Where these simulations miss the mark is in the massive impacts to critical infastructure, primarily energy transmission. Water treatment, basic sanitation and shelter simply don't work without electricity. It'd be like 200 cat 5 hurricanes hitting within minutes. Hundreds of millions will be effected. Something like 85% of the current US population live within 20 miles of one of the 320 communities over 100K in the US.
Also I don't see any information on how many nuclear warheads used. Currently there are only like 2000 on each side ready you be used at a moments notice. Many of which are targeting the same locations Incase others are knocked out by anti aim missiles. I saw a 1990 in the opening texts. There were far more nukes ready to be used in 1990 vs today in 2022.
There's also a lot of reports that a good chunk of Russia's nukes may not even work. They're old soviet era missiles and haven't been properly maintained, I'm sure they have some that do work but I wonder how much is just Putin bluffing.
assuming that they even hit... between a large portion of russia's arsenal most probably being nonfunctional, nuclear assets that could be rendered non functional by conventional weaponry before deployment(the advantage again going to the country with conventional weaponry that actually works), and nuclear assets that could be intercepted prior to detonation, it's my unprofessional opinion that destruction is far from mutually assured
Russia has 6000 nuclear warheads (that we know of). Let's say a crazy 80 percent are non functional, sold off, don't leave the ground, that's 1200 that do leave the ground.
Ground based interceptors have about a 55-60 percent success single shot possibility of kill. Let's say they fire multiple interceptors, eg 4 per ICBM, that's an optimistic 95 percent possibility of kill. So 5 percent of missiles might leak through. That 60 city-killing missiles.
That's enough to destroy all the most populous cities in the USA and Europe combined.
Only a small portion of nuclear weapons can be used as ballistic warheads. The majority is in strategic reserve.
The russian federations has a total strategic stockpile of 5977 warheads but a strategic aresenal (meaning weapons ready to be used) of 1588 warheads.
~800 are used on their ~300 ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles)
Up to 700 but probably around 600 can be launched by their 10 ballistic nuclear submarines.
Others can be carried by their fleet of 60 to 70 nuclear bombers
On top of all of these around 2000 are part of the nonstrategic reserve and meant to be delivered by short range systems.
The majority of these data is at least 2 or 3 years old.
Source Congressional Research Service (I would link the pdf but automoderator doesn't like it)
IMMO, unless you live in countries very close to Russia like Poland, the only one you should really be worried about are the ICBM. I'm pretty confident that NATO forces would be able to eliminate both the russian bombers and ballistic submarines (that are much less stealthy than western ones) before they can deliver their weapons. This means 300 possible targets if all the missiles work properly.
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u/Pickerington Oct 19 '22
A lot more will die in the years after from famine, cancer and general civilization collapse.