This is how nuclear war would begin - in terrifying detail

[Xolodno]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/nuclear-war-begin-terrifying-detail-060000413.html

What would happen if a nuclear power station in California were hit by a nuclear weapon launched by North Korea? Many people within a nine-mile radius would be vaporised or burnt to death, and the reactor would melt down, causing a lethal rain of radioactive uranium shards. And, in this imagined chain of events, that’s just the beginning. Another missile heads towards Washington DC. Images of a mushroom cloud cause panic on social media. Then again, as the Pulitzer-finalist journalist Annie Jacobsen observes in this book, the destruction of the Californian plant would also have the effect of permanently taking the social network formerly known as Twitter offline. So it’s not all bad news.

Nuclear War: A Scenario is a breathless, minute-by-minute description of one way in which, thanks to apparent North Korean paranoia, a global thermonuclear war could suddenly erupt. It’s based on hundreds of interviews with many retired security officials and more-or-less declassified information in the public domain. What it captures brilliantly is the emotional chaos into which leaders would be plunged in such a situation: Jacobsen paints a disturbingly persuasive picture of a panicking, dithering American president, given only a few minutes to decide whether to retaliate by nuking Pyongyang before the first incoming missile even hits – in other words, to obey the “Launch on Warning” doctrine current in the US – while being shouted at by an entourage that ranges from the ­cautious to the insanely hawkish. These are scenes straight out of Dr Strangelove.

Jacobsen’s book also details the mad logic of escalating retaliation that takes hold, and the large contri­bu­tion to disaster made by ­unreli­able technology. American missile-defence simply doesn’t work half the time. The president orders a massive strike on North Korea (before another Korean nuke hits Washington DC and downs his fleeing helicopter), but the trajectory of those nukes will take them over Russia to hit the target. The Russ­ian missile-alert system is err­atic and they think there are twice as many coming towards them over the Arctic Circle. They demand to speak to the president on the phone, but the president is nowhere to be found. (He’s bleeding in a forest.)

North Korea then detonates a nuke in space above the US, causing a massive electromagnetic pulse that destroys the electricity grid, and all infrastructure goes down. Finally, out of injured pride – having received no call back – the Russians launch their own nukes before the American ones pass them on their way to Pyongyang. Less than an hour after the first explosion at the Californian power plant, Russian bombs destroy the capitals of Eur­ope; 14 minutes later, 1,000 Russ­ian missiles strike targets in America. Half a billion people die. Nuclear winter looms. Soon, no food will grow in the northern hemisphere.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Would make a great movie. And really ought to be powerful enough to get the whole world to wake the fuck up.

Robert De Niro as the President....

[Xolodno]

10. Probably should be a movie.

That, or have "The Day After" or "Threads" remade. I've run into too many who think it wouldn't be such a big deal and could survive it. That cavalier attitude could get us all killed. In the 80's it was 30-45 minutes before the nukes hit (excluding subs parked off the coast), now its 15-30. Not even enough time to kiss you significant other and down some booze.

If I saw the warning signs and could connect the dots of a possible nuclear war;

Option 1. Buy a hunting rifle with plenty of ammunition, lots of canned and dry goods, medical supplies, etc. Then head to our place in the mountains which has a well. Live out life from there.

Option 2. If I can really read the tea leaves accurately, cash out my investments, convert them to gems and silver and head to the other side of the equator.

There are no winners in a nuclear holocaust.

[OAITW r.2.0]

21. "7 Days in May" is overdue for a present day remake.

Pitt, Damon, Di Caprio, Affleck, Russell, De Niro. Question is, who directs it?

[Xolodno]

25. Nolan.

He would know how to bring a devastating story to the big screen. When I saw Oppenheimer, was wondering if he would show Truman's callous arrogance on the Soviets getting the bomb. He did.

Most don't know, they had figured out the math for the bomb well before Germany or the USA. Stalin was skeptical (thankfully...imagine that madman having it first) of it and didn't pursue it. The spies they had at Los Alamos weren't there to steal info, but to confirm they were on the right path. Thus roughly five years later, after being decimated by the German army, they were able to detonate one. Our intelligence services at the time just assumed they stole the info. All they did was get the "teachers edition", did the work and checked to see if they got it right, which they did.

[neverforget]

24. I would hope I am at ground zero so I'm vaporized.

If not, I'll self exit. With as many nukes in the world, life afterwards would probably be just a slow death by radiation poisoning, starvation or thirst.

[Xolodno]

26. Move near to a military base...

...or North or South Dakota and you'll be fine.

[Island Blue]

29. I live about 75 miles

south of Norfolk, VA which would most definitely be a target. Not close enough to be vaporized, although that would be my preference in this senerio.

[Johnny2X2X]

33. Modern nukes don't have radiation

But they are so much more powerful.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

35. Uhhh, modern nukes DO have radiation.

I gather you're referring to something Neil de Grasse Tyson said, which was simply misleading or wrong, depending on how you interpret exactly what he said. If they didn't have any radiation, they'd be conventional bombs.

[xmas74]

46. Come move down on my block.

8 miles from Whiteman AFB. The Day After was about the area around that base.

