[HN Gopher] 1,100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets
___________________________________________________________________
1,100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets
Author : throwup238
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-01-20 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (futureoflife.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (futureoflife.org)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Having lived through MAD, I still can't believe this century got
| off to a start so bent out of shape over mere terrorism.
|
| (upon reflection, having also lived through the pandemic, I can
| believe it)
| nyokodo wrote:
| > so bent out of shape over mere terrorism
|
| 9/11 was an attack on the greatest symbols of American power on
| American soil. Suffice to say, Americans are not accustomed to
| that and they went mad with rage and fear. Cue a generation of
| death, destruction, and the reshaping of the world as America
| worked through that trauma.
|
| It wasn't just mere terrorism but also the psychological result
| of American strategic isolation.
| jameskilton wrote:
| I like to put it slightly differently:
|
| 9/11 was the most successful terrorist attack in modern
| history. We are _still_ running scared.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > We are still running scared.
|
| Not as compared to 9/11 through ~2017. America has largely
| returned to the geopolitical indifference it had in the
| 1990s but with much greater exhaustion for direct foreign
| military intervention and cynicism about strategic
| alliances.
| asdff wrote:
| Foreign policy wise the ship never was off course at all
| from the doctrine its had for decades. In terms of the
| American people though, its obvious how the event has
| severely damaged us both in terms of how we think about
| our fellow people, and the sort of restrictions and
| surveillance we have imposed on ourselves in the name of
| safety since.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I don't think most people considered the WTC as a symbol of
| anything other than tall buildings. Or at the worst, a symbol
| of unfettered capitalism. It seems to me it was made into
| that symbol after the fact to get everyone's feathers
| rustled.
|
| In 2000, if you were to ask someone what building represented
| the success of the US, I'd bet the majority would say Statue
| of Liberty, Empire State Building, or Sears Tower. Maybe that
| answer would be different for New Yorkers though, idk.
|
| The psychology that should be noted was the government and
| media whipping the populace into a psychotic frenzy which
| made us willing to murder a quarter million people in a
| country that had nothing to do with the attack. The fact that
| this isn't brought up every time 9/11 is mentioned is a
| travesty.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think you have the cause and the effect mixed up. The
| government didn't have to 'whip us up' we did that entirely
| on our own. The government was able to go places they never
| could because of that fervor, but they had at most a
| marginal role in creating it. You're wildly misremembering
| how much fear there was on day 0, before the government had
| a chance to do anything.
|
| We, as a civilization, are riding the razors edge of
| stability. The amount of energy required to destabilize the
| system, when applied in just the right way, is shockingly
| small.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > We, as a civilization, are riding the razors edge of
| stability.
|
| This is massively overstating the impact on the west, and
| America specifically. Obviously it massively disrupted
| life and civilization in the Middle East and elsewhere,
| and it lead to the death of 10s of 1000s of military
| personnel and degraded civil liberties in America and
| elsewhere. But it had no substantial impact on
| "civilization" in the west.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Apart from seeding a culture of paranoia and xenophobia,
| and converting the Anglosphere from a mid-trust culture
| into a low-trust culture.
|
| See also, airport security theatre.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > I don't think most people considered the WTC as a symbol
| of anything other than tall buildings
|
| The WTC clearly represents American economic might, but the
| Pentagon was attacked also and that represents American
| military power. The White House narrowly avoided being hit.
| Additionally, people don't have to consciously understand
| what things symbolize for that to be make an impact on
| them. Plus, it wasn't just a message to Americans but to
| the world, especially the Muslim world, and the WTC had
| been unsuccessfully attacked 8 years previously so it was a
| symbol of failure for them. Not afterwards!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It was not so much a symbol as it was "hitting close to
| home".
|
| It's one thing to see the body bags of soldiers coming
| back. It's another to see death and destruction in your own
| city.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I think the reaction to 9/11 was the US wanting to make the
| point "you destroy a few office buildings, we destroy a few
| nations" very clear to the rest of the world.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Idk, I think it was about money. Someone must have made a
| ton of money out of that. And that weird connection
| between the president and the family of the guy who pulls
| that off... edit: Arbusto Energy it was called.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not only.
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/10/saving-the-
| saudis-20...
