I've got no intention of derailing the thread, but dude, that's simply untrue. While contingency war plans obviously exist — there's a famous oplan called "Basic War Plan Red" that describes precisely where and how the United States would invade Canada, for instance — the only really meaningful plan for nuclear war the United States has ever had has been SIOP, and its antecedent, Plan Totality. Each plan, starting with Totality, listed a number of strategically significant cities in the USSR that would be targeted as part of a retaliatory strike, in the event of war. (I think Totality started with 20 named targets; later plans are obviously still classified.)

China didn't find its way into any version of SIOP until 2003 … where they were part of a joint retaliation contingency plan. In other words, it described the scenario in which the US, Russia and China would release our nuclear weapons cooperatively to retaliate against some other state actor.

The US has never "targeted" China, in any meaningful sense, with nuclear weapons. We've got conventional Taiwan Strait scenarios coming out our ears, but there's no acknowledged plan for nuclear war with China.

The thing is, they originally WEREN'T that destructive compared to the over all war. Way more were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo then in the nuking of Hiroshima, for example. They were just, once you developed them, cheaper and put fewer of your own men at risk. If the next war had started out or quickly grown to involve bombing cities to intentionally kill civilians, I think nukes would have been used with no second thoughts. It's a fluke of history that there was this gap where there was time for the idea of mass murder to become morally wrong.
(there's a great news clip in Atomic Cafe of future VP candidate Lloyd Bentsen calling for the use of nukes in Korea)

A collapse would be horrible. There's every indication that the leadership is cut off enough to think lashing out in one final spasm would be better then just fading away, and even without nukes a suicidal attack on South Korea would be devastating. In a perfect world, whatever son takes over either slowly opens up the place, or he becomes the figurehead of a council of generals who know the military reality and they try to ease the country back from the abyss.

Correct.The firebombing of Tokyo did kill more people and do more damage, but at a huge cost in men and material, the sheer scale of the logistics doesn't even compare to one plane one bomb even at WWII sized atomic weapons.
Then as you get to the late 50s with ballistic missiles the ability of both sides to annihilate each other starts to scale up and up. To do a Tokyo style attack is really hard while a small group of bombers or missiles get easier. And its clear that the leader ship of both sides would be the first target. While the general population was unaware the true power of the bomb the US and soviet leadership had huge statistics, photos and other various records such as medical data on the terrible effects. It was obvious to anyone who read it that there would be a completely different world after such a full scale war. The balance to the ease of there use is offset by the terrible out come, you strike you die. but  by the 1960s it was become a matter of public discourse that a nuclear war was not only un-winnable but most likely the last act of our civilization.

in 64 the Chinese detonate their first bomb with more within a few years becoming the far deadlier hydrogen bombs.
While there's the direct event of 1958 around Taiwan, the US has maintained a nuclear attack force against china since the late fifties with a almost attack planed from Guam as early as 1951.
If you think that the US didn't have nuclear strike targets in the largest communist population that had aided in attacking during the Korean war, then detonated its own atomic weapons I don't know what would lead to that conclusion. Every western nuclear NATO force had some hand in targeting china, from British subs to American ICBMs. While a 1960s strike most likely would be aimed, started by or at soviet Russia, China was also on the list.

And again the point was that were getting both strategic and commercial items build/modded/assembled/formed/created/glued in a nation that is both totalitarian and top of our hit list until recently. We have been lead to believe that things like computer chip are a simple commodity like pork belly's but in reality the number of companies that build the steppers needed for there assembly can be counted on one hand. Also once you lose a industry its incredibly hard to start again with out both government intervention and general will power to do so.

Right now were in a strange economic stalemate but its shape to me is starting to look like the last days of the Edwardian era before WWI which had similar odd balances of power both from the royal houses being related to the trade furiously engaged in by nations that would within a few years be trying to destroy each other in Flanders. I would compare many of the multinationals today as being like those royal houses.

