, he could just be wrong. A few years hence he could be chained next to you in a Siberian salt mine shaking his head, “But but … it was unthinkable!”
One story was still making the rounds in the mid-1970s was a new surveillance radar turned on sometime in the early 1960s. It immediately started showing multiple returns – massive attack numbers. Excitement ensued until they figured out they were bouncing a return off the moon and turning it into multiple moving returns. Had we operated on a strict launch on warning basis, things would have gotten very dicey. Cheers -
The Chinese might calculate that pushing us around is an easy play.
In fact, they have pushed Obama’s face in the sand and asked him what he is going to do about it. “An attack on Pakistan will be considered an attack on China”, so keep your hands in your pockets and let’s see another one of your deep bows now, please.”
We not only owe them gobs of money, they are not just our landlord, they are lord over our land. Being pushed around by China is bad enough, but soon to be pushed around by China, Iran and Russia all at the same time is a bit much to take. (not to mention the sniveling toady, France)
The board game RISK, seems to have rolled the dice quite poorly the past two years. It really matters not one whit if you have own the better gun, if you are a coward and your opponent knows it, he’ll beat you every time.
I recall those days before a nuke exchange was presumed to wipe out all life. If you were writing scifi and needed a new stage, you just had a nuke war. And you wrote about immediately aftewards–Alas Babylon–or several centuries later–Norton-Star Man’s Son–or if you figured that mid-eighteenth century war along the Alleghanies was cool but Drums Along The Mohawk had the franchise, why then you kicked over the board with a nuke exchange and had para-Mongols riding out of the Dakotas to face armored knights in the Hudson Valley.
Dragons? Radiation mutated gila monsters. No problem.
Interesting. Fascinating for young guys. But the Dark Ages were nobody’s picnic. Spent a lot of time and blood recovering.
Richard Aubrey @ 31: “Dragons? Radiation mutated gila monsters. No problem.” LOL. Yeah, teenagers in the 60′s could read a lot of that post-Apo sci-fi. A lot of it pretty dark but, as you say, a great way to kick over the board and see what would happen.
The scenario depicted in those film reels may have had some propaganda purpose, but . . .
Circa 1980 I was on the Caltech campus having a conversation with a “military geek” who seemingly casually informed me that the war-fighting strategy of the U.S. nuclear forces was First Strike, always was, and the goal was to make that always so into the future. MAD (mutual-assured-destruction) of where the U.S. would launch a retaliatory counter-strike as part of a deterrent posture, it was explained to me, was purely for public consumption and to assuage the consciences of liberal intellectuals.
The idea was that ever since Stalin got The Bomb, the historical as well as ongoing policy of the U.S. was not to maintain nuclear parity with the Soviets but overwhelming nuclear superiority. And the preferred strategy was never launch under attack or even launch on warning but launch a preemptive strike. That is, when the threat from the Soviet Union or some other adversary rose to the level of existential danger, the U.S. policy was to launch the most thorough counter-force preemptive strike imaginable.
Mind you, even having this capability of waging preemptive nuclear war on the Soviet Union, to take such a step is not something any President would take lightly. Even a counter-force strike may inflict millions of casualties on an adversary, raise clouds of radioactive fallout, and expose the U.S. homeland to millions of casualties from even a residual retaliatory strike. What conditions would prompt consideration of such a strike are hard to say — perhaps unmistakable intelligence regarding a mass Soviet mobilization, say, the attack Western Europe. The Chinese, recently disclosed that the Russians approach Nixon with a plan to wage preemptive war on Maoist China, perhaps suggesting that the U.S. could play either a supporting role or simply step aside, and that Nixon “saved China” by telling the Soviet Russians in no uncertain terms of don’t do it or risk atomic war.
Now I know what you are all thinking, and there are “war geek” types lurking around all manners of engineering colleges and university campuses, and some of them spin some kewl but difficult-to-corroborate yarns. But I think I have some data points of corroboration.
One is that until perhaps the 1970′s, the Russian nuclear forces were much more in the way of bluff rather than might. They had only a handful of ICBM launch pads and perhaps only dozens of operational bombers in the time period in question. Their ballistic missile subs for reasons speculated upon in Tom Clancy’s novel never had the global reach of those of the U.S., and considerable resources in the form of Orion aircraft, Los Angeles class attack subs, and underwater sensor networks were expended towards neutralizing that threat.
Two, I remember seeing the front cover of IEEE Spectrum Magazine in the mid 1980s showing a test of the receiving end of what would be the type of counter-force strike I talked about. In a photo taken at the Marshall Islands Kwajalein Test Sight, the reentry vehicle tracks of the 6 warheads from 2 Minuteman III missiles were seen converging on 3 ground points. If that wasn’t a dress rehearsal for a strike against missile silos with missiles still in them, I don’t know what was. The fact that this picture was unclassified and on the cover of IEEE Spectrum was in itself a form of subtle “diplomacy” of communicating intent and capabilities.
Three, what Mikhail Gorbachev as much as admitted what “broke the back” of Soviet ambitions of remaining a superpower was not so much “Star Wars” missle defense by was deployment of the D5 submarine launched ballistic missile, with, what was it, 10 warheads per rocket by employing an accurate enough guidance to serve as a counter-force weapon against hard targets.
Four, why was it that the Soviets were so hot on getting the U.S. to agree to some form of “No First Use”? First Use was always an option in U.S. planning to prevent all of Western Europe from being conquered by a Soviet tank army.
So the Soviets were quite dishonest about their capabilities but very open about their intentions. The “imperialists”, however, were quite open about capabilities but certainly coy about our intentions.
Aardvark @ 25: “I found interesting that Paul Ryan submitted his budget plan to the Council of Bishops, which endorsed his endorsement of ‘solidarity’ and ‘subsidiarity’ as the foundations of government”
Damn! And I had high hopes for Paul Ryan. Now he is off spouting New Age gibberish about solidarity and subsidiarity. He might as well be proudly displaying an original copy of the US Constitution suspended in his own piss.
Solidarity means whatever any brain-dead leftist wants it to mean. (Solidarity with differently-abled Palestinian lesbian single mothers, for Goodness sake!). And “subsidarity” means that the speaker is a spineless Europhiliac, slyly promoting more expansive governmental control.
It is a pity that Ryan did not stick with inalienable rights, limited government, and federalism. But at least we now know his true nature. Damn!
rwe @ 1: exactly
Fifty years ago, 1961, we did not yet have the Minuteman force in place. I’m not sure how many nuke warheads we had completed. Something like 1972 was probably max nukes in terms of warheads and delivery vehicles, though the B-1 and B-2 deployments came a bit later, and I’m not sure when enhanced fission became choice over fusion, …
But much of this changed after the idea of “nuclear winter” came about. Well, maybe not, Dr. Strangelove had the basic idea by whenever – 1965? To the degree this is true, it didn’t matter what targets you hit, because the ash and fallout and radiation would wipe out civilization, if not the human species, if all those warheads were used on anything at all.
Is that true? Well, there is probably some gigaton level at which it is. Did we ever reach it? Who knows.
There’s nothing here that is unthinkable, all the options have been worked out to three decimal points in scifi over the last fifty years. I’m afraid I don’t have even the smallest shred of qualms about discussing the options or doing the math. Frankly, I’m not sure who does. People who played Missile Command video games didn’t seem to melt down into quivering balls, no matter how many times they won or lost. Go figure.
Don #22:
There is a book that may still be avaiable that came out in the early 1980′s, “The Day After Doomsday.” It was written by a biologist that was doing studies of plant and animal life that happened to be around some of our nuclear missile sites. He attended an antiwar presentation put on by the people who were trying to stop ICBM moderization. He asked what would be a safe place to be in the event of a nuclear war and was told “No where.” Skeptical, he looked into it, found that the answer was BS,and ended up writing a book on how to survive disasters. He included a map showing projected fallout from a Soviet attack and pointed out why it was absurd, providing a more realistic map.
Agimarc #29: That happened in WWII, when the British modified the elevation of a surveillance radar to try to spot V-2′s.
Something else happened in the 70′s relative to ICBMs that surprised the hell out of everyone, even though it was pretty obvious in retrospect, but I better not talk about it.
re: 27. exhelodrvr
10)Jay,
“I have a friend who was an engineer in San Diego 50 years ago, who noted that the military (Navy maybe) had deployed anti-air artillery cannon with nuclear warheads”
I question that.
I watched a TV show the other year on Underground Cities. It was referring to San Fransisco. A look to Wikipedia found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike
The Nike Hercules was immortalized by Cecil (of Beany and Cecil):
I wonder how many got the reference.
37) abate
Anti-Air missiles with nuclear warheads is completely different than anti-air cannon with nuclear warheads.
The Cuban missile crisis was all about counterforce capability. At the time almost all strategic assets were bombers. We had IRBMs in Turkey which could take out the Russian bombers in about 10 minutes. We gave those up to settle the crisis. The danger of missiles in Cuba was not to our cities and population but to our bombers.