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That's what the terrorists were ostensibly protesting
| though. By fucking up Iraq we kind of proved them right.
| asdff wrote:
| Just as a note for the cultural impact, for many movies
| after they were constructed, B roll footage showing NYC
| skylines seemed to often feature them over things like the
| Empire State Building or even the Statue of Liberty. They
| were apparently featured in over 1100 films.
|
| https://donnagrunewald.wixsite.com/wtcinmovies
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| You've evidently forgotten the concurrent attack on the
| Pentagon in the same hour on 9/11.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 3000 civilians were killed in a single attack. It's not about
| the buildings or any symbolism, it's about the tragic loss of
| life in first hand. Everything else second. If you're looking
| for symbolism, you have the January 6 insurrection.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Fixed:
|
| Cue a generation of death, destruction, and the reshaping of
| the world as America _co-opted the trauma to start a
| generation of unjustifiable wars and massively reduce civil
| liberties._
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| "mere terrorism"? It was an attack on a civilian target. Pearl
| Harbor was a military installation. The USA had never faced
| anything approaching the scale of 9/11. The WTC 1993 attack and
| OK City bombing in 1995 didn't come close. It became very
| apparent how complacent the USA had become.
|
| Unlike a state attacking another state, pinning down _where_
| these people were getting their orders from was difficult.
| Considering what your age must be, I 'm surprised you struggle
| to understand the difference between an openly militarized
| nation versus terrorist cells that could be anywhere and
| anybody. There's no coordinates to punch into a MAD system when
| it comes to terrorists.
|
| If it was so easy, years wouldn't have been spent searching for
| the likes of Bin Laden.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Scale? Less than 3000 people died during 9/11. That is
| nothing compared to anything else that's happening in the
| world. With or without the US's involvement.
|
| Edit:
|
| he U.S. post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria,
| and Pakistan have taken a tremendous human toll on those
| countries. As of September 2021, an estimated 432,093
| civilians in these countries have died violent deaths as a
| result of the wars
|
| 144 times as many CIVILIANS were killed by the US.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| It isn't about body count, it's about a handful of people
| taking control of aircraft and causing mass destruction
| with minimal effort, energy and resources expended.
|
| It also isn't about whether it is "nothing" compared to
| what is happening elsewhere, the topic at hand is the USA.
| The rest of the world isn't what is being discussed.
|
| There were weaknesses in the US national security threat
| model. It wasn't a major consideration that someone would
| hijack a plane and fly it into NYC, the major assumption
| was that an attack would come from another nation, and it
| would be military, and it would be detected as hostile in
| aerospace. Guise of a civilian aircraft? Yeah, that was a
| gaping hole.
|
| Come on, the fucking Pentagon had a plane flown into it on
| the same day.
|
| It's one thing for gov to get hacked by teens, it's another
| thing to have a terrorist org do all that in the space of a
| few hours.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| > A handful of people taking control of aircraft and
| causing mass destruction with minimal effort, energy and
| resources expended.
|
| Sure, the same can be said about the handful of people in
| the US: The president, the Secretary of Defense /
| Department of "Defense"
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Again, the topic isn't other countries, the topic is the
| USA. My comment addresses that topic. You're trying to
| argue something completely orthogonal to what my comment
| or the one I'm responding to is about.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't see how the US responded in Rest of World is even
| remotely irrelevant.
| richardw wrote:
| Given you only want to measure US impact: The US lost
| more soldiers in the war on terror than people killed in
| 9/11. And spent by some counts $8 trillion. Compared to
| the threats posts by MAD, 9/11 was a rounding error and
| wasted an enormous amount of blood, treasure and
| political capital. On that day, the world was with you.
| We were all New Yorkers.
|
| But instead of fixing a few gaps and taking out a few
| leaders per month indefinitely, the US allowed itself to
| be distracted massively for decades, surely way beyond
| what the terrorists could have dreamed of. It was
| basically first prize for Osama. I'm not sure what the
| full count of the US economic and social losses are but
| it's probably indescribable. Someone waved a red flag and
| Bush couldn't help himself.
|
| The smart move would have been to rise above it. You're
| the greatest nation on earth. You don't get distracted by
| a few terrorists, you get on with changing the world.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I'm a Brit. You're talking to me like I'm an American.
|
| I understand your sentiment, but I disagree, "you get on
| with changing the world", which should include preserving
| that which already exists.
|
| People forget about the concurrent attack on the Pentagon
| on 9/11. If all that can happen in the space of less than
| an hour, that was not a threat to be ignored, and more
| would have followed had something not been done.
|
| You're also conflating improving national security with
| boots-on-the-ground searching for supposed WMDs in
| another country. The two things are not the same in any
| way. Your argument is total "whataboutery".