Surprisingly, that wasn't the case at all, at least under US and USSR nuclear-use doctrine. The leadership was the last thing you wanted to attack, because once the civilian authority is either literally or effectively destroyed (either dead or so cut off as to be totally incommunicado), there's nobody to talk to about a deescalation or cessation of hostilities. The notion of a "decapitation strike" made it into a ton of fiction, but in reality, nobody thought that was anything remotely close to a good idea under any circumstances. If things had really gone south during the Cold War, the safest places on Earth would have been DC and Moscow, and Omaha and Kuntsevo. The second two are where the strategic military commands were for the US and the USSR, and the first two (obviously) are where you'd find the people with the power to surrender. Those are the last guys you want dead.

The fact that I really nerded it up in the early 90s, when I was in college, and read everything I could get my hands on about US nuclear-use doctrine and policy. When you use the phrase "nuclear strike target," do you know what that really means, in practice? A set of lat-long-alt numbers, and maybe an aerial photograph with a crosshair in the middle of it. That's it. It's not like there were ICBMs sitting in silos with pre-encoded trajectories that would take them to Shanghai at the push of a button. Strategic war plans, of which there were literally thousands, included lists of possible targets, sure. But the list of possible targets accumulated over the decades includes basically every industrial center, population center, power plant, factory, highway intersection, runway, natural or man-made dam and public swimming pool on the planet. The list could basically be described as, "These are the things we know how to attack." To say that "China was targeted" is no more true than saying West Germany was targeted. In fact, West Germany was much more densely targeted — to the extent that a far greater number of potential targets was identified there — because that's where NATO planned to use limited release of strategic nuclear weapons to stop a Warsaw Pact armor incursion through the Fulda Gap. In the event of a large-scale tank invasion, Frankfurt would have been a nuclear casualty in minutes, long before anybody even considered a nuclear use anywhere else on the planet. Such was nuclear-use doctrine in the 70s and 80s; it was seen as far more likely that we'd destroy friendly cities in attacks against invading conventional Warsaw Pact forces than that we'd ever launch strategic attacks against enemy targets. We had a gun pointed at our own heads, telling the Soviets, "Don't come any closer or the white boy gets it."

If you look back on nuclear-use doctrine in the US and allies, at first glance it seems absolutely insane. Then you dig deeper and realize that it actually makes a sort of sense; there's an internal logic there that you can actually wrap your head around. But that's when the real chill sits in. When you understand that plans for nuclear war were that very special kind of insanity that seems less and less insane the closer you look, until you get down to the very bottom and completely forget that the things you're thinking about are fucking incomprehensible.

George C. Scott's lines about not getting our hair mussed and twenty-million-tops are funny. They were funny at the time, and they're funny now. But in the calculus of nuclear war planning, they're also chillingly plausible. Because when you're contemplating scenarios with outcomes on the order of a third of a billion civilian dead, losing half a dozen major cities in the continental US really does seem like a decisive victory. That was the mindset of the men whose jobs it were to think the unthinkable.

The Cold War was a different time.

The great virtue of large-scale nuclear weapons is that they're really fucking complicated. Hell, you can learn all you need to know about the basics of two-stage fusion weapon design by googling "Teller-Ulam" and reading for an hour. But when it comes time to actually make one, you have to face challenges related to extremely exotic materials, super-precise machining, handling of very unstable energy-dense high explosives, and about a thousand other obstacles.

If you somehow managed to get past all those, you (or your local non-state-sponsored nutbar) could build yourself a 300 kiloton nuclear device that, detonated at rush hour at ground level, could dig a crater 500 feet deep, completely vaporize 150 city blocks, immolate 600 more, and kill a quarter million people instantly.

(For reference, the bombs used in World War II were on the order of 15 and 20 kilotons respectively. The W88 warhead found in ballistic missile subs is thought to be about 475 kilotons; the B83 free-fall bomb can yield over a megaton, which is just fucking incomprehensible.)

Fortunately, you can't get past all those, 'cause they're hard to pull off, even if you have a detailed recipe.

Funny (and basically totally off-topic, sorry) story about this, though. One of the first steps in building the first atomic bombs was the enrichment of uranium. Natural uranium is mostly made up of an isotope called U238, which is very weakly radioactive and not fissile; it doesn't explode. But through a complex process, you can filter out the mostly-useless U238 and concentrate the fissile U235, which becomes nuclear fuel for reactors or bombs.

