about russia nuking itself

cyber

New Member
probably one of the weirdest topics you might have read for a while but whatever.

considering russia apparently has issues with its own equipment and its missile arsenal might be not entirely functional,
and considering missile defense systems might potentially catch most missiles,
and considering nuking europe or the us would result in mutual destruction and thus the destruction of russia anyway,
and considering nuclear winter causes most deaths worldwide in a nuclear face off,

no matter how advanced the icbm defense or submarine defense of the nato might be, even with a guaranteed 100% prevention rate, russia would always be able to keep the threat of nuclear armageddon by having the option to just nuke its own territory to cause a nuclear winter, followed by worldwide fallout, they dont even need functional missiles to nuke themselves and could potentially even alternate the warheads to ensure more debris to be send into the sky. and i doubt they overlook the option to make that threat when they think the nato has too good of an icbm defense available.

so yeah the questions:
- is there any reasonable chance to counter that doomsday scenario where russia nukes itself?
- do you rate any anti icbm system as a waste of money? i mean it only seems to make sense if and only if russia heavily underestimates its capabilities and actually tries to nuke europe/us instead of itself for the better outcome of the missiles being caught.

*if this went too far, dont roast me please*
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
Moved to appropriate forum.

On this subject, with the massive reductions in arsenals, and the questions regarding the very idea of a nuclear winter, I strongly suspect that Russia nuking itself would first and foremost hurt Russia. It certainly wouldn't be painless for the rest of the world, especially neighbors. Cancer rates would spike world wide, and contamination would be significant, but I suspect not apocalyptic.

I'm also not sure what makes you think the reliability of Russia's ICBM arsenal is this poor or what BMD could conceivably catch most of Russia's arsenal. There's a great Russian article called "Nuclear Illusion. You can't glass them over." Realistically at current arsenal size and structure Russia probably can't completely annihilate the US with just the strategic arsenal. Deal completely insane amounts of damage, making any potential war inherently not worth it? Sure. Wipe out organized society (nevermid all human life) in the US? Not likely. I wish there was an english translation (one of these days if I finally have down time I might translate it myself). Meanwhile here's the original in Russian in case anyone wants it.

 

cyber

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ok i just read around half the article using deepl. its pretty long after all.

if the info is true that kinda confirms that they already now, even ignoring nato defenses or unreliable equipment, have no other real threat available than potentially causing a nuclear winter by bombing themselves.
the difference between bombing any other country and bombing themselves is that if bombing themselves it is less troublesome to place and time the bombs correctly to make the shockwaves hit one another creating an upward draft towards stratosphere and the ground can also be prepared for maximum tonnage . That way far less energy would be wasted into useless shockwaves.
rougly 10^11 Tons of debris pushed into the stratosphere should be possible doing some estimations and calculations, that sounds like enough for an apocalyps, but im not an expert.

after reading that article and if i was russia id at this point start to be afraid of a nato first strike.
 

Feanor

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Staff member
ok i just read around half the article using deepl. its pretty long after all.

if the info is true that kinda confirms that they already now, even ignoring nato defenses or unreliable equipment, have no other real threat available than potentially causing a nuclear winter by bombing themselves.
I suggest you finish reading then because that's not the argument the article makes at all. The article is aimed at dispelling a popular myth in Russia among the "patriotic" crowd, that seem to think the nuclear arsenal is enough to "glass over" any opponent, or even the entire planet. This is simply not accurate. It is however enough to kill at least tens of millions of people. That is definitely a real threat, and pretending otherwise is silly.

the difference between bombing any other country and bombing themselves is that if bombing themselves it is less troublesome to place and time the bombs correctly to make the shockwaves hit one another creating an upward draft towards stratosphere and the ground can also be prepared for maximum tonnage . That way far less energy would be wasted into useless shockwaves.
rougly 10^11 Tons of debris pushed into the stratosphere should be possible doing some estimations and calculations, that sounds like enough for an apocalyps, but im not an expert.
This requires some serious math, some serious modeling, and some serious studying of weather patterns to even propose as an argument. Please provide some evidence for the quantity of debris and the effect it would cause.

