nuclear war

[Mortblanc]

Paul, once again you are talking out your a$$ about things you have no knowledge or training in.

If you simply google the figures you will find that in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb drops more people died in the weeks after the attack, due to radiation poisoning, than died in the initial bast. Those deaths were in a huge area outside the initial blast zone. And we now have much better bombs.

We also have that Chernobyl thing where there was no "blast" yet hundreds died due to direct gamma ray exposure and thousands have died of radiation induced cancer during the decades since. I once read where the Soviets required every pregnant woman in the evacuation area to have an abortion. Those victims were scattered in an exclusion zone the size of Kent and not in the line of sight between the city and the reactor. The Chernobyl "accident" was not even equal to a low grade nuke blast. The Soviets have not released true casualty figures to this day.

There are also numerous incidents after the Soviet Union fall where untrained civilians breeched the plentiful supply of small reactors producing energy for isolated villages and outposts and died of radiation within days. Most of those incidents read like a comic tragedy.

The "after-kill" is a strategic part of each nations' nuclear capability planning. Geopolitically it eliminates the resistance of the population, tactically it deprives the enemy army of access to territory and channelizes movement. That is unless you are fighting an enemy that has no regard for the lives of their troops and figures they can win before the soldiers all die of radiation poisoning.

In the case of GB you would not even need a full Nuke blast to eliminate most of the nation. The dispersal of a half dozen "dirty bombs" up and down the west coast would wipe out all resistance within a month.

But the political thing is much different than you think. Russia views the nuke option as a kid does tipping over the game playboard. If they can't win they will spoil the situation for everyone. They know that retaliation will be swift and total. They also know that the US is not going to make a "first strike", so they are safe until they actually launch something no matter what "conventional options" they apply.

As long as they see the west as a reproduction area for their slave labor force and repository of resources you are safe.