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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

If you let fly with a Hiroshima sized bomb (what this is) you can be pretty assured that the chain reaction will be about the same as if you let fly with a megaton sized warhead.

I could see the argument about reducing barrier to use if this were a 1kt bunker buster but this nuke is still big enough to be treated the same as any other nuke in the fleet.

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> If you let fly with a Hiroshima sized bomb (what this is)

It's actually less than half (1/3rd in most cases). W76-2 warhead (what's on these missiles) contains 5-7kt[1] yield vs. Little Boy's 15kt[2], and Fat Man's 21kt[3]

But I do think your other point still stands - these are still pretty large - large enough to not just be launched for any reason, or small reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W76

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man

Yeah, the point dsfyu404ed is making remains the same. In fact, I'd wager that in practice, there likely is no yield at which a nuclear warhead would not evoke an immediate nuclear response.

I mean, just thinking about it from my American point of view: If we get hit by a nuclear warhead, you can try to rationalize it away all you like by saying, "Now bilbo0s, don't get angry. It was only 5kt." Sorry, maybe I'm too vindictive, but I'm still gonna want the President to respond in kind. Immediately.

I think the only way you don't get a nuclear response, is that the country you hit is not capable of delivering a nuclear response. Even then, I mean, are the other countries with nuclear weapons just gonna wait for you to come after them? I don't think so. You just proved that you would use nuclear weapons. (Against people without nuclear armaments no less.) I just think that if, say, China or the US were to do that, it would alter the entire foreign policy environment in which they operate.

Again, maybe I'm just the type who holds too much of a grudge and most people wouldn't retaliate? But I wouldn't bet on it.

> I'm still gonna want the President to respond in kind.

Probably shouldn't take it upon myself to speak for all humanity but I think that's a universal response. Everyone wants revenge. But are they going to get it immediately? No need to guess, we already know what the US government will do when a foreign actor commits mass murder on US soil.

"We will respond at a time, place and manner of our own choosing and not be forced into knee-jerk responses."

An attack will precipitate a meticulously planned response where the US has considered all the angles and stacked the deck to ensure that it achieves the best possible outcome. I don't think the mechanism used for the attack (nuclear) makes a difference.

On 26 September 1983, the computers in the Serpukhov-15 bunker outside Moscow, which housed the command centre of the Soviet early warning satellite system, twice reported that U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles were heading toward the Soviet Union. Stanislav Petrov, who was duty officer that night, suspected that the system was malfunctioning and managed to convince his superiors of the same thing. He argued that if the U.S. was going to attack pre-emptively it would do so with more than just five missiles, and that it was best to wait for ground radar confirmation before launching a counter-attack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World

One weapon is unlikely to trigger MAD, even after detonation.

I'm at work so unable to spend time finding the source, but I recall seeing declassified documents that a US opening attack probably would have started with one or two missiles to trigger exactly this sort of response, followed by the all-out strike at around the time the first missiles would be confirmed by ground radar and they couldn't hide it anymore. Fun!

No need to source it, seems plausible. Even knowing this was the official strategy you still can't go full MAD upon spotting a small number of weapons in flight. You need to be absolutely sure because maybe these 1-2 missiles were launched in error and maybe total annihilation can be avoided.

In the 1980s, I read a book ("The Third World War" by General Sir John Hackett, IIRC) that speculated on how a West vs Soviet war might unfold. Facing conventional-forces defeat, the Soviets launch a single nuclear missile as a "warning shot" (vs. Manchester, IIRC). The Allies carefully choose a similar Soviet city in size and strategic importance (Kyev) and nuke it. The nuclear exchanges end there.

It's an interesting book, but it did not age well. His predictions about alliances and spheres of influence were way off (he expected Sadat's Egypt to be the Mideast's Soviet bastion and the Shah's Iran to be the Allies' counter, for example).

"Facing conventional forces defeat". How arrogant this sounds. West tried to occupy Russia all the time in the history. Napoleon and Hitler were predicting exactly the same: "conventional forces defeat and all Russians will happily surrender and march into gas chambers to democratize and free themselves"

But so far this never happened and never in it's history USA attacked a strong opponent. Military success looting small and powerless third world countries like Iraq and Libya doesn't mean much. Note that invasions failed in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria.

Even more: though Iran is a very lucrative target for looting (lots of oil and advantageous geographic location), US doesn't have the courage to invade and colonize it. Although Iran does not have nuclear weapons or any other kind of wmd.

Dude. It's a novel. A 40-year-old novel.

>One weapon is unlikely to trigger MAD, even after detonation.

Well, not after detonation. After detonation, all bets are off. You can't take out, say, Miami, and expect not to receive a nuclear response to that message. You're going to lose a city.

Now, if you launched the Miami strike by mistake, the loss of, say, Rostov-on-the-Don, should be the end of the matter. But you're definitely going to lose a city.

But one weapon, if it is shown not to be real, would not trigger a response at all if everyone acts in a professional manner. After all, no cities are lost on either side in such a scenario.

Let's say the error goes the other way. Criminal actors within the US illegally launch a strike and destroy Rostov-on-Don. The US agrees to hand over the culprits for Russian trial and pay reparations. The Russians decline and destroy Miami instead.

Matter settled?

>Matter settled?

Of course not. Now in addition to putting the criminals responsible on trial for the murder of the residents of Rostov-on-the-Don, I'm going to add charges for the murder of the residents of Miami. Might even invite Russian prosecutors over to get in on the trial? Who knows?

In any case, once the criminals are executed, the matter will be settled.

Exactly this. An infrared flare from a missile launch, seen from a launch detection satellite, looks exactly the same, 20kt or 450kt warhead.

I'm pretty sure that only applies to ballistic missiles though. Cruise missiles probably don't show up on those satellites, and even if they did, how would you differentiate a nuclear armed cruise missile from a conventional cruise missile? There is also the matter of nuclear torpedoes, bombs dropped from planes, bombs placed by special forces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Muni...), nuclear artillery shells (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48), recoilless guns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)), etc.

The OP was about sub-launched ballistic missiles - I was trying to make the point that when a ballistic missile flies from a sub, you cannot tell the yield, and the potential hair trigger-response will be the same regardless of yield.

This type of weapon is essentially destabilizing, as the article said.

I agree with you on other weapons, the flight profile will be vastly different.

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