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Old 04-07-2016, 08:59 PM   #1
acrosome
 
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Default [AtE] Nuclear Target List

Anyone running an AtE game is going to want radioactive wastelands in their setting, right? The problem is having a scenario with a radioactive wasteland where everything isn't a lifeless radioactive wasteland. This requires quite a suspension of disbelief, so I'm working on a scenario for a limited nuclear exchange, and I need help with a target list, which I intend to be a limited counter-force target list.

I'll get into details of the target list in a further post, below, but here is the scenario I'm thinking of for those who are interested:

Design Note: Something has to catalyze the nuclear exchange, and I want a reason for survivors to be isolationist and wary of strangers. A viral pandemic would seem to fit the bill.

So, there is a worldwide pandemic. The virus is most virulent among far-East Asians, among Indians and Africans nearly as much, and among Middle-Easterners just slightly less than that. Northern Europeans are moderately susceptible, with Mediterranean Europeans somewhat more, and Baltics and Eastern Slavs much less (though still almost a third). It appears to be downright difficult for a Scandinavian to catch it, though it is definitely possible. This of course leads to speculation that the virus is a racially tailored biological weapon and the media- ignoring the Asian susceptibility- begins to call it "the Melanin Virus."

Design Note: Three points... 1. I wanted to make it pretty obvious that the Virus was an engineered bioweapon, and people have been speculating about the terrifying possibilities of racial targeting for a long time. 2. I needed a reason for Europeans to try to flee to Russia, so I built in a reason for perceived safety in Russia- low infection rates. 3. I needed to keep China out of it and unable to send hordes of refugees into Russia because China can't really participate in a limited exchange- their nuclear philosophy and arsenal are not built for it. So I hit them hard early with the virus, and China implodes almost immediately.

The Virus is going to be what you'd expect- it is highly virulent, with a long incubation time followed by a 1 week prodrome where it causes very nonspecific symptoms before finally progressing to a nasty encephalitis. This ensures that it can spread almost worldwide before an effective quarantine can be initiated. It has a very high mortality rate but those who do survive often suffer hippocampal and other lesions that lead to some very unsettling effects. The first is a tendency for fantastical thought, which can lead to religiosity or conspiracy-theory-type obsessions. The other is aggression (GURPS's Bad Temper and similar disads.) So it’s not quite the Rage Virus from 28 Days Later, but enough to stress societies to the ultimate degree. This is hardly a new idea- one old AFTERMATH setting had something very similar called the Scourge of God Plague. Needless to say, something this odd and specific almost has to be an engineered weapon.

Design Note: The campaign will be set 32 years AtE. I wanted a reason for very odd groups to be wandering around for the entertainment value that everyone expects, so this gives me a reason for bizarre belief systems such as groups that worship Elvis or whatever. Whatever level of weirdness you want is possible- they would pass the belief system on to their children even after the Virus has gone dormant in the population.

Russia mobilizes all reserve Interior Ministry troops to secure it’s borders early. This proves difficult, and they progress to enforcing a Dead Zone. Nonetheless hordes of refugees accumulate on their European border and many are getting through to the false safety of low-infection Russia, usually carrying the Virus with them. (It is rather easier for most of Scandinavia to secure their borders, which are almost all coasts.) Eventually Russia decides upon drastic action.

They begin massive cross-border artillery and airstrikes on border refugee concentrations. This has the opposite effect from their intent- refugees flee across the border and Russia can’t stop them all. With their lower susceptibility to infection the Russians feel that they just might be able to prevent a total disintegration of their state, but only if they are not flooded with highly-infections carriers, and their thoughts turn to the unthinkable. They publicly announce their intention to use weapons of mass destruction in a very limited way to “remove pockets of infection” in a few large refugee concentrations from which the border-crossers are emanating. Clearly, many of these are NATO members… Minutes after this declaration a massive chemical attack detonates over two major Eastern European border cities.

Article 1 of the NATO Treaty is invoked and mobilization begins, but no immediate strategic attacks are made. While a highly concerned America and Canada digest all of this the European NATO states decide that at a minimum a gesture is required lest the “limited” Russian attacks expand to the rest of the continent. Unfortunately no NATO member has a standing chemical arsenal with which to mount a proportional response. Thus, while some other European NATO members consider seizing the B61 warheads of the American nuclear lending program- which would require a risky air defense penetration to use- Britain and France take action by coordinating, announcing and performing a token response on two small Russian border cities with nuclear ballistic missiles. A few days pass as tempers cool, but Russia makes some preparations…

Design Note: Such communication about intent is thought by theorists such as Kissinger to be required for limiting an exchange. This is one reason that the communications hotline between Moscow and Washington exists- the hopes that an exchange might be limited to a scale that the human race might survive.

