(01-26-2017, 10:19 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:46 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 01:34 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:People have done the math with no agenda aforethought. Guess what. WW3 would not be the end of the world.

Correct.  Nuclear winter is grossly overhyped, studies done by RAND, Kahn, and others have shown that casualties, while horrific, would not kill the majority of the population.

But it would be The End of the World as We Know It. 

It depends on the scale. Most calculations assumed a counterforce model.  But counterforce isn't a real strategy against an external enemy--it was directed against and internal opponent--the US Navy.

Let's agree that none of use really knows how many war scenarios exist, and, of that number, how many involve nukes.  Let's also agree that we have too many strategists on the DoD staff to assume the number is 1.  What we can assume is the restraint we would feel as one of 3 major nuclear powers.  If we engage either the Chinese or the Russians, the other will then have the nuclear advantage of a full stockpile and no collateral damage. 

So a nuclear war is unthinkable, unless the one doing the war making is devoid of thought.

(01-26-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

(01-25-2017, 01:34 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:People have done the math with no agenda aforethought. Guess what. WW3 would not be the end of the world.

Correct.  Nuclear winter is grossly overhyped, studies done by RAND, Kahn, and others have shown that casualties, while horrific, would not kill the majority of the population.

But it would be The End of the World as We Know It. 

Albert Einstein was asked about this.  He responded, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

• • Albert Einstein, in an interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173
    
  • Differing versions of such a statement are attributed to conversations as early as 1948 (e.g. The Rotarian, 72 (6), June 1948, p. 9: "I don't know. But I can tell you what they'll use in the fourth. They'll use rocks!"). Another variant ("I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones") is attributed to an unidentified letter to Harry S. Truman in "The culture of Einstein" by Alex Johnson, MSNBC, (18 April 2005). However, prior to 1948 very similar quotes were attributed in various articles to an unnamed army lieutenant, as discussed at Quote Investigator : "The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears". The earliest found was from “Quote and Unquote: Raising ‘Alarmist’ Cry Brings a Winchell Reply” by Walter Winchell, in the Wisconsin State Journal (23 September 1946), p. 6, Col. 3. In this article Winchell wrote:
    Joe Laitin reports that reporters at Bikini were questioning an army lieutenant about what weapons would be used in the next war.“I dunno,” he said, “but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!”

I dunno, I guess Einstein has a little more cachet than random Army officer back in the 40s. 

Quote:You selectively discount the nuclear effects.  Many persist for decades, and are highly dangerous in minute quantities.  I remember the Strontium 90 concern in the '50s, and that was due solely to testing.

(01-26-2017, 10:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-26-2017, 10:19 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:46 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 01:34 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:People have done the math with no agenda aforethought. Guess what. WW3 would not be the end of the world.

Correct.  Nuclear winter is grossly overhyped, studies done by RAND, Kahn, and others have shown that casualties, while horrific, would not kill the majority of the population.

But it would be The End of the World as We Know It. 

It depends on the scale. Most calculations assumed a counterforce model.  But counterforce isn't a real strategy against an external enemy--it was directed against and internal opponent--the US Navy.

Let's agree that none of use really knows how many war scenarios exist, and, of that number, how many involve nukes.  Let's also agree that we have too many strategists on the DoD staff to assume the number is 1.  What we can assume is the restraint we would feel as one of 3 major nuclear powers.  If we engage either the Chinese or the Russians, the other will then have the nuclear advantage of a full stockpile and no collateral damage. 

So a nuclear war is unthinkable, unless the one doing the war making is devoid of thought.

There aren't 3 major nuclear powers.  If you set the cutoff at 1000 weaponized warheads, roughly what's needed for some kind of counterforce attacks, there are only 2, the US and Russia.  If you set the cutoff just below China's 280 or so warheads, you have to include France at 300.

Your analysis would be correct if there were exactly 3 major nuclear powers, but there aren't.

(01-26-2017, 11:01 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-26-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote: Albert Einstein was asked about this.  He responded, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Is that all you got, bumper sticker slogans?  Would it really be a "world war" with sticks and stones?  I like the original quote better:

I dunno, I guess Einstein has a little more cachet than random Army officer back in the 40s.  [/font][/color]

David Horn Wrote:

SomeGuy Wrote:You selectively discount the nuclear effects.  Many persist for decades, and are highly dangerous in minute quantities.  I remember the [color=#a20000][size=small]Strontium 90 concern in the '50s, and that was due solely to testing.