after reading that article and if i was russia id at this point start to be afraid of a nato first strike.
They are. They have been this entire time, and have been very vocal about it. I'm quite startled. For someone quoting tonnage of debris caused by a nuclear exchange, you seem to be blissfully unaware of Russia's political stance and nuclear planning process.
 

cyber

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i obviously have no model, nobody will have a functional one id assume, so i simply calculated the shockwave energy (50%) caused by 6000 warheads with an avarage of 10MT and how much mass would reach a height of 16 km on avarage with that amount of energy. and then devided that value by a factor of 8 to take multiple side effects into account like losing the energy of the outer shockwaves and not being able to melt enough ground.

they have also been vocal about getting rid of nazism or being afraid of biolaboratories or a trillion other lies. its also massively nonsensical to start a war, throwing out nuclear threats if what they can actually deliver is kinda...well...weak. i actually expected them to have 4-5 times the capacity in terms of delivery devices . yes that might be called blissfully unaware i guess. but under the given reality i dont understand their behaviour anymore.

also the part with the patriotic crowd being dispelled is right in the beginning of the article. ill follow your advice and read the article at some point.
 

Feanor

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i obviously have no model, nobody will have a functional one id assume, so i simply calculated the shockwave energy (50%) caused by 6000 warheads with an avarage of 10MT and how much mass would reach a height of 16 km on avarage with that amount of energy. and then devided that value by a factor of 8 to take multiple side effects into account like losing the energy of the outer shockwaves and not being able to melt enough ground.
A pretty strange estimate. Standard Topol warheads are 500kt, or 0.5 mt. That adjusts your average size down by a factor of 20. The total number of strategic warheads available to Russia today is ~2000. That's one third of the number. Of course there's the tactical warheads. But I still find the notion that Russian political leadership is actively suicidal to be a strange one.


they have also been vocal about getting rid of nazism or being afraid of biolaboratories or a trillion other lies. its also massively nonsensical to start a war, throwing out nuclear threats if what they can actually deliver is kinda...well...weak. i actually expected them to have 4-5 times the capacity in terms of delivery devices . yes that might be called blissfully unaware i guess. but under the given reality i dont understand their behaviour anymore.
I'm not sure what this has to do with the contents of this thread. There's a Russia and the West thread over in the Geostrategic Issues subforum. I suggest you visit it for discussion of Russian threats, motivations, etc.


Is there anything else you're trying to explore regarding this strange notion of literally suicidal use of nuclear weapons in the the hopes that the collateral damage destroys the planet? Because as it stands there is 0 evidence in favor of this theory. And last time I checked a death toll in the tens of millions isn't exactly weak or negligible. No western country is going to go to war without a very, very, good reason, if the death toll from a Russian counter-value strike will be tens of millions. Russia's nuclear arsenal remains a credible deterrent, which is the purpose of a nuclear arsenal. And it's probably a good thing that it's no longer large enough to wipe out the planet.
 

cyber

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after the decline of the soviet union they got back their radioactive materials from the newly formed countries and since especially germany modernized their gas extraction technology there was little reason to use their radioactive supplies in reactors. in that case they likely still have all that is needed to create warheads with much bigger yield. the technologie isnt exactly groundbreaking after all.
thats why i think its more appropriate to use 10MT per bomb for this. they clearly wont be able to shoot them with icbms anytime soon as those icbms wont exist due to bigger weight , but if just using it as pure bombs, it shouldnt take too long to assemble an arsenal with a huge yield.


you said that before the war russia was afraid of nato expansion, which makes no sense as its completely irrelevant wether theres 1 base or a 1 million bases stationed in ukraine as russia only has its nuclear arsenal to counter the nato and what are a million bases in ukrain going to change in that regard? nothing. so nato expansion is just a badly constructed reason behind trying to invade ukrain. But at this point, after the invasion of ukrain, russia has reasons to be afraid of a nato first strike because 100 million lives lost in a nuclear war arent too different from 100 million lives/futures lost into slavery.

i stated the questions in the opening post.
 
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