Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Sources – Mr. President
We thank our experts
– Dr. Matt Caplan
Illinois State University
– Prof. Stewart Prager
Princeton University and The Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction
We also thank The Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction for their partial support.
Preface
Our story takes place on a planet like the earth, but not the earth. The countries are inspired by the US and Russia, but they are not one-to-one the US and Russia. We’ve taken care to base the facts and numbers in the story on what is really known about real countries, real arsenals, and real strategies, but a lot is also not known and cannot be known. Most details about weapons, missiles, anti-missiles, decoys, early detection systems, and targeting strategy are classified, even though much of the big picture can still be pieced together. We’ve done our best to tell a story that is faithful to the realities of a US-Russia nuclear war while also simplifying many aspects of it to be accessible to you. As always, our videos are “in a nutshell” and we hope to inspire you to learn more- which you can do in this document.
The initial idea for the narrative of the script was inspired by the VR experience Nuclear Biscuit, by Sharon Weiner (American University) and Moritz Kütt (University of Hamburg) in collaboration with the Program on Science and Global Security (SGS) at Princeton University.
https://sgs.princeton.edu/thenuclearbiscuit
– Because Intercontinental ballistic missiles are basically rockets launched into space before re-entering the atmosphere over their target and releasing many different warheads. Higher and faster than anything you can send after them.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are the longest range missiles. They achieve this by using multiple rocket stages and traveling far outside the atmosphere.
#Center for Arms Control and Proliferation. Fact Sheet: Ballistic vs. Cruise Missiles. Retrieved August, 2023.
Quote: “Ballistic missiles are powered initially by a rocket or series of rockets in stages, but then follow an unpowered trajectory that arches upwards before descending to reach its intended target. Ballistic missiles can carry either nuclear or conventional warheads.”
#Karl Tate. How Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles Work (Infographic). November 03, 2021
https://www.space.com/19601-how-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-work-infographic.html
Some ICBMs have a range of 16,000 km.
#Army Technology. The 10 longest range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)
lists the top ten ICBMs by range. 2019.
Quote: “The R-36M (SS-18 Satan) is the world’s longest-range ICBM with a range of 16,000km. With a weight of 8.8t, the R-36M is also the heaviest ICBM in the world.”
– Here is what we know: Four minutes ago our new infrared monitoring satellites detected one hundred twelve bursts consistent with ICBM launches from the enemy’s inner territories.
Nuclear-armed states have long worked on methods to know as soon as possible if they are under attack. One method is to launch a fleet of observation satellites into orbit, equipped with infrared cameras that can detect the heat from an ICBM launch.
The following publication provides a summary of the early years of the defense alarm systems in the US.
#Hall, R. Cargill. Missile Defense Alarm System: The Genesis of Space-Based Infrared Early Warning. 1988
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/docs/foia-mda.pdf
Quote: “Written over ten years ago, this history of the Missile Defense Alarm System, or MIDAS as the program generally was known, remained classified and for the most part confined to a file drawer. After a security and policy review, late in 1998 Lt Gen Eugene L. Tattini, Commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, declassified! MIDAS, an action that liberated its history to be shared with a much wider audience. This history compasses the origin and early years of space-based infrared (IR) sensors employed to detect the launch of ballistic missiles and, in time, the flash of ordnance·detonated on Earth and in the atmosphere. It addresses the people, institutions, ideas and machines brought to the task and their relationship to each other over a twelve-year period at the height of the Cold War, between 1955 and 1967. Beside treating the primary actions and events, it also attempts to account for the expectations and tensions that existed among the key participants: aerospace engineers who created the spacecraft and payload, their military superiors who anxiously sought an operational system, and still others in the Pentagon and Congress who doubted whether the technology would work, insisted on more research to demonstrate it, or sought to cancel the program after six ignominious flight failures.”
The US constantly updates that fleet of satellites, for example with SBIRS.
#Lockheed Martin Corporation. Lockheed Martin's Sixth And Final SBIRS Missile Warning Satellite Successfully Launched, Now Under U.S. Space Force Control. 2022.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/sbirs.html
Quote: “Following a successful launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today, the U.S. Space Force is now communicating with the sixth Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (SBIRS GEO) -6 satellite, built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT).
The final satellite in the SBIRS program series, GEO-6 joins the U.S. Space Force's constellation of missile warning satellites equipped with powerful scanning and staring infrared surveillance sensors.”
As does Russia with its EKS early warning system.