It's a quick death for me.

[neverforget]

47. I live in a suburb of Portland Oregon. Although we have no large military bases

nearby, we are a population center, port, rail junction and major airport hub plus Air National Guard base at the airport. I figure there are at least 2-4 nukes pointed at us. The Russians have enough for overkill. As I said, if I'm not vaporized, self exit is the way.

[xmas74]

50. If you ever want to guarantee it

You can be my neighbor in Warrensburg,MO. You'll be vapor in moments but we do get to see the Stealth fly overhead regularly.

[ret5hd]

2. then...

a rumor starts that douching with used motor oil will cure/stop radiation poisoning. (guess who believes it)

[former9thward]

3. I got the book a couple days ago.

Next up to read.

[Midnight Writer]

4. Nah, we got Reagan's Star Wars Missile Defense system that we spent trillions on.

It will shoot down those pesky Korean missiles long before they hit the USA.

Unless, of course, we were lied to by Ronald Reagan and the whole thing was a multi-trillion-dollar boondoggle filling the pockets of defense industry executives.

[OAITW r.2.0]

22. Unlessof course, ....

you are correct.

[OAITW r.2.0]

23. Ronald Reagan/His administration was the evil inflection point. Sure, Ron gets credit for the wall coming down....

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FUCK NO, one person put his life on the line to bring the wall down....the greatest Russian statesman of my lifetime, Mikhail Gorbachev.

[yagotme]

5. Is it just me, finding this statement repulsive,

Then again, as the Pulitzer-finalist journalist Annie Jacobsen observes in this book, the destruction of the Californian plant would also have the effect of permanently taking the social network formerly known as Twitter offline. So it’s not all bad news

or is it some new normalcy? Describing the death of probably millions, thousands of homes/property permanently destroyed, but hey, good news, we got rid of Twitler? Cutting off ones nose, I guess...

[Hekate]

8. Yeah, that kind of offhandedness is icky & deserves to be called out.

[Gore1FL]

6. I haven't read the book. I have ony read the review at provided link.

It sounds like the book makes a lot of assumptions regarding detection, escalation, political and military reactions, and seems to imply the attack was out-of-the-blue with no apparent intelligence or escalation in tensions. China isn't mentioned at all, apparently.

It may be a good read. The review makes me disinclined to take it too seriously as a forecast.

[Hekate]

7. As someone who spent their childhood in terror of being nuked by the USSR, I'll skip it

However, anyone who has not had an information overload, I recommend they get up to speed. It’s important to be aware.

[mitch96]

11. Ahh yes. The old "duck and cover" drill in grade school...nt

[Hekate]

15. That was only a small part of it for me. My parents' house was full of post-WWII books...

A lot of fiction was written about WWII and a lot was written about the afterward — especially Science Fiction — that was nuclear-apocalyptic in nature. I was an early and avid reader. Television was no guaranteed respite for us — there was small genre of moody dramas about surviving families.

[H2O Man]

13. It is based

on the extremely unlikely idea of North Korea attacking the US. The sad thing is that people of limited understanding could find this frightening.

[Xolodno]

18. Don't forget...

...it only took on lunatic in Serbia to cause a massive war.

[H2O Man]

19. Lions and tigers and bears!

Oh my!

Don't forget ...... the two are distinct.

[EX500rider]

42. Franky N Korea would be lucky just to hit the N American continent, much less a specific target

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They do not a have a stellar launch success rate and very doubtful they have a reliable working reentry vehicle & warhead combination, especially as it will be untested.

[H2O Man]

45. Right.

They have no reason to, either.

[Runningdawg]

9. When it comes to nukes, ignorance is bliss.

Nothing any of us can do would stop it. I'll just wait for the flash.

[NickB79]

12. Why would we use land-based ICBM's against NK?

That part seems really off to me. A single Ohio-class boomer carries enough nuclear ordinance to level North Korea. Why risk launching land-based ICBM's that are easily spotted by satellites and pass over Russian territory?

[Xolodno]

14. Because you don't hit a target with a single nuke.

You hit it with several to make sure it gets hit hard and disable/degrade any and all retaliatory options. It's why Russia is developing nukes that just stay in the air after an initial launch. That way they can order them to hit targets they weren't aware of or areas they didn't hit hard enough after the first strike.

[NutmegYankee]

16. A single Ohio Class submarine has that kind of power. nt

[Xolodno]

20. I believe it.

But panic will set in. An attack by a lunatic in North Korea may be construed as a first "wave" by China and/or Russia. Massive wars always start with cooler heads not prevailing and someone at a lower rank making a drastic mistake.

[EX500rider]

38. When NORAD DSP satellites detect a thermal plume from a launch they know exactly where it launched from

Also the radar tracking stations can calculate trajectory back to launch location.

US launch codes can only issued by National Command Authority and you can bet it will be after a quick zoom meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their recommendations. Lower ranks will not enter into it.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

28. A single Trident II MIRV'ed warhead missile from a Ohio class SSBN

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would level any target in N. Korea.

[NickB79]

34. Most of North Korea's infrastructure isn't hardened at all

Only a few buried military bunkers would require double taps.

