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Please keep your anti-American statements to yourself. Thanks.
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.
I think that would be more than enough to provoke say the allies of Iran, say Russia or even China, into joining the conflict. Or perhaps more likely an alliance of Arab/Islamic states.
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.
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?
Just for the record, which our own local government acknowledges, New York City can't actually be evacuated. There are just over 8 million residents of the city, and another couple of million to the city's east on Long Island. Not nearly sufficient routes of exit to get through or out of the city in case of something like a nuclear attack.
So right from the start, the death toll would be way more than a million. As to kicking off World War III, that would depend mostly on the Federal government's response. I should think that most countries suddenly under nuclear attack would be in "reprisal" mode, though.
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?
North koreas lasst missle attempt went about 850 miles
So right from the start, the death toll would be way more than a million. .
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.
It wouldn't precipitate WW3 because no major power is going to go that route.
For example, let's say some radical India steals a bomb and detonates it on Pakistan and then all hell breaks lose? Russia, China, US aren't going to suddenly want to get in on the fun.
P.S. The premise that say Iran nuking NY and the US nuking Iran would be merely unneccessary revenge would be predicated on the idea that after using 1 nuke, they wouldn't be planning on using more. Not exactly sound logic.
Iraq and Afghanistan haven't been very encouraging dress rehearsals for this.
Iran and Afghanistan are NOT examples of TOTAL war not even total conventional war....The US is hamstrung by an unwilling, weak willed populace that precludes us from wageing winnable war under the current conditions...... If (and I think it unlikly) the US got nuked by a "rouge" state the Hue and Cry would be deafening! I think at that point we would be willing to go back to Grandpa's gameplan and bomb them into the neolithic period.....
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