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rheumination t1_j1rc99z wrote

Reply to comment by laineDdednaHdeR in Ukraine drone reported shot down deep in Russian territory by Miserable-Lizard

Suppose they are maintained horribly and 99 of 100 fail to reach their target. That’s still 60 nuked cities. That’s a lot of destruction. These aren’t little bombs like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads as of 2022, the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world”

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cosmicrae t1_j1rvhrp wrote

I would (gently) suggest that you look around GitHub for a project titled OPEN-RISOP. That is a simulation of ~2100 warheads targeted on the USA. This is the red team approximation. There are three scenarios represented: Counter-Force, Counter-Value, and a combination of CF+CV. Counter-Force being an attack aimed at strategic assets and the immediate supporting facilities. Counter-Value is roughly what is being wrought upon Ukraine now. The trade off CF+CV is a blend of the two. It is also interesting that some targets (of which there are 9,000+) do not have a fallout pattern associated with them. My presumption is that those targets are neither hardened nor have a wide land area. An example is a natural gas compressor station. They do not need a warhead, but could be sufficiently damaged by a conventional cruise missile warhead.

Russia does not have enough nuclear warheads to hit every US target With one, because some of those warheads are assigned to targets in the EU and in other countries. So the ~2100 is a fair guess. That Russia is rapidly burning thru cruise missiles, is good, because that also goes into equations involving targeting. Some of the 9,000+ targets in the hypothetical OPEN-RISOP list are thermal power plants, the same type that are currently being hit in Ukraine.

The sooner that Russia gets out of the global strategic warfare game, the better for all of us.

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GinTonicDev t1_j1tyr8w wrote

They don't need to hit cities in your country. They could literally throw their own nukes at their own cities to kill you. Heck, sending those rockets without any warhead at all in our direction would kill us all.

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ukrokit t1_j1uiwoj wrote

Do you know how many nukes have been tested and how powerful they were?

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W_Anderson t1_j1rk39s wrote

They aren’t all armed or even out of storage all at once l.

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rheumination t1_j1rnent wrote

Sure. Point being is that it only takes one to ruin an entire multi city metro area and they have SIX THOUSAND. So if some fail, it is still a catastrophe.

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dbernard456 t1_j1s3s7g wrote

Not mentionning that nukes that wont go supercritical will spread tons of highly radioactive stuff in the biosphere, which is almost worst than a nuked city.

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unskilledplay t1_j1thilo wrote

I went down this rabbit hole recently. There isn't much radioactive material in a nuclear bomb. Almost all of the ionizing radiation is created during the explosion. This radiation is extremely dangerous but it decays quickly. Radiation in nuclear test sites isn't even detectible today.

There are models that show how ionizing radiation can have disastrous downstream effects but these are all effects that follow the seconds and hours after an explosion.

There hasn't been any detectible radiation in Hiroshima or Nagasaki for many decades.

The image I had in my head of a lifeless wasteland that is uninhabitable for thousands of years after a nuclear holocaust just isn't real. The only material that is radioactive for thousands of years is spent nuclear fuel, or HLW. Everything else decays quickly.

For scale, a nuclear power plant will use 24,000 kilograms of nuclear fuel per year. An advanced nuclear bomb will have about 4 kilograms before detonation.

The radiation and even the long distance radioactive fallout following a nuclear explosion is most definitely not worse than the explosion itself.

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SirCB85 t1_j1ts40t wrote

The Dude you are answering to isn't talking about nuclear Fallout from a successfully detonating nuke, but the contamination from a nuke failing to ignite and spread its payload as a dirty bomb instead.

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unskilledplay t1_j1upddt wrote

Is there a mechanism where a failed nuclear warhead can effectively become a dirty bomb? From what I've read, dirty bombs and ICBM warheads are wholly unrelated.

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Dekarch t1_j1sg2ii wrote

Assuming they can hit the right country. Failure to launch or shortly after launch just dumps radioactive waste on Russia.