Hell, in the event of a nuclear strike by NK, I'm not even sure we would respond with our own nukes, given how dangerous fallout would be to our forces in Japan and South Korea. A heavy conventional bombing run and cruise missile barrage would remove 90% of their military capacity. They're essentially still in the 1960's, tech wise.

[EX500rider]

43. B-2 bombers would be the option used IMO

Leaves the strategic arsenal untouched and does not alarm China or Russia.
Plus they can do post strike analysis right away to see if another strike is needed.

Really not much you would need nukes for in N Korea, mostly their under mountain nuclear infrastructure, everything else could be handled by conventional bombing & cruise missile strikes.

[Blue Owl]

17. Red Don's fantasy

[A HERETIC I AM]

27. 5 billion people dead.

The author was interviewed and segments of it are on TikTok.

She said In a nuclear war perhaps a few hundred million die from the blasts, but the bulk of the deaths, up to 5,000,000,000 people come later, from starvation due to the ensuing nuclear winter.

People our age have been afraid of this possibility for as long as we have been alive.

[EX500rider]

39. Franky she does not seem well informed on the subject

"people within a nine-mile radius would be vaporized or burnt to death"

yeah, no.

Severe shockwave damage could extend to about a half mile. Severe thermal damage would extend out about a mile. Flying debris could extend up to a few miles. Initial (prompt) nuclear radiation for a 10-Kt blast could expose unprotected people within about 3/4 mile of the explosion site to lethal radiation dose.

Bigger warhead yields will increase that some but you run into the inverse square law, twice the yield does not produce twice the damage.

Even a 1 megaton burst drops off to 3 psi at 6 miles, about 90mph, with third-degree burns up to 8 km (5 miles) away.
"Vaporized" would really only occur inside the fireball, which is only about 440ft in a 1 megaton explosion.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

40. "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed.."

[EX500rider]

41. "...but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops!"

[Kid Berwyn]

30. "On the Beach"

Story by Neville Shute helps us see what things would be like in the limited time afforded survivors in the Southern Hemisphere.

[Sympthsical]

36. Everyday is like Sunday . . .

Come Armageddon.

[justaprogressive]

31. Yeah except it won't be N. Korea

It will be China, an actual credible threat.

They want Taiwan for the chip manufacturing, they want the Phillipines
for offshore bases, pushing the 12-mile limit out to 100 miles....another
claim..of theirs disputed by every maritime nation.

[elocs]

32. In the middle '60s I asked Mr. Knight, my Jr. high school science teacher, "If there was a nuclear attack,

would they keep us at school or send us home?" His answer: "We'd probably send you home to die there". It took me some years to appreciate what an honest answer that was.

Who else has read the 1959 apocalyptic novel by Pat Frank, "Alas, Babylon? Maybe good for its era but sanitized and unrealistic by today's standards.

[EX500rider]

37. Maybe good fiction but bad at foretelling a realistic scenario

1. The Kim Dynasty is many things, suicidal is not one of them.

2. Nukes do not have a "nine-mile radius where people would be vaporized or burnt to death"
Severe shockwave damage could extend to about a half mile. Severe thermal damage would extend out about a mile. Flying debris could extend up to a few miles.

3. Just because the N Koreans have detonated a few crude nukes under a mountain doe not mean they have a working warhead miniaturized enough to fit on top off a rocket and robust enough to survive the high G's of launch followed by the freezing of outer space followed by the extreme heat of re-entry. Even if designed they have done no long range testing to ensure operation.
Warheads require complex guidance and warhead release mechanisms needing significant flight testing to ensure reliability.

4. Even if they did, their chances of a successful launch with their long range Hwasong-17 ICBM when launched on a polar trajectory to it max range is slim. It also has to pass over the US Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) our anti-ballistic missile system based in Alaska & Calif.

5. The US would be unlikely to use strategic assets to respond that may alarm Russia & China, if we did decide to respond with a limited nuclear strike it would most likely be from B-2's staged out of Guam or straight from US bases IMO.
Also IMO opinion the only realistic target for a US nuke would be the N Korean Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, most targets the US could readily destroy with convention strikes from B-2's and F-35's

[brooklynite]

44. North Korea doesn't have the range to hit Washington...

Nor does it have the targeting precision to hit a nuclear plant in California.

[EX500rider]

48. Unfortunately their Hwasong-17 ICBM might

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-17

Japan's defense minister Yasukazu Hamada estimated the operational range of the Hwasong-17 as 15,000 km or more, if mounted with a sufficiently light warhead.[8][14] Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace agreed that if the successful November missile test had been fired at the US instead of up into the air, it could easily reach anywhere in the continental United States.[15] An alleged unsuccessful test-flight of 2 November 2022 had suggested the Hwasong-17 might be unreliable. As of November 2022, it is unknown how much a large (for example, MRV) warhead would reduce Hwasong-17 range, and it is also unknown whether North Korean ICBM technology has the ability to deliver a warhead that survives re-entry into the atmosphere.

[roamer65]

49. Can I be Slim Pickens?

I want to ride the bomb on the way down.