Doomsday Peace

[CDurham]

But its still just a bigger axe, so the Soviets have a few really big ones and the Americans a lot of smaller ones, an axe is an axe it is no "final step in MAD" because MAD itself is a "final step". A couple thousand 'regular' nukes on both sides is all that is needed (as opposed to the tens of thousands made by both sides in the Cold War).

And the Earth has been impacted with FAR worse things than 1,000 MT of explosives, remember the Dinosaur extinction? That would make the 1,000 MT look like an M-80 next to a 100-pound bomb. And the American counter-strike will have far more explosive power in their combined total.

As for fallout, well with how many nukes we've detonated since 1945 in tests I'm not sure how much would be in the Soviet one.

But really, nothing changes, its still the same nuclear brinkmanship that worked so well in OTL, its just now the Soviets might NOT be capable of pulling back, not that they don't want to, but that they made their options so that they CAN'T.

Also, remember, its one thing to wipe out every human on earth, either in the barrage itself or the ensuing nuclear winter. Its quite another for ALL life on Earth to die off. If you'd looked at Earth 3 months after the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit you'd think nothing would have survived, but it did, something always will.

 

[DocOrlando]

1. Its not space based. In my POD the Soviets simply launched one into orbit to show how powerful the bloody thing is.

Every ballistic missile is space-based for a little while. It goes up, it leaves the atmosphere, it comes down, it re-enters the atmosphere.

4. This isn't a first strike, or second strike kind of weapon. If it goes off everyone dies, so what is the point if the US has submarines? I am placing this on the sheer fear of such a thing. I know this is MAD, to me it is the final step in MAD a weapon so pointlessly deadly that the best option is always to back down.

Ah. So this is just Dr. Strangelove. See CDurham's post which precedes this one and is full of truthiness.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

It also strikes me that an undiscriminating MAD device such as this is hardly going to help the Soviets win the Cold War, which was as much about world oppinion and economics as military supremacy.

Lets say that they do build these bombs, and even that they can send the money into making consumer goods like you would have them do. I don't believe it, mind you, but for the sake of argument lets say they do.

What does the rest of the world feel to being held hostage to any third party? The USSR lost a lot of face an goodwill due to the Cuban Missle Crisis because they were seen as having been the ones pushing the world to nuclear annihalation, and that annihalation was going to be the aftereffects of the attacks directed at another target.

This? This weapon is all inclusive. Non-aligned countries aren't going to be spared the direct effects and be effected solely by the side-effects of the exchange. They are being threatened just as much as the US. And if history has shown much, people rarely think well of those threatening them.

Non-alignment will be gone, or so much reduced as to make less difference than it did OTL. Soviet sympathy will be limited to the die hards and heavily oppressed, and between you and me the oppressed might feel safer without the Soviets.

So how can the Soviets hope to win hearts and minds by threatening to kill everyone if anyone makes a mistake?



And on a different note, western intelligence agencies are going to spend all their resources on tracking down those few doomsday weapons. What do you want to bet they'll do if one day they are sure they have every single soviet bomb (and it would be a bomb to track; missles would be obvious) in their sights? It's one thing to consider a first strike but know you can't target all the enemy missles. It's another if you think you have a good chance of pulling it off.

The Soviet planet killer increases, not decreases, the chance on nuclear strikes.

 

[birdy]

It's based on the Tsar Bomba. The Russians seem to like making these massive things and call them tsar.

Thanks for the explanation.

if the soviets have loads of money to spare- maybe they put more into building up a carrier force or something.

 

[Max Sinister]

This doesn't seem flawed to me, it's Game Theory, the best outcome is one that neither side wins. So unless the two superpowers change how they interact with each other the outcome will always end with both sides backing down. For despite what others have mentioned Russia will be lost as well if the US has no chance but to nuke her.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

 

[Fenwick]

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

I like that movie too, but good thought no?