Even the sarin had had little effect on the refugee crossings and eventually Russia decides upon exactly what Europe feared- that they are now forced to use even more drastic measures. But while some losses can be tolerated they must prevent a massive response. They also feel that it is NATO who is to blame for releasing the nuclear genie and that they are thus not morally constrained against such a use themselves. During the pause they had moved what SSBNs they could within first-strike range of Europe as well as aggressively seeking and tracking opposing European SSBNs, and they become resolved upon a massive counter-force attack against European NATO members. They once again announce their intent almost as the sub-launched nuclear missiles fly. Being short-range attacks using SSBNs there is almost no warning and, while imperfect, the first-strike works reasonably well at destroying European NATO’s strategic nuclear arsenal before a response can be mounted.

Design Notes: A counter-force attack is meant solely to destroy an opponent’s ability to retaliate by targeting their nuclear arsenal. This contrasts with a counter-value attack, which is an attack upon industrial and population centers with the intent to wipe one’s opponent from the face of the Earth. I do make the assumption that Russia performs much better at tracking and dispatching opposing SSBNs than they have been historically- perhaps a traitor in British ranks (yet again)? The nuclear European states do not have fields of robust hardened missile silos, so a counter-force first-strike is a viable tactic against them, so long as their (very few) SSBNs can be at least partially negated.

Despite the Russian announcement of limited intent, America decides that this action cannot stand without a response. The limited SSBN response that is launched from a single surviving British SSBN is considered insufficient. The Americans have always been much better at submarine warfare than the Russians and they immediately begin sinking Russian SSBNs, which Russia surprisingly tolerates without launching. Shortly, though, the United States declares to the world that Russia has become a present threat to all other states on Earth, and announces their intention to conduct a very rigorously counterforce attack of their own. The submarine warfare had been only a small portion of this- they had waited a short while until they had removed most of the SSBN short-warning threat.

Design Note: Again, the multiple declarations of limited intent are key. It doesn’t work as well as the nuclear optimists had hoped- it’s a bit more widespread than that- but it should create good enough suspension of disbelief for gaming purposes. :)

The Americans hoped that the strikes from the single British SSBN would have disrupted Russian command and control enough to make them vulnerable. I’ll make the British strikes on targets that might lend that impression.

America launches their declared limited counter-force strike- trusting in God and their expanded ABM system against the weak response of which they consider Russia capable- but also taking care that the missile tracks are clearly avoiding large population centers. Russia proves perfectly capable of a proportional response, and the missiles pass one another over the Arctic Ocean. (Poetic hyperbole, there- many of the US launches are from SSBNs.)

Design Note: I’m not sure how I’m going to fit the world’s other nuclear states into this, except that it is imperative that Russia and China do not exchange nukes. China pursues an almost purely deterrent counter-value strategy with a relatively small number of incredibly high-yield weapons rather than a larger number of smaller and more accurate lower-yield weapons. If China launches a counter-value attack against Russia there would have to be a similar response, and the world dies.

All of which leads me to- what are the North American targets?

Last edited by acrosome; 04-07-2016 at 09:49 PM.
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Old 04-07-2016, 09:02 PM   #2
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Default Re: [AtE] Nuclear Target List

Is this at all likely? No, of course not. But I just need RPG-level suspension of disbelief, here.

You can see potential targets on this map- the black dots are counter-force targets, but they’re still a lot more than I can believably tolerate, so I’m assuming that only nuclear weapons and their command and control elements are targeted. (Ignore the triangles- those are counter-value targets.) So not every single possible military base is hit in my scenario as is shown on that map. Most important are the dense clusters in North Dakota, Montana, and the Colorado/Wyoming/Nebraska tristate border- these are the fields of hardened Minuteman III silos.

These are important because they are ground bursts, which create staggering amounts of fallout. Air bursts are more efficient for flattening non-hardened targets and create much less fallout. I have found numerous examples of possible fallout patterns which differ greatly depending upon assumptions about variables such as the scale of the attack and wind patterns, but for my purposes this map is almost ideal. You can see the three incredibly large plumes from the missile fields, and that is The Wasteland. It does not show the massive 25-30Mt ground burst that is expected upon Cheyenne Mountain, but that actually works for me since I desire the survival of Cheyenne Mountain for plot purposes. I pontificate that both the United States’ and Russia’s ABM defenses were concentrated in defending their central command and control targets. Perhaps a Fantastical Anti-Ballistic Laser (FABLe) is installed atop Cheyenne Mountain? :) I still want Colorado Springs to be destroyed, so I’ll let one warhead make it through to Peterson AFB.