Even though this is conceptually simple, figuring out how to actually do it was a hell of a challenge. You have to start by dissolving processed uranium ore in nitric acid, then going through a bunch of chemical reactions to finally produce a compound called uranium hexafluoride. It's extremely toxic, corrodes basically every metal, and its reaction with ordinary water is amusingly described as "energetic."

So merely storing this stuff was a hell of a challenge, much less processing it. After lots of experimentation, the big brains at Oak Ridge synthesized a compound that they could use to coat canisters, pipes and fittings that would prevent the uranium hexafluoride from destroying the metal, so they could store and process it to make fuel for bombs and reactors.

For decades, the chemical composition of this seemingly magical compound was a highly classified military secret in the United States, known only by its code name: K416. Nobody had the foggiest idea what it was, but everyone assumed it was an extremely exotic substance with rare and peculiar chemical properties that allowed it to both (a) bond with metal, and (b) remain inert in the presence of one of the most reactive gases known.

Some years later — I forget precisely when — the identity of K416 was finally declassified.

It was Teflon. Which by the time of its declassification was already found on frying pans in every kitchen in America.

Basically every tiny step in the building of a nuclear explosive device — bomb, warhead, whatever — is high up on the list of the most difficult things human beings have ever attempted. And thank god for that.

Ok lets break that down.

We both agree that in the event of a serious political event leading to a nuclear exchange with china nuclear weapons WOULD be launched that would hit predetermined site inside china including large population bases to induce casualties to over whelm any chance of a protracted war.

You agreed that China was target listed.That targeting went beyond  battle prep like in Germany. This was both political and strategic in its planning as China was part of a enemy faction, and had human resources far out reaching all the US and NATO combined.

Two: China was and still is communist. Communism was the enemy of the US and its allies to the extent you outlined their western Europe policy as a "we will destroy it rather then give it up." remember this golden oldie, "better dead then red?" Its fair to say that at a ideological level that anything past the point of no return would have lead to a attack on this political enemy with weapons loaded with nuclear capability.

Thus a fair conclusion is that in event of any serious events such as the almost atomic attacks in retaliation for Korea, China was targeted, and events had gotten past just planing and reach operation level before stopping, such as the 51 strike. While there was more focus and open aggression between soviet Stalinist Russia, Mao china was second on the list of enemies.

Again its clear that China was a considered a serious threat both ideologically and in military.

Today in our post industrial world China has through very controlled means risen to become in a sense "factory of the world." There responsible for the assembly of both components and the final assembly of a huge disproportionate amount of the gadgets so in favor like laptops and Ipods.
So before it went off the rails i restate my original points.

There was a period of stability as a result of the statement, during which there was a incredible rise in quality of life and comfort in the west.

The nation you wanted to nuke and thus start a final human war with now makes your Ipods.

As for your enemies having nuclear proliferation is going to happen, I also suspect several nations that have not ever claimed to have them, such as Japan, do in fact have them.

As for terrorists willing to kill civilians what are you talking about? when you drop bombs from 60000 feet people die. To get upset by a particular method is ridiculous. Some one trapped under three tons of fallen concrete versus some one dying on a street corner are not moral choices but weapon choices. 

The Taliban is a entity to emerge from a CIA funded secret war, which once over lost all interest in until the late 90s. There is a terrible rise in states on the brink of anarchy or under incredible domestic pressure such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan due to a convergence of forces and events that is happening at a planetary scale. Parts of Africa such as Somalia, and Asia have falling into debt and environmental failure so deep as to be near impossible to fix. In these places which lack any stability or real solutions religion has come to fill the vacuum. You see this in Saudi Arabia where a huge percentage of students are getting degrees in theology rather then engineering etc.
Whats seems to be happening in the US is something similar with the rise of fundamental religion, denial of scientific concepts such as stem cells or evolution. There plenty of evidence on the "Christianization" of the US armed forces over the last twenty years. So to claim their the only force motivated by crazy religions is false. Bush made many claims that god had told him to do various things such as start wars etc. as well.
To me there is little long term difference between these kinds of people on both sides. IF the human race is to get out of this century we will have to get past the silly differences in our various symbols and deal with the larger issues as a species rather then various tribes.

