post-nuclear war?

Take command of air and naval assets from post-WW2 to the near future in tactical and operational scale, complete with historical and hypothetical scenarios and an integrated scenario editor.

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CCIP-subsim
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post-nuclear war?

Post by CCIP-subsim »

So I've been reading the DesperateDan post on MIRVs on Baloogan's site, and it got me thinking about ideas for post-nuclear scenarios. Not ones with radioactive mutants and eating rats, but actual relevant and immediate ones. So, I was curious if you all might have thoughts and insights.

Let's assume that a full nuclear exchange happens tomorrow involving all major nuclear powers, for reasons unknown. Let's assume that no conventional war preceded it and there was no advance warning. Three questions:

1) What military units and capabilities would survive in the hours, days, or weeks following the ICBM exchange? How organized (or disorganized) will they be?
2) What objectives might surviving military forces be pursuing on an hours/days/weeks scale following the exchange? Who might they fight and for what?
3) How might they pursue their objectives? What tactics or operational postures might they adopt? What would be their main obstacles, limitations and threats?

Any thoughts appreciated - just curious as to whether there's something here that's worth exploring for scenario-building!
magi
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by magi »

These are very interesting notion's… I would get online and do a lot of homework… Pretty frightening to contemplate all of this… But recently I was talking to a retired Air Force guy… Who thought that nuclear war could be winnable… Hummmm.....
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HalfLifeExpert
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by HalfLifeExpert »

ORIGINAL: CCIPsubsim

So I've been reading the DesperateDan post on MIRVs on Baloogan's site, and it got me thinking about ideas for post-nuclear scenarios. Not ones with radioactive mutants and eating rats, but actual relevant and immediate ones. So, I was curious if you all might have thoughts and insights.

Let's assume that a full nuclear exchange happens tomorrow involving all major nuclear powers, for reasons unknown. Let's assume that no conventional war preceded it and there was no advance warning. Three questions:

1) What military units and capabilities would survive in the hours, days, or weeks following the ICBM exchange? How organized (or disorganized) will they be?
2) What objectives might surviving military forces be pursuing on an hours/days/weeks scale following the exchange? Who might they fight and for what?
3) How might they pursue their objectives? What tactics or operational postures might they adopt? What would be their main obstacles, limitations and threats?

Any thoughts appreciated - just curious as to whether there's something here that's worth exploring for scenario-building!


1) obviously submarines come to mind, I would think some land forces would still be out there, but as this is an Air/Naval sim, we can factor them out. Depending on where it is, a US carrier group could still be sailing out there.
2) Assuming all nukes, including SSBN warheads, were fired,First priority would be to reestablish contact with the national leaders, assuming they are still alive.
At that point the official war would be effectively over IMO. I would think that there wouldn't be a whole lot of motivation for the surviving military forces to fight each other, as each nation is just massively devastated.

Maybe some of the ships will fall to mutinies, and become pirate ships.......imagine a renegade Arliegh Burke or Udaloy out there.

Think of the novel "The Last Ship" (not the series, as that was about a virus). I think wiki has a good plot summary.

I have thought of ideas for post exchange scenarios, and they largely involve control over one ship/sub or a small group of surface ships, no larger than a carrier group,
basically sailing around trying to find surviving friendlies, and defending themselves if attacked.

Perhaps a good scenario would be for scattered military ships of multiple nations encountering eachother, and fighting could break out, but it also could not.

Maybe the objective would be to just survive and get to a distant location. Maybe as a US ship in the Atlantic, try to get to South Africa or the Falklands.
FTBSS
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by FTBSS »

You have to assume most ports capable of supporting large naval vessel would be destroyed, so non nuclear powered vessels and planes run out of fuel fairly quickly. Think the most powerful ship /force may be the Jimmy Carter a SSN with a sizeable special forces group for scavaging and the ability to take targets of opportunity at will
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CCIP-subsim
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by CCIP-subsim »

ORIGINAL: HalfLifeExpert

Think of the novel "The Last Ship" (not the series, as that was about a virus). I think wiki has a good plot summary.

Oh, I remember this novel now! Thanks for the reminder and suggestions - I think that's a great idea. I think something that's centered on a unit or a small group like this could make for an interesting survival-oriented campaign as well - lose your core unit(s) and you lose the scenario automatically.