“The Chinese, recently disclosed that the Russians approach Nixon with a plan to wage preemptive war on Maoist China, perhaps suggesting that the U.S. could play either a supporting role or simply step aside, and that Nixon “saved China” by telling the Soviet Russians in no uncertain terms of don’t do it or risk atomic war.”
This actually confirms a story I heard once, that Mao once remarked to Kruschev at the time of the Sino-Soviet split that the Soviets would run out nukes before China ran out of peasants. Even Solzhenitsyn, the archetypal anti-Soviet Russian intellectual, once warned the West in his famous Harvard speech that if the Chinese got the latest Western modern weapons and could build them in bigger quantities it would be game over for the West. Solzhenitysn may have been slightly off on that but he was not wrong about the internal decline of the West.
Even back in the mid-80s supposedly at the height of the Reagan era tensions, P.J. O’Rourke reported getting drunk with some Russian guys along the Volga, one of them a WWII vet, and toasting to the U.S. and Russia someday being allies against China.
k/34, but remember Bishops move diagonally and stay on the same color squares. Wait and see how he sounds speaking to a roomful of Rooks –straightforward and heedless of the shades of gray.
j/35, you’re saying you never did fall for the ”war porn” meme from the Andropov ‘shaming the west’ file.
***
An older (2007 or
but unforgettable title from JR Nyquist fits into this thread –i searched “danger is not appreciated nyquist” and found this guy who has excerpted some of the archive and points to some essays that, should you find your hair laying down and wish that it stand up on end for awhile, you could assay.
something just occurred to me:
Don Rodrigo wrote:
“The other guys refused to believe me. I finally brought them around when I pointed out that what mattered was: the life after such a war would be diminished, stark, and savage. But you know? Even a major multilateral nuclear exchange wouldn’t necessarily destroy all civilization or poison everything. It’s a remarkable modern human conceit that we somewhat overstate our capabilities for destruction, whether we’re talking about nukes, or environmental issues — global warming in particular.”
Substitute “Default on all US Debt obligations” for war and all the other references.
I do not think the American nuclear deterrent is taken seriously in the Middle East. Sure, America bashers never fail to remind the world that the United States was the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, not once but twice. They use such commentary to bash the United States as hopelessly evil and also to shame the United States into never using them again. As it is, the United States looks like a nation that has been shamed into never using nuclear weapons at any time for any purpose.
I sometimes wonder if al-Qaeda is trying to use mass casualty attacks to push the United States into using nuclear weapons against Muslims. Think of it as their form of blue suicide. Al-Qaeda treats America’s nuclear arsenal as pure bluff, whereas there is no doubt that Islamists would use every nuclear weapon they can get their hands on. In “The Quranic Concept of War”, General S.K. Malik promoted the power of raw fanaticism as a means to overcome American and Soviet nuclear weaponry. Now, we are seeing the results of his strategic thinking.
K 34. ‘And “subsidarity” means that the speaker is a spineless Europhiliac, slyly promoting more expansive governmental control.’
Er, not quite.
The principle of subsidiarity holds that a larger and greater body should not exercise functions which can be carried out efficiently by one smaller and lesser, but rather the former should support the latter and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the whole community.
This principle defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.
Although never so named, the Constitution assumes this in the delegation of powers, not withstanding the Yerps paying lip service to this important principle.
40. Roy Lofquist
The missiles placed in Cuba ( Cuber ) had such poor target accuracy that no one saw them as anything other than counter-valued weapons.
Further, they were positioned so close to major American bases — especially in Florida — that they couldn’t be protected from America by flight-times. That is, they’d lose them to American strikes before they could ever launch unless they were set on a hair trigger.
THAT’S what the experts figured out. Cuban based missiles made military sense ONLY if used as a first strike package — and the ones deployed were too sloppy to depend on as counter-force weapons.
The Crisis was an epic fail for Kennedy; something that the press hid from the public.
He entered the poker match with ‘five-of-a-kind’ and walked away with only half of his pot.
——–
As ever SAC thought of itself as the whole show.
But in the above scenario the USN would be getting in first licks, for sure. Based out of Yokosuka, our Asian carrier task force would’ve long before nuked the daylights out of opfor Asian assets.
Submarines in the White Sea would’ve knocked the door down with cruise missiles — atomic tipped.
The Soviet ICBM base in Estonia would have been crushed likewise.
The ICBM strikes posited in the scenario were impossible for the Soviets until the mid-sixties.
The propaganda notion that America would stop when the enemy surrendered was and is absurd. After the blood was up, America would want to PERMANENTLY instruct the planet as to the dire consequence suffered by those that nuke her.
And of course, the enemy lands would become forfeit… all of them.
Loses due to prompt radiation are terrible – -but they fade VERY quickly. Note how the Sendai disaster has faded from the international media. The radiation level has been dropping almost 50% per week. This is because early emissions are dominated by radio isotopes with short, half-lives.
——
A more reasonable termination of WWIII would be only after physical occupation of the opfor homelands by the US Army. The opfor leadership would all be dead — including all subordinates able to command the national stage. There would be no one to sign any silly piece of paper.
Because of the severe damage done to America, such an expeditionary effort would not be possible for quite some time, perhaps years. In the meantime, any attempt at recovery by opfor survivors would be hammered down. Conditions would devolve to the stone age.
Mao would be proven wrong as the Han population was clipped by 99%.
So, instead of being over in a week, the war would probably go on for years and years. At the end, America would end up morphed into a neo-Roman global colossus; which would be a poor outcome.
It would however, result in an American monopoly on atomic weapons. Russia would have surely destroyed the atomic production of Britain and France — and the brains that built them. America would have destroyed Russia and China utterly.
The UN would be disbanded, of course. It would be replaced by a Federal Department of Native Affairs.
We certainly were lucky that the Russians loved their children.
Islamists — ?
I was once in a Herc outfit, terrible place for a simple but honest grunt, and we used to have various practice alerts with scenarios leading up to them. The surprise alerts found the troops in their bunks at 0230 in field jackets and boots. ADA guys are strange.
Then we got a war warning. It was a mistake, lack of correct info or something and the batteries blew the war horn. In a really, really surprise alert, we got up faster than any of the “surprise” exercises we’d had. If you figure flip-flops and a wet towel are the preferred uni for nuclear war.
Dunno if it was a residual of Pearl Harbor–our parents were of that generation–or simple discipline and sense of duty. But those draftees were ready to kill, and were ready in record time.
It may have been Wretchard who broached the possibility that the Islamists might try to force us to do something so horrible that…we wouldn’t do it.
I could think back to the Iran-Iraq war where the Mad Mullahs got a huge number of Iranian kids and gave them plastic keys–keys to heaven–and sent them in masses over Iraqi minefields and kill sacks.
Now. Suppose it’s us on the ground in the area and the kids this time each have two hand grenades and a suicide vest. Can’t let them get into our positions. So we will be killing thousands, possibly tens of thousands of kids in the open in front of the media, with no other options.
Imagine the NYT and the Yurps looking at that.
46. blert,
At the time of the crisis I was in Peshawar, Pakistan. We were kinda eavesdropping on the Russian missiles. Shortly after the crisis began they fired an ICBM from Kapustin Yar, an IRBM from Tyuratam and two ABMs from Lake Balkash. When all 4 got to the same general area they set of a 300 kiloton device at high altitude to test EMP on their missiles. Scary.
Everything was very compartmented – need to know. But there’s always scuttlebutt. The above posting is based on that.
Roy
I think that even in an all-out nuclear war only a fraction of the bigger nation’s arsenals would ever be used; that is why the “wiping out life” scenario is not likely.
Some held that deterrence never worked and civilization survived the Cold War only through sheer good luck or the peaceful nature of the Soviet Union.
Hard-core pacifists of the campaign for nuclear disarmament even argued that it didn’t matter how evil the Soviets were because nuclear war was so terrible that submission to any tyranny was preferable to risking mass death. As Bertrand Russell, the moving spirit of the campaign for nuclear disarmament put it: “if no alternative remains except Communist domination or the extinction of the human race, the former alternative is the lesser of two evils.” In other words, “better Red than Dead”. This was actually their slogan.
Despite the fact that Russell’s theory wasn’t quite validated by history, his ideas, like many ideas on the Left, have proved immune to refutation. Lots of people still believe that it is always preferable to accommodate rather than to confront; that there are never any Just Wars and there are certainly no Just Nuclear Wars. Always give in when extinction is the alternative.
The idea it preferable to convert to radical Islam rather than risk lives by confronting it would make special sense to people who argue that ‘no set of barmy religious beliefs is worth fighting for. If people want me to bow five times a day toward Mecca as the price of getting on with my life, it’s a bargain compared to war’. The problem is that it is always the last pinch of the vise that hurts. On a previous thread someone remarked that many of the European Jews failed to flee from Hitler in time because they believed, even till the last, that things would never get so bad.