"As for terrorists willing to kill civilians what are you talking about? when you drop bombs from 60000 feet people die. To get upset by a particular method is ridiculous. Some one trapped under three tons of fallen concrete versus some one dying on a street corner are not moral choices but weapon choices."

I'm talking about targeting civilians directly, hence "prime target", not as collateral damage. Hijacking a plane full of civilians and flying it into a civilian target etc. is very different than targeting military sites that happen to have civilians in the area.

"Whats seems to be happening in the US is something similar with the rise of fundamental religion, denial of scientific concepts such as stem cells or evolution. There plenty of evidence on the "Christianization" of the US armed forces over the last twenty years. So to claim their the only force motivated by crazy religions is false. Bush made many claims that god had told him to do various things such as start wars etc. as well. "

"Fundamental" Christianity is very different from Islam. No Christians that truly believe in the fundamentals of Christianity are going to wage "holy war". There is no such thing as holy war in Christianity. And Catholicism doesn't count as they go beyond the scriptures. Holy war and conversion by the sword is, however, fundamental to Islam.

There is no "denial" of stem cells. The debate is over what kind of stem cells we should be using. It's an ethical debate, not religious. Evolution has been used as an excuse for eugenics and genocide, so don't even bother. And I suppose you can get actual quotes from Bush saying that God told him to start wars? What do you think about Hillary saying the holy spirit guides her?

Last edited by fardawg (2010-08-02 14:38:04)

Deamon
Got those Bush quotes yet, or do you want to recant? Real evidence of the "Christianization" of the US Military would also be nice. You can't just make claims about the motives of the military without evidence.

Last edited by fardawg (2010-08-02 14:42:33)

If the charges are true, then not only does that violate his rights but also true Christianity. No real Christian would send death threats or harass anyone. trying to force someone to convert is the antithesis of Christianity. This does not prove a "christianization" of the military however.

The military shut down a baptist church service that was led by a baptist chaplain. No one was compelled to attend, yet it was still shut down. The chaplain was also told off for answering the religious questions of soldiers with his own beliefs. I would probably disagree with the guy on some things, but he should have the freedom to hold a service for baptist soldiers. I would say the same for atheists who wanted to hold a meeting.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=64495

As for the majority of Islam being misrepresented by the actions of a small segment, it is the minority that is being misrepresented. Just look up the "Cairo Declaration of Human Rights" from the Organization of the Islamic Conference, representing 57 Islamic states. Its a bunch of double speak in order to make it seem as if they are supporting human rights.
“Everyone shall have the right to express
his opinion freely in such manner as
would not be contradictory to the principles
of Shari’ah.”
http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/16/ … e.pdf?rd=1

Last edited by fardawg (2010-08-03 14:52:56)

1. Cold war was weird, even the later part. And there was not nearly enough sex.

2. Nobody talked about China by the late '70s. Nixon smooved it all out. That Nixon was a smoove brothah.

3. Once Reagan and Gorbachev met at Reykjavik and the word got out that they had considered total disarmament, the Cold War was over. Gorby was different from all the other boys, anyway.

4. Who gives shit about where iPods are made? Fucking Apple fanboys. You people make me sick.

5. For more Cold War fun, check out Fail-Safe. Walter Matthau's take on Cold-Warrior Herman Kahn will rattle your skull. And Henry Fonda bombs New York!

That was awesome. Thanks Jeff.

Awesome, but... a great story? Dude, that's the story. Reagan liked to play the hard-ass, but he knew a player when he saw one. And Gorbachev was finally a man we could do business with. No more Andrei Gromyko mumbling "Nyet" at every overture.

Re: The cold. I distinctly remember the reporters being really excited even tho they were saying nothing actually came out of it, but then always mentioning basically that Iceland kind of sucks.