EDIT: For clarification, I feel that the current situation on the ground in the war (vs. say a year ago) might indicate that an attack on Russia might not result in instant nuclear war, which is what prompted my question. I am well aware of the “instant nuclear Armageddon” opinion.
Serious question. I don’t need to be called stupid. I realize nuclear war is bad. Thanks!
Do you like tablewear?
Because this would create a lot of glass in a few short moments.
Took me a sec to realize what you meant by this lol
In a conventional war they would crush Russia. Remember when the United States captured Baghdad in a week? It would be like that. But the chances are high that Putin would start launching nukes, and then everyone loses.
I’m not willing to gamble but I don’t think they’d go nuclear. The trick is to offer amnesty and support to everyone but Putin so they have a better option than death for themselves and their families. Loyalty to dictators is always about self preservation.
They would drop tactical nukes on NATO forces.
It’s never going to happen anyways.
They would drop tactical nukes on NATO forces.
Yeah maybe. I was operating under the prevailing idea in this thread that NATO would steamroll through Russia. It’s not something I necessarily agree with.
It’s never going to happen anyways.
Well, quite. This is all just a thought experiment, no one thinks it could happen. NATO is a purely defensive alliance.
Ukraine has no nuclear weapons. Nuclear arsenal is basically meant to face nato/USA in Russia.
Ukraine invading Russia is a humiliation. But it’s not a real threat for now. Russia didn’t even declared the state of war yet.
I’ve heard that Russia can’t really use atomic bomb against Ukraine because Ukraine has no atomic bombs itself. If it did, it would spark nuclear proliferation by breaking a tabou. And China wouldn’t allow that, because they don’t want Taiwan to get the bomb.
But nato is an atomic power. Thus, atomic bombs are fair game.
For starters: amassing troops at the russian is a warning.
But I think a coordinated attack by NATO could neutralize all russian air power, at least in the western part. Thus preventing Russia from waging war in Ukraine or making any attacks on NATO countries in return.
Nuclear war is not plausible due to Mutual Assured Destruction.
If your destruction is already inevitable because all of NATO is invading your country, then mutually assured destruction begins to look like a good option from the losing position.
For this reason I would argue nuclear war is plausible in the scenario.
You may also say “well the NATO forces may be looking to arrest you and not kill you so logically your best bet is to hold off on nukes”, but people, even leaders of countries, often don’t react rationally under extreme circumstances so there is definitely a non zero risk of nuclear destruction.
Because Putin is a “So much for your fucking canoe!” kind of leader. I think most world leaders are if they have the chance. Look what we still say about France for surrendering in WW2, they get plenty of mockery despite being the very nation that helped the US exist in the first place.
So the default is that the worst of the rich and powerful like Putin have the relationship with their citizens and country that a narcissistic, severe domestic abuser has with their partner:
“If I can’t have you, no one will…”
World war III and after that NATO countries occupying Russia. Probably quite some people die and things get destroyed in the process.
I think if they’re smart they destabilize the regime and go for Putin. And not fight the whole country and population of Russia.
Nuclear annihilation. Got nothing to lose at that point
Nato would completely overwhelm Russia, but not before nukes would fly from various places and hit major cities in the western world. In the retaliation, all of Russia would be destroyed, world in turmoil…
I have some doubts that Russia’s nuclear weapons are even in operational order.
maybe they try to launch them, and they just self-destruct inside their silos. or, they fly, but fall out of the sky still in Russia, or, they actually fly all the way to the destination, but fail to detonate.
to be sure, this is not something that we should wager on. I just think it would be funny if it turned out that way. just a fun little daydream of imperialist fascist scum getting put in the ground where they fucking belong.
Even failures could be bad, for nearby areas or the world. Just a missile falling and then burning is going to release stuff into the air and water. A far cry from a working launch, but still a mess and that’s just one missile. What is the probability that they all fail to even launch or just do something and crash inert? Not big, I would guess. Even a badly maintained nuclear arsenal has its own deterrence.