Robbery victims know the problem with Russell’s adage. There is no certain a priori way to know how bad a certain form of “domination” will eventually become. For it may become equivalent to “extinction”. Crime victims take this very risk when they decide to cooperate with criminals. If I am sure an armed robber is only after my wallet it makes no sense to resist. But if I had a good reason to believe that after taking my wallet he would kill me anyway, then I might as well grapple for the gun. We make the judgment and we are sometimes wrong.
Even so, some would argue that the dictates of “humanity” require us to rise above such petty notions as retaliation. Suppose you were the President and the Soviet Union had just executed a first strike on the United States. SAC tells you one hundred million Americans lie dead. Why avenge them? Why not stand down SAC instead of ordering the death of two hundred million Soviets which would not bring back the American deceased anyway? Bertrand Russell would argue that a world with a hundred million dead Americans is better than one with 300 million dead Americans and Soviets. So if attacked, surrender.
But the problem with that reasoning is that if the Soviets knew the US President was Bertrand Russell they would surely attack. A Lord Russell in the Oval Office automatically means 100 million deaths AND Communist domination. And that can’t be good, could it, except perhaps to those who wanted it that way in the first place? At all events, adopting the Russell doctrine would have increased the Soviet incentive to attempt a first strike. And you don’t want that because it encourages bad behavior. Deterrence only works if you are sure that punishment is certain; that whether the President is Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama or Bertrand Russell, categorical destruction would visit any nuclear attacker on America.
The difference between the Cold War and today is that while one might be reasonably sure that a Barack Obama would launch a massive retaliatory strike had the Soviet missiles hit North America, there is no similar assurance on the scale of nuclear terrorism. Back in the day the sheer scale of a Soviet First Strike meant Presidents effectively had “no choice” but to fire away while they could. Today, a President Obama would have a choice, and that weakens deterrence. In the crazy of that game theoretic, it is often better to bind yourself to a course in order to deter enemy action.
But does anyone still think this way today? Not that they necessarily should. But it would be instructive to know how they think in this modern enlightened age, and how is this calculus is conveyed to America’s potential enemies.
W…
OBL has answered your query: the islamists regard America as a weak horse.
He held to his course as surely as Adolf.
And he has left a legacy of hatred and revenge.
———-
It’s all too likely that the ‘terrorist’ attack on the Pakistani Navy is but a ‘deep state’ long con against America.
Namely, the op provides cover for Pakistani exports of anti-submarine gear to China; the planes being ‘shockingly destroyed’ in the process. Together with our stealth helicopter they constitute payment in full for the 50 fighter jets that Beijing is sending to Islamabad.
And the 50 jets are expected to stop SEALs from nabbing any more HVTs.
Towards this end, the opfor mouthpiece proclaims that it’s a pure suicide mission. Translation: most of the strike force has escaped – but don’t try looking for them.
And of course, the Pakistani Admiral is proclaiming that the assault was oriented against the Navy — not the Naval Air Force — which suffered all of the losses! How turned around can you get?
Such antics clearly demonstrate that ISI is a hostile power with state support.
———-
Subotai’s prior post WRT dis-arming nuclear Pakistan is cogent.
De-toxxing the neighborhood is going to be VERY nasty.
As for Pakistan’s strategic intentions it must be plain to all by now that she intends to crank out atomics until her stash of death is astounding. She operates with a Stalinesque paranoia which means that her desire for mega-deaths is unlimited.
If you doubt it, check out the bizarre postings that are the norm in Pakistan. Try the Long War Journal and Bill’s associated links.
Like other victims of agitprop, they can’t figure anything out.
Robbery victims know the problem with Russell’s adage. There is no certain a priori way to know how bad a certain form of “domination” will eventually become. For it may become equivalent to “extinction”.
That’s why a reasonable person is never entirely an empiricist, knowledge is never guaranteed, especially in advance, you cannot in principle decide to depend on it in practice.
OTOH, you make the converse error if you always ignore actual evidence.
“There is some s*** I will not eat” is thus the middle course, and the one I recommend, on every possible basis.
#36,
I believe you are thinking of “Life After Doomsday” by Bruce Clayton. copyright 1980, it has information about survival after disaster hits. It is the right book, in the preface he notes the comment.
It is a very useful and interesting book. In the event a “lost” nuke shows up in a city near you, information about how to cope with fallout is worth searching Amazon for a copy. They even have it for the Kindle.
From The New Scientist
”
Genes, germs and the origins of politics
Conventional explanations for a country’s political system would draw on its history, economy and culture.
Randy Thornhill from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, however, thinks it might be determined by the threat of disease in a region.
This triggers psychological biases, which originally evolved to prevent illness spreading, that also hinder the emergence of democratic ideals.
Some support for this idea comes from statistical comparisons of different regions.”
http://www.newscientist.com/embedded/political-genes
They rated people in 98 different nations and regions, from Estonia to Ecuador, on the collectivist-individualist scale, using data from questionnaires and studies of linguistic cues that can betray a social outlook.
Sure enough, they saw a correlation: the greater the threat of disease in a region, the more collectivist people’s attitudes were (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 275, p 1279).
The correlation remained even when they controlled for potential confounding factors, such as wealth and urbanization.
In fact –biological warfare is cheap and fairly easy to launch.
If you do not care about the consequences.
There are still lots of underemployed virologists and bio chemists left over from the old USSR.
Apart from the Military, very, very few people in the US have immunity to smallpox–for example.
w@50: We make the judgment and we are sometimes wrong.
Threat assessment requires training – at the personal level as well as the sovereign level. Most individuals have no training and no clue. Security specialists advise never get into a vehicle under any level of threat – it’s over – or you might wish it so for the rest of your life.
Threat assessment at the sovereign level is obviously more considered, even if less public. I’m not sure that the American psyche can be divorced from the notion of retaliation. It may seem so at times because the burden of “humane” behavior is on the strong. We – and yes, Americans especially – go the distance before the slow growl of serious combat begins to control and alter the exchange. (It’s a luxury of people who have attained a certain level of success that drives enemies insane. Bite d@mmit!)
As far as ‘conveying that calculus’ to America’s potential enemies, I doubt the effort is worthwhile. The enemies in the ME would not understand and the enemies elsewhere – Russia, China – would not care. The Canadians might have something to say.
The game theory here is far beyond my pay grade; and obviously Rand and many others worked on it for generations (and no doubt some do so today). Seems to me that against a rational opponent you want to offer “payoffs” that always incentivize him to do the “right thing.” So the certainty of obliteration, should he attack, is a negative payoff that ought to keep him from attacking. As W observes, if you get a reputation for backing down in a fight, then the p(obliteration) goes down and you have increased the odds that he will call what he thinks might be your bluff. Except you may not even know, yourself, how you’ll respond in the crunch; you might actually man-up. But by then, it’s too late. As W says, if the threat is annihilation you want to “bind yourself” unambiguously to a course of action that the other guy cannot accept.
Which binding has, in our case, now broken. Weakness invites violence. Mr. Waffle has dragged us all closer to the fire.
Of course those awaiting the 12th Imam could care less about the strength of the signal, so maybe it hardly matters. They will light it off as soon as they can, regardless of our credibility.
Like I had said, “(MAD) was purely for public consumption and to assuage the consciences of liberal intellectuals” (such as Bertrand Russell).
My “military geek” informant as much as told me that after the U.S. lost its atomic and then hydrogen bomb monopolies, the strategy became one of maintaining not arms parity by overwhelming superiority, and tremendous resources were spent by a wealthy nation to maintain that advantage over a rather poor nation.
If I were to add yet another data point, when German student Mathias Rust piloted a Cessna and landed in Red Square, Emmett Tyrrell of the American Spectator wrote somewhat in jest that “The Russians in response ‘pressed the button’ on their launch-on-warning-of-an-attack retaliatory response and it all came up a fizzle” or some words to that effect. Now you could say that the Russian air defense (Protivo Vozdushnaya Oborona Strany) refrained from shooting down a lone Cessna, obviously engaged in a stunt instead of a coordinated strike, out of humanitarian considerations. More likely the small, slow plane “flew in under the radar.” I understand the response involved the firings of some high-ranking AD (I mean PVO Strany) generals.
This is not to say that “pressing the button” would be a casual decision for an American President. But there is good reason to believe that any nuclear war would go overwhelmingly against the Russians even if it resulted in grave damage to the U.S.. And as such, the Soviet propaganda machine was in overdrive encouraging belief in “blowing the world up many times over”, “Mutually Assured Destruction”, “Nuclear Winter”, “No winners in a nuclear war”, “endless and unwinnable arms race” and so on. Why do you think that the Safeguard and later Star Wars ABM systems provoked the liberal establishment into such a frenzy in a way that offensive systems never did?