I fully acknowledge that it would be horrible beyond imagining to have a nuclear war, it just wouldn't be "The End of Everything!".  What point are you trying to make, other than that you remember the 50s?

Quote:I actually remember seeing Einstein being interviewed in the '50s, and the subject was discussed. (probably on Omnibus). I can't validate the quote. I was about 10 at the time. I remember the discussion, because it was scary.

Quote:
Strontium 90 is a nucleotide that displaces calcium in bones, leading to cancer if the concentration is high enough. It doesn't take much, and nukes generate a lot of the stuff.

(01-26-2017, 12:31 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-26-2017, 10:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-26-2017, 10:19 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:46 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 01:34 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Correct.  Nuclear winter is grossly overhyped, studies done by RAND, Kahn, and others have shown that casualties, while horrific, would not kill the majority of the population.

But it would be The End of the World as We Know It. 

It depends on the scale. Most calculations assumed a counterforce model.  But counterforce isn't a real strategy against an external enemy--it was directed against and internal opponent--the US Navy.

Let's agree that none of use really knows how many war scenarios exist, and, of that number, how many involve nukes.  Let's also agree that we have too many strategists on the DoD staff to assume the number is 1.  What we can assume is the restraint we would feel as one of 3 major nuclear powers.  If we engage either the Chinese or the Russians, the other will then have the nuclear advantage of a full stockpile and no collateral damage. 

So a nuclear war is unthinkable, unless the one doing the war making is devoid of thought.

There aren't 3 major nuclear powers.  If you set the cutoff at 1000 weaponized warheads, roughly what's needed for some kind of counterforce attacks, there are only 2, the US and Russia.  If you set the cutoff just below China's 280 or so warheads, you have to include France at 300.

Your analysis would be correct if there were exactly 3 major nuclear powers, but there aren't.

Fair enough.  I doubt the French want to be our protectors, but who knows.  The Brits have an arsenal too, and they Ohio class subs.

(01-25-2017, 05:41 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-24-2017, 04:07 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Seriously, detail me the scenario that leads directly from something like Taiwan to either country launching their missiles at the other in the full knowledge of a corresponding attack on their own facilities and populations, and explain to me why it would be the only outcome.

The issue is simple. What is the point of engaging in a military conflict in which you cannot win?  Suppose Trump decided to blockcade these islands.  Can you show a path where he can win?  I don't see it, and if I see this, so do the Chinese.  They can keep pushing until Trump gives up, after all, is he going to end civilization over some fucking islands in the South China Sea?  The US considers the Carribean an American lake--what's the difference?

And this is the problem.  In the old days such issues would be resolved by all-out great power coalition wars (read Kennedy's book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers).  You can't do that now, an all-out conflict would go nuclear. So the great powers resorted to a minuet, with proxy wars to make their point.  Most of the great powers, (except for the strongest two) got a clue and pulled out, seeing it was a fools game.  Does China want to play this game?  No!  They want what I would want, sure things--like the Spratley's.  (The islands no, the principle, yes).

Quote:They want what I would want

Quote:Some Guy, your video quoted above might need to be corrected. It says an error occured.

Quote:Meanwhile, yes, I don't think people everywhere are that different. As the Rascals said in 1968, "people everywhere just want to be free." The "train of freedom" has encountered some derailments since then, but I'd say the world is more free than it was in 1968. Syrians may be Muslims and have some different values than liberal 60s kids in the USA, but fundamental rights and freedoms are not that hard to understand. The Arab Spring young rebels in Tahrir Square understood them just fine, and so did the Syrians against a dictator who refused to help them in the midst of a crippling, climate-change-caused drought. (thus, we Americans really caused their problems, but we refused to help them).

Quote:And there's no doubt that the Iraq War of 2003 never had to happen. The facts are that it was a war of choice whose purpose was to overthrow a regime that was no threat to the USA or its allies. Those who continue to believe George W Bush's lies are living in a fantasy.

(01-26-2017, 01:45 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: All of which is why even a military conflict with China would be unlikely to escalate to a nuclear exchange, especially not right off the bat.  Cyber attacks, naval clashes, attacks on satellites, even a proxy conflict in Korea again, sure, but a nuclear exchange?  Doesn't really make sense.

