Calculating Technological Regression from Global Thermonuclear War

[AlexanderHowl]

The best option for Pakistan is to threaten to nuke the holy sites of India in the case of an invasion combined with digital propoganda that would lay the blame for any such destruction on the Indian government. Ground detonations against such sites would destroy the legitimacy of any Hindu government because of the previously existing propoganda, as they would be blamed for being incapable of protecting the most treasured locations of Hinduism. Such an event could very well lead to civil war in India, as the religious authorities would blame the political authorities, and the various sects would blame each other for allowing such an event to occur. It would also inflict a lasting trauma on the Indian psyche, as their connection to their past would be vaporized.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The best option for Pakistan is to threaten to nuke the holy sites of India in the case of an invasion combined with digital propoganda that would lay the blame for any such destruction on the Indian government.

I seriously doubt that would work. It'd be like 9/11², except Pakistan has been treated as an enemy of India longer and more publicly than al-Qaeda had been, and is a government that is (at least ostensibly) representative of the Pakistani people. India would be angry, the world opinion would be behind them (after all, they used the bomb first), and the enemy that attacked them is right next door. At minimum, I'd expect tons of brutality incidents in the ensuing war. Maximum's unprintable.

[Willy]

Not to forget that pakistan is a longtime ally of china, a emeny of india, china and india have other allies around the globe. Welcome to WW III.

[maximara]

How To SURVIVE A Nuclear Fallout! | The SCIENCE of... Fallout talks about how the fire of even a low yield exchange could result in a Nuclear winter.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The best option for Pakistan is to threaten to nuke the holy sites of India in the case of an invasion combined with digital propoganda that would lay the blame for any such destruction on the Indian government. Ground detonations against such sites would destroy the legitimacy of any Hindu government because of the previously existing propoganda, as they would be blamed for being incapable of protecting the most treasured locations of Hinduism. Such an event could very well lead to civil war in India, as the religious authorities would blame the political authorities, and the various sects would blame each other for allowing such an event to occur. It would also inflict a lasting trauma on the Indian psyche, as their connection to their past would be vaporized.

This wouldn't work for roughly the same reason why the US government didn't fall in 1942 when taken by surprise at Pearl harbour. The Indian people (like the American people in 1942) will focus their anger on the nation that actually made the attack, and worry about "could we have done more to prevent this" or "how much did our actions leading up to this, contribute to it" afterwards. Especially as we're not talking about a conventional attacks against ostensibly military target, but nukes against civilian targets.

Similarly AQ gave it's justifications and rationale for the 9/11 attacks trying to argue they were responding to US foreign policy decisions, but did many actually give it any credence. More importantly did anyone value AQ's justifications to the point that anger was turned en mass towards the US gov and not AQ? (certainly not in the US). Again yes there was some "how did the US government fail to protect us" and "what are the knock on effects of our policy choices" points made afterwards, but it didn't get in the way of what happened next.

Even with your prior propaganda point, threatening to do something doesn't make the threatened party get the blame when you carry out the threat. It just makes it even more obvious it was you that did it. Even if the threat was made in response to an Indian invasion. Because India isn't going to just invade on a whim, it will have made sure it had sold the invasion to Indians as a legitimate response to something. (it will attempt to do the same with the international community as well). Going back to 1942 the Japanese were keen to point to US trade policy towards Japan curtailing what they saw as Japan's legitimate foreign policy as why they attacked, or justification for it. But very few in the US or in fact anyone outside the Axis bought that line.

On top of all this there is the existing context that Pakistan is already seen as a belligerent enemy by many Indians, India blaming Pakistan for this within India is not going to be hard. Additionally while the International community won't be best pleased by India destabilising the whole situation with an invasion (although it will depend on the background to that invasion), it will pale into insignificance compared to their displeasure at Pakistan nuking civilian centres!


NB: Mods sorry are we getting to close too RL modern politics?

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by Willy

Sorry, but this is not correct. First EMP is highly likely to fry the hard drives, or other electronic storage devices.

I don't anticipate a significant chance of survivors where there's a strong enough EMP to destroy electronics. I'm more thinking computers and appliances, that are in rural electronics stores or shielded deep under Cheyanne Mountain or it's counterparts in other countries.

If you liquidated every city on the planet in atomic fire there would still be more walkie-talkies and Radio Shack home computers left in the world than humans who know how to build them from scratch.

[AlexanderHowl]

High altitude thermonuclear detonations for EMP purposes would make sense to inhibit recovery purposes. You would just need to allocate 1% of your nukes for that purpose, and you could fry any unshielded electronics possessed by, well, everyone in the target region. Since this would include civilian radio and TV, it would also prevent effective emergency responses, further enhancing the effectiveness of the nuclear strikes. By the way, optimal detonation is 400 km, allowing for an effected radius of 1200 km, so it can cripple communications without vaporizing people

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Willy

Sorry, but this is not correct. First EMP is higly likely to fry the hard drives, or other electronic storage devices.

EMP isn't generally all that effective against electronics that don't have attached wires acting as antennas, so offline backup systems aren't going to be terribly affected, and even if storage devices get damaged, it's likely that the data is still there, just currently unreadable (and repair supplies tend to be stored in antistatic bags that will also repel EMP just fine). EMP can still do lots and lots of damage, but more in the form of "a whole bunch of machines we're currently using suddenly don't work" than "impossible to recover".

[Tom Mazanec]

In 1962 Russia had limited intercontinental thermonuclear delivery capacity. Do we know what their target list was outside Europe (particularly in the US)?

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Anthony

EMP isn't generally all that effective against electronics that don't have attached wires acting as antennas, so offline backup systems aren't going to be terribly affected, and even if storage devices get damaged, it's likely that the data is still there, just currently unreadable (and repair supplies tend to be stored in antistatic bags that will also repel EMP just fine). EMP can still do lots and lots of damage, but more in the form of "a whole bunch of machines we're currently using suddenly don't work" than "impossible to recover".

Excuse me but I´m not convinced of this. Because while DVD´s and so on don´t store Info by using magnetic particles, the typical hard drive is a magnetic disc, the flash storage chips, and SSD´s use microchips. Both will suffer badly from a EMP. A Microchip is basically constructec from very minimized electric conducting wires, the first was build using wires, only now the process is down to the nm scale, but the technique is the same. Some of the stuff gets fried if a lighning strucks a nearby building even if disconnected from the Grid. As for magnetic storage devices, thanks to earth magnetic field the tend to loose data over time, remember watching a VHS casette after years lying in the corner never used before ?

As for the quetion about targets 1962, the UDSSR had better missiles then earlier expected, but in contrary to urban myth not so much warheads to annihilate the NATO complete, targets would be choosen after priority, that means pentagon yes, the larger Airforce and missile bases, but not enough for all the bigger cities.
Fallout is discussed controversily here, so it depends from your opinion about that how much this topic will cause more damage and how much.