The IAEA and the START treaty mean we have inspectors that can monitor the actual capabilities of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. According to these inspectors Russia has, at least, 2000 completely operational nukes.
You don’t have to take Russia’s word on it. USA and Russia inspected each other’s nuclear arsenal as part of the New START treaty until the beginning of covid.
Thanks for the tidbit
Russia is believed to have about 6500 nuclear weapons. Even if ninety-nine percent of them fail, that’s still 65 cities turned to ash.
That’s a very effective visualization.
Even Doctor Manhattan can’t be all places at once.
That seems like a ridiculous number of nuclear munitions. Like why so many?
I recall hearing something about real arms reduction making nuclear war seem like a sane, viable option.
The theory is that we’re safer if all sides know they can completely annihilate each other. No world leaders genuinely want nuclear war (despite what they say, threaten, or imply), so nobody launches a nuke. Flaw - that theory assumes all leaders are sane and rational.
“The theory”… You make it sound like MAD is some obscure fact. I so hope that is not the case. But maybe… Fuck…
I’m not trying to. This was MANY years ago, so I’m being cautious (perhaps overly so) with the wording.
So that even if 99% fail or get shot down, 65 cities are still turned to ash.
The existence of this post (and its title in particular) might give you a clue…
The US and the USSR engaged in a race to have the most nukes. After the fall of the Sowjet Union international treaties were put in place to reduce the number of nukes in both east and west.
Don’t quote me, but if I remember correctly, at the height of the cold war, both sides had more than 12.000 nukes each.
Humanity had enough fire power to delete the entire globe roughly 40x over then. Why? Because bigger is better.
That’s dumb. They didn’t do it just for shits and giggles. They did it because in a nuclear exchange, you only get one shot so you need to overwhelm your opponent’s defenses.
Imagine your opponent gets the jump on you in some massive way. Your land based nukes have to launch from somewhere and the enemy is pointing to every one they have sussed out.
You want to still get a meaningful # in the air if the worst happens
I’m guessing you’ve never heard of mutually assured destruction
Also, we tested quite a few of them
A personal crackpot theory that is almost certainly wrong, is that aliens heard the emissions from these blasts and came to investigate wtf was going on. Physically impossible but still comes to mind everytime I see this.
This video is so disturbing, every time. Every detonation is an implied threat, a political message, a promise of violence, a show of power. Every detonation is an environmental catastrophe, a long-term cost that we’re still paying, both in the collection and refining of the nuclear material and in the detonation. Every detonation is an economic burden, human time and effort spent making a tool that only makes destruction. The US effectively bankrupted the USSR with this competition.
The systemic cost of the whole thing is just mind-boggling. There’s really only one silver lining that I see. Humanity had access to a terrifying new weapon, the power to wipe itself out really. And we didn’t do it. At the time of highest ignorance, when very few people in the entire world really understood how bad it could be, and when political tensions were high, we did a lot of posturing but we didn’t actually do the worst we could have.
It could have been so much worse, and we (collectively) chose not to make it that way. I do find some comfort in that.
MAD theory and both sides realize that nuke silos are targets for nuke weapons so they had “extras” because everyone knows some won’t leave the tube.
More likely several hundred, not 65.
Each nuke carries multiple warheads that split up in space and fly to individual targets.Aren’t the multiple warheads for the same target, though?
The imperialist fascist scum would be launching the nukes from the safety of their elaborate, well-stocked, and expensive bomb shelters. I don’t disagree with your opinion of those people, but it’s vital to remember that the biggest victims would be the millions of civilians who have already suffered under their rule.
They have considerable overkill, to the point where only a fraction has to hit their target.
Russia has 5000 nukes, if the US is not involved, Europe will be toast
Even without US. UK has nukes, France has nukes. You don’t need a lot to destroy Russia. Basically just two.
NATO would ensure that the US is involved. We’re aligned with the Europeans.