|
| If you have holes in national security that allowed
| something like 9/11 to happen, including the attack on
| the Pentagon on that same morning, you do something to
| prevent the likes of it, or worse, from happening again.
| You can't even argue against that.
| richardw wrote:
| > I'm a Brit. You're talking to me like I'm an American.
|
| You got me.
|
| > whataboutery
|
| Since we're slinging terms around: false dichotomy.
|
| I'm not arguing that they should have ignored it. Fix the
| specific issues without creating more, broader, deeper
| issues. The approach used wasted massive resources of all
| kinds - economic, social, lives, focus. There were
| infinitely better outcomes that could have been achieved
| at lower overall cost. 8 trillion is a lot of misplaced
| focus spent in deserts far away.
|
| Don't mix up the "what" with "how". Fix the problem, but
| not stupidly.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Somehow I suspect taking control of governments by - for
| example - invading them, or fomenting revolutions, is
| more dangerous than taking control of aircraft.
|
| And the "security weaknesses" were mostly in the White
| House.
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/attacks-will-be-
| spectacular-...
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Oh, you mean like the concurrent attack on the Pentagon
| on 9/11?
| https://www.history.navy.mil/research/archives/digital-
| exhib...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Sure, just like Sadam.. Have your seen Bush recently about
| that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58DXSSBs4u0
|
| "the result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia
| and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified
| and brutal invasion of Iraq.. i mean of Ukraine... heh.. Iraq
| too"
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What a piece of shit lol. Even Putin at least pretends
| (wink wink) that he actually thinks his invasion is
| justified. That the US has no problem with basically not
| just letting this guy get away with it but even
| "rehabilitating" him in the past few years... it's a bit
| unbelievable and clearly sets the precedent
| internationally. This video always plays back in my head
| whenever I hear about how good pax americana is or how our
| side at least has "good intentions" lmao.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _absence of checks and balances in Russia and the
| decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and
| brutal invasion of Iraq.. i mean of Ukraine... heh.. Iraq
| too_
|
| Uh, the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were sanctioned by the
| Congress. Overwhelmingly. Then the people who started them
| were replaced, thrice, giving the problem fresh sets of
| eyes. Comparing W. Bush _et al_ to Putin is ridiculous on
| many levels, even if the wars _per se_ share
| characteristics. (Most potently, in being massive
| blunders.)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Bush's words, not mine
| scotty79 wrote:
| United States builds their identity through their enemy. It
| started in WWII and worked so good that they almost immediately
| adopted communists as their new enemy. When Soviet Union
| eventually surpisingly collapsed despite US constantly proping
| them up as credible enemy, they started losing identity.
| Fortunately, accidentally seeded terrorist groups cropped up
| and did significant enough damage. US eagerly elevated them to
| the position of the new main enemy providing all the necessary
| PR. Even the name Al Qaeda was pretty much invented by US
| trying to figure out who hit them. Before US started using this
| name it was a name of random training camp.
|
| As nice and safe the terrorists were as an enemy, everybody
| knew that it won't last long. It just wasn't convincing and
| terrorists, apart from few events, were pretty much worthless.
|
| So US naturally picked next solid enemy, China for their next
| hopefully long and prosperous cold war.
|
| Having an enemy is super important for US politics, their
| industry and social structure. It gives them excuses for
| protectionism. It gives them ability to have an alternative to
| increasingly impoverished civilian customers when it comes to
| stimulating innovation and industrial growth. It allowes them
| to give jobs to people that in purely civilian economy wouls
| just raise unemployment and unrest. All the culture of US is
| soaked in hero/villain dynamics that consolidates society and
| prevents from asking too many questions in the presence of a
| villain.
|
| The problem now is that US is starting to drop the ball. World
| caught up with their advantage of being the only major economy
| not damaged by WWII. Unfortunately the current US enemy is on
| more capable side. So this time, maybe for the first time, the
| US is in the real danger. Maybe isolationist tendencies of
| Trump and his fans are not such a bad thing. Maybe US should go
| back to pre-wwii state. Times when US could credibly pretend
| they are on top of things, not just bit ahead of the pack, are
| pretty much over.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Kind of right, kind of not. There are unarguably factions in
| the US that consider fascists like Putin to be friends, not
| enemies, and would happily consider an international
| alliance.
|
| And US force-projection has few defences against the kind of
| subversion of key figures that Putin has decided to
| specialise in.