Failure at the reentry phase just destroys the warheads.

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tubulerz1 t1_j1ru0x5 wrote

How do you know they have 6000 ?

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rheumination t1_j1s3868 wrote

I looked it up. But that’s not exactly your point is it? Your point is can we trust the number?

Do we ever really know anything? Of course we cannot be certain of anything in life, especially Russians. However they blew up a ton of these bombs. So we know they can make them. The USSR was good at making LOTS of weapons. It’s not hard to imagine they made thousands of these. But I get your point, we can never really be sure if anything. Just like we can never be sure that they destroyed the warhead they said they would. So it’s entirely possible they have thousands more than this number too. Can you grant me that?

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supershutze t1_j1tw78j wrote

You're making the mistake of assuming that they have 5977 delivery systems too.

Nuclear warheads sitting in a warehouse aren't going to do much good.

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Therocknrolclown t1_j1s1cua wrote

Dangerous thinking

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rheumination t1_j1s44bu wrote

Care to elaborate? Why so coy?

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Therocknrolclown t1_j1s84k2 wrote

Oh I just mean, assuming any amount of there nuclear arsenal is our of commission, could lead to decisions being made that could endanger the entire world.

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Szczup t1_j1umkld wrote

I wonder if it is coincidence that most of accounts glooming and worning about the strength of russian nuclear arsenal are those one created after February 2022.

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rheumination t1_j1up2yw wrote

Dude, you cannot even spell “warning” correctly. I don’t think you’ve cracked a conspiracy with your big brain. If it helps you sleep better, I wish the Russians would become fertilizer for a bounty crop of Ukrainian sunflowers. But I’m a bot, sure Sherlock.

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Bongressman t1_j1rt9ol wrote

But they wouldn't be launching hundreds, that is the literal end of the world. 1-2 would be more likely. So, the odds of failure go way up.

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AggravatingCry5733 t1_j1rs68m wrote

Nope. im betting right now it’s all bullshit and we should just carpet bomb these assholes and get back to life better than before- Russian free

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pete_68 t1_j1rigcb wrote

Cities are secondary. They'll target military sites. And I doubt any of their missiles would ever detonate on American soil. I think our defenses are much better than the public or the Russians know.

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adarkuccio t1_j1rltg2 wrote

I REALLY doubt they'd target military sites, are you following what's happening in Ukraine?

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BrandyNewFashioned t1_j1rmhgh wrote

If anything, they probably still have the same target maps they had in the 1960s. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have a warhead aimed at the closed army ammo plant to the north of where I live, despite everything having been demolished 20 years ago.

Then any nukes that don't fail midflight will probably miss and hit innocent towns, or fuckall wilderness.

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krell_154 t1_j1sru27 wrote

They'd miss, but would probably hit Yellowstone in the process, thus destroying USA

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Quackagate t1_j1s5z4c wrote

Either behind the bastards or lions led by donks podcasts brought up one time that if you change your targeting priority from military targets to civilians you only get like a 5%-increase in deaths in a full-scale nuclear war. This is because so many military bases are near large metro area

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pete_68 t1_j1rmgln wrote

They would target military installations and manufacturers of weapons and infrastructure. Those would be the primary targets. They're not trying to invade the United States. Decimating our cities doesn't get them anything.

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FarawayFairways t1_j1s96lt wrote

Every time I read comments like this (and yes they invariably come from Americans) I'm just relieved that the great hive mind of Reddit is no where near the decision making apparatus

Perhaps you'd be so good as to enlighten us as to your level of expertise in the field, because assurances like "I doubt" (any of their missiles work) and "I think" (we've got better defences than we know of) doesn't really fill me with any confidence

It's a really bad bet to place

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stackjr t1_j1s35cn wrote

Just to be clear, shooting down a nuclear armed missile is no easy feat and the US military has failed to do so in many training exercises. Do not make the mistake of thinking we are untouchable in the US.

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