[festus]

If such a thing happened, within 24 hours every Muslim in the USA - and perhaps many other countries as well - would be dead.

If such a thing happened and we decided to start raining bombs down on the middle east a lot more than the moselms would be dead.

Russia would not stand idly by and let us obliterate the oilfields that they need as much as us. So they would order us to stand down. We would make a call to listen or tell them to f### off. Then they would have to make theirs whether to attack us. And on it goes.

If they go for the nuke we must go for ours. And if we start poppin ours off its balls to the wall time all around last man, if any, standing wins.

That said. If they nuke us "Live Free or Die."

[Southack]

"Russia would not stand idly by and let us obliterate the oilfields that they need as much as us."

Incorrect. Russia is the world's largest or 2nd largest oil exporter. Russia *competes* with Middle-Eastern oil exports. Killing a Russian competitor wouldn't even make the Kremlin brass cry.

[Strategerist]

If such a thing happened and we decided to start raining bombs down on the middle east a lot more than the moselms would be dead.

Not surprisingly, considering the stupidity of people that fantasize about such things, as we've seen earlier in this thread, it's impossible to nuke the world's Moslems without killing tens of millions of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. The world's Islamic population doesn't live completely concentrated in small areas isolated so that fallout doesn't reach anyone else. You've got millions of Armenians in the middle of the Turks and assorted Moslem former Soviet Republics; you've got millions of Christians in Lebanon; you've got millions of Christians scattered throughout Indonesia. The second largest Muslim population in the world is in India, scattered amidst a vast sea of Hindus, hundreds of thousands of Christians, etc.

[Southack]

Russia
Russia is important to world energy markets because it holds the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. Russia is also the world's largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter, and the third largest energy consumer.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/russia.html

[Publius6961]

Russia would not stand idly by and let us obliterate the oilfields that they need as much as us. So they would order us to stand down.

It is almost reason to cry to grasp the enormity of the average American's ignorance.

We could set off a thousand nukes on Saudi Arabia alone and leave the oil fields unscratched.
There would be no reason whatsoever for the Soviets to freak about anything. And since we are the masters at air bursts (minimum radiation, maximum damage) even the fallout is survivable.

Of course it would be horrific, but the actual globe is a lot lot bigger than the ignorant can imagine, and the actual use of nukes a lot more puny than they have nightmares about.