#Bart Hendrickx. EKS: Russia’s space-based missile early warning system. 2021.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4121/1
Quote: “In May of last year, Russia launched the fourth of its new-generation missile early warning satellites called Tundra. Flying in highly elliptical orbits, they continuously monitor regions from which missile attacks could potentially be launched against Russian territory. The Tundra satellites are part of the Integrated Space System (EKS), which will also include several satellites in geostationary orbit. With the fourth Tundra launch, EKS is reported to have reached its minimum baseline configuration. This article attempts to shed new light on the system’s technical features and capabilities using a variety of openly available sources.”
– For some reason only 20 of their 80 underground nuclear silos seem to have fired, so we suspect most of them were transporter-erector launchers, you know: trucks with big missiles on them.
ICBMs can be launched from land, sea or air. Ground-based ICBMs are often held in underground silos with strategic importance. (The numbers are hypothetical.)
The following paper explains and compares the three legs of the US nuclear triad: ground-based ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and airborne.
#Harrison, Todd, And Evan Linck. The Role of Ground-Based ICBMs in U.S. Nuclear Deterrence. 2017.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep23185.4?seq=1
Quote: “Ground-based ICBMs serve two main functions in the nuclear triad: as a missile sponge (i.e., a target likely to draw fire) and as a first-strike weapon. ICBMs are geographically dispersed in underground silos so that an adversary will need to expend at least one warhead per missile to neutralize them in a preemptive attack, greatly increasing the number of targets and the scale of attack required to be effective.”
A Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) is another way to launch ground-based ICBMs. It is a large truck that can move around missiles, move them into a vertical position and then launch them. An example is the MZKT-79921 that can handle the Topol-M missile.
#Army Technology. Topol-M Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). 2011. https://www.army-technology.com/projects/topol-m-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-icbm/
Quote: “The Topol-M is a three-stage solid-propellant ICBM. It carries a single nuclear warhead under US-Russian arms control treaties. The design can support MIRV warheads. The missile can reach a range of 11,000km at a speed of 17,400km/h.
[...]
The Topol-M mobile missile is fired from a transporter erector launcher (TEL) canister mounted on the MZKT-79921 cross-country, a modified eight-axle mobile launch vehicle. The TEL was developed by the Titan Central Design Bureau and produced at the Barrikady Plant.”
The differences between silos and TELs is important to different countries. Silos are more resistant to damage but cannot be moved once detected. Road-mobile TELs can be moved and hidden again but are much more vulnerable.
#Art Hobson. The ICBM Basing Question. 1991. https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs02hobson.pdf
Quote: “This paper compares and evaluates alternative mutual ICBM basing options for both the US and Soviet Union, assuming both START and finite-deterrence (2,000 warheads per side) force structures. While continued reliance on multiple-warhead silo based missiles will make ICBMs even more unstable than they already are, stability could be quickly enhanced by replacing multiple warheads with single warheads in present silos. For the longer term: mobile basing is stable if deployed randomly over large land areas, but not if bunched at known garrisons.”
– It’s unclear why they didn’t use all their silos – they might just not work after more than thirty years or they might be keeping them in reserve.
Nuclear missiles and their warheads are not durable things that you can leave untouched for many years. They need constant maintenance. Modernization programs are also necessary to keep them effective against a target’s evolving defenses. Taking care of ICBMs comes at an enormous cost. It is not certain that all nuclear states are as diligent as the US when it comes to maintenance and upgrades. The thirty years we are mentioning in our script is an estimate.
#W.J. Hennigan. Inside the $100 Billion Mission to Modernize America’s Aging Nuclear Missiles. 2022.
https://time.com/6212698/nuclear-missiles-icbm-triad-upgrade/
Quote: “On average, maintenance teams in Wyoming replace five parts a day, every day. Sometimes when a part fails, it can be found in military stock. Other times, an electrical adapter or connector gives out, and it’s been decades since anyone has seen one. The Air Force can’t simply pull something off the shelves at Home Depot and slap it on a nuclear missile, so entire teams are dedicated to locating spare parts. If it can’t be found, the military will contract a machine shop to manufacture it from original specifications, which can be pricey. Maintenance expenses have ballooned to $55,000 an hour for missiles and equipment held year-round in temperature-controlled silos buried deep underground.”
It should be noted that no-one, not even the US, is completely certain all of its decades-old arsenal works.
#Chris Baraniuk. No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work. 2023.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nuclear-weapons-testing
Quote: “Thankfully, nuclear warheads mostly just sit there, motionless and silent, cozy in their silos and underground storage caverns. If someone actually tried to use one, though, would it definitely go off as intended?