Design Note: This is why the American West makes for a great AtE setting- it is possible for not everyone to be dead. This contrasts with the northeast and north-central states, which are pretty much screwed. This all works for me since I'm pretty uninterested in anything east of the Mississippi, though I suppose that I have to contend with the deep South. But I also want another factor limiting the exchange, so…

In both the US and Russia, while the initial strikes are the most widespread, there is a factor that drags out prolonged erratic strikes- the theory that hypersonic MIRVs hitting the dust clouds from earlier detonations will be scoured to pieces and destroyed proves correct. The initial strikes upon the missile silos are timed imperfectly enough that warheads arriving a minute or two later hit the dust cloud from the earlier detonations and are destroyed. (This dust theory is why the missile silos are kept concentrated in small areas.) Instead, the silos are slowly picked off over the course of a few days. I posit that real-life trends had continued and that there had been fairly drastic reductions in nuclear arsenals Before the End (BtE). Further, since so many warheads of the first wave were destroyed by the dust, much more of the nuclear arsenals are consumed in the counter-force strikes than might be thought, leaving too few for a reliable counter-value strike by either side. Thus, both refrain from further escalating for fear of inciting a counter-value attack by their opponent without being able to conduct a truly effective one of their own…

Design Note: The necessity of dragging out the silo strikes over a somewhat longer period of time is one reason that Cheyenne Mountain (and it’s Russian counterpart) must survive for plot purposes.

So, I need a list of North American nuclear counter-force targets, by which I mean nuclear weapons and their command and control. One issue is that I’m not entirely sure where the USAF stores their aircraft-delivered B61 and B83 nukes. Does anyone know? In the list below I simply assume that it is with the bombers. Likewise, I assume that the Trident warheads are stored where the SSBNs are home-based, but if anyone knows better I’m all ears. I have no idea at all where the USN keeps the W80s for their Tomahawks. Norfolk? San Diego? Help? I have included B1 bases, though the B1s appear to have had their nuclear-strike capability removed in accordance with various treaties so they probably need to be removed. I am aware that these aircraft are unlikely to be in service in 10-20 years but I assume that their replacements will be based similarly. Are their any delivery systems that I have not considered?

VIRGINIA
Pentagon, Washington D.C. Airburst.

COLORADO
1. Cheyenne Mountain AFS, Colorado Springs, CO (NORAD operations center). 25Mt groundburst. Possibly protected by some sort of notional Fantastic
Anti-Ballistic Laser (FABL)?
2. Peterson AFB, Colorado Springs, CO. NORAD, 21st Space Wing, US Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Airburst.
3. Buckley AFB, Denver, CO. Space Command, 460th Space Wing, missile tracking. Airburst.

ALASKA
1. Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage, AK. Alaskan NORAD Region Regional Operations
Control Center (ROCC).
2. Fort Greely, AK. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (ABM) system. Airburst.

FLORIDA
1. Tyndall AFB, FL. Continental NORAD Region headquarters.
2. Eglin AFB, FL. 53rd Wing (B2). A testing squadron. Include?

NEW YORK
1. Rome, NY. US East Regional Operations Control Center (NORAD).

WASHINGTON
1. McChord AFB, WA. US West Regional Operations Control Center (NORAD).
2. NB Kitsap, WA. (Subase Bangor.) Primary West Coast submarine base.
Airburst?

WYOMING
1. Warren AFB, Cheyenne, WY. 90th Missile Wing. Groundbursts.

NORTH DAKOTA
1. Minot AFB, ND. *91st Missile Wing. *5th Bomb Wing (B-52). Groundbursts and Airburst.
2. Grand Forks AFB, ND. *319th Bomb Wing (B1). Airburst?

MONTANA
1. Malmstrom AFB, MT. (341st Missile Wing.) Groundbursts.

CALIFORNIA
1. Vandenberg AFB, Lompoc, CA. 30th Space Wing, Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (ABM) system. Airburst.
2. Edwards AFB, CA. 412th Test Wing (B-52, B1, B2)? But it's a "test center." Should it be hit?