|
| The US will continue in some form. But the post-Enlightenment
| liberal/rationalist/progressive current in the US and Europe
| is in deadly danger.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| 2016
|
| too bad the detonate website is from an even earlier time because
| it doesnt work on iphone
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Just use landscape orientation
| surfingdino wrote:
| Could we also have lists of targets compiled by other nuclear
| powers?
| wrsh07 wrote:
| There's something deeply unsettling about an interaction where
| you pick a location (not in the US) and click "detonate"
|
| That might be intentional (and could make for an interesting
| art experience!) but I'm honestly more interested in
| understanding averages than individual examples. Eg ten
| warheads are randomly detonated at one of the locations, 100?
| 1000?
|
| It's important to note that there's no chance we have dozens of
| nuclear warheads flying without retaliatory strikes
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| I remember reading that although France had a completely
| independent nuclear force they did secretly cooperate with NATO
| on targeting sites so that none of their nukes would be
| "wasted".
| justahuman74 wrote:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/best-places-to-survive-...
|
| has a map of what would get hit in the US
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I have just tidbit - that Vienna, the capital of a neutral
| country Austria, was one of the first Soviet targets for
| nuclear strike:
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/13...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This can't be full list from 1956, since there's nothing in
| Mongolia.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I doubt that there was any target of strategic importance in
| Mongolia, which would have justified the expense of an ICBM.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Mhmm that makes Mongolia the perfect place to put missile
| launchers ;)
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| At least for 1956, we know that one side was only targeting its
| enemies. There's long been debate over if the nuclear powers
| would lob a few warheads in the direction of some of neutral
| countries to prevent them from becoming hegemons in the post
| nuclear war world.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Totally plausible. Actually even more plausible as a way to
| draw neutral countries into the war because in all-out exchange
| there would be no way to be 100% sure whose warhead landed on
| your head.
| roywiggins wrote:
| In the 60s the US contemplated nuking China in response to a
| Soviet strike on the US:
|
| "In 2012, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel
| (ISCAP) declassified an important document on the pre-
| delegation instructions approved by President Lyndon Johnson in
| early 1964. Under the instructions, if the Soviet Union or
| China launched a nuclear attack on the United States that
| knocked the president or his successor out of action, making
| communication impossible, U.S. commanders-in-chief of unified
| or specified commands (such as Strategic Air Command or
| European Command) had the authority to retaliate against the
| entire Sino-Soviet bloc, even if some Soviet allies or China
| had not launched an attack."
|
| https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2018-0...
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Apparently Vienna was an early Soviet target:
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/13...
|
| But I don't think it was about the post-nuclear-war hegemony,
| it was more immediate. There was always the risk that e.g.
| Swedish airfields could be used by USA (with or without Swedish
| approval) to bomb e.g. St. Petersburg.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That's one of the reasons why Sweden has lots of stretches of
| highways that can be used as makeshift airbases. Especially
| during the cold war there were many.
|
| https://www.mil-airfields.de/se/list.htm
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| It is interesting to see that in Southern Urals the major nuclear
| manufacturing sites Chelyabinsk-40 and Zlatoust-20 (as they were
| named in 1956) are not targets and would not be affected, but
| their civilian doppelgangers would be hit. The secrecy of the
| Soviet nuclear program was probably quite good.
| asdff wrote:
| It was probably so much easier (and still is) to integrate as a
| spy in the U.S. than the other way around.
| takinola wrote:
| My understanding is spies are mostly compromised nationals as
| opposed to foreigners trying to blend in.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Dragon Ladies flew over Soviet Union from 1955 until 1960,
| when Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk, i.e. a bit farther
| to the north from interesting locations. Those spy planes
| could make a photo of the sites.
| jgilias wrote:
| This is pretty fascinating when living in an ex-USSR country.
| There's a target between two major cities in the forest at a non-
| descript village. I know what's there though. In the Soviet times
| there used to be a large facility hosting hundreds of tanks.
|
| At the same time, I know of a place that used to be a rocket
| launch base. There were around 10 across my country alone. I
| don't see any of those being targeted.
| cornholio wrote:
| It seems the non-USSR eastern Europe would have been completely
| reduced to nuclear ash, unlike most of the USSR, which is much
| less covered due to its size and sparse population. In my city
| alone there were three targets.
| jgilias wrote:
| But that's not really surprising. There's a lot of targets in
| the Baltics. But the reason is that the Soviets put a lot of
| military objects there because it's just closer to the
| potential frontline, as well as targets further west.