“Nobody really knows,” says Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear weapons historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology. The 20th century witnessed more than 2,000 nuclear tests—the vast majority carried out by the US and the Soviet Union. And while these did prove the countries’ nuclear capabilities, they don’t guarantee that a warhead strapped to a missile or some other delivery system would work today.”
– Aerospace Command thinks the ICBMs are targeting our nuclear command centers, silos, and major airforce and navy bases, ending this war before we have a chance to act! The enemy’s strategic doctrine prioritizes military targets and our nuclear weapon systems, but their secondary targets are our industry and infrastructure – oil refineries, power stations and deep water ports. All located near or in major population centers.
This is known as counter-force targeting. It is a nuclear doctrine where warheads are aimed at military assets and industrial sites, with the hope of neutralizing the target’s ability to fight without causing too many civilian casualties.
#Britannica. Counter Force Doctrine. Retrieved August, 2023.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/counterforce-doctrine
Quote: “Counterforce doctrine, in nuclear strategy, the targeting of an opponent’s military infrastructure with a nuclear strike. The counterforce doctrine is differentiated from the countervalue doctrine, which targets the enemy’s cities, destroying its civilian population and economic base. The counterforce doctrine asserts that a nuclear war can be limited and that it can be fought and won.”
The following publication considers both counterforce and countervalue scenarios for a simulation of Russian nuclear attack on the US.
#Natalie G. Montoya. No Winning Moves: Calculated Casualties and Damages of a Nuclear Attack on the United States by Russia for First and Second Strike Scenarios. 2021.
Quote: "The targeting strategy for this work has two goals: damage limitation and economic devastation. Damage limitation is primarily applicable to the Russian first strike scenario, which assumes that the United States would launch a retaliatory strike, whereas the Russian second strike scenarios place higher emphasis on economic destruction. Neither the Russian first strike nor Russian second strike with strategic warning employ all of the available warheads as the full available arsenal was not necessary to achieve the objectives of the attack plans."
– We won’t know the exact casualty count for a few weeks. Deaths from the blast and burns may be a few million today.
Our story in the video takes place on an imaginary planet so we are not really estimating the number of deaths in the script. However, there are studies doing these calculations for the simulations of different targeting scenarios.
#Natalie G. Montoya. No Winning Moves: Calculated Casualties and Damages of a Nuclear Attack on the United States by Russia for First and Second Strike Scenarios. 2021.
Quote: “Beyond infrastructure damage, the blast fatalities and injuries were calculated using NUKEMAP, and the number of U.S. missile silos expected to survive an attack
was calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation. The Russian first strike resulted in 49.73 million casualties and all oil refineries and major shipping ports and 2,809 HV
transformers destroyed with 132—-225 surviving U.S. silos and 520 unused warheads. The Russian second strike with strategic warning resulted in 70.17 million casualties;
all oil refineries, all major shipping ports, and 3,233 HV transformers destroyed with 783 or more unused warheads. The second strike without strategic warning resulted
in 7.76 million casualties and 71 oil refineries, 27 major shipping ports, and 618 HV transformers destroyed. This study showed that deep arsenal reductions are possible while maintaining deterrence, the role of the U.S. ICBMs should be evaluated, and grid security and oil dependence should be addressed.”
– Radiation exposure for intact population centers is highly dependent on the weather over the next week.
This bullet point is specifically about fallout, in the form of radioactive nuclei produced by the bombs. For example, the US silo fields in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming, act as a 'nuclear sponge' tending to attract a large number of warheads.
#Minuteman Missiles on the Great Plains
https://www.nps.gov/articles/minuteman-missiles-on-the-great-plains.htm
Quote: “The first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silos arrived on the Great Plains in 1959 when Atlas sites were constructed in Wyoming. Since that time there have been hundreds of Atlas, Titan, Minuteman and Peacekeeper sites constructed all the way from Texas to North Dakota, New Mexico to Montana. The most common sites have been the Minuteman. Due to its solid fuel technology, the missiles could be mass produced. They could also be remotely controlled from Launch Control Centers miles away from the actual silos, allowing sites to be dispersed over a wide geographic area. From the mid-1960s until the early 1990s there were 1,000 Minuteman Silos and 100 corresponding Launch Control Facilities for command and control.”
Another more recent Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) manual on responding to a nuclear attack:
#FEMA. Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation Third Edition. 2022.
https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_nuc-detonation-planning-guide.pdf
Quote: “Although fallout patterns depend on weather conditions, the most dangerous fallout particle concentrations often occur within tens of miles downwind of ground zero and typically fall within the first few hours. Wind direction and speed change with altitude, which can cause the fallout to be deposited in more than one direction. Fallout particles near the detonation are relatively large and may be easily visible, both as a cloud of debris and as they fall to the ground. Because of their size, the inhalation hazard is small compared to the external dose received from particles on the ground.”
