Nuclear War
A Scenario . Anne M. Jacobsen . 2024 . Bvtn. Lib. 355.0217 JAC
- Second checkout 2025 August; forgot to write notes the first time
pxii-xvi 47 interviews, including Richard Garwin d2025, William J. Perry, Leon Panetta, Frank von Hippel, Brian Toon, Charles Townes d2015, Jay Forrester d2016
- pxvii 1 megaton thermonuclear weapon, 100M Kelvins, ~5 times center of Sun
however, the largest yield weapon in the US arsenal is the 475KT W88, 400 produced, yield similar to the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite
W54 tactical nuclear warhead, 10T to 1KT, 51 lb, 11in diam, 16in long
p008 Setsuko Thurlow nytimes 2020
- Nobel Peace Prize, Virginia husband James Thurlow, interracial marriages prohibited in VA, moved to Toronto
still alive 2025 (?) 75 min video
- p013 third bomb ready to ship, material for 4th bomb by end of August
- p016 weapon count: 1947:13 1948: 50 1949: 170
p017 Richard Garwin Super Ivy Mike November 1952
p020 US nuclear stockpile graph
- peak stockpile 31,000 1967, peak deployment 12,000 1987, 2024 estimate 3708
p033 SIBRS Space Based Infrared System
p043 Clear Space Force Station central Alaska
p047 STRATCOM
- p048 Global Operations Center
- p053 1600 seconds from Soviet launch to US detonation
p056 photo of 2019 flood at Offutt Air Force Base
p059 Launch On Warning
- p064 the president is entirely uninformed about waging nuclear war
p068 Hwasong-17 RD-250 rocket engine probably stolen from Russia
p073 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense failed
p077 SBX sea based radar
- p089 400 1-warhead ICBMs, 66 bombers with multiple warheads, 14 nuclear subs with 20 4-warhead SLBMs
p099 B-2 stealth bomber B61-12 (400kT?) bunker buster gravity bomb
p103 Pedialyte
p105 Raven Rock Mountain Complex Site R, 70mi northwest of White House, Blue Ridge Summit PA
p109 National Military Command Center not deep underground
p109 William Perry ... democracy gone ... military rule, imposssible to undo
- p117 NK: 2003 Plutonium production, 2006 first test, 2009 second test, 2016 thermonuclear weapons, 2017 ICBM
p124 NK SLBM aimed at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant
- p127 Devil's Scenario
- p133 82 warheads launched at North Korea
WHY NOT WAIT? Call the Russians and let THEM clean North Korea off the map
- p143 rancher uploads phone video of Diablo Canyon mushroom cloud
p144 X "overloaded and shuts down" Gregory Touhill ... NO, it just gets really slow and sporadic.
p153 Tundra satellite inaccurate
p154 Electromagnetic Pulse destroys helicopter electronic systems, crash??? NO, controls are hydraulic.
p160 missiles targeting North Korea overfly Russia, SecDef cannot connect
- p164 33 min, nuclear explosion over Pentagon
- Serpukhov-15 satellite control center 90 miles (no, 80 kilometers, 50 miles) southwest of Moscow
- p169 Russian radar interprets 50 US missiles as attack on Russia
p169 Gregory Touhill says Northern Virginia has 60% of the world's data centers ... er, no
statistia says 5426 in entire US, around 4740 in the rest of the world, 10166 total, 53% in the US
Data Center Map says 4205 data centers in the US, 636 in all of Virginia, 15% of US.
p173 1983 Proud Prophet War Game
"declassified" (though heavily redacted) in 2012 allowing Paul Bracken to discuss it
p174 National War College 1946 inside National Defense University 1976
- p176 Bracken 1997 war game, cyberterror attack, one conclusion was move data storage out of Manhattan
p177 Doomsday plane, E-4B Nightwatch
- p179 Doomsday planes can launch all nuclear weapons (sub, bomber, ICBM)
p179 ARGUS infrared imaging
- p182 15 seconds between missile launches (six minutes)
- p183 missiles cannot be recalled after lauhc
p183 FPCON, DELTA highest level alert for attack on military installation
p183 DEFCON against civilian, 5 least to 1 most severe
- p184 Ring 1 4.5 mile radius destroyed, casualties near 100%
- p185 Ring 2 7.5 mile radius ablaze, pine needles and black rubber ignited by flash
- p186 radial inbound winds 200-300 mph
- p187 lethal radiation delays first responders for days
- p188 nuclear flash temporary blindness up to 50 miles away
p189 DISA Defense Information Systems Agency
- p191 100 US nuclear weapons deployed on European NATO bases
- p192 (missing) President has authority to use them
- p193 Russia offended by NATO expansion into former Warsaw Pact nations (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Albania)
p198 Missile Warning Center Cheyenne Mountain Global Operations Center Offutt AFB
p203 TV Journalist: "These two sets of instructions from FEMA contradict one another" what is there to say?
p203 Los Osos 7 miles north of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, 4 miles south of 4 lane California 1
- p204 "Cell phones and computers that were plugged into wall sockets had their microprocessors destroyed
- Some components in the AC adapter might get fried due to the "antenna" between the pole transformer and the adapter, but the DC phone circuit to the phone is thin and DIFFERENTIAL and won't zap the cell phone. The real problem is loss of infrastructure for the phone to connect to.
