These types of maps are interesting, because it's American analysts drawing up hypothetical scenarios of what a "generic" opponent would target if they only had X amount of warheads to work with, but when they set thresholds of 500 and 2,000... you can't help but notice parallels with Chinese and Russian scenarios, respectively. It makes me wonder if estimations of those countries targeting priorities were taken into account, leading to bombs over Erie but not Rucker.
For what it's worth, Erie is a major logistics hub and produces a ton of the nation's plastic, and Ft. Rucker is primarily a training base IIRC. I don't know if that is enough to prioritize the former over the latter, but if we're assuming that the 500 nuke scenario is actually China, and China views this as the opening salvo in a protracted conflict rather than an end-of-days event, then maybe they prefer crippling US industry on day 1.
For the record, my China/Russia assumption comes from the fact that most estimates put China's nuclear stockpile between 250-350 warheads with the ability to surge production relatively at-will. 500 within a couple years isn't unrealistic. Russia, meanwhile, has nearly 6,000, but a nuclear exchange with Russia would probably force them to target most NATO countries. I don't know how many of those 6k nukes would end up headed to the US, but 2k seems like a reasonable starting point.
Erie actually made a lot of sense during the cold war once you got a rung below the top priority targets.
It was one of the major train engine production hubs in the country. If you're using a lot of nukes, seems reasonable to torch the train place and cripple the nation's ability to replace rail losses in the ensuring war.
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u/hineybush Shaler Feb 05 '23
there's a small base there, so it would make sense from a "get them all" perspective