OK, another data point — Hollywood or dare I say Shepperton Studios. The whole premise was that the U.S. had overwhelming superiority in nuclear arms, the putative smugness of this superiority lampooned by having the George C Scott character say, “With all due respect Mr. President, I think we should finish what (the Sterling Hayden character) started. If we hit them now with everything we’ve got, they’d barely be able to touch the hairs on the back of our neck — 10 million American casualties . . . tops!” The “Macguffin” propelling the plot of Dr. Strangelove is that the Russians, unable to compete with American military might, reverted to an automated Doomsday Machine, where “bombs, unlimited in size” would be detonated on their own soil in response to an attack, to which Dr. Strangelove, the German-expat U.S. defense scientist replied that our side had “thought about that one too” but in pointing out the advantages and drawbacks, thunders at the Russian ambassador, “What is the point of having a Doomsday Machine if you don’t tell the world!”
I am not saying that fictional movies are the source of information about atomic war fighting strategy, but of all the movies on the subject, Dr. Strangelove is the closest to “getting it right” in that the U.S. indeed had overwhelming superiority, could indeed launch a first strike, and the only hope the Russians had of a counter was some exotic scheme — in real life there was some talk of some Russian ICBMS having biological rather than nuclear warheads, of some kind of “dead man’s switch” radio network in Russia to automatically launch a retaliatory strike after the national leadership had been lost, and so on.
So to keep the record straight, maybe what kept the peace during the Cold War was not a bi-lateral standoff in atomic weapons but of the U.S. maintaining overwhelming nuclear superiority while allowing the Russians the face-saving fiction of having some level of parity. If this was indeed the case, this needs to become more widely known that we can draw lessons from it.
Wretchard #50
Well, think about this. Our current leadership are not steely-eyed men who will defend truth, justice and the American way at all costs.
But while they will shout from the rooftops how horrible it is to waterboard someone they do not blink at quietly sending Hellfires down from Predators to evaporate people whose names they do not even know. Basically they give the appearance of being willing to do almost anything if it can’t be pinned on them.
The Soviets/Russians were comfortable with Reagan and Bush. They knew who the Americans were and that they could be trusted even if they themselves were not worthy of that trust. In contrast, Bill Clinton set back Russian/US relations by a decade. They knew him to be a liar, someone who would go to war for his own CYA in a heartbeat, and was not to be trusted. Any military adventurism on the part of Reagan or Bush had a solid philosophical basis. In contrast, Slick Willy would wag the dog.
So how can they regard Obama? In much the same way as Clinton only more so. He looks like an easy mark relative to putting American interests second to his own, but at the same time cannot be trusted in any way. And he is the poster child for Plausible Deniability. Hell, he’s the poster boy for Implausible Deniability. He’d nuke you if he thought it would be good for him and then claim that terrible Gen. Jack Ripper exceeded his authority.
Presbypoet #53:
Yep, that’s the book. Well worth having.
Apart from the Military, very, very few people in the US have immunity to smallpox–for example.
True. But here in the west we are given a certain immunity by our general good health and our sanitary living conditions. The same cannot be said for much of the rest of the world. A plague may spread through the industrialized west, but it would be a uncontrollable wildfire in the much of the rest of the world.
The US has enough smallpox vaccine for maybe 1% of US the civilian population.
Interesting theory from Wiki–
“Recent studies suggest that the smallpox vaccine provides some level of defense against HIV.
Both the smallpox vaccine and HIV exploit a receptor called CCR5, which is expressed on the surface of white blood cells.
Researchers theorize that one factor in the sudden spread of HIV in the early 1980s was the result of eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s, and the subsequent and abrupt decline in smallpox vaccinations worldwide.”
Biological Warfare is a much greater threat than the blowing up of some hospital radioactive waste–or thousands of smoke domestic smoke detectors.
Soviet scientists studied migratory birds as potential vectors for biological warfare–their concern was that the birds die–or shed the virus– before they come back to roost—presumably.
The WHO ended smallpox in the 70s–but the virus deposits still have not been destroyed.
“The WHO ended smallpox in the 70s”
Yeah – they were definitely a lot better before Keith Moon died.
How did we make it alive and even un-nuked through the Cold War?
The Soviets had enough to do recovering from the war and digesting eastern europe, and found it didn’t go down so well, so why would they want to start blasting away at the rest of the world, that wasn’t going to help, nor get them the consumer goods that the west was enjoying.
The US had nobody to nuke, we’d rather trade with anybody, and had a large distaste for making nukes such a commonplace that someone might launch one at New York. Anyway we were busy being good consumers.
France and England didn’t want to undertake nuclear aggression.
And, that about wrapped it up.
The mundane conquered nuclear war.
Maybe rationality had something to do with it too.
But our Islamic friends don’t seem terribly enamored of the consumer life. They brag about loving death, and some percentage of them probably mean it. And they think we’re wusses, “paper tigers” as the Chinese once made it, paralyzed by our own strength and lack of character. In the end, they are pretty much world-class stupid and happy about it, as I expect will eventually earn its due reward.
Victor @60: “The WHO ended smallpox in the 70s-but the virus deposits still have not been destroyed.” I believe it wouldn’t end the threat to world health if the virus stocks were destroyed. Because the virus has been sequenced. So it is now, literally, a digital file that can be re-instantiated in nucleotides by instructing a machine to assemble the desired string. Maybe not child’s play, but hardly difficult.
So it would be prudent to assume that those now working 24/7 on Twelfth Imam Project, are thinking hard about this.
Secondarily, I don’t understand why a decline in smallpox vaccinations would help HIV to spread. If the CCR5 co-receptor is part of how the two viruses enter the host, how would not activating CCR5 with a smallpox fragment help the co-receptor to be more vulnerable to HIV? I’m no biologist or infectious disease guru, I would just appreciate some more explanation.
The Russian response to anything was always brute force. Their guidance systems couldn’t guarantee they’d even get near the target, so they developed massive thermonuclear weapons in the hopes that, if you have a 20 Megaton device, being off by a few miles is close enough to destroy the target anyway. They tried to compensate for their obvious technical inferiority with overwhelming numbers. They tried to build more nuclear weapons then we’d be capable of destroying, either with a first-strike or with ABMs. In the end, strategy and brains beat out brute force.
Make of this what you will, but…
An uncle of mine (passed away during the early 80s) went from radar tech on bombers over Germany, to an EE degree, and then worked for numerous of the major defense contractors of the day – Sperry, Raytheon, etc, finally ending up as a Science writer for Lincoln Labs (MIT).
During the late 70s, a number of my family was discussing the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviets. My uncle, usually very close mouthed, interrupted, “during the late 50s, we took an old sub, stuffed it to the gills with nuclear weapons on radio command, and sank it somewhere off the Black Sea coast near Odessa…if anything were to start, we would detonate it. It would shower 90% of the most important part of the Soviet Union with radioactive water, make it uninhabitable for thousands of years.” And then shut up.
Was he joking, or dead serious? He was not the kind of guy who kidded around.
Victor as ever, spews random fallacies…
Most of the adult population in the US has been vaccinated for life many, many years ago.
Only the younger generation, say 39 years old and younger, stands at risk.
——-
What all of the bio-warfare dreamers never consider is that such agents ALWAYS morph. The blowback is too horrifying to contemplate.
Worse, CDC and other such agencies are already on continuous alert for infectious diseases at all times.
The propagation trail — rather like internet linkages — would be traced back to the points of origin all too quickly. Not so fast that damage is contained; but fast enough to fix blame.
Since biologicals work their wonders best with dense populations — they would run riot in the third world.
So biologicals have all of the worst properties as weapons. Sloppy omni-directional ‘aiming,’ no termination of effect, blow-back towards the initiator — and a conditioned response by any nuclear power of atomic retaliation.
That’s why they stink as a war-fighting weapon.
For a nation like China, with a large urban population, biological warfare is an own-goal of epic proportions. Such weapons entirely eliminate the population advantage she has.
Fascinating and informative discussions, as usual, but more so for the seriousness of the past. Presumably past.
Talk of the weakening of our defense policy position is extremely apt, because in 1991 not much really changed in the world other than shuffling some labels around to make the west go to sleep. The Communist party lost it’s place, but it was just a skin to the prole bones and security services muscle of the Soviet Union–important, but replaceable with new scar tissue. Russia grew a new “skin” of capitalism–and quickly morphed it to fascism. Perhaps it was due to Clinton, or maybe not.
Regardless, though the public faces changed, the KGB and other security services stayed in charge of Russia, and arguably have only grown in power by embracing new, more profitable paradigms. These are the same people who wanted the US dead during the Cold War, to at minimum safeguard Russia from encirclement and destruction.
Russian psychology has some strange elements, dating all the way back to their rebellion against the Golden Horde. In short, they feel the need to expand as far as possible as a defense measure, and break out of “containing” measures that register to them as incipient attack preparations. Regardless of US intentions toward the SU, the Cold War of the 20th century with the US (and of the 19th century with Britain) pressed all these buttons. Since the collapse of the SU the US policy toward Russian containment has trundled forward regardless, and though there may have been a moment for real rapprochement it was past when Bush 1 lost.