HAWAII
1. Pearl Harbor, HI. Sea-based X band radars for the GMD system. Also, presumably, some USN W80 warheads. Airburst.

CONNECTICUT
1. NSB New London. Primary East Coast submarine base. Airburst?

NEVADA
1. Nellis AFB, NV. Test and Evaluation Group and 57th Wing are listed as having B-52s, B1s, and B2s, but I think they're only for training- should it
be a target? Airburst?

LOUISIANNA
1, Barksdale AFB, LA. 2nd Bomb Wing (B-52). 30th (RES) Bomb Wing (B-52). Airburst?



TEXAS
1. Dyess AFB, TX. 7th Bomb Wing (B1). 96th Bomb Wing (B1). Airburst?

SOUTH DAKOTA
1. Ellsworth AFB, SD. 28th Bomb Wing (B1). Airburst?

IDAHO
1. Mountain Home AFB, ID. 366th Bomb Wing (B1).

KANSAS
1. McConnell AFB, KS. 384th Bomb Wing (B1). 184th (RES) Bomb Wing (B1).

GEORGIA
1. Robins AFB, GA. 116th (RES) Bomb Wing (B1).

MISSOURI
1. Whiteman AFB, MO. 509th Bomb Wing (B2). 131st (RES) Bomb Wing (B2).

CANADA
1. CFB Winnipeg, Manitoba. *Canadian NORAD Region Headquarters.
2. CFB North Bay, Ontario. *Canada East Sector and Canada West Sector Sector Operations Control Centers (SOCCs).

I'll try to keep this updated as people make suggestions. But I'm going to bed right now so I'll have to check for responses tomorrow night.

Last edited by acrosome; 04-07-2016 at 09:26 PM.
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Old 04-07-2016, 09:21 PM   #3
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Default Re: [AtE] Nuclear Target List

Quote:
Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
It does not show the massive 25-30Mt ground burst that is expected upon Cheyenne Mountain, but that actually works for me since I desire the survival of Cheyenne ]
Expected by whom and in combat with what? You'd need a launch vehicle larger than Titan missile or a bomber (_heavily_ loaded TU-95) and Cheyanne mountain would be a long way for a bomber to go.

Of course, war with Alien Space Bats solves there problems and could get you your long-lasting radioactive wastelands too. Real World nuclear warheads are/were distinctly sub-optimal for producing radioactive wastelands.

<shrug> It's a genre co0nvention and never apply to much realism to genre conventions. It's just that radioactive wastelands especially in continental quantities are one of the less realistic genre conventions.
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Old 04-07-2016, 09:33 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Expected by whom and in combat with what?
Well, that's supposedly what Cheyenne Mountain was meant to resist- a 25Mt ground burst. Yes, most modern Russian land-based strategic warheads are about 800kt but you can mount a damned large warhead on a missile if it is one warhead and not MIRVed. Exact details are moot, since I posit an ABM interception.

I'm going for significantly higher realism than is the AtE default. And I hate the alien space bats. Sort of. Well, actually Alien Resistance a la Falling Skies would be a fun campaign, too, but I don't really consider it AtE for some strange reason involving my own preconceptions and cognitive dissonance- it's a subtly different genre by my reckoning, sort of in the same way that PK insists that AtE is not meant to cover Apocalypse Now. Plus, my personal misanthropy dictates than humanity must do this to itself.

So... not helpful, Fred. (That's meant as friendly teasing.) I'm looking for target recommendations, here.

For the record, my campaign is going to be in the American West centered around Colorado so it's not going to be in the huge northeast fallout zone, anyway. The Wasteland is more of an impassible border than an exploration location. It is a massive dead zone. There will, of course, be smaller fallout zones around to be avoided or accounted for as well.

And at some point I'm going to be asking about how fast a fallout dose decays, because NukeMap shows >1000rem/hr at T=0 for ground bursts, and that is serious $#!+.

Last edited by acrosome; 04-07-2016 at 09:53 PM.
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Old 04-07-2016, 09:49 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
Well, that's supposedly what Cheyenne Mountain was meant to resist- a 25Mt ground burst. Yes, most modern Russian land-based strategic warheads are about 800kt but you can mount a damned large warhead on a missile if it is one warhead and not MIRVed. Exact details are moot, since I posit an ABM interception.

So... not helpful, Fred. (That's meant as friendly teasing.) I'm looking for target recommendations, here.
I suspected it wasn't what you were interested in which is why I kept it short. However, You say you want above-average realism....

