[jacobush]

Don't you have the missile silos in rural Midwest. A truly global conflict with existential fear in major powers, will get hot. But currently the US could absolutely devastate China atomically, but China would only be able to take swings at major US cities.

Everyone will be losers but as things currently stand, China would loose the most.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Do we really know that? Maybe they have developed some form of working SDI.

Furthermore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Great_Wall_of_Chin...

[jacobush]

Oh yeah, someone will technically "win" a full exchange, I'm sure. The brass may see high survival rates. But the infrastructure will be bombed away. It will take decades to rebuild. One can't even compare to anything before and extrapolate. There have been local disasters and rebuilding, but we have never seen a complete national system bombed away and what will come after.

(A variant of a worst case I haven't even considered before is a full nuclear Armageddon, and then Command and Control survives to take nuclear potshots for years afterwards. For instance if one party has still substantial conventional forces but the other manages to from time to time scrounge up another nuke and launch it.)

I could see them have more ICBMs than apparent, but successful SDI I don't think is possible, not against nuclear strike submarines in any case.