|
| I'm just happy we got out of that nightmare. If for some
| reason we were still part of Russia, chances are I'd be sent
| off to kill Ukrainians right as we speak. Given that people
| from ethnic minorities are 200x more likely to be drafted
| than Russians from Moscow or St Petersburg.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'd be dead. Along with quarter of million people in my city.
| Just because there's a very small civilian airport with one
| runway that serves about 12 planes per day, on the outskirts.
|
| Screw the coldwar US.
| jgilias wrote:
| Time for more stories then.
|
| I have a family friend who's old enough to have served in
| the Soviet military. The guy is a sharp dude who had really
| good grades in math. So when he was drafted he was directly
| enlisted into the 'rocket force' as a guy who does the
| trajectory calculations. He served in Kaliningrad.
|
| He tells that they'd get drills where they are woken up at
| night, and then need to calculate trajectories for hitting
| Oslo, Paris, London, etc.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'd expect nothing less from Russian side. But my country
| has and always had a lot of sympathy for the US. Always
| awaiting their eventual win as our saviors. So it feels
| just wrong. It's like learning that their main plan to
| end the standoff was to shoot the hostages in the first
| volley.
| jemmyw wrote:
| In an all or nuclear exchange nobody was going to win
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| When I was studying in MIPT, we had a course on
| mathematical support of military operations. Basically,
| there was an intro to the navigation systems of ICBMs and
| calculations of trajectories. We even had some parts of
| an old ICBM in the room. I dropped out of it, once I
| learned that after I'd get an officer rank at graduation
| there will be higher chances to be drafted to some
| location in Siberia and serve one year more than a
| private.
| TheCleric wrote:
| The US is no saint to be sure, but this goes both ways. I
| was aware growing up I'd be vaporized if nuclear war ever
| broke out seeing as I lived right next to a major Air Force
| base.
| onthecanposting wrote:
| Well, how many US ICBMs actually work is an open question and
| the recent test results aren't good. You might not have much
| to worry about.
| rblatz wrote:
| Can you provide details? I've not heard any concern about
| the readiness of US weapons, but have heard a lot since the
| Ukraine war about the poor state of Russian military
| equipment.
| michaelt wrote:
| I don't know about the weapons, but there have certainly
| been reports of a lot of personnel readiness issues [1]
|
| I suspect in the cold war, missile crews could feel it
| was an important job, high-tech and well-funded, even if
| it tedious, unsociable and morally questionable. It no
| longer has those upsides.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/united-states-
| government-b942adacae524dcf...
| rainworld wrote:
| Recent Minuteman ICBM test failure:
| https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/02/minuteman-
| iii...
|
| _I've not heard any concern_
|
| Because you're not supposed to.
|
| _have heard a lot since the Ukraine war_
|
| Because you're supposed to.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| [delayed]
| toast0 wrote:
| Was your launch base established in 1956? The US went through
| several launch systems during the cold war and some launch
| sites were reused but some sites were new.
| jgilias wrote:
| I don't really know. The context is that as a kid I went to a
| kind of a military training after school activity. That
| sounds super weird, I know, but it was fun, got to learn the
| basic military training.
|
| Anyway, we had a summer camp for a week or so near one of
| these decommissioned rocket facilities, and we were just told
| to not go anywhere near the silos, as they're pretty deep.
| So, I know where it is, but I don't know when it was
| commissioned.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| All the slio locations are public information and have
| wikipedia pages. If you know the location you are
| interested in you can probably find it with some sleuthing
| or googling "decomissioned nuclear silo [state]". e.g. here
| are the north dakota ones
|
| https://www.nps.gov/articles/mappingmissilefield.htm
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That's probably the case for the US too. The numerous missile
| silos all over middle America, in the middle of farmlands
| probably made for very attractive targets.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah they went to great lengths to hide them but did this
| really work? I always doubt it.
|
| I never really saw the point in hiding or targeting them
| though. But the time a Russian launch would be detected the
| launch would be triggered and the silos would have already
| been empty by the time the warhead arrived.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| We didn't hide ours (American). We put up chain link with
| barbed wire, razor tape, and nice signs that started, "Use
| of deadly force authorized."
| macintux wrote:
| Launch detection was, I believe, not all that robust in the
| early days, and making sure that the enemy couldn't
| precisely target all of your silos, and making sure they
| _knew_ they couldn 't, was presumably useful for
| deterrence.
