[AtE] Nuclear Target List

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Canada has not maintained and operated U.S.-owned nuclear weapons since 1984. ...

That said, CFB Halifax regularly has visiting U.S vessels that are widely known to be nuclear-armed. ...

This is probably also true of CFB Esquimalt and CFS St. John's.

Someone with lots of nukes would point one warhead at each of these three targets. ...

Someone with a surfeit of nukes would hit CFB Goose Bay, CFB Bagotville, and CFB Gander, too, because there used to be nukes there and the runways are still useable....

Note that Canada still cooperates in nuclear weapons development and testing as part of its NATO and NORAD obligations. ...

The original concept was of a very limited counterforce attack against US nukes and the NORAD C3 structure. Those involved were actually trying very hard not to progress to a general (counter value) attack. So the long-term research places weren't hit. I didn't even plan to have the US Air Force Academy hit.

But I may be broadening the attacks quite a bit, now, after having read a bit more about the timescales on which fallout decays. So, since I know nothing at all about the Canadian defense establishment any input is welcome.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

A TL10 civilization is capable of using advanced fusion weapons, so there would be little reason for nuclear fallout to occur. .

Just a brief comment but while fusion warheads without any uranium or plutonium stages will not be scattering fission products from the bomb unless you go to (at least)hydrogen and Helium-3 80% of the energy produced will be in the form of neutrons.

If the explosion is high enough that the great majority of those neutrons are absorbed by the surrounding air there's still no long term radiation but a ground strike with one of these would put you significantly closer to nuclear wasteland as the neutrons could strike heavier elements and produce some long-lasting radioactive isotopes..

I have no good ideas on how to make a pure fusion bomb of such size and given the great disparity of hydrogen and uranium in density I strongly suspect you could pack a much greater weight of uranium into a warhead of given volume.

Still, more neurons could lead to more long-tern radiation in the right circumstances.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

FWIW, this is the approach I took. Every city in the US over 50k people gets at least one nuke, often multiple from MIRVs. All large dams, any intersection of interstates, all military and national guard bases, etc.

That said, if you're 2-3 generations (~60 years) past the war, dose except maybe at the crater centers (and near melted down power plants) is probably survivable, and while you have lots of thematically appropriate bomb craters and sagging buildings around them, nuclear explosions aren't THAT destructive, so you have lots of decaying cities/bases to explore, with more damage closer to the city center/important government or defense buildings.

And heck, since I posited TL 10 civilization before the fall (so I can have robots and useful beam weapons as super-loot/enemies) you can always just say "this one location I like managed to shoot down the incoming nukes with ABM defenses."

50k? Really? That's pretty small. Current US and Russian arsenals are a LOT smaller than in the Cold War- I don't think that's do-able. You have to hit all the military targets first. So I think I'd limit things a heck of a lot more than that- I doubt that there are enough warheads to go around. If you research you can find info on the ridiculous numbers (though still paltry by Cold War standards) of warheads that we still have. Right now the Russians have about 300 ICBMs with 900 warheads and 160 SLBMs with 700 warheads. The (old, Cold War) target lists that I've seen generally don't hit towns that small without a reason. There's no need- with major centers and shipping hubs gone they'll wither anyway. Instead, the juicy targets get more than one warhead to be sure that some get through despite launch failures, misses, notional ABMs, and whatnot. I saw one where Ft Carson alone got six 800kt Topol MIRVs= which is ridiculous if you know just how small the actual facilities are on Ft Carson. Of course back then CEP sucked so they had to throw a lot of warheads to be sure of a hit. But I imagine that it would take a lot of warheads to take out the (sprawling) port of L.A., for instance.

EDIT-- Oh, and the SS-18 Satan could throw up to a 25Mt warhead, Fred. :)

Granted, the currently-fielded version throws ten smaller warheads and a crapton of penetration aids instead. Presumably because the Russians have come to their senses and realize that the multiple MIRVs are more effective than one crazy-big mountain cracker.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by acrosome

50k? Really? That's pretty small. Current US and Russian arsenals are a LOT smaller than in the Cold War- I don't think that's do-able. You have to hit all the military targets first. So I think I'd limit things a heck of a lot more than that- I doubt that there are enough warheads to go around. If you research you can find info on the ridiculous numbers (though still paltry by Cold War standards) of warheads that we still have, but most of them are in cold storage by treaty. And a lot are air-delivered relying on a deep penetration raid by aircraft, the viability of which is currently highly debatable. The (old, Cold War) target lists that I've seen generally don't hit towns that small without a reason. There's no need- with major centers and shipping hubs gone they'll wither anyway. Instead, the juicy targets get more than one warhead to be sure that some get through despite launch failures, misses, notional ABMs, and whatnot. I saw one where Ft Carson alone got six 800kt Topol MIRVs= which is ridiculous if you know just how small the actual facilities are on Ft Carson. Of course back then CEP sucked so they had to throw a lot of warheads to be sure of a hit. But I imagine that it would take a lot of warheads to take out the (sprawling) port of L.A., for instance.

Well, I wanted the players to be able to visit multiple sites on the Colorado front range with nuke craters in the center of the city. You have to hit rather small cities for that to be possible. That means in CO only Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Pueblo, Boulder, Greeley, Longmont, Loveland, and Grand Junction get hit, if you ignore outlying suburbs.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Well, I wanted the players to be able to visit multiple sites on the Colorado front range with nuke craters in the center of the city. You have to hit rather small cities for that to be possible. That means in CO only Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Pueblo, Boulder, Greeley, Longmont, Loveland, and Grand Junction get hit, if you ignore outlying suburbs.