– We might be looking at dozens of millions of deaths by the end of the month.
Estimates for casualties from nuclear war are difficult. Cold War era calculations had tens to hundreds millions of people die in a nuclear strike on each side.
#William Burr. Cold War estimates of deaths in nuclear conflict. 2023
https://thebulletin.org/2023/01/cold-war-estimates-of-deaths-in-nuclear-conflict/
Quote: “The work of the National Security Council’s highly secret Net Evaluation Subcommittee supported Beckler’s conclusions. As part of its effort to gauge the overall impact of nuclear strikes on each side, the subcommittee prepared casualty estimates. In its 1958 report, the subcommittee imagined a devastating Soviet attack in 1961 involving the detonation on the United States of 553 nuclear weapons with a total yield exceeding 2,000 megatons—more than 130,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which had an estimated yield of 15 kilotons. An estimated 50 million Americans would die, with nine million sick or injured, out of a pre-attack population of 179 million. The US retaliatory attack would include every city in the “Sino-Soviet” bloc with a population of over 25,000. It would completely destroy “command facilities” in Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang and kill 71 million people at once; 30 days later, a total of 196 million people would be dead (out of a population of 952 million people in the bloc).”
#National Security Archive. Long-Classified U.S. Estimates of Nuclear War Casualties During the Cold War Regularly Underestimated Deaths and Destruction. 2022.
Quote: “Exemplifying the catastrophic scale of the casualties was a 1967 interagency report that reported on the comparative vulnerabilities of the United States and the Soviet Union. According to the estimate, in 1964, the Soviets could kill 48 million Americans in a preemptive attack; by 1968, with greater numbers of ICBMs in place, they would be able to kill 91 million. By contrast, the trend in Soviet fatalities was constant during the decade because U.S. already had large strategic forces in 1964. In a U.S. retaliatory attack on Soviet cities in 1964, some 77 million would be killed. Under the same circumstances, 81 million would be killed in 1967.”
Today, the bombs are smaller and less numerous. The estimates are in the few tens of millions of deaths immediately after a first strike. Though the number of long term deaths would still be way higher.
# Luisa Rodriguez. How many people would be killed as a direct result of a US-Russia nuclear exchange? 2019
Quote: “There are many determinants that factor into the number of people that would die as a direct result of nuclear detonations during a US-Russia nuclear exchange. I consider the following six factors the most important. They make up the key parameters in my model:
The targeting strategy (i.e. what kinds of targets will each country attack?)
The number of military facilities each country might target
Whether each country would also target cities, in addition to military facilities
If they were to target cities, the number of cities each country might target
The sizes of the nuclear weapons in each country’s nuclear arsenal
The population size of the cities that might be targeted during an exchange
When I take all of these factors into account, I expect that we’d see a total of 51 million deaths caused directly by nuclear detonations on military and civilian targets in NATO countries and Russia (90% confidence interval: 30 million — 75 million deaths).”
#Xia, L., Robock, A., Scherrer, K. et al. Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection. 2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
Quote: ”We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.”
– We’ve got 1500 warheads across our silos, bombers, and submarines. The 400 in silos need to be launched now before they get taken out. 46 nuclear capable bombers on high alert can be ready to take off in 2 minutes – we need to transmit the order now to get them out of the blast radius if you want to consider using them though.
The number 1500 is based on the New Start Treaty. The US and Russia agreed to limit their nuclear weapons that are 'ready' to be used (on missiles, bombers and subs) to 1500. Russia has recently announced a withdrawal from the treaty but there doesn't seem to be evidence that the US and Russia have become noncompliant. The numbers are otherwise hypothetical.
#European Parliamentary Research Service. The New START Treaty between
the US and Russia. 2021.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2021/690523/EPRS_BRI(2021)690523_EN.pdf
Quote: “The US and Russia both have formidable arsenals of potentially destructive nuclear weapons. Although a nuclear-free world remains a distant dream, the two countries have taken steps to limit the risk of nuclear conflict, through a series of arms control agreements limiting the number of strategic weapons that each can have. In force since 2011, the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) is the latest of these agreements. Under New START, Russia and the US are limited to an equal number of deployed strategic warheads and weapons carrying them, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles. To ensure compliance, there are strict counting rules and transparency requirements, giving each side a reliable picture of the other's strategic nuclear forces.”
