Posted on 05/30/2002 4:25:59 PM PDT by Pokey78
The US and the USSR had very opposing ideologies, the big difference that kept us from war (and we came close a few times) is the fact that we had oceans between us and both sides understand exactly what a nuclear war would entail - that is not the case here, and that scares the crap out of me. They start tossing nukes, US servicemen in Afghanistan/Pakistan will be harmed, not to mention the fallout and subsequent cleanup (which of course George will ride to the rescue, with our tax dollars).
LOL
1) Launch its nukes at India in a suicide attack (after all Pakistan has many radical zealots in its military, and as i posted in a previous article there are reports of some commanders being willing to see all of Pakistan destroyed just to get some Inidan cities. And again, suicide bombing is such a 'tender' Islamic trait).
2) Send at least one nuke through the ISI service into the hands of some freedom fighter group.....ooops, i meant terrorist group......, and the reason fro doing this is so that the 'murderous' west that allowed this 'atrocity' of nuclear warfare to be commited against the 'Godly' nation of Pakistan should also suffer.
The above are the Islamic form of Mutually Assured Destruction. Makes one wish for the US-Russia version huh!
Of course if the nukes look like they will affect China, they may decide to do something against either nation (remember, nukes do not care what your political or other ideologies are) as an act of self preservation.
The Chinese posture alot, but I am not sure that they want to cause any major ripples.
Dude, are we on the eve on destruction? It might be a good time to bring back Barry McGuire! He hasn't had a hit in 37 years and that Christian rock thing he's been doing is getting so old, man.
Together, they might lose 20 million, which is huge, but it wouldn't really put a major dent in the overall population. Economically, it would be devastating, although more so to Pakistan.
I'm not trying to downplay the danger or imply that it's acceptable. What I want to do is downplay any suggestion that either side could obliterate the other with nukes. It's not even close to being true.
A true Darwin award entry for some 5 million Chinese.
,,, it's been a while since I left the comfort of my armchair to do a quick stock take on each side's warheads. What sort of capabilities are at hand?
Actually, no. Against the old Soviet Union we were never sure if we had the upper hand. In this case vs. the Arab world...we do.
If they set off a nuclear weapon on our soil, I am confident that our military would make them all drown in lakes of fire.
I do not wish to contemplate that we wouldn't. Down that road lies madness.
Well, the "good" news is that the nuclear warheads fielded by both India and Pakistan are pretty much all in the 12-kiloton range... i.e., they are "only" Hiroshima-size atomic bombs; if used against cities (which they would be), figure each would cause 300,000 deaths -- 100k "instantly" and 200k from radiation (an estimate from the Japanese experience, which is probably comparable given Japan's high population density).
Ergo, I'm guessing that the total kill-potential of all nuclear warheads on the sub-continent is about 25 million... 7.5 million for Pakistan's arsenal of 25 atomics, and about 18 million for India's arsenal of 60 atomics. Well, we could probably quadruple that "base" number of blast and radiation deaths to account for the resulting chaos and starvation which could likely follow... call it 100 million dead (25 million Indians and 75 million Pakistanis) in the case of a full scale exchange.
Now, that is horrifying, no bones about it. However, the total nominal yield involved is "only" about 1 Megaton (85 atomics at 12kt each), or triple the size of China's 1966 nuke test. So there would be some Trans-Pacific fallout over the US, but something like 0.5% of what your link estimates (given it's assumption of a 200 megaton regional nuclear exchange).
Which means -- in my purely-amateur opinion -- that the take-away from all this is, the kill-potential of these dirty little atomics the Indos and the Paks have pointed at eachother is dreadful (anywhere from 25 to 100 million dead between the two), but the Trans-Pacific fallout danger to the US is... let's call it moderate to serious, not necessarily grave.
The grave danger to the US comes -- again in my opinion -- not from the danger of a straight-up war between India and Pakistan (even a big one), but from the unpredictable "nightmare" scenarios which could develop: if China moves into the game, or if the Pakis "misplace" some of their atomics into terrorist hands, etc...
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