[x0137294744532]

> No, nuclear war doesn't count, even the worst nuclear war imaginable won't be as bad as WW2 was.

Let's do some math. Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed ~100,000 people, making it 50,000 per bomb. The US has currently 31,175 nuclear weapons at its disposal. If it were to even use 5% of its arsenal, assuming they have the same power as the bombs from '45 (which they don't), it would amount to 150,000,000 deaths. This is 2.5 times more than the total casualties of ww2, without even accounting for the nuclear weapon use of the opposing side.

[vinceguidry]

You're assuming all the bombs will be dropped on population centers. They won't. Most weapons will be used on military targets. Removing your enemy's ability to wage war will always take priority over non-military targets.

[pg314]

> You're assuming all the bombs will be dropped on population centers.

He isn't. He is assuming 5% of bombs will be dropped on population centers.

> Removing your enemy's ability to wage war will always take priority over non-military targets.

You are applying conventional military tactics in a nuclear war. They don't apply. See MAD[1], the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

[mrec]

MAD isn't current US policy and hasn't been for some time. US doctrine allows for flexible responses and the possibility of a nuclear exchange staying within the bounds of a regional conflict, rather than automatically escalating immediately to all-out nuclear spasm.

And I don't think it was ever the official policy of the USSR; their planners believed that even all-out nuclear war was both survivable and winnable. (Which made the whole concept distinctly iffy as the foundation of deterrence.)

[vinceguidry]

To piggyback on this:

MAD is a convenient fiction that politicians and the military use for political purposes. It has zero bearing on any actual military strategy because it is not a real scenario. There aren't enough strategic weapons in the world to bring about such an outcome.

To learn more about how the military community thinks of nuclear warfare, follow this guy on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/profile/Thierry-Etienne-Joseph-Rotty

[maxerickson]

My whole small town is ~1 mile from a military target.

(For example, every single ocean port is a military target, war time industrial capacity is a military target, etc)

[Synaesthesia]

Well now we have megaton sized nuclear bombs, far far more powerful than the ones used on Japan.