Posted on 05/30/2002 4:25:59 PM PDT by Pokey78
Who really knows? Neither country is currently bragging.
I've seen a lot of estimates, and they all suggest that India has between 30 and 100 nukes. Pakistan has between 25-50.
That sounds like a lot, and my guess is that both are too conservative. Pakistan surely has been on a crash program to build them since their perceived defensive needs are greater.
But nobody thinks they are bigger than about the 25 kiloton range, and many much smaller. Nasty bombs if they land on your house, but if you're five miles away, you'll probably live.
Why?
Think of it. Under MAD both nations knew for certain they would both be annihilated! And although the Soviets had more nukes than the States, we still had enough to ensure we could destroy the USSR several times over. Thus even if they had more than us we still had more than enough, meaning mere numbers were not a viable way to analyze this strategy.
However against the Jihadis we have a foe that is not afraid to launch, and does not care about a retaliation. After all there affiliation to 'Allah' is such that they 'know' they are going to heaven, thus death is welcome to them.
In the old system both the Soviets and the US feared fro the destruction fo their culture and their people, thus they would never launch unless there was no alternative. All they did was sabre rattle.
However my question to you is this. What would UBL or his peers do if they got their mits on a WMD, especially a nuke? And had the ability to deliver it to the west?
I bet the only lapse in time between them acquiring the weapon and them detonating it would be due to the time spent in trasnporting the weapon. Then boom!
Even that might be overstating it. We used to set these things off above ground right here in the USA. We've been nuked MANY more times than Japan ever was.
5 million? Could be more like 500 million. A full-scale launch by China would very likely earn the same from us in response.
Trouble is, even 20 nukes is, well, pretty bad... China ain't India and Pakistan, cobbling together 1945-era 12-kiloton atomics; the Chinese have *real* nukes, and they are *big*... probably a 2 megaton warhead atop each DF-5 ICBM. Figure a kill-potential of at least a million each -- the math ain't pretty.
Worse, China will probably have them all MIRV-ed up within a decade... triple the warheads, triple the fun. Now the math really ain't pretty.
All the more reason to accelerate the National Missile Defense, ASAP.
Ask the people in St. George, Utah and other points east about that. Despite the fact that the bombs we tested were ultra-clean compared with what would be let loose in Paki-India, there were plenty of medical problems including cancer. My own daughter contracted Hashimoto's Disease, a thyroid-destroying ailment that's usually fatal, from milk contamination caused by fallout from "dirty" Russian bomb tests. Fortunately she survived it but not without many problems, fear and pain. This is very serious stuff, for us as well as Asia in general.
This may be true, but I don't believe it. When faced with true nuclear fire, the ragheads will scream like little girls. I KNOW it.
Simply because, I know, as do they, that a nuclear weapon of the roughly 12 kiloton size that the Paki and the Indian governments wield, will kill 2/3 of it's victims slowly and horribly from radiation poisoning.
This is quite different than going out in a clap of thunder with 75 lbs. of Semtex strapped to your ass.
I welcome the opportunity to witness my theory being proven wrong.
Historically, just about every major invasion into the subcontinent has come through Kashmir and what's now modern-day Pakistan (although it hopefully won't exist much longer). It's India's major vulnerability point on land, since the Himalayas serve as a natural barrier to their north.
,,, now, that's a realistic statement.
From the CIA factbook on Pakistan
Labor force - by occupation: agriculture 44%, industry 17%, services 39% (1999 est.)
Agriculture - products: cotton, wheat, rice, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables; milk, beef, mutton, eggs
Exports: $8.6 billion (f.o.b., FY99/00)
Exports - commodities: textiles (garments, cotton cloth, and yarn), rice, other agricultural products
I'm actually pretty content with the estimates I've seen putting Pakistan at 25 and India at 60.
Pakistan no doubt wants a lot more bombs, but the unregulated Khushab reactor probably only produces enough Plutonium for one or two bombs a year. So that tends to put an upper limit on how fast the Paks can expand their arsenal.
Meanwhile, a really high-ball estimate of 200 nukes has been made for India if one assumes total employment of all possible Plutonium production at India's six unregulated reactors, but most observers don't seem to think that India is running their program that aggressively, or that she has in the past. Ergo, most of the estimates fall around 60 or 70 constructed warheads for India's stockpile.
But, I'm no expert. I like www.fas.org for their analysis.
but the Trans-Pacific fallout danger to the US is... let's call it moderate to serious, not necessarily grave. ~~ Even that might be overstating it. We used to set these things off above ground right here in the USA.
Good points, and totally agreed; I just didn't want to totally downplay the threat, either.
Do you think that the U.S. goverment has thrown around the idea to India that if they were "wink, wink" to nuke Pakistian, that the U.S. would be very grateful if they were to maybe...i dunno...accidently send a nuke into western Pakistan and bump off a large popualtion of Al Quaeda and probably even Bin Laden?
Just something to think about
Bloody Sam Roberts:"I also believe that the one thing that will keep this from happening is that Pakistan has to know it will be swatted like a bug if it uses nuclear weapons against India."
The Telegraph wants to sell papers -- Bloody Sam Roberts has it right.
Well, such an event would be the Mother of All Martyrdoms. Some of those idiots might go for the idea.
Gandhi's victory came in 1947 when India won independence. The subcontinent split into two countries (India and Pakistan) and brought Hindu-Muslim riots. Again Gandhi turned to nonviolence, fasting until Delhi rioters pledged peace to him. On Jan. 30, 1948, while on his way to prayer in Delhi, Gandhi was killed by a Hindu who had been maddened by the Mahatma's efforts to reconcile Hindus and Muslims--Encyclopedia Britannica
One-side of the story This habit of one-sided thinking is ingrained in our culture. As an example of our contentment with one-sided thinking, consider the multi-Academy Award winning movie "Ghandi", about the life of one of the great 'saints' of the twentieth century. Two key ideas this movie sought to convey were Ghandi's beliefs in the virtues of nonviolence and nondiscrimination. Ghandi's name is closely associated with the position of uncompromising nonviolence as a way of achieving political change. He is also credited with the idea that all men are equal regardless of race, colour or creed. Who can forget the opening scenes of this movie where Ghandi, in his young postgraduate days in South Africa, so boldly challenged the blatant racist policies against non-whites.-- http://members.ozemail.com.au/~opposite/magazine.html
However, some time ago, Richard Grenier in an article The Ghandi Nobody Knows (Quadrant May 83) challenged these almost universally accepted myths of Ghandi's life and teaching. Grenier provided strong evidence that Ghandi had ardently supported the British Empire in no less than three wars in the early part of the twentieth century. In the early days of the struggle for Indian independence, evidence also indicates that Ghandi accepted the inevitability of, and perhaps the need for, violence in the process of his country gaining its independence.
Grenier also reminds us that Ghandi, himself a member of a high caste family, was a supporter of the Hindu caste system until very late in his life, a system which discriminates against people according to the conditions of their birth.
The Hollywood interpretation of Ghandi's life actually presented us with only one side of a rather more complex story. And the movie obviously received very widespread acclaim. So we can't blame Hollywood or the other story-tellers of our time for the distorted pictures they offer us. There is something very appealing and comforting about these simple pictures. But life is not always pure good or pure bad as in the movies. In life, good contains the seeds of bad just as bad contains the seeds of good.
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