#US Department of State. New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms. 2022
https://www.state.gov/new-start-treaty-aggregate-numbers-of-strategic-offensive-arms-4/
#Reuters. Putin: Russia suspends participation in last remaining nuclear treaty with U.S. 2023
Quote: ”President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the United States that limits the two sides' strategic nuclear arsenals.
Putin stressed that Russia was not withdrawing from the treaty but the suspension further imperils the last remaining pillar of arms control between the United States and Russia, which between them hold nearly 90% of the world's nuclear warheads - enough to destroy the planet many times over.”
Nuclear-capable bombers like the B-52 Stratofortress can ‘scramble’ within 15 minutes. If their crews are already on high alert, the time to take-off can be even shorter.
#Stefano D'Urso. Declassified Video Shows How B-52 Crews Would Conduct Nuclear Strikes During Cold War. 2023 https://theaviationist.com/2023/03/26/declassified-video-shows-how-b-52-crews-would-conduct-cold-war-nuclear-strikes/
Quote: “Back in the day, B-52s with nuclear weapons on board were on alert and ready to launch in just 15 minutes from the alarm, while others performed airborne alert missions as part of Operation Chrome Dome. These bombers on high alert were meant to perform retaliatory nuclear strikes in the event the Soviet Union attacked the United States. The fact that the training film was declassified as Russia continuously threats the use of nuclear weapons, as retaliation for the Western support to Ukraine since the invasion started last year, is worth of remark.”
#Walter J. BoyneFifty Years of the B-52. 2001.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/2001/December%202001/1201buff.pdf
Quote: “Crews on alert status were expected to remain together and be close
enough to meet the 15-minute demand. Aircraft were “cocked,” that is, ready for engine start, and experienced crews could have the engines running within two minutes of an alarm and be taxiing within five minutes.”
– Of our 14 nuclear submarines, 5 are presently at sea. While they’re submerged they’re undetectable, so that’s our back-up for a nuclear retaliation if we lose our silos and bombers.
For the past six decades, the nuclear powers have held each other at bay using nuclear deterrence. In theory, no state would engage its armies to invade a nuclear power because it would counter-attack with ICBMs. There is no point in gaining new territory if you lose all your cities and population as a result! You might think that an aggressor with nuclear weapons of their own could wipe out their target’s silos or airfields and proceed without harm. That is where nuclear retaliation comes into play: a fleet of submarines would hide from the initial attack and pop out afterwards to deliver a strike. (The numbers are hypothetical.)
Put together, we get Mutually Assured Destruction. Whatever move an aggressor makes, they are certain to get destroyed. So far, this has prevented wars from actually breaking out between nuclear powers.
#Britannica. Mutual assured destruction. Retrieved August 2023.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy/Massive-retaliation
Quote: “Mutual assured destruction, principle of deterrence founded on the notion that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an overwhelming nuclear counterattack such that both the attacker and the defender would be annihilated.”
#Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs) Retrieved August 2023.
https://www.csp.navy.mil/SUBPAC-Commands/Submarines/Ballistic-Missile-Submarines/
Quote: “The Navy's ballistic missile submarines, often referred to as "boomers," serve as an undetectable launch platform for intercontinental missiles. They are designed specifically for stealth and the precise delivery of nuclear warheads.
Each of the 14 Ohio-class SSBNs originally carried up to 24 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with multiple, independently-targeted warheads. However, under provisions of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, each submarine has had four of its missile tubes permanently deactivated and now carry a maximum of 20 missiles. The SSBN's strategic weapon is the Trident II D5 missile, which provides increased range and accuracy over the now out-of-service Trident I C4 missile.”
– Our best guess is that each missile will deploy at least 6 re-entry vehicles, about 600 in total, which is the part that carries a warhead back into the atmosphere during its terminal descent onto the target – with many more decoys on top of that, inflatable balloons meant to waste our anti-missiles. We’re now tracking nearly 4000 potential targets.
The numbers we use here are totally hypothetical though we got inspired by the following source.
#Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Table 1. Russian nuclear forces, 2022. Retrieved August 2023.
https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/nuclearnotebook-March2022-russia-table1.pdf
One ICBM can carry multiple warheads. After boosting into space, an ICBM can disperse these warheads alongside decoys. That is how a few hundred launches can turn into thousands of potential targets. This makes it very difficult to work out where the warheads will land, how many sites they will hit or where to aim anti-missile defenses.
#Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Fact Sheet: An Introduction to Ballistic Missile Defense. Retrieved August 2023.
Quote: “The GMD system seeks to intercept incoming ICBMs during their midcourse phase. ICBMs can remain in the midcourse phase of their trajectory for around 20 minutes, giving defense systems more time to intercept the target. However, targeting is difficult, because nations that have perfected ICBM technology are also capable of adding decoys or
countermeasures to their missiles that detach during the midcourse phase and travel at the same speed as the missile until atmospheric re-entry. That means GMD interceptors have to correctly identify a warhead amongst debris and decoys.”