So… what? Given the opportunity, these same security services would leap at the chance for a no-risk takedown of the US. Takedown as in “no more America ever again”. So would China. Why–don’t we buy their stuff? Yes, and it’s non-sustainable, just like their food situation. A Russia and a China that sees a cripplingly weak America and cowed world can and will take it to our beaches. In the case of Russia, to obtain the technology and people it needs (ran out of hardworking German slaves long ago). In the case of China to obtain agricultural land (first) and other resources (second). Obliterating the threat of the USA forever would be bonus.
That’s the threat. You just need a sufficiently decreased p(obliteration) to make the calculation work–and Russian military planning is all about calculation. For Russia that could be… what, -20 million or more? And China would love to shave off about half a billion. They just have to be sure of winning.
–JC
Humanity isn’t threatened by nuclear weapons; it is at risk from the growing gap between his constantly improving tools and the stagnant condition of his base nature. We are as far beyond the caveman as gods in our technology, yet we are still those very same cave-men. Our capabilities are up to date, but our intent is as ancient as the greed, lust, cruelty and hatred of prehistory.
Take away nukes and we will invent more terrible weapons still. At Trinity we finally achieved what we had sought for ages. “I am the destroyer of worlds”. We found the bomb because we wanted to find it. Man has never said no to a weapon.
What modern pacifism has done is harness the atom to the dream of power. It comes to a frightened world and says, “give us your freedom and we will keep you safe. We — us — the United Nations will lock up all the dangerous things so that only the elect may use them. You will give up your liberty but your lives shall be ensured.” But inside the suit, behind the UN-logoed podium, it’s just another cave-man making a speech. Smooth as silk on the outside yet still, when alone, capable of chasing a maid round a room yelling, “don’t you know who I am?”
We can lock up every bit of technology but unless we empty our minds of knowledge or return to the trees we must live with ourselves. And therein lies the trouble.
I served on an FBM submarine for 6 years, between 1972 and 1978.
In October (November, actually) 1973, I found out first hand that our official deterrent, second strike doctrine was not set in stone.
On a single day, 39 FBM submarines all over the globe went to launch depth and spun up all the birds, on orders from the force commanders. Not until the guidance packages had erected and the first missile tube hatch rolled open were we told to stand down.
That was probably the worst day of my life. After, I hated the mission, but I stayed aboard that boat for 4 more years.
We (the crew of my boat and the crews of the other boomers in the fleet) expected to launch. We would have launched. The whole thing started out in response to the Soviet’s avowed intention to send a sizable force to Israel and the occupied territories via Turkey, once it was clear that the Egyptians and Syrians were getting their asses handed to them again by the IDF. We went to DefCon 2 and deployed everything that could get under way. The WSRT they sprang on us was intended to convince both ourselves and the Russians that the Nulear Forces would launch tactical nukes on command. It worked on both accounts.
What good are weapons if you find that your crews will not use them? Not much.
The strategy was deterrence, based on MAD. But we always had the capability to strike first, especially after the ballistic missile submarine force had matured.
We can lock up every bit of technology but unless we empty our minds of knowledge or return to the trees we must live with ourselves. And therein lies the trouble.
As they say in business, every problem is an opportunity.
Maybe we just have to earn our way to the Omega point.
Wretchard,
I am growing so weary of Brokaw’s “greatest generation” scam. They were the cannon fodder of the really “greatest” generation; that of Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, etc, who ran the war effort to victory. When the “greatest generation” was in charge we got Viet Nam and I’m very disappointed in what my generation, “Boomer” is leaving to my children – I’ve got one heading to Afghanistan next month. What is wrong with total victory?
69. B Dubya
It’s called brandishing…
—-
Minot, North Dakota went into full lockdown at the same time. Base security captured an all time record of fleeing airmen trying to bug out to Canada!
The whole exercise was performed to STOP a direct confrontation between the Red Army and the US Army in Egypt.
At the time you’re worried stiff — Moscow is mobilizing parachute divisions — rumored to be sitting on the runways at that time.
So your basic thesis that America was engaged in a first strike is entirely upside down.
Everything was done with maximum exposure so that the opfor KNEW that the gun was at the ready — in the holster.
Nixon then talked Moscow out of the crisis and set the course for the Sadat-Begin Treaty signed under the Peanut.
Letting the Russians KNOW that we were at DEF CON 2 is the absolute antithesis of First Strike.
Mike Giles @ 59
‘Apart from the Military, very, very few people in the US have immunity to smallpox–for example.’
I don’t understand this statement. I, my sister, my wife, her brother and sister all had smallpox vaccinations as babies and so did millions of other people world wide who were born before 1970. Assuming that we still have some sort of immunity many millions of people born before 1970 have immunity to smallpox.
The last time I was in the U.S. I could have sworn that I saw many Americans who are 42 years or older. Why aren’t they immune to smallpox?
The fatality rate for flat-type smallpox is 90% or greater and nearly 100% is observed in cases of hemorrhagic smallpox.
Smallpox vaccination provides high level immunity for 3 to 5 years and decreasing immunity thereafter.
Apart from the military — no one has been vaccinated against smallpox in the US since the 60s.
My point is that biological warfare is potentially a much greater threat than nukes.
It is relatively low tech, low cost, low mass, easily transported– and lethal.
Smallpox is just one of the lethal viral/bacterial agents the USSR researched and developed over many decades.
The other uses of biological agents could be to destroy crops and livestock.
In the US we have the best public health/safety systems and we will prevail.
But nukes are not the greatest threat.
MAD works with rational actors who are familiar with Game Theory
Irrational actors are a different matter.
“Believe nothing that you hear my friend
and only half of what you see.
For what you hear are are lies my friend
and what you see
that’s me.”
Tinian Island 1945.
Vic…
You’re no doctor.
Small Pox vaccines NEVER need a booster shot.
Get off!
BTW, vaccine expansion can happen in ultra-quick time…
So Small Pox is a COMPLETE dud for bio-warfare.
It can devastate the third-world…
But in NO WAY effect the military balance in the major military powers…
Unless you mean to destroy the ummah, China, India and Russia….
Swell.
So much for your deep thinking…
#74 Victor I think the real problem with biological warfare is the delivery, just as it is with chemical warfare. It’s not that easy to spread stuff around.
Re: Blert
I understood that brandishment thing after some relection in ’73.
But here is the kicker. On the boat, at the time, we didn’t know from brandishment. All we knew is that we had gone to battle stations missile and we expected authenticated fire orders any second, which we would execute when they came.
There is no real linkage between an enemy first strike and our tactical launch, not, at least, in terms of hardware. The discipline of the force ensures that the strike will be made when command orders it. That command is not insane is the only real safeguard against an unprovoked strike. So far, the track record of sanity fpr American Nulear Force COmmanders is perfect.
It was a real wake up for most of us. How many Russians do you suppose we could have killed with 80 kilotons of unstoppable nuclear warheads? One boat loadout.
Philosophically and Ethically, if the thought is equal to the deed, then we were no longer innocent. Like I said, as vital as the deterrant mission was, it was always based on the threat of a tactical launch and I hated it ever after.
72/blert & 69/B Dubya
So your basic thesis that America was engaged in a first strike is entirely upside down.
This is another fascinating illustration of how our individual perceptions of reality are determined by the cognitive prism of ideology/philosophy. The tell is easily seen in the terminology used in:
The whole thing started out in response to the Soviet’s avowed intention to send a sizable force to Israel and the occupied territories via Turkey,
The inherent logic of the premises underlying the mindset which frames the Arab/Israeli reality in these terms almost inexorably renders the conclusion that we were the ones intent on First Strike aggression.
78/B Dubya & Blert
As soon as I posted my comment I saw your response and that I had misread your motivations – please accept my apology. I perceived an anti-Israel perspective that was unwarranted.
Regarding the role of ideology/philosophy in shaping our perception of reality, I believe my premise still holds. You noted:
Philosophically and Ethically, if the thought is equal to the deed, then we were no longer innocent. Like I said, as vital as the deterrent mission was, it was always based on the threat of a tactical launch and I hated it ever after.
From the perspective of my beliefs, I’ve never considered us as innocent – we are merely striving to overcome our inherently flawed natures. In terms of the stark tragedy you were facing, my reaction would have been one of thankfulness and renewed faith in the correctness of the mission. I don’t believe I would have hated it. Perhaps it would be more precise to say we can hate the necessity for the mission rather than the mission itself – an apocalyptic version of “hate the sin, not the sinner”.
56. oman “Secondarily, I don’t understand why a decline in smallpox vaccinations would help HIV to spread. If the CCR5 co-receptor is part of how the two viruses enter the host, how would not activating CCR5 with a smallpox fragment help the co-receptor to be more vulnerable to HIV? I’m no biologist or infectious disease guru, I would just appreciate some more explanation.”
CCR5 is a co-receptor for HIV. There is a mutation called CCR5-d32 which is an inherited deletion and results in an altered receptor. If you are homozygous for this muation (both copies) you have near complete immunity to HIV.
