If New York was nuked, would that precipitate WWIII/the end of the world? (conspiracy, brainwash)
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In other words. "If you don't agree with me, shut up".
I did not interpret from the OP that this was just another thread in which everybody was supposed to jump on the bandwagon and rally around the American flag, calling for the US to spread salt on the fields to make it impossible to ever grow crops there, or turn entire countries into skating rinks, which are apparently acceptable responses to the question.
You are currently in the History Forum. There nothing "off topic" about a response that references past historical events in arriving at the prediction that the OP called for. (This topic should not be in the History Forum at all, and most responses (that meet your approval) have not been based on any historical perspective at all.
I am anti- every country that has ever used nuclear weapons to resolve their petty aspirations for global domination, and every country that in the past half a century has formally sent regular troops to fire live ammunition on distant continents to wreak havoc and chaos to create a unilateral and self-serving world order. The complete list of all those countries is as follows:
1. The United States of America.
By the way, let's analyze the OP. "some crazy dictator decides to start WWIII". OK, good enough so far. The question is would some crazy president of the USA complete the project, by escalating the incident to WWIII and end the world as we know it? My answer was Yes, some crazy president would almost certainly assure WWIII or somethng worse, a global dictatorship. If you think that is being anti-American, keep your statements to yourself.
You are trying to appear reasonable but to most of us you just look bitter with an ax to grind. Seems you are the only one bringing your own personal politics to this discussion.
It's an unimaginable scenario, some crazy Iranian or South Korean dictator decides to start World War III by sending one or a few thermo-nukes to hit Manhattan.
Or a SAC geneneral whose precious body fluids have been impurified by fluoridation transmits "Wing Attack Plan R for Robert" to the bombers under his command.
or a sac geneneral whose precious body fluids have been impurified by fluoridation transmits "wing attack plan r for robert" to the bombers under his command.
As many times as I've read this "scenario" I can't possibly fathom what WWIII has to do with anything. Where are the interlocking alliances what would trigger such a conflagration? Where is the mutual suicide pact between Iran and anybody?
Iran has a secret treaty with Wilhelm the Second, whereby if any country that does not recognize German possession of Alsace-Lorraine attacks Iran, Germany will declare general mobilization. When THAT happens, all bets are off.
Personally I'm more interested in the point of departure that results in a nuclear armed SOUTH korea nuking New York.
It's an unimaginable scenario, some crazy Iranian or South Korean dictator decides to start World War III by sending one or a few thermo-nukes to hit Manhattan. The immediately impact kills at least a million. NYC is evacuated, but millions more die from radiation. The US retaliates by obliterating Tehran. Would this spell World War III and perhaps the end of the world as we know it?
I think before North Korea or Iran would ever be capable of such an act, that there is another more likely atomic scenario.
Pakistan attacks India with its nuclear arsenal in an attempt to wipe it off the face of the earth, and the Indians retaliate. In the horror and chaos of this catastrophe, Israel takes the opportunity to zap Iran, or Iran attacks Israel, and a second nuclear holocaust is ignited.
This would leave the U.S. in a very tricky position. It would undoubtedly ignore the Pakistan/India event, but Rightist domestic sentiment would probably force it to become involved in any conflict between Israel and Iran, no matter who had struck the first blow.
Neither event would bring atomic destruction directly to the U.S., though given the size of the events airborne fallout might prove a problem, and the subsequent actions of other large powers could bring the U.S. to presently unforseeable confrontations with them.
Iran has no allies accept Syria. Russia and China use Iran as a leverage only and as a dollar store to sell surplus arms and, trust me, if a nuclear war would happen between Iran and the US then they would stand aside.
Most of the arab states would be happy to see Iran nuked off the map.
That being said, Iran and N. Korea have no long range ballistic missle capability. May I present a more plausable scenario - a nuclear device is brought into NYC somehow by religious or political extreemests and exploded, that device is found to originate from N. Korea or Iran. Now then the question would be regarding the degree of state sponsorship and the question would become of retaliation. That would take days of invistigation and by that time heads would have cooled down.
