Posted on 07/16/2002 3:49:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
No. Because if your opponent bets high, you win money. Nobody wins if a country launches ICBMs at us and (mostly) fails.
And New York is, by far, the biggest city in America. It's also one of the densest. A strike on the Greater Los Angeles Metro Region would probably require 20 missiles to generate a similar number of casualties.
The numbers add up very quickly.
Actually, once you get out of the top ten cities, the numbers fall off dramatically. In order to kill suburban America en masse, you need massive numbers of warheads--much more than 60.
Not to mention the fact that the world economy would more or less come to a complete and utter stop.
You mean that China would go into economic collapse BEFORE we returned their favor?
Suburban America is largely irrelevent. Cities serve as the economic and political anchors of the nation, and we could not function without them. Without food distribution networks, safe drinking water, intact transporation systems, etc., and with significant radioactive fallout, millions of suburban soccer moms could die incidental to the initial blast.
Interesting claim. And completely false...
Cities serve as the economic and political anchors of the nation, and we could not function without them.
There's a liability attached to those gains, and in losing a city, we lose both at once. Again, New York is the last great dense city--everything else
Without food distribution networks,
Which can function without the urban cores...
safe drinking water,
Which is generated and stored OUTSIDE the cities...
intact transporation systems,
They don't need to be intact, just functional. Notice that the Capitol Beltway is designed as a firebreak.
etc., and with significant radioactive fallout,
The fallout comes from surface bursts--i.e., from counterforce strikes. Countervalue strikes are airbursts to maximize destructive potential.
millions of suburban soccer moms could die incidental to the initial blast.
You're still going to be a LONG ways away from 150-200 million.
Actually, since I've written a rather succesful and well-received book on this, I happen to know something about it. Suburbs and exurbs are still dependent on central cities. Even as a higher percentage of jobs migrates out to the suburbs, the economy is growing ever more dependent on cities as transportation, logistical, workforce, and education centers.
Again, New York is the last great dense city--everything else
You make it seem as though New York were dying. But in fact its growing ever more dense, and, between 1990 and 2000, jobs actually shifted from the suburbs to the city, bucking the general nationwide trend. And New York anchors even larger economic clusters. So if New York were to go boom, we could easily loose several trillion dollars in GNP overnight, and this is not counting the effects of the panic that would undoubtedly set in.
Which is generated and stored OUTSIDE the cities...
But not the distribution networks. And water sources are especially vulnerable to contamination, radioactive or otherwise.
Notice that the Capitol Beltway is designed as a firebreak.
Sounds like an urban legend to me. But even if true, do you have any idea what percentage of the DC MSA economy is concentrated within the confines of I-495?
The fallout comes from surface bursts--i.e., from counterforce strikes. Countervalue strikes are airbursts to maximize destructive potential.
Sorry. Sixty nuclear blasts over our largest population centers would cause significant fallout. Rationalize it if you wish, but nuclear war is not survivable in any meaningful sense of the word.
You're still going to be a LONG ways away from 150-200 million.
I don't think so. I think you could easily see that many casualties within five years of an attack.
Sorry, you may be an absolute genius at urban planning, but you're ignorant of how nuclear weapons work or are used. G'Day.
I'm not an urban planner. And while you might be expert in the technical aspects of nuclear detonations, you are clearly ignorant in matters of economics and international relations.
LMAO. Don't tell me we need to destroy the country to save it...
You would think we have lots of weapons that are kept under wraps.
Mqaybe so thirty years ago, but nowadays we can't even keep them out of our most sensitive nuclear research areas, and we allow companies to sell any thing they want, no matter how it may benefit their military (i.e. supercomputers, high tech chips, missile guidance and accuracy...the list goes on) The only kind of "wraps" I see us as a country still having is stealth technology, and one of those was lost in Bosnia(?) - how long before China gets their hands on information from that? I'm no Doomsayer but wee really should be getting busy on developing stuff to counter all these, and not take 15 years and triple budgets doing it.
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