The interesting thing is that CCR5-d32 has about 10% prevelence in european population but does not occur with any frequency anywhere else. Because it is inherited there must have been genetic selection pressure to cause this population to retain the gene. HIV has not been around long enough to have caused this kind of shift which takes centuries.
Both Bubonic Plauge and Smallpox have been proposed as reasons why this mutation occurs in europeans. Based on modeling Smallpox is the leading candidate.
It is important however, to keep in mind that nobody knows how smallpox binds to cells, but a close realtive has been shown to use CCR5.
Based on these models it took around 700 years for the mutation to get to the 10% level. The vaccine and eradication of smallpox happened yesterday in evolutionary terms.
There was a news report based on an article in an open source journal where a group of researchers proposed that smallpox vaccine provides some protection against HIV. They claim that in the lab vaccinated cells did not replicate the virus as well. The researchers however were careful to state that no conclusions could be made from their limited study which was more medical news than a major published study.
As far as I can tell there has been no further progress on the question.
So bottom line is that there are some interesting theoretical connections between smallpox and HIV immunity but nothing of major significance at this point.
Armageddon then and now:
Since the 1960′s the population has grown and/or become more concentrated in urban areas. While communications might be more robust I wonder about roads, and other infrastructure. How much would a nuclear exchange reduce or restrict food supplies.
Really big volcanic eruptions in the past have released energy equivalents or surpassing a nuclear exchange, but the population was less and much more dispersed.
Most of the volcanoes are in rural areas but there are more people much closer to them now. If Yellowstone ever pops a big one?
1/ Duration of protection of smallpox vaccinations: according to W.H.O
“Epidemiological studies have demonstrated that vaccination protects against smallpox for less than five years after primary vaccination and that substantial but waning immunity can persist for ten years or longer. Protection may last longer when revaccination is performed.”
http://www.who.int/vaccines/en/smallpox.shtml
2/ Smallpox and HIV/AIDS
–”To test if the events may be linked, the researchers looked at the white blood cells taken from people recently immunized against smallpox and tested how they responded to HIV.
They found significantly lower replication rates of HIV in blood cells from vaccinated individuals, compared with those from vaccinated controls.
The smallpox vaccine appeared to cut HIV replication five-fold.
Immune boost
The researchers believe vaccination may offer some protection against HIV by producing long-term alterations in the immune system, possibly including the expression of a receptor called CCR5 on the surface of white blood cells, which is exploited by the smallpox virus and HIV.”
An interesting area of research.
I’m not sure how the lessons of the 50s and 60s apply to the war on terror. M.A.D. was based on symmetric warfare. The GWOT is assymetric. The AQs can certainly hit us with a nuke, but who or what are we supposed to target in response? Some prime goat-herding real estate in rural Pakistan? What if the guys who set off the bomb are actually Chechens or Somalis or American Muslims?
Do we tell the “sponsors of terror” such as the Saudis, Syrians, Iranians, and Pakistanis that if the US ever suffers a nuclear terrorist attack we will retaliate by nuking their major cities and military bases?
I guess what it boils down to is, how can you deter people who have nothing to lose and nothing to defend but their ideology? We probably have enough nuclear weapons to hold the entire “Muslim world” hostage. But I get the impression that the people who are fighting us would let the rest of the umma fry if they thought it would advance the cause.
#65 Allston:
“during the late 50s, we took an old sub, stuffed it to the gills with nuclear weapons on radio command, and sank it somewhere off the Black Sea coast near Odessa…if anything were to start, we would detonate it. It would shower 90% of the most important part of the Soviet Union with radioactive water, make it uninhabitable for thousands of years.”
Would make a great premise for a movie, wouldn’t it?
The ‘Odessa sub’ scheme is redundant.
All over Russia there are clones of Chernobyl. When struck they are certain to spew radio isotopes all over the countryside.
The Russians will be without electric power AND vast, vast lands will be ruined for generations.
Instead of being in just one spot…
They are all over the place.
This means that Russia is extraordinarily vulnerable in a way that no other nation is.
that imf guy was doing a little “brandishing” of his own…
“But… But… he’ll SEE the BIG board?!”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
This is a fairly unimportant request, if anyone here remembers this incident: In the immediate aftermath of 1991, as things were coming apart in the failing USSR, some very high up Soviet military officials were invited to an inspection visit to the USA, and were escorted by high ranking US military personnel. I didn’t hear much detail at the time, just a photo of some Soviet military in full dress uniform, with a small caption, during their US visit.
It always intrigued me as to just what they were permitted to see.
Spindok @81 and Victor @83: thanks for the additional info. Worth a thread of its own although mostly what I would contribute is half-baked speculation on how the immune system works. Insofar as smallpox vaccination causes better resistance to HIV infection through an effect on the CCR5 co-receptor (which HIV needs to climb into the cells of interest), I suppose the effect is to reduce the co-receptor’s accessibility to the viral coat protein that wants to hook onto it. Maybe a change in shape. See also maraviroc, which blocks viral entry by binding to the co-receptor…
Bertrand Russell’s and the left’s duplicity can be easily exposed by turning their ‘better red than dead’ adage on the other side – how about ‘better capitalist than dead’? Then twist the situation around. Why shd the reds retaliate if the capitalist West struck first? After all, if they fought back it would be SUCH a waste of human life, right? So why don’t THEY give up, eh? [/sarc]
From this perspective, their argument doesn’t have a leg to stand on, does it?
As ever, what a bunch of morons.
In related news the IAEA is confirming that the Syrian facility destroyed by Israel in 2007 was a nuclear reactor.
That makes two bad actors (Iraq and Syria) prevented from going nuclear by the IDF. One more to go. You think they will get a nobel prize? Thank you note from the UN?
When Netanyahu says that they will not tolerate a nuclear Iran that is not hubris. It is policy and it will not change with the next PM. For now I think current policy is wise. Let the Iranians spend their treasure and political capitol until the time comes. Stuxnet was brilliant. Besides they are building reactors on major fault lines and the Iranians tend to be ‘accident’ prone.
This week they had a major explosion at a new gas refinery. The Bozos in charge ordered it turned on before it was ready because of some political celebration going on even thougfh the engineers warned them.
Yeah, these folks are going to do great running a nuclear program.
Re. #67. JC in KZ: “Russia grew a new “skin” of capitalism–and quickly morphed it to fascism.”
Unfortunately we are well advanced along this road and continue moving in the same direction.
Cas @14 (who was replying to Jay Beltway @9)
Jay, beltway @9:
“the Soviets and Chinese made extensive preparations to protect their populations.”
There were never provisions (or hope) that they would save the entire population; they just needed to save enough of “the serfs” to rebuild, after they annihilated the governments of the West.
Exactly! Jung Chang’s book, Mao: The Untold Story, which I recommend highly, reveals that Mao had a stunningly callous attitude to nuclear war. The book provided evidence that Mao, while attending an international conference of “socialist” parties, made the remark that if a nuclear war took place, even if it killed one-third or even a half of all people on Earth (including, no doubt many, many of his own people), it would be no big deal since there would be plenty of people left over and more than enough to rebuild.
This heavily footnoted book made it clear to me that Mao was every bit as much of a monster as Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot.
78. B Dubya
“It was a real wake up for most of us. How many Russians do you suppose we could have killed with 80 kilotons of unstoppable nuclear warheads? One boat loadout.
Philosophically and Ethically, if the thought is equal to the deed, then we were no longer innocent. Like I said, as vital as the deterrant mission was, it was always based on the threat of a tactical launch and I hated it ever after.”
A single SLBM would have more than 80 kT of destructive energy, IIRC. Did you mean 80mT?
There is no such thing as a tactical launch from a SSBN — not in the 70′s. All atomic weapons at that scale would be deemed strategic. Further, SLBMs were considered counter-value weapons at that time. Read that to mean culture destroying.
PALs have been introduced to eliminate the rogue commander issue.
Nixon’s move was preemptive escalation. Everything was in-your-face obvious. Moscow was notified by the White House. The entire affair from start to stop was the primary mission: deterrence.
Nixon was telling Russia to butt out. We were not going to permit them to frustrate Israel nor our diplomacy.
While you were sweating bullets, Kissinger was burning up the phone lines.
So your premise is off. Nixon was deterring Moscow from complicating the Yom Kippur War up into an atomic contest. In that sense, he was repeating the brinksmanship of Kennedy.
The primary mission of the Fleet Ballistic Submarine Force was obtained: deterrence.
A MAJOR war was prevented.
If Russia had sent a parachute army into Egypt it’s a provocation that would certainly bring America in.
The whole idea of Russia protecting Egypt while we frustrated Israel’s defense was a pure tails I lose — heads you win scheme from Washington’s point of view.
When it’s all said and done, Nixon and Kissinger never looked better.
The contrast with the Peanut and our Iranian embassy is stark. Carter managed to completely destabilize the most liberal despotic regime in the ummah — because he FELT that the Ayatollah was a religious man. (!) So he promoted him at the expense of the Shah.