| toast0 wrote:
| Looks like an ICBM flight is about 30 minutes. Even if
| you have good launch detection, that's not a lot of time
| to communicate, decide, and launch the counter strike. If
| missiles aren't on standby, it takes time to prepare
| them.
|
| There's a good chance some counter launches get
| delayed... Seems like a lucky first strike could
| significantly reduce the counter strike. But everyone
| loses anyway.
| xg15 wrote:
| A bit sobering that there is a target right in the center of
| Berlin with several other targets in close vicinity - a mere 7
| years after the Berlin Airlift. I guess the US compassion for
| Berliners did have limits after all.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| That would include US citizen too. They probably just
| realistically looked at the survival chances of West Berlin in
| case of full scale war. Soviets were confident that with
| conventional warfare they would reach the Channel in mere
| weeks, nuclear was really the only deterrent.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| An interesting choice of (non)targets. Bratislava, the second-
| largest city of Czechoslovakia (and capital of Slovakia) would
| have been spared.
|
| I get that the military targets got priority, but I would have
| expected that large population centers would get hit as overall
| strategic targets too.
|
| Another thing I noticed is how many targets there are in the
| Baltics given the small population. It has like triple the amount
| of targets in comparison to Czechoslovakia even though it has/had
| only about half of the population. I don't know how to explain
| that, it's not like Czechoslovakia had less strategic position or
| smaller weapon industry.
| treprinum wrote:
| It's likely due to being close to Vienna that would take an
| indirect hit in that case. Also, it seems to be covered in the
| follow up fallout so it would be severely damaged anyway.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| "Likely" based on what? I'm not sure how much consideration
| NATO gave to neutral countries. Vienna is about 50 kilometers
| from Bratislava, it shouldn't receive that much damage.
|
| Compare that with West Berlin (a NATO city) which is getting
| 5 nukes all around its borders, not farther than 10
| kilometers. (with some more nukes in a slightly larger
| distance, but still less than 50)
| runlevel1 wrote:
| To my knowledge, no Russian targeting plans have ever been
| declassified, but an open source project called OPEN-RISOP[^1]
| has a few hypothetical attack plans that give some idea of what
| would be targeted.
|
| Its creator, David Teter, is a former advisor to USSTRATCOM, DIA,
| and DTRA on strategic plans (SIOP/OPLANs 8044/8010), kinetic and
| non-kinetic weapon effects, vulnerability analysis, and
| targeting.
|
| It's raw data, so to get a visualization you need to use
| something like Nuclear War Simulator[^2]+. Here's a video showing
| one such plan:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF0mEOCK2KE
|
| [^1]: https://github.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP
|
| [^2]: https://nuclearwarsimulator.com
|
| + NWS is on Steam, but don't go into it expecting a game-like
| experience. It's more of a rather technical "what-if" simulator.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| There exist at least one declassified plan of the Warsaw Pact
| showing all the targets the Soviets would strike with nuclear
| weapons but also showing expected nuclear strikes by NATO
| forces. It also shows extensive use of chemical weapons
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine A
| very detailed map was declassified, unfortunately it's not
| included in the wiki article. But you can google it
| treprinum wrote:
| There was some documentary about a Ukrainian silo with dampened
| launchers and they mentioned they targeted China among others.
| hasoleju wrote:
| The number of targets in an area resemble the population density
| of that area. It feels very strange to see the targets in the
| former GDR. A lot of them close to Berlin. Part of that city was
| not part of the USSR, but would still be affected heavily by the
| attacks of the targets nearby.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| > Even though today's nuclear targets list is classified, it
| probably doesn't look dramatically different.
|
| Uh I'm pretty sure it does look dramatically different in Europe
| at least because a huge proportion of the targeted Warsaw pact
| and Soviet Socialist Republic countries in 1956 are now part of
| NATO.
|
| Seems like a very ignorant statement to make.
| gattr wrote:
| On a related note: Cold War-era Polish military maps of the
| British Isles, in case of a Warsaw Pact invasion thereof:
|
| https://earthlymission.com/map-of-britain-teach-invading-pol...
|
| > This Cold War era map was created to teach Polish troops how to
| pronounce English place names in the event of an invasion against
| Britain (click to enlarge). Towns and cities in Essex and Kent
| are spelled out phonetically - resulting in interesting
| transformations such as Southend-On-Sea into Saufend-On-Sji.
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