I'm thinking this might be a great idea to pursue after all - certainly most military units these days all have NBC protection, so at least on the scale of days to a few weeks, I can imagine there might still be some pretty substantial combat, assuming some sort of command structure survives and is determined to fight, whether in retaliation, or in trying to prevent secondary strikes, or in trying to scramble for resources and safe havens. And even if no substantial command structure survives, things would probably still be quite interesting.
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Mgellis
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Mgellis »

One important issue to consider would be what nations would survive relatively intact? We can assume that the U.S., Europe, and the Soviet Union (or Russia) take horrifying losses and lose most of their industrial capacity, ports, airports, etc. But would every other possible target get hit by nukes? What about countries like Brazil or Indonesia or New Zealand or South Africa? And what happens in a world where secondary or even tertiary powers are now the major surviving powers (but where a few very powerful platforms like nuclear submarines from former major powers like the U.S. are still part of the equation)?






Rory Noonan
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Rory Noonan »

I recently watched 'On the Beach', a move from the early 60's about a US sub arriving in Melbourne, Australia (my town!) after most of the rest of the world had been wiped out by a nuclear exchange. Not a bad movie, a few points that I remember:

> Most of the oil producing countries, and nearly all the means of transporting oil were wiped out. Petroleum powered vehicles were used very sparingly.
> Fallout and radioactive debris will probably end up contaminating the entire world to a greater or lesser extent
> Governments and people in general will likely behave very differently, with many having 'nothing to lose'

A very interesting setting for a campaign would be the battle for remaining, previously weak or passive countries to establish dominance or claim resources.
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lowchi
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by lowchi »

Relevant:

The Effects of a Global Thermonuclear War
4th edition: escalation in 1988

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear ... rwar1.html
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Zaslon
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Zaslon »

Nuclear Winter is simulated in CMANO?
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Kids think about Iran and Amateurs think about Russia, but professionals think about China
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ultradave
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by ultradave »

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”


― Albert Einstein
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Gunner98
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Gunner98 »

ORIGINAL: FTBSS

You have to assume most ports capable of supporting large naval vessel would be destroyed, so non nuclear powered vessels and planes run out of fuel fairly quickly. Think the most powerful ship /force may be the Jimmy Carter a SSN with a sizeable special forces group for scavaging and the ability to take targets of opportunity at will

If there is a Carrier Strike group out there with an AOR/AOE it could survive a while. Speculating that with reduced flight operations and creeping along perhaps a couple months. Other ships from the US and other nations might join (or try to join) them over time. A campaign could be built on the effort to keep fuel and food coming, so port visits with force on smaller unaffected nations.

Would ABMs manage to protect a key base - say Guam. Isolated enough perhaps... Don't know

Lots of possibilities.

B
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AlmightyTallest
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by AlmightyTallest »

One thing to consider is that in a full nuclear exchange that the war isn't over in a single day. This circa 80's defense pamphlet shows a strike map of North Dakota's launch sites and cities from FEMA.

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http://www.ki4u.com/nuclearsurvival/states/nd.htm#information

You can check out the other U.S. states and factors to consider, the data is from 1990 I believe. After reading some of this info I'm pretty sure it will make you want to hug a puppie, pretty sobering stuff.

More factors to consider: http://www.ki4u.com/guide.htm

This is known as "dense pack" and means the following:
DENSE PACK - Look at all those target sites. So close Together! It serves a purpose. It is missiles protecting missles, and this is how it is done. These are "hardened" sites. Meaning it takes a direct ground explosion to dig them out. An air burst will not do it. When you have a ground explosion it throws many tons of dust and sand up into the air. High into the air. This is what will later become fallout carried by the winds hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles away. But right over that site that has just been hit the sand and grit in the air is very thick for quite a while. Another high speed missile (ICBM) trying to come through it will have its skin torn off just like by sand blasting and it will be destroyed. So the other missile sites nearby are safe. On the other hand, because missiles take off much slower than the speeds they eventually reach, the missiles in the undamaged silos can still be launched and will pass through the dust cloud without be harmed. Neat, eh? See there is a purpose in putting so many in one place. Now the only way that you can dig them out is with what is called a slow walk. Hit a target. Move on further and hit another target where the dust from the first won't hurt you. Come back thirty or forty-five minutes later and hit a second target near where you hit the first, after the cloud has had time to blow away. A slow process. Some silos will already have launched and you will waste the shot. Others can still wait to launch later because you can only get one at a time. This could go on for days. Neat. The military missiles protecting missiles. But they don't protect you, because if you are downwind you will get the fallout. Fatal if you are not in a shelter. They call it Defense but it is only Destruction. Nothing here defends or protects you, if they are used.
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CCIP-subsim
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by CCIP-subsim »