Well, at least he stopped the Iranian population boom. Right now their TFR has collapsed into European levels.
The Wan is the Peanut on estrogen. So he turfs out Mubarak and starts a Salafist surge at the central HQ of the Muslim Brotherhood. Consequently, the Copts are getting wiped out by islamists — with tacit government support.
Change you can notice.
——
Despite all of the morbid predictions biological warfare is not appealing to rational actors.
Even Hitler disdained poison gas. He rightly figured that America’s chemists could go toe to toe with his. Further, modern aircraft would surely bring such toxins straight into the homeland. Whereas, he’d be quite unable to reach out to America.
Any germ that propagates to good and lethal effect is a germ that will blow-back against its creator.
Russia suffered such blow-back ages ago — without even deploying the weapon! ( Anthrax, variant )
However, such is not to say that someone as whacky as ISI / AQ would see it my way.
This is just another reason to NOT educate muslims in the West. The downside to us is horrific. The upside for the ummah is nil. There are NO JOB SLOTS for hyper-educated muslims in the MENA. No where is there any pretense of rising on ones own merit. It’s always either clan connections or army connections. That’s exactly why in nation after nation the up-and-coming bright boys go into the national army.
Kinuachdrach @34
You’re being hasty in dismissing “subsidiarity” as an important and relevant idea. The best description of it that I know of can be found at Ann Barnhardt’s site: http://barnhardt.biz/. Once you get there, go to the article timestamped April 28, AD 2011 9:12 PM MST.
In ’73, The turks invaded and took half of Cyprus, and Yassar Araphat’s PLO was driven from the Kingdom of Jordan after PLO’s unsuccessful attempts to “liberate” the KoJ. Arabphat then headed for Lebanon and we know what happened to Lebanon after that.
How does the ‘brandishing’ that took place (known only to those deployed in subs, and in SAC) figure into these two scenarios?
I always thought that it was the weakening of the executive office (via watergate) that prevented Nixon from taking action to defend Lebanon. Thirty thousand soviet troops in Syria, and possible confrontation with them placed so close to Araphat’s escape route.
The world pivoted to how we know it today in that year, with Iran superseding soviet influence in Syria, and Lebanon later on. that was the time and the opportunity to defend an ally, Lebanon, but cleaning up Kennedy and Johnsons Viet-mess cost a lot of capital and I wonder what pre-emptively stopped a deployment of marines to annihilate anyone or anything threatening the sovereignty of Lebanon?
The Wobbly Guy, #91: You reminded me of a debate exchange I read somewhere in William F. Buckley’s writings. One British leftist, decrying America’s posture in the Cold War and suggesting moral equivalence between the US and USSR, declared that the latest American outrage was going to result in “bombs falling on London.” To which a pro-American countryman of his responded, “And who’s going to drop those bombs?” The assumption–in keeping with the Soviets’ branding any aggression as purely defensive–was that the USSR couldn’t help it; the onus was always on us.
97. Gaffe Prices
Yassar Araphat’s PLO was a Soviet asset. They trained him to be an islamic communist — nee islamist.
They stood-up his PLO. The PLO is to Moscow what the Taliban is to Islamabad.
The 1967 War was driven by Soviet intrigues against Dimona. ( Spy satellites do pick up desert construction. )
The whole scheme was to trigger a combined attack against Israel during which Dimona would be occupied.
Moscow understood that an atomic Israel would be way too much for the Arabs to handle — and Moscow, too.
But, as posted previously, Israel ruined the game plan. Her intelligence services doped out Arab intentions — and provided a roadmap to success. ( The Golan being an exemplar for said intel. )
Any further pressure on Israel may cause her to revert to the August 1967 borders. That’s a certainty if Egypt militarizes the Sinai.
Gaffe Prices…
Vietnam, in 1973, made any such military insertion out of the question. Nixon’s entire strategy was to extract the US from conflict.
Bezmenov specifically cites Lebanon as a textbook example of KGB destabilization operations.
That the public mind did not perceive the PLO as a Soviet puppet is a testament to our MSM.
Since the topic was already broached, I’ll have to weigh in on Dolan, subsidiarity, and solidarity.
As far as it goes, “Subsidiarity” is a relatively recent formulation of Catholic social teaching. Its locus classicus is the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, which, as the title suggests, pertains specifically to the condition of the working classes, especially those industrial workers which were then becoming a notable fixture of European society. Subsidiarity is a practice, not a doctrine. Modern-day “Distributists” like Dale Ahlquist have elevated it to something like a metaphysical principle which they suppose applies univocally to every area of human life and society, but this is assuredly quite mistaken. Tanquam has given an accurate definition of the underlying idea; but as near as I can tell, the main source of compatibility between Catholic doctrine and subsidiarity seems to be the rather narrow field pertaining to the diocesan structure of Church governance.
“Solidarity,” on the other hand, has nothing to do with Catholic social teaching and was apparently imported into Catholic discourse only in the course of John Paul II’s ill-advised “dialoguing” with the modern world, in which he burdened the Church with a new lexicon of imprecise, phenomenological newspeak. The idea has anarchist, socialist, and syndicalist roots which are altogether incompatible with real Catholic teaching.
And as for Archbishop Dolan, I don’t think he is the kind of man whose authority you would want to cite on any matter of real importance, as I tried to show here:
http://manofthewest2000.blogspot.com/2011/05/masculine-compassion.html
http://www.bing.com/search?q=terror+attack+planned+cdc+atlanta&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
They know where half the world’s smallpox is located, alright. The other half is in Moscow.
#31, #82 or anyone : do you feel that the scenario presented in “One Second After” [EMP strike on continental US ] is feasible for any terrorist group[s] at present? With so much of control systems being very modern, if such a strike is a real possibility, do other countries even need to invest huge resources in large numbers of atomic/nuclear weapons? The question could be , how many days food supply do big cities have if the trucks and trains stop running? How long would the fuel on hand continue to power backup generators even if they survived the EMP? What disease outbreaks would be expected, and how soon? Are present military communication and transportation and weapon systems protected or shielded from such a possibility? And a side note, in October of 1973, the IDF was what, 30 miles?, from Cairo with no real opposition, and about the same from Damascus when stopped. Several have commented on the Nixon order to raise alert levels. But many published sources claim that at the critical time, Nixon was asleep or drunk. Anyone have any recent sources to recommend on this aspect? GBUSA
HOLY CRAP BETHESDA WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!
BRB replaying the Fallout series to prepare for the nuclear holocaust
Smallpox by bio weapons is small news because mother nature is far more clever than we are.
Launch a smallpox or some other virus somewhere else and try to predict where you will be 2 months after. Your scientists if they can be honest will tell you they cannot.
Nobody does this because guided bomb is much better weapon. Virus has it’s own agenda and that fight is never ending, if you will.
K. Funny story. Showed up for the failed voluntary smallpox vaccine after 9/11 for certain workers.
There were about a dozen workers there to give the vaccine. There were only two who showed up to get it.
Myself and an ICU nurse from a local hospital..
We watched the video, signed the papers and got our vaccine. Whatever no big deal.
When I got home I told my wife about my afternoon.
She had one question.
“was she cute”?
I laughed “why”?
She sad “because if it hits you are going to be the only two left”
We still laugh about that.
Spindok
Blert is correct that a sea-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) has been a counter-value weapon and was too inaccurate for counter-value use against missile silos. That’s been upgraded now I’m sure. Russian bombers would likely be already in the air and not much threat anyway.
A typical boomer had 10 missiles with 3 warheads each or 30 warheads. Each warhead was 100 kT or so (I forget the exact numbers) each big enough to level a good sized city. The Soviet Union had about that number of good sized cities. Hence only one boomer was capable of destroying almost all the metropolitan areas of the country. I did a calc like this for a NROTC class I took in college – it was a substitute to a phys ed requirement I would have had to take in Florida over the summer!
As to the short and intermediate term effects of a full nuclear exchange in the late 50s or 60s, you have to remember that a large part of the US force was 25 MT SAC gravity bombs or Titan II missile warheads, most intended for ground burst. Such an event would leave a fallout pattern that would be lethal over an area of 100 miles by 25 miles for a 24 hour exposure. You couldn’t walk out in time.
The Cuban missiles were indeed countervalue weapons with little tactical utility. I remember the drills as a kid on the Florida gulf coast and how the school sent home offers to sell dog tags for the children so that the parents could identify the bodies.
There was always something sobering in realizing that the largest country on the planet was spending a big chunk of its national resources on weapons designed specifically to kill you and your family and friends.
b@99: That the public mind did not perceive the PLO as a Soviet puppet is a testament to our MSM.
It’s obvious to this member of the public that violence in the ME is being sponsored by agents who have a vested interest in maintaining a hot slow bleed on western resources and psyche. One can cite the long list of Israeli accomplishments, and one can cite the slow drip of Palestinian culture, but the reality behind the conflict is the financial and geostrategic benefit accrued to foreign agent(s). It is for this reason that I think the state of Israel would be better off someplace else. The violence will never end. The risk premium is too lucrative. In a way, the violence is it’s own market exchange.
