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Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified For First Time (gwu.edu)
HughPickens.com writes: Scott Shane writes in the NY Times that the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States' potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China. The Strategic Air Command study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and "friendly forces and people" to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the "systematic destruction" of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted "population" in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.
The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."
The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."
not a concern since the cities will be targeted anyway (laughing at some rose-colored glasses wearers here to think that is still not doctrine for all out war)
You do know in warfare the silo doors are blasted open with explosives, not mechanically opened?
In the fascinating and disturbing BBC documentary "The Trap: F**k You Buddy", Adam Curtis outlines how the field of modern economics, specifically that which relies on game theory and systems analysis, is tightly related to the type of military analysis implied in the document referred to in the parent post. Both modern quantitative economics and military analysis use mathematical models based on game theory to cold bloodedly analyze human life and death. Most people don't realize that the same mode of thought that brought us fire bombing and potential nuclear apocalypse also brought us the Chicago School of Economics.
The BBC documentary series "The Trap" utilizes rare footage from the BBC archives that you will not see anywhere else. I highly recommend watching it. More of us need to stare the unpleasant reality of the modern world in the face if we are to get out of our current malaise. In the end, the truth shall set you free.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The German 'carpet bombing' of Rotterdam killed less than 1000 people, and involved 90 bombers...
The Blitz in London (which never even got close to 'carpet bombing' killed less than 500 people.
Our lovely Americans killed around 100,000 Japanese in Tokyo with incendiary raids (basically burnt them to death), Hiroshima and Nagasaki averaged about 100,000 each also, but of course those were single bombs.. Other 25,000 in Dresden, pretty much the same method, 40,000 in Hamburg. While the British assisted on such raids, they were very much American designed and lead. There failure is also well documented (it was supposed to 'break' the Germans, instead of course it just strengthened their resolve), but the lessons have pretty much been ignored.
For the Germans you would have been better to perhaps actually learn some history, Warsaw and Stalingrad were their big cases of bombing,although neither was at all typical carpet bombing (more a long sustained attack over weeks), and a large number of the casualties there are considered secondary (disease, starvation, exposure, etc) (around 25,000 and 40,000, similar to Dresden and Hamburg, however fatalities from actual bombing are estimated to be closer to 1/3 of those numbers).
Sorry to let facts get in the way..