Well, heck, in the Front Range: Cheyenne, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo are all high-priority targets for various military reasons. And Grand Junction is an important logistical target in any decently-sized exchange. It is, after all, a grand junction (railroads). So craters abound, and you don't have to hit every 50k town to do that. For that matter there are no 50k towns that aren't suburbs anyway, and nuking Walsenburg makes no sense no matter how you slice it. (I mean, really, can you honestly say that Greely and Fort Collins aren't suburbs of Denver nowadays?)

Or am I misunderstanding you, and you want even more craters than that?

But this sort of plays into my point. The MIRVs on a given missile have to be targeted in the same region- you can't scatter them all across a (large) western state, for instance. So a nice high-value target is going to get blanketed by several MIRVs. The greater Denver area might get six 800kt MIRVs from a single Topol, for instance. Well, I guess greater Denver might get two Topols, actually... At any rate, there will be multiple impacts around Denver, including all of those "suburbs" in a counter value exchange.

(It's the coasts that make good SLBM targets- to keep warning times low- so it's ICBMs for Colorado...)

[acrosome]

Damn. I've been reading about the Denver Federal Center and it would make an outstanding surrogate for the Uni in my Totally Not Operation Morpheus campaign. (Operation Morpheus was an old AFTERMATH! setting.)

Back to the drawing board...

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Well, heck, in the Front Range: Cheyenne, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo are all high-priority targets for various military reasons. And Grand Junction is an important logistical target in any decently-sized exchange. It is, after all, a grand junction (railroads). So craters abound, and you don't have to hit every 50k town to do that. For that matter there are no 50k towns that aren't suburbs anyway, and nuking Walsenburg makes no sense no matter how you slice it. (I mean, really, can you honestly say that Greely and Fort Collins aren't suburbs of Denver nowadays?)

Or am I misunderstanding you, and you want even more craters than that?

But this sort of plays into my point. The MIRVs on a given missile have to be targeted in the same region- you can't scatter them all across a (large) western state, for instance. So a nice high-value target is going to get blanketed by several MIRVs. The greater Denver area might get six 800kt MIRVs from a single Topol, for instance. Well, I guess greater Denver might get two Topols, actually... At any rate, there will be multiple impacts around Denver, including all of those "suburbs" in a counter value exchange.

(It's the coasts that make good SLBM targets- to keep warning times low- so it's ICBMs for Colorado...)

My point is those towns I listed? Those are ALL of the 50k+ cities in CO, unless you start counting suburbs. Which I don't. Like you say, something big (Denver) is gonna get hit with multiple warheads, but a 50k cutoff tends to be "no large cities left" especially after you take out dams and have a bad winter with no transportation infrastructure. This gives me about 10 ruined cities with epic craters and lingering rad count in the state (and the Denver area at least with them dotted all over the city)

I wouldn't call Fort Collins part of Denver. Nor really Boulder or Longmont.

But setting it at 50k I find is a nice limit for "will likely catch most major ports, military bases, heavy industry, and transport hubs.". Means I don't have to do too much more digging to find small bases I missed, and the GIANT troves of loot all got blowed up good, which means for the good stuff PCs typically have to brave much more unstable structures and rad count and robots and etc. It's just a handy " rule of thumb" cutoff point that I felt resulted in the level of destruction that made for an interesting environment.

[dcarson]

I think you can scatter them along the orbital track just not too far off of it. So along the more or less north-south great circle from where ever they launch from.

You'll also get overkill on the good targets. If there are two targets that matter to different commands, even if they are only a few blocks apart they'll each get a warhead aimed at them since you don't trust that your target will get hit if something happens to lower the other targets priority.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

My point is those towns I listed? Those are ALL of the 50k+ cities in CO, unless you start counting suburbs.

My point is that all those other towns and suburbs around Denver? They're all within the envelope of MIRVs from a single bus, so it's reasonable to hit them all as a part of the greater Denver attack. Six half-megaton warheads spread out are much more effective than a single three-megaton warhead anyway- that's one reason for MIRVs.

As a rule of thumb for you, though, yes it clearly gave you a reasonable result. But I think greater Denver (including the burbs) would get more than one warhead. A single 800kt Topol MIRV won't destroy it all- it's too spread out. A 1.8 mile airburst over downtown flattens or burns almost all of the city, but further places like Centennial get spared. DIA, too, so it would probably get a warhead.

But no craters, unfortunately... :( It would be airbursts. If you really want the craters then you need more warheads to flatten Denver. Even Englewood, Aurora, and Thornton get spared with a downtown ground burst.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by dcarson

I think you can scatter them along the orbital track just not too far off of it.

A MIRV bus has some amount of delta-v, which can be used to give the warhead reentry vehicles crossrange as well as vary the target points along the flight path. The exact "footprint" you can get depends on the missile and the number of warheads, as well as the spacing of your targets and the missile trajectory. But the footprint will be an ellipse with the major axis oriented along the flight path.

For a Poseidon Mk 3, I found claims of 150 nm crossrange with 10 RVs, and 300 nm crossrange with six (compared to ranges of 2500 nm and 3000 nm respectively). If you wanted to assign all of the delta-V to one RV, then you could give it even more crossrange. (Though that's not why you built a MIRV in the first place.)