I don’t know if this is a valid defense of the MSM, but one might consider the number of Russian reporters who fall, lunge, disappear, choke, or slouch to their deaths and find the latest school district fund misallocation less life threatening.
I spent 4 years of my military career on a SAC base (near the end of the Cold War).
It was the only place where I was required to have a will, because there was an official assumption that if war started we would be a target of a Soviet missile with multiple nuclear warheads.
Off-topic: This page includes an advertising link to malware. I couldn’t find a contact for the PJM system admninistrator–could one of the PJ staff or author please inform him of this problem?
what is the name of link to the malware?
W…
Perhaps he’s referring to MacKeeper….
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217061/Newest_MacDefender_scareware_installs_without_a_password?source=toc
The gist of the story is that a crew out of the former Soviet Union is trolling the web with ‘free’ scare-ware that installs itself on Macs ( or Windows ) not even requiring a password intervention.
Once it gets rolling it, itself, generates pop-ups, an such like crazy. The victim is solicited for some bucks to get the upgraded ‘professional’ package – -which then simply gets rid of its own dirty linen.
The crew is changing the name and the program very rapidly, MacDefender already being relabeled at least twice.
( MacProtector MacSecurity MacGuard etc )
“Newest MacDefender scareware installs without a password
Criminals ‘give Apple the finger,’ says security researcher, by releasing new version just hours after Apple warned of fake AV software”
Gregg Keizer
ComputerWorld
“The cyber criminals also changed the way they distribute the fake security program, breaking it into two parts: a small downloader, dubbed “avRunner,” which once on a Mac reaches out to a hacker-controlled site to download the phony MacGuard security software.”
@105. Whitehall
You could tear a good hole in a Soviet city with a 100kT bomb (about 6x Hiroshima), and that would play hob with the electrical net and food transport infrastructure, but in terms of ending a war it would not come close. Bridges would remain intact unless hit nearly directly, industrial buildings would be damaged but with critical equipment intact, and etc. Railroad nets are apparently a deuce to take out with nukes, as well. So, while you’d generate a lot of suffering, they’d get mad and get over it.
Interestingly, you’d cause more direct civilian casualties than an equivalent strike on a US city. Why? Denser apartment blocks, all of at least 5 stories with commerce done on the first floor so people don’t have to go far. Industry (targets) mixed in as well. Despite having tons of space, the Soviets built up and not out, like the Europeans, but did so to keep people from moving around and eluding observation. Meanwhile, a US city would lose the commerce area, but retain most of the population spread around the suburbs.
100kT nukes came into their own once the targeting systems became more precise and useful for obliterating this or that base/factory/bridge. Now those 25mT bombs, you’d not have a city or population left….
–JC
Blert;
Nope. Kilotons.
The key to the effectiveness of the submarine launched Polaris A-2 and A-3 was miniaturization of the warheads, something the Soviets never got right.
As for accuracy, the A-2 could spot a baseball diamond at max ramge,
The A-3 could spot the pitcher’s mound. The A-3 also incorporated a MIRV array that triangulated the target; big boom outside the array, but huge compression on the interior of the pattern, which dramatically increased the effective power of the weapon. Most importantly, these birds worked. Failure rates were very low, and there were shots made thoughout the 3 decades thaqt these ships served.
The FBM end of the triad was the survivable part. After ’61, penetration of Soviet airspace by fixed wing bombers was not possible because of Soviet missile air defences (remember Gary Powers?), unless the AIr Force deployed standoff weapons. Land based ICBMs were vulnerable because their launch facilities were fixed and were subject to location via on-ground intel gathering by the Soviets and their embedded agents in the US. The boomers were basically undectectable, except by sonar, until the end of the cold war, when satellite technology advanced sufficiently to make thermal detection from orbit likely. The standard FBM (598 through the 640 classes) had 16 missile tubes, and the follow-on Ohio class had 24. In 1973, all 41 boats of the original force were in service (656 possible SLBMs). (in October 73, two were not avaialble) The boomers would have been vulnerable after the first launch. Depending on the amount of traffic inbound into the USSR from the boomer fleet, the computed ballistic of the missile could conceivably be computed to point of origen and a return shot made; in the water, close is good enough with nuclear weapons. A small nuclear weapon cooked off under the surface would only have to be within a few kilometers to disable the boomer’s ability to launch additional missiles (and probable breach of the pressure hull by the pressure pulse emanating from the detonation site), because of the relative fragility of the missile guidance packages.
We never pulled the trigger. Had we ever done so, the immediate loss of life would have made the predations of the 20th century dictators seem as child’s play. And the survivors would probably have had no reason to be thankful.
Wretchard…this URL was active when the malware tool over: track.supercoolprizes.com.
In re EMP.
Overblown. The Russians conducted EMP tests over their own territory in the early 1960s. They used 300kt devices at altitudes of 50-80 miles. Yes, some electrical stuff got fried. But not much.
http://ed-thelen.org/EMP-ElectroMagneticPulse.html
The boomers were not originally intended as a counterforce weapon system. Their big advantage was survivability and their early DISadvantage was accuracy so that they were the reserve countervalue force. If the tit for tat didn’t end early, we would kill as many Russian civilians as we could find grouped up in clusters (aka cities). It was ultimately their role in MAD that made them useful and worth the money.
Improvements in accuracy made it possible to hit more counterforce targets but the “circular error probablity” never got good enough to hit “the pitchers mound.” The Russians supposedly came up with a modified trajectory for their SLBM that could reduce flight times against targets, especially coastal ones making demands on our reaction times against decapitation very narrow.
Note that “MIRV” is not the same as “MRV.” The former would send up to ten warheads against ten dispersed targets or added decoys. The latter was the first technology that could send only three warheads in a relatively tight group. Simultaneous detonation risked fratricide from neutrons from one warhead fizzling the others so the timing had to be spot-oon, within the flight time of 14 MeV neutrons.
I agree that EMP is greatly overrated. It is real, certainly, and one of my electrical engineer friends (with a power specialty) see it as a problem for his transmission system. However, most of the tall tales about it are just scare stories. See a later edition of Glasstone’s “Effects of Nuclear Weapons” for some early understanding.
One can optimize a warhead and its delivery for production of EMP. Don’t have too many details on the design features or how difficult that is though.
This seems like a good thread to ask this question. I was reading Omni magazine back in the 1980′s, and it had an article about some sort of Roswell-like crash in the Rio Grande. That turned out to be a P-51 crashing that the locals misinterpreted, but the investigators who were debunking it came across something that surprised them: it seems that in June of 1950 or 1951, the Air force thought it saw a massive bomber formation flying over Canada(spotted by radar from Loring AFB in Maine). It was convincing enough that the British Ambassador was notified in order to evacuate Washington (no record if he did) because “we were at war”. Again supposedly “hundreds” of fighters were sent to meet this threat.
Has anybody ever heard of this? I know that there were alerts all the time, but this was taken seriously enough to alarm Washington, allegedly. And naturally, I no longer own that copy of Omni, nor remember what issue it was.
Peterson…
Such tales have long been told…
But they are related to the early daze of DEWS radars.
The art was so new that every manner of false positive had the boys hopping.
The fighter response sounds mythic.
For those used to modern radar it’s hard to get ones imagination wrapped around such primitives as SJ radar — and ‘blobology.’
In the forties-fifties most radar sets displayed ‘blobs’ as positive returns. Because of the primitive CRTs available, the operator would place his brow directly into a ‘cone of sight’ — an item made part of the mythic Star Ship Enterprise — at Spock’s station.
What he would see would be a central point and moving, glowing blobs drifting to and fro around him. Ground clutter was a bug-bear – so the system was designed to only aim up and out. Any blob that tracked across the display would constitute a ‘threat’ if it even barely resembled aircraft.
False positives remained a problem for both powers right down to the end. More than a few close calls started with such glitches.
“The men who produced the simulation unwittingly left a testimonial to their greatest achievement, which, in retrospect, at least rivals the achievement of the Greatest Generation.”
They WERE the “Greatest Generation.” The young men who fought their planes in to bomb Berlin and Tokyo during WW2 became the SAC leaders and thinkers who created our nuclear warfighting and deterrent strategies, and forces. The Boomers were watching Howdy Doody while their fathers and uncle faced down the USSR. The “Greatest Generation” also took us to the Moon, they were the savvy, brilliant engineers who designed and implemented the Apollo program while the Boomers were just starting High School and College.
Those guys scrambling to their planes in the movie?? Not Boomers, these are the “Greatest Generation” and the “Depression Kids” born in the 1930s. In 1958 the oldest boomer was still in Middle School.
Interesting article on this topic: The Nuclear War of 1988
ee/119, like this guy:
http://www.acepilots.com/usaaf_gabby.html
…or, the guy whose portrait hovers in the sky behind the B-17G, my dad (really).