I mentioned the Titan II which was the US' largest ICBM and it maxed out at a single 5 to 10 megatons and that was with skinny US warheads. USSR warheads were heavier per MT. That 25 MT would have ben maximal load for a realistically loaded TU-95. When they test-dropped the TSAR Bomba they had to take the bomb bay doors off and almost couldn't take off.

If you want a realistic layer of high gloss finish over the setting (and that will be the best you can achieve due to inherent genre unreality) go with whatever looks/sounds good.

Nuclear wasteland settings may not violate core principles of physics the way FTL does but they do a real number on rocket science, nuclear weapon design and historical capabilities. You're gonna want to hand-wave stuff.
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Old 04-08-2016, 08:35 AM   #6
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Quote:
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...Titan II... TU-95... TSAR Bomba...
Ok, Fred, you're still harping on one small declared non-issue out of that ridiculous gigantic manifesto I posted. And I guess that's ok. I'm OCD too. Plus, I guess I shouldn't complain- you're clearly the only person who read it, right? ;)

But have you got any potential targets that I missed?

FWIW I agree that the genre is inherently unrealistic. But are there any RPG genres that aren't? And does that mean that I shouldn't make a token effort at suspension of disbelief if it's important to me? Yes, hand waving ensues...

Anyone coming in late can feel free to skip the first manifesto and just go the the list in the second manifesto, by the way. The first one was just background for those who care, and I admit that it is on the bleeding edge of the 10k character forum limit.

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Old 04-08-2016, 08:45 AM   #7
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Default Re: [AtE] Nuclear Target List

By the way, I've decided that I have to change the racial targeting of The Virus. Hitting Africans that hard has morally questionable implications in the South, for me as a campaign designer. I just can't make a game where almost all surviving African Americans are barking mad.

So, I'm working on it. I still need a continuum with Chinese hit hard but Eastern Slavs hit comparatively lightly, with most others falling in between, so that Europesns will want to flee east. My initial thoughts above involved the Scandinavian blood that helped lead to the Rus, but that's not going to work.
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Old 04-08-2016, 09:30 AM   #8
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I'm OCD too. .
I'm not. I wrote you 2 short messages. the first conveyed incredulity at a specific detail. The second tried to convey to you a few things you did not appear to know.

I have not attempted to aid you in your large list because it's part of the wrong question. you do not need to reduce casualties so that everyone doesn't die and everything isn't a radioactive wasteland. You need to increase casualties so that enough people do die to end civilization as we know it and you have to hand-wave radioactive wastelands altogether.

What I do when running this genre is break out my Gama World maps of Pitz Burke and set the campaign many generations after The End with "The End" not being a classic Cold War nuclear exchange.

There. That's my main point and my advice. I will now prove I'm not OCD by abandoning this thread.
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Old 04-08-2016, 09:50 AM   #9
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Default Re: [AtE] Nuclear Target List

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I have not attempted to aid you in your large list because it's part of the wrong question. you do not need to reduce casualties so that everyone doesn't die and everything isn't a radioactive wasteland. You need to increase casualties so that enough people do die to end civilization as we know it and you have to hand-wave radioactive wastelands altogether.
This. No plausible nuclear exchange at foreseeable tech levels will directly kill nearly enough people for civilisation as we know it to end.

The famine that follows the collapse of worldwide trading might do it, but in that case, the precise targeting points of the missiles are mostly a matter of academic interest for everyone not lucky enough to be caught within a blast radius.

There are, in any case, absolutely huge numbers of people who do not live within even a 50 km distance from any target of conceivable military value.
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Old 04-08-2016, 09:52 AM   #10
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I You need to increase casualties so that enough people do die to end civilization as we know it and you have to hand-wave radioactive wastelands altogether.
Ah- I absolutely did not get that as your main point. And still can't see it on a re-read, frankly. But I got it now if you say so.

To address that issue, then- that's what the virus is for. My concept is really a pandemic-caused apocalypse believe it or not- not a nuclear one- so the virus and disruption are what causes the necessary huge population crash. But I like the challenge of dealing with radioactive zones, and the more dystopian atmosphere that they lend, not to mention that it's sort of traditional, so I wanted some. So the nuclear strike is almost an afterthought actually. (Clearly I did not communicate that very well.). But I feel that I need to keep it very limited, or the whole world would be dead. It's also nice to have most of the US northeast and Great Lakes region out of contention, since I want to limit my campaign to the North American west, which are already mostly thinly populated.

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