Thanks for the great reads, folks! Very insightful and lots of ideas there - I really wish more people would read this stuff, considering how mis-fictionalized nuclear war tends to be.
Also interesting that this is mainly Cold War-based, but of course nukes haven't gone anywhere - makes me wonder how and whether this kind of scenario might look different today.
HaughtKarl
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by HaughtKarl »

http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

always a fun site to fiddle around with to see how well you'll fare if your city got nuked.
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ultradave
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by ultradave »

ORIGINAL: CCIPsubsim

Thanks for the great reads, folks! Very insightful and lots of ideas there - I really wish more people would read this stuff, considering how mis-fictionalized nuclear war tends to be.
Also interesting that this is mainly Cold War-based, but of course nukes haven't gone anywhere - makes me wonder how and whether this kind of scenario might look different today.

I think in many respects it wouldn't be much different. While we (both the US and Russia) have significantly fewer nuclear weapons than at the height of the Cold War, the ones we do have are quite sufficient to cause the same massive destruction. Both the US and Russia have around 1500 active nuclear warheads. For the US, the submarine based ones are much more effective than older Cold War era Polaris and Poseidon missiles, and are essentially safe from pre-emptive elimination. The limited anti-missile defenses we have in place would be easily overwhelmed. They are not designed to stop a full nuclear attack.

Multiple weapons were targeted at individual hardened targets because the accuracy was not sufficient to ensure destruction, however, once one 450KT warhead goes off in one spot, 2 or 3 more is not going to significantly make things worse. More fallout, but that's a relative thing, when it's already a catastrophe.

The fact that we had around 25000 nuclear weapons and the Russians had 35000 at our peaks is mitigated somewhat in that many were tactical or theatre nuclear weapons, which we no longer have/deploy. But the areas that those weapons would be used in are most likely covered by targeting from strategic weapons as well. The large number of weapons in the past was immense overkill.

Now it's just overkill. On top of that add in the larger number of Chinese, Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons than back in the 80s. There are studies that a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan of a 100 weapons or so could lead to a nuclear winter scenario, so 3-4000 would be unimaginable.

So, with all that, I'd wager that the aftermath would still be about as described in many Cold War era descriptions.
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Gneckes
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Gneckes »

ORIGINAL: HaughtKarl

http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

always a fun site to fiddle around with to see how well you'll fare if your city got nuked.

That's some pretty scary stuff.
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by AlmightyTallest »

Out of curiosity, are there any Russian sources that posted nuclear target maps like the U.S. for Emergency, etc.? You never see that stuff.

Also, there's the consideration of nuking your own territory to deny movement to the enemy, this is one of a few declassified maps of Germany in the 80's. Notice the use of small kiloton weapons to blast forests down to block roadways and other paths for advancing tanks.

The plus signs or cross hairs are the detonation points, and number beside them are the size of the blast in kilotons according to the legend.

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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Gunner98 »

Difficult to tell because the photos don't show a classification but these are likely training maps for a Nuclear Fire Planning course or something like that. Doubt very much if we would see the real thing, but could be.

Cannot remember exactly but the small triangles you see indicate rubble blockage or infrastructure damage to impede movement. By the 80's interdiction and canalization where the only real (immediate) effect you could count on against a prepared and moving military force.

B
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AlmightyTallest
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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by AlmightyTallest »

Thanks for the info Gunner98. I have to track down that book again with the map but I think your correct in that it was a sort of training manual with an example classroom map.

When I first saw it, just the idea gave me pause at the time.

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RE: post-nuclear war?

Post by Gunner98 »

You're not kidding there. Thankfully it gave everyone pause for thought... over time.

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