Russia has something like 4,000 nukes, only 1 or 2 really need to work to cause massive devastation. It's much more likely that more than 1 or 2 still work and that is more than enough.
Enough? Enough for what? This is not mutually assured destruction. If Russia and the US engage, this is a madman shooting a tank with a 9mm. It may cause some damage, but he's going to be obliterated in the process.
Yes but Russian leadership doesn't necessarily believe that the nukes don't work. If they do a massive launch then we'll probably take at least some damage, and if we massively retaliate then we'll conduct a risky experiment to see who's right about nuclear winter.
The debris thrown up into the stratosphere from our weapons detonating in Russia would likely be enough to start a nuclear winter, not to mention the fallout making everything in the northern hemisphere a lot more radioactive.
Any large exchange of thermonuclear weapons is going to break most supply chains and lead to a great simplification of society and the deaths of at least 90% of the population in the process as industrial farming stops being a thing.
The exchange on the Russian side would be minimal, if any. On the US side, it'll only need to target major cities to be effective. Destroying Moscow and Saint Petersburg would be more than enough. They could use neutron bombs, as they are cleaner, if they still have.
Destroying Moscow and St. Petersburg might be worth losing Paris, London, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles; but it certainly wouldn't worth losing Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome, and other centers of the worlds history. The others also has a vote, you know.
Still, I'd rather not have to move my ski season to the sides of Mount Golgotha near Jerusalem - that glowing snow might still be radioactive after all.
The GQP‘s ongoing downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already killed more than 1 million Americans, has proven that a large part of the US electorate disagrees with you.
>It's much more likely that more than 1 or 2 still work and that is more than enough.
Obviously.
Historically, with real tanks seen to be performing in action, then cardboard tanks additionally performed exactly as the deterrent fake ones were intended to do.
Also in tank warfare when the majority of tanks have not been brought into action, the cardboard ones accomplished the same things as the majority of real ones.
Edit: not everyone can be expected to believe it's true, some are just more easily fooled than others
Plus my bad, there were a lot of inflatables historically for even better deception:
Is it the case that they'll launch a whole bunch at once? Wouldn't they send one or two to Ukraine for effect? If it works it should be enough to scare everyone.
The west is very clear that they’re not willing to allow the precedent of small scale nuclear weapons use without consequence. If Russia does this, we will massively ramp up our involvement in the war.
Nuclear weapons will not actually make a huge difference. Neither on the battlefield nor on civilian targets.