- p206 "... submerged submarine has no ability to know exactly where it is ..." Bullshit. They have inertial guidance platforms onboard, probably far more accurate than the missile guidance, calibrated but not slaved to GPS
Steven J. DiTrullio 2021 consultant for Draper Labs after 1984
- Not mentioned - the reason for pinpoint accuracy is to detonate a warhead REALLY CLOSE to a silo and vaporize it.
p207 Russian radar near Komsomolsk-on-Amur
p208 Kazbek communication system
- p209 Hundreds of objects seen, decoys to confuse interceptor missiles
- p210 president missing, Joint Chiefs chairman dead, highest ranking Sec. Def. unable to contact Russia
p214-17 Lesson#8 May 1946 Louis Slotin accidental criticality, dies horribly
- p221 In 2018, Putin confirmed *launch on flight forecast*, before arrival and explosion
p225 Dead Hand Sistema "Perimetr", Putin chooses most extreme nuclear strike option
p226 Dombarovsky ICBM base 52 silos, RS-20 missiles with up to 10 500kT warheads
- p228 Russia 312 ICBMs, 1090 warheads ready to launch
p236 3 subs K-114 Tula / Delta IV 16 missiles, 4 warheads each
p237 This image of undersea cables redrawn as "enemy submarine patrols" uhhh...
- p239 in this scenario. complete deterrence failure
- KHL: and if deterrence fails and the US is doomed ... why launch retaliation at all? Skippers should hide the subs, and bargain with surviving democracies (Australia? India? Japan?) to defend them while they rebuild the US
p241 Thomas Schelling rationality of irrationality Arms and Influence pp. 219-233 (1st ed?) at PSU 5th U104.S33
- p244 FEMA sends no more messages, 332M Americans on their own
- p245 European bases NATO bombers take off
p246 US SLBM deliver 32 W88 warheads on North Korea
p248-249 NK surface targets, obliterating Pyongyang region, nuclear facilities, violating Red Cross Rule 42
p252 NK leader in bunker 1900 feet below Mt. Paektu on Chinese border
p255 North Korea Nuclear EMP Attack: An Existential Threat 14p
- excerpt: Former NASA rocket scientist James Oberg visited North Korea’s Sohae space launch base, witnessed elaborate measures undertaken to conceal space launch payloads, and concludes in a 2017 article that the EMP threat from North Korea’s satellites should be taken seriously:…there have been fears expressed that North Korea might use a satellite to carry a small nuclear warhead into orbit and then detonate it over the United States for an EMP strike. These concerns seem extreme and require an astronomical scale of irrationality on the part of the regime. The most frightening aspect, I’ve come to realize, is that exactly such a scale of insanity is now evident in the rest of their ‘space program.” That doomsday scenario, it now seems, has been plausible enough to compel the United States to take active measures to insure that no North Korean satellite, unless thoroughly inspected before launch, be allowed to reach orbit and ever overfly the United States.
p258 Richard Garwin mad king logic
p260 North Korea launches 10,000 chemical weapons at South Korea, 240mm diameter, 8 kg of Sarin in each
p264 William Graham 2008 10% of vehicles not running any more
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- 50 vehicles built between 1987 and 2002 were exposed to a spectrum of EMP blasts (up to 50kV/m in strength).
- 3 out of 50 vehicles shut down while driving.
- All 3 of these vehicles continued rolling until they safely coasted to a stop.
- 1 of those vehicles was disabled completely and would not restart.
- 2 of those vehicles restarted without an issue.
- Many nuisance issues arose from the 50 exposed vehicles including radio interference, strange and erratic behavior from headlights, turn signals, or brake lights, and one vehicle needed to have its dashboard replaced
- My take: 300 megavolt lightning bolts don't kill cars, EMP probably not. 50kV/m means 50V/mm with a "spacecloth impedance" 377 ohms per square; most auto wiring is much lower impedance than that. Might kill the car radio - maybe not.
- p266 fly by wire vulnerable?
- Maybe for poorly designed plastic shell vehicles; metal body aircraft are Faraday cages.
- EMP may cause a vast amount of damage to non-military radios, but military equipment should be designed to take it.
- I equipped much of my home with hospital grade isolation transformers. Power distribution is three wire Romex. Ethernet is mini-transformer isolated, though that only stands off 100 volts or so, and forms a different loop than the power wires. That may be vulnerable ... but I have spares, and the computers are on UPS, again a voltage barrier.
- The real question is how to "volts per meter" of an EMP burst (presumably vertically polarized at the detonation site) couples to mostly horizontal loops of various sizes.
p269 1975 Foreign Policy magazine 1975 Apes on a Treadmill Paul Warnke
- p271-274 hundreds of military bases and citie obliterated
- p276 Likely nuclear strike targets map, image by Michael Rohani, no reference or source
- p277 1000 nuclear weapons - 1000 different targets? One for Los Angeles and one for Coos Bay? No, the military targets top the list, then bomber-capable airports, then ports ... there are WAY more than possible 1000 targets.
p277 Nikita Khrushchev The survivors will envy the dead
- purple prose ensues
- p281 The next 24 months and beyond
- p282 "thousands of rings of fire"
Pages of TTAPS Nuclear Winter
Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War Online 200 page PDF download with account
p283 Owen (Brian) Toon more like 10 years
- p284 Midlatitude northern hemisphere most affected
- p285 Nuclear Little Ice Age
- p285 There isn't enough uncontaminated food and water to go around
- p286 Death of farming, crops (stored dry seeds die?)
- p286 fresh water freezes, foot of ice
- p287 millions of thawing corpses (filters become impossible to make?)
p290 24,000 Years Later
- The radiation poisoning from nuclear World War III has naturally decayed
p291 Göbekli Tepe a manmade tel (tels can be more than 43 meters high)
- p297 It was the nuclear weapons that were the enemy of is all. All along.