Doesn’t Drumpf plan to remove us from NATO? Or am I remembering wrongly what I read?
Yeah, well. He is going to prison.
He will never see a second in prison, don’t kid yourself.
He deserves it.
A boy can dream, can’t he?
Personally, I wish that jackass who shot his ear had been a better shot. What a waste of such an opportunity.
The end of the northern hemisphere*
Well, nuclear winter would certainly solve that global warming problem for everyone left.
But I am le tired!
WTF, mate?
About that time eh chaps? Right oh
It’s an old meme from a short funny video about the end of the world
Yes, and in the video Australia says, “WTF, mate?”
Well it is an old meme sorry I didn’t remember every line verbatim :)
Woosh
A lot of people are focusing on what Russia would do but this would also alarm every single country that isn’t in good terms with NATO and they would also start mobilizing their armies. China, NK, and maybe even the middle east would retaliate if nato was this aggressive.
About those nukes…
I’m sure they were kept at the same tip top condition as the rest of the russian military complex’s equipment.
Possibly. But even if 99% of their strategic arsenal is junk, they’d still be left with 17 working warheads. Who’s gonna risk 17 large cities wiped out?
Assuming no one nukes the world or that all air defenses work, it’d be a mess. There’s no force in human history that can stop NATO in a traditional war. (Maybe the Mongols because they’re always the exception.) But it’s very likely China, North Korea, Iran, and others would be much harder to conquer/occupy at the same time.
It would be widespread suffering in most of the world. The truth is that war is obsolete as a means of accomplishing 99% of political goals. Most of the world would descend into chaos and civil war. Food would be scarce and in times of scarcity, the drunkest, most violent people usually end up in charge. You’d have warlordism in the vast, vast majority of the world.
The natural state of humanity isn’t trade and property rights. It’s warlords offering protection in exchange for whatever they need. No one “wins” wars in 2024. Groups like ISIS would thrive, not law and order.
What makes you think humanity has a natural state?
Yeah, I don’t think we’ve had a real “natural state” since we discovered agriculture. Our whole thing is kinda setting ourselves above/apart from nature
Like I mean after Rome fell the kingdoms that arose were pretty warmongering picking fights with other kingdoms for mearly having a different religion and even when Rome was a thing capital punishment was pretty common and brutal and Rome was a super power for being military strong nations only really started to be widely civil to one another by id say 1880 somewhere in the late 1800s leaving about 1,850 years of constant wars between all nations
Easy way to kill a country: Disrupt the critical infrastructure at multiple points.
Just imagine how crippled we are without AWS, Azure, Cloudflare and Gcloud. Kill electricity, damage water supplies and destroy medication supply and the chaos is perfect.“Without their heads, they’re powerless!”
“Bullets! My only weakness!”
Gotta think of the Mongols.
As long as we’re living in the past, let’s revive the golden horde to deal with Russia
It’s kinda sad to see Mongolia now. Not a lot going on, almost completely dependent on China.
Wait I’m confused. Why would a NATO invasion of Russia destroy the rest of the world? Sure, Russia would be fukd. And if China tried to defend Russia for some insane reason, it would be one heck of a war. But not “entire world falls into anarchy and chaos” levels, that’s absurd.
I think the assumption is China would join in with defending Russia for fear that it would be next and alone. I’ll edit this and add Iran to the assumption that they don’t want to be next and alone either.
China clearing wants more resources and land. China has historical ambitions in Taiwan. China has historical grievances with Japan.
Vote for me as your warlord plz!
Everyone I’ve read here is talking about Russia immediately launching their nukes, but among so many nations, surely several would think to do something sneaky to disarm the nukes before anyone launches a full-on attack against Russia.
If any nation could build an intelligence network that can disarm all 4000+ nukes inside Russia and can coordinate it before an all out attack; at that point they could push a puppet leader to control the country anyways.
I think it’s more likely that Nato would quickly just storm the occupied regions of Ukraine. Would probably be less risky of a nuclear Armageddon
I am down with this idea