Quote:How does the US sink one of China's artificial islands?  Conventional weapons can't sink an island.  A nuke would do it neatly, though, with minimal loss of life.

Quote:How does China sink a US carrier?  They don't have the conventional forces to do it.

Quote:Of course, there are nonmilitary weapons that might be equally devastating.  China could release their immense reserves of dollars in a way that would result in instant painful inflation in the US.  It would of course hurt China too.  Similarly with the US imposing tariffs on Chinese goods.

(01-26-2017, 04:22 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:How does the US sink one of China's artificial islands?  Conventional weapons can't sink an island.  A nuke would do it neatly, though, with minimal loss of life.

Gibberish.  How does an island sink, nuke or no?

Quote:How does China sink a US carrier?  They don't have the conventional forces to do it.

The US Navy begs to differ.  Conventional missiles can sink ships just fine.

Quote:Of course, there are nonmilitary weapons that might be equally devastating.  China could release their immense reserves of dollars in a way that would result in instant painful inflation in the US.  It would of course hurt China too.  Similarly with the US imposing tariffs on Chinese goods.

How would selling their US Treasury holdings, in isolation, do what you suggest?

Quote:China's artificial islands are only a couple miles long.  A reasonable size nuke would disperse most of the sand back into the waves.

Quote:A US supercarrier won't sink from a single conventional hit - even some WWII carriers took multiple kamikaze hits and survived - plus it has an entire task force and air wing to protect it.  In a conventional sea battle, the Chinese navy wouldn't get close.

Quote:The laws of supply and demand apply to currency exchange rates along with everything else.  If China dumps a massive supply of dollars onto the market by selling them, they become cheaper relative to other currencies and relative to goods.  That means everything else becomes more expensive in terms of dollars - inflation.

(01-26-2017, 10:11 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:China's artificial islands are only a couple miles long.  A reasonable size nuke would disperse most of the sand back into the waves.

Would it?  All of it?  To what depth?  Disperse it where, into the atmosphere saturated with radiation?  I don't think you've thought this through.

Quote:

Quote:A US supercarrier won't sink from a single conventional hit - even some WWII carriers took multiple kamikaze hits and survived - plus it has an entire task force and air wing to protect it.  In a conventional sea battle, the Chinese navy wouldn't get close.

Claim not borne by wargames run by the Navy under all but the most restrictive (read: unrealistic) circumstances.  Nor by experience during WWII.  It's not like the Chinese Navy would have to close in and fire broadsides, it's all about missiles (launched from subs, small attack craft, destroyers, planes, and land-based launchers, etc.) these days, and subject to the salvo combat model derivation of Lanchester's Square Law.

This is not to say that the Chinese are invincible either, just that one has to consider the reality of modern weapons, industrial capacity, and local geography (Chinese are unlikely to fight out in the open Pacific vs staying largely within the first island chain where they can rely on mainland-based air and missile assets) when talking about gaming out naval conflict.

Nothing is invincible.  A single Exocet missile sunk a British destroyer during the Falklands, an aircraft carrier is made of the same things on a larger scale, and missiles are much cheaper than aircraft carriers, you can afford to waste many to sink one.

That's why the US Military doesn't talk about sending carriers INTO the Taiwan Strait like they did back in '96 in the event of a crisis.  And the carrier wing doesn't have the range it used to, either.

Quote:

Quote:The laws of supply and demand apply to currency exchange rates along with everything else.  If China dumps a massive supply of dollars onto the market by selling them, they become cheaper relative to other currencies and relative to goods.  That means everything else becomes more expensive in terms of dollars - inflation.

 
Depends on buyers as well as sellers, dude.  The Chinese have been offloading Treasuries for a couple of years now, their holdings are down to $1.12 trillion, less than half that of the Federal Reserve.  They're not even the largest FOREIGN holder of US debt now, the Japanese are.

Quote:Disperse it where?  Read my last few words, please.  As I said, "back into the waves".  The sand would sink back to the bottom where it was dredged up from in the first place.

With respect to radiation, a bomb has a few kilograms of fissionable material, while a power reactor has a few metric tons - several orders of magnitude more.  If we could live with Fukushima without shutting down all the nuclear reactors in the world, the military will be able to live with a few bombs.  That's assuming the decision makers will have "thought this through", which isn't something to be counted on once you get into a shooting war.