Using this scenario lets assume that Iran or N. Korea was found somewhat responsible. My guess, depending on the degree of their responsibility, the leadership of N. Korea or Iran would be destroyed. That means tactical nukes possibly, certainly the destruction of the government of Iran or N. Korea. The tricky thing would be assigned responsibility, collecting evidence, convincing our allies, etc. It's hard to beleive, when a person thinks nukes they think the end of the world. But no. It's almost like they afix some magical properties to it. War certaintly, lots of deaths yes, end of the world - no.
It would actually be simpler and cleaner with your scenario. But things won't happen that way.
In the TV show Jericho, the 23 cities where nukes went off had a greater impact that if one city was nuked. The impact of a nuke attack would be as much psychological as physical. It would produce panic and paranoia about who was next. Interestingly enough, North Korea and Iran are blamed and nuked off the map in retaliation. It does not cause a world war. I think these two places were picked because if there are nations which wouldn't be missed it would be them since they have no allies.
A series of localized nukes COULD be done by someone who didn't have long range capabilities, which is why there is a much more possible danger of smaller ground based bombs.
You can go nuke where you think they come from, but this does nothing to keep any not yet set to go off from doing so, and spreading MORE panic.
You are trying to appear reasonable but to most of us you just look bitter with an ax to grind. Seems you are the only one bringing your own personal politics to this discussion.
Yes, I'm the only one, unlike these posters, who are completely free of bitterness and personal politics:
a wingnut country like Iran
the moment we figured out what rogue nation did this, we would likely obliterate it.
before we turn Pyongyang or Teheran into a skating rink,
No building would be left standing. Salt would be sown on the earth so nothing could grow.
we would wipe out their borders and give it away to friendly countries
Not necessarily, depending on the scenario. If the OP also includes radioactive explosives such as "dirty bombs" the death toll would actually be light, with perhaps panic taking more lives then the actualy explosion.
Their are other low yield type nuclear weapons as well. Russia has or had nuclear "suitcase bombs", but they are designed to take out bridges and fortifications, not cities.
Exactly. If someone wanted to do the worse damage they would take out the power grids. Since most are still full of parts built in the earliest days (one massive power failure in the east was caused by a tree falling and causing a surge which took out all the relays) Or damaging water delivery, or as mentioned bridges. Massively obstructing transportation would disrupt our food distribution. People sitting in the dark with an uncertain time when the lights would come on, likely no water as water is often pumped in by electricty, and lack of communications would create both panic and disarray and paranoia about the next one. Reparing infrastructure would be far more disabling than the loss of a single city.
This is why modern warfare is so often directed at civilians over military targets.
I think this thread is an excellent follow up to the recent thread that asked how you feel about the developement of nuclear technology in WW2. The things being discussed here are exactly why I said NO, it was NOT a good idea to build a bomb in the first place.
Now we are at a point where nuclear technology is not only out of the bag, but getting out of control and costing us plenty to keep a lid on. It's only a matter of time before some major city of the world is destroyed at the whim of a madman. Now we approach the age where we have to go to war with a county that has the bomb, just because they have it and the threat is too great to ignore. Either that or ignore the nut-job country in question, and hope they are just carrying out idol threats while they gain more power and reach "untouchable" status. I don't think that's going to work too well in the long run either.
It does not have to be a country either, any well funded organization with corrupt nuclear engineers may be able to buy or build one someday. Maybe not today, but what about 10, 20, 50 years down the road. In the scope of history, the nuclear age is still in it's infantcy. If such an organization is set up in multiple countries, the MAD policy does not work so well. Who are you going to retaliate against if you get nuked ? You end up chasing ghosts for 10 years getting to the people that planned it, while they plot more nuke attacks.
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