Once the cloud of decoys and warheads falls back down from space, it encounters the atmosphere. The decoys fall back and burn up. The many warheads are equipped with heat shields to survive re-entry, alongside precision systems to adjust their trajectory. That is why these are called Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles or ‘MIRVs’.
#Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV). Retrieved August 2023.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/MIRV-Factsheet.pdf
Quote: “Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) were originally developed in the early 1960s to permit a missile to deliver multiple nuclear warheads to different targets. In contrast to a traditional missile, which carries one warhead, MIRVs can carry multiple warheads. For instance, a Russian MIRVed missile under development may be able to carry up to 16 warheads, each in a separate re-entry vehicle. Warheads on MIRVed missiles can be released from the missile at different speeds and in different directions. Some MIRVed missiles can hit targets as far as 1,500 kilometers apart.”
#Richard L. Garwin. Technical Aspects of Ballistic Missile Defense. 1999.
https://rlg.fas.org/garwin-aps.htm
Quote: “ICBM warheads must be protected by a reentry vehicle (RV) against the heat and deceleration of the atmosphere. A typical peak deceleration is on the order of 60 g. However, only a small fraction of this energy need be absorbed by the material of the RV-- the rest being carried off by the wake of the reentry. Although initial ICBM RVs used a heat-sink approach, this was soon superseded by a much lighter protection system that uses ablative material that gradually sacrifices its heated surface layer and erodes in a controlled fashion on reentry. The RV shape approximates a sharp cone with a small nose radius.”
– This ionizes the atmosphere and creates radar interference.
A known effect of nuclear detonations at high altitude is their ability to ionize the atmosphere. This layer of ionized air creates an obstacle to radio waves, making it much harder to track ICBM warheads with radar as they sail above that layer.
# Atomic-archive. Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Chapter 10, Radio and Radar Effects. Retrieved August 2023.
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasstone-dolan/chapter10.html
Quote: “RADIO BLACKOUT
10.01 The transmission of electromagnetic waves with wavelengths of 1 millimeter or more, which are used for radio communications and for radar, is often dependent upon the electrical properties, i.e., the ionization(§ 8.17), of the atmosphere. The radiations from the fireball of a nuclear explosion and from the radioactive debris can produce marked changes in the atmospheric ionization. The explosion can, therefore, disturb the propagation of the electromagnetic waves mentioned above. Apart from the energy yield of the explosion, the effects are dependent on the altitudes of the burst and of the debris and on the wavelength (or frequency) of the electromagnetic waves. In certain circumstances, e.g., short-wave (high frequency) communications after the explosion of a nuclear weapon at an altitude above about 40 miles, the electromagnetic signals may be completely disrupted, i.e., “blacked out,” for several hours.”
This has been tested many times.
#Operation Fishbowl. 1952 - Johnston Island area. Retrieved August 2023.
https://www.atomicarchive.com/media/photographs/testing/us/fishbowl.html
– Our interceptors should still operate okay, they’ve had a 55% success rate in tests but never with this many decoys or with radar interference this intense.
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program is an enormously complex and expensive attempt at providing the US some sort of anti-missile protection. Its success rate is only 55%, in highly scripted tests against ‘easy’ targets with no decoys or interference involved.
#Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. GMD: Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved August 2023.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/missile-defense/gmd-frequently-asked-questions/
Quote: “Across the entire missile defense enterprise, which includes shorter-range missile defense systems, the success rate in testing is approximately 80 percent. However, shorter-range systems, such as the Patriot and THAAD missile defense programs, are limited to smaller, regional coverage areas. The only program designed to protect the entire United States homeland from a long-range missile attack is the GMD program. GMD has a failing test record: a success rate of just 55 percent in highly scripted tests, including three misses in the last six tries.“
– This is our last chance to counterattack. We’re out of time. Our silo launch sequence takes 5 minutes.
Just as an example, the Minuteman II system has a launch sequence of less than 5 minutes.
#National Museum of the United States Air Force. Launching Missiles. Retrieved August 2023.
Quote: “In the Minuteman II system, the launch sequence took less than five minutes.”
– This is a lot to take in, but the war plan is made, you just need to enter the launch authorization codes and push this button to transmit them!
The nuclear launch codes, or ‘Gold Codes’, allow the US president to authorize a nuclear launch using the Presidential Emergency Satchel or ‘nuclear football’ that is always present nearby.
