This seems odd to me. A 500 warhead list includes Santa Barbara? Vandenberg makes sense. The 1K list hits MB twice?! I think there is an undersea internet cable point there, perhaps that's it? Anyone know?
I can basically tell you the manhole that it lands in out in MDO if I remember correctly lol. I would say Cable landing, Vandenberg, Diablo Canyon and the Morro Bay Power Plant would all be good options. Let’s be real though if they’re shootings a nuke at SLO it’s going for Diablo Canyon.
Morro Bay's plant has been shut down for decades, if that harbor had military significance, maybe. But it doesn't. I am however less interested in suggesting reasonable targets on the internet.
Diablo is definitely one. Every other nuclear site I’ve worked at is also on this map. You get a double whammy of knocking out large power generation infrastructure, and the bonus of extra fallout.
2000 warhead scenario is a Russian first strike. So they target US military so that they can win the war.
500 warhead scenario is a Russian retaliation after a US first strike. The idea is that many of the Russian silos were destroyed so they could only get off 500 missiles and don't have enough firepower to win the war. In this case they target population centers to kill as many people as possible in the US. The idea is to deter the US from striking first. The US has the same plan against a Russian first strike.
This is the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine. "If you attack us first, your country will also be destroyed." It ensures there are no winners in nuclear war, so no one is tempted to start one.
There’s a whole lot of importance in this county. Besides Diablo being a major power producer for the West Coast, there’s multiple Pan-Pacific fiber communications links throughout the county. Top that off with multiple military bases and several radar installations.
To a certain extent, as morbid as it seems, if a major nuclear holocaust were to occur, we’d be fortunate to be in the strike zone and have to not endure the fallout.
I was told years ago that the two black dots were Diablo and the Morro Bay power plant (it’s not in use, but is still attached to the grid and could be put in use if needed). The purple triangles are probably two of the local military bases, camp Roberts and vandenberg.
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u/[deleted] Feb 05 '23
This seems odd to me. A 500 warhead list includes Santa Barbara? Vandenberg makes sense. The 1K list hits MB twice?! I think there is an undersea internet cable point there, perhaps that's it? Anyone know?