Note that I'm not advocating using nukes, just pointing out how it could happen.  Keep in mind it's going to be Boomers making the ultiimate decision, not Silents who tend to think things through to the point of indecision.

Quote:We're talking about the South China Sea, not the Taiwan Strait.  The Exocet's range is about 100 miles, which doesn't buy you much in a sea that's about 1000 miles across.  That's why China is building the artificial islands.

Quote:How does China sink a US carrier?  They don't have the conventional forces to do it.

Quote:As for the fuzzy wuzzy formula - excuse me, the "Lanchester's Square Law" as it seems to be called nowadays - try applying it to the fact that the US Navy is about 10 times the size of the Chinese Navy.  I think you'll quickly see how it supports my point that China loses any conventional naval conflict.

Quote:The artificial islands do have the potential for making the South China Sea a no go zone for the US Navy, though, which is why they are such an issue.

Quote:Interesting - thanks.  I knew China was supporting their currency, but I hadn't realized they'd spent that much on it since I last checked a few years ago.

(01-25-2017, 05:53 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Counterforce targets THE EXTERNAL ENEMY's launch sites and other nuclear facilities.  What are you talking about?   

(01-27-2017, 02:29 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:53 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Counterforce targets THE EXTERNAL ENEMY's launch sites and other nuclear facilities.  What are you talking about?   

Heh heh.  I thought that would get your attention.  The nuclear winter idea is really rather silly--as if they worst thing we would have to worry about after a nuclear war would be particulates in the atmosphere.  The concept emerged during the political debate about nuclear war in the 1980's.  Lots of silly ideas are floated in politics, nuclear winter isn't any sillier than supply-side tax cuts.

Even sillier was the counterforce concept, which as you note was supposedly about targeting the USSR's launch facilities. The CF concept was publicized during the MX missile debate. The argument for this new missile was that it was super accurate and could be used for counterforce applications for which the existing Minuteman missile was unsuitable.

The CF concept doesn't make any sense unless the targets were silos occupied by missiles. But the only way you can strike at silos that still contain missiles is if these missiles had not been launched, that is you struck first.  This lead to charges that the MX missile was a first-strike weapon or at least would be seen as such by the USSR and so was destabilizing.  What followed by an increasingly bizarre concepts of partial strikes and counter-strikes which made increasingly little sense.

To get to the heart of the CF concept you have to look at the original MX concept, which was a way to address an obvious critique of the US "triad" nuclear strategy.  The logical question is, why did the US maintain land-based missiles?  Such weapons were obviously a target for which no defense existed.  Why not just get rid of them and rely on our nuclear subs, which unlike the land based weapons, were mobiile and undetectable, making them invulnerable to attack.  In other words why not hand over the job (plus the funding and prestige) of the job of providing the nuclear deterrant to the US Navy?  This of course did not sit well with the USAF, who came up with the CF concept to justify the land missiles (i.e. their piece of the pie).  SLBMs were not sufficiently accurate for CF purposes, for that you needed the land-based platforms.  These could be made more secure from attack by going to a mobile-based (MX) system in which the 1000 Minutemen were replaced with 100 super-accurate highly-MIRVed MX missiles that would be shuttled between the existing array of silos so that at any time, 90% of the silos would be empty.  If the USSR then launched a CF assault they would most strike empty silos, leaving intact a substantial fraction of our CF capability, plus all of our SLBMs.

THe MX system was too expensive and it went down, but the USAF still wanted the missile, and went double down on the CF concept, which is the only justification for land-based missiles that was being offered. Of course the obvious counter to the CF concept was, if the MX wasn't a first strike weapon, and would only be used for retaliation, why wouldn't the USSR not strike at all of our silos, taking out all of America's CF capability?  The USAF woud have no response to this, but the argument never went here--it wasn't PC I guess. 

I finally concluded that the CF argument was simply a justification for keeping the USAF involved in providing the US deterrence, instead of delegating this to the USN, as would seem logical.  Hence my tongue-in-cheek claim that the real target of the CF doctrine was the US Navy.

The MX missile debate was one of the first times I developed a cynical view of American foreign policy politics. It would not be the last. More than 20 years later I ended up embracing the views expressed in the libertarian site Antiwar.com.