#Britannica. Nuclear Football. Retrieved August 2023.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-football
Quote: “Nuclear football, also called Presidential Emergency Satchel, a specially designed briefcase that accompanies the president of the United States when the president is away from the White House and whose contents would enable the president to decide upon and order the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a national emergency. According to a book published in 1980 by a former director of the White House military office, the Presidential Emergency Satchel, as the nuclear football is officially known, contained a set of codes that the president would read aloud to authenticate his identity to military authorities, a list of optional plans for preemptive or retaliatory nuclear strikes, a list of sites where the president could safely stay during a nuclear conflict, and a description of procedures for using the country’s Emergency Broadcast System (later replaced by the Emergency Alert System).”
– The total fallout from their attacks and ours might trigger a nuclear winter, potentially killing billions around the world – but that might happen even if we don’t retaliate.
A full-scale nuclear war will release enough soot into the atmosphere to significantly affect Earth’s climate. It would disrupt food production on top, ruining vital infrastructure and causing an unprecedented global economic crisis.
By this calculation, 5 billion people would die from a US-Russia nuclear war. Most of these deaths happen far from the directly affected regions. Even a ‘smaller’ war between India and Pakistan would cause 2 billion people to die.
#Xia, L., Robock, A., Scherrer, K. et al. Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection. 2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
Quote: ”Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production. Here, we use climate, crop and fishery models to estimate the impacts arising from six scenarios of stratospheric soot injection, predicting the total food calories available in each nation post-war after stored food is consumed. In quantifying impacts away from target areas, we demonstrate that soot injections larger than 5 Tg would lead to mass food shortages, and livestock and aquatic food production would be unable to compensate for reduced crop output, in almost all countries. Adaptation measures such as food waste reduction would have limited impact on increasing available calories. We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.”
– Confused and with incomplete information, a single person – yes, it's really just ONE single person who decides – can literally make civilization-ending decisions killing hundreds of millions of people in the time it takes to watch a youtube video.
It is US policy that the President has “sole authority” to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. Other countries variably use US-like sole authority (e.g. France, North Korea, China), a limited extension of launch authority to defense ministers beyond the executive leader (e.g. Russia, UK, Israel), or councils, (e.g. Pakistan, India).
The following article summarizes the chains of commands in nuclear countries.
#Union of Concerned Scientists. Whose Finger Is on the Button? 2017.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/whose-finger-button
Quote: “In the United States, a single person is authorized to make the decision to use a nuclear weapon—the president. They are not required to consult with any advisors before issuing a launch order. No one in the Defense Department, Congress, or the judicial branch can lawfully prevent the use of nuclear weapons once the president’s order is given. This system of control (known as “sole authority”) is not the only way to handle launch decisions. In fact, other nuclear states have adopted chains of command that are distinctly less risky than sole authority, and which may provide safer models for the United States to learn from.”
#Jasmine Owens. The President's Sole Authority. 2020
https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/presidents-sole-authority
Quote: “The origins of this policy go all the way back to August 1945. The U.S was ready to drop atomic bombs on Japan. President Harry Truman was shown the bombing order but had never explicitly authorized the atomic bombings. The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th. The second bomb would be dropped three days later over Nagasaki. When Truman learned that a third bomb was being prepared, he ordered that no more atomic weapons be dropped without his express authority. This was the very beginning of Presidential Sole Authority. Truman believed that nuclear weapons were political weapons. Therefore they should be under the control of a political office like the presidency. ”
Sole authority is a highly contentious policy that is debated widely in the arms control community, for reasons that are apparent in the video.
#David S. Jonas and Bryn McWhorter. Nuclear Launch Authority: Too Big a Decision for Just the President. 2021.
Quote: “There are several proposals to constrain the president. One would require consensus among the president, vice president, and speaker of the House of Representatives4—the two individuals next in line in the constitutionally mandated presidential chain of succession. Another proposal would have the president involve the attorney general and secretary of defense in his decision-making.5 Advancing one of the more ludicrous ideas, others have even advocated a role for the Supreme Court.6 Some experts have called for a consultation,7 rather than consensus, requirement in which the president would discuss the momentous decision with an array of high-level national security advisers prior to authorizing the launch of nuclear weapons but not be bound by what they advise. Finally, some politicians have advocated for laws prohibiting the president from authorizing a nuclear attack in the first instance absent a declaration of war by Congress.8 None of those options are realistic or acceptable.”
– In 1995 Russian radar detected a submarine launched missile and their nuclear forces went on full alert, except it was actually a scientific rocket to study auroras.
There have been many false alarms that could have led to actual nuclear war. One such event was the Norwegian Rocket Incident of 1995.
#Geoffrey Forden. False Alarms on the Nuclear Front. Retrieved August 2023.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/falsealarms.html
Quote: “Early on the morning of January 25, 1995, Norwegian scientists and their American colleagues launched the largest sounding rocket ever from Andoya Island off the coast of Norway. [Sounding rockets collect data on atmospheric conditions from various altitudes.] Designed to study the northern lights, the rocket followed a trajectory to nearly 930 miles altitude but away from the Russian Federation. To Russian radar technicians, the flight appeared similar to one that a U.S. Trident missile would take to blind Russian radars by detonating a nuclear warhead high in the atmosphere. That scientific rocket caused a dangerous moment in the nuclear age. Russia was poised, for a few moments at least, to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on the United States. In fact, President Boris Yeltsin stated the next day that he had activated his "nuclear football"—a device that allows the Russian president to communicate with his top military advisers and review the situation online—for the first time.”
– In 1979, US computers reported a full scale Soviet attack with only minutes to respond – except it was a training tape being incorrectly loaded into a computer.
#National Security Archive. False Warnings of Soviet Missile Attacks Put U.S. Forces on Alert in 1979-1980. 2020.
Quote: “Recently declassified documents about false warning incidents during 1979-1980 – supplementing materials first posted on this site in 2012 – are being published today for the first time by the National Security Archive. The erroneous warnings, variously produced by computer tapes of war games and worn out computer chips, led to alert actions by U.S. bomber and missile forces and the emergency airborne command post, actions that could have led to a superpower confrontation, or at least dangerous tensions, if they had gone any further.”
– In 1983, the Soviet satellite alert system showed five ICBMs launched from the US… but it was a false alarm caused by sunlight reflected on clouds.
#Pavel Aksenov. Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world. 2013.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831
Quote: “Thirty years ago, on 26 September 1983, the world was saved from potential nuclear disaster. In the early hours of the morning, the Soviet Union's early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.
But duty officer Stanislav Petrov - whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches - decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm. This was a breach of his instructions, a dereliction of duty. The safe thing to do would have been to pass the responsibility on, to refer up. But his decision may have saved the world.”
– During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet submarine with no contact to Moscow for several days concluded that nuclear war had begun and decided to launch a nuclear torpedo. Luckily the authorization of three officers was required. One of them, Vasily Arkhipov, opposed it. But what if he hadn’t?
#National Security Archive. The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis at 60. 2022.
Quote: “Sixty years ago, on October 1, 1962, four Soviet Foxtrot-class diesel submarines, each of which carried one nuclear-armed torpedo, left their base in the Kola Bay, part of the massive Soviet deployment to Cuba that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis. An incident occurred on one of the submarines, B-59, when its captain, Valentin Savitsky, came close to using his nuclear torpedo. Although the Americans weren’t even aware of it at the time, it happened on the most dangerous day of the crisis, October 27. The episode has since become a focus of public debate about the dangers of nuclear weapons and has inspired many sensationalist accounts.
Today, the Archive marks the 60th anniversary of the underwater Cuban Missile Crisis by publishing for the first time in English the only public recollection of Vasily Arkhipov, the submarine brigade’s chief of staff, who was on board B-59 at the critical moment and helped Captain Savitsky avoid making the potentially catastrophic decision to launch a nuclear attack. Arkhipov shared his memories of the incident during a presentation at a conference to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis held in Moscow on October 14, 1997.”
– Simply accepting that the existence of nuclear weapons is inevitable might mean their use is inevitable.
This is paraphrased from President Obama’s April 5, 2009 speech in Prague:
Quote: “Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”
– During the cold war, the world had over 70,000 nuclear weapons – through arms reduction treaties, that number is now about 12,500. Progress is not guaranteed, but it’s also not impossible.
#Kristensen, Korda, Johns And Kohn. Status Of World Nuclear Forces. 2023.
https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/
Quote: “Despite progress in reducing nuclear weapon arsenals since the Cold War, the world’s combined inventory of nuclear warheads remains at a very high level: nine countries possessed roughly 12,500 warheads as of early-2023.”
– Governments and militaries are not separate from their nations, they’re part of them, just like you. You have the power to make demands of your leaders and often this begins with just being aware about an issue. If you want to learn more, we have compiled a number of resources for you in the video description and our sources.
If you would like to read further and learn more about the nuclear ban treaty, nuclear programs and the risks they pose, and how you can take part, you can check the following resources.
#The Arms Control Association
#The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
#The Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction
https://physicistscoalition.org/
#International Committee Of The Red Cross