Most of Russia's land is in Siberia, few people live there. Most of the people live west of the Ural Mountains in the European side of the country. European Russia is smaller in size than CONUS USA. CONUS USA is a little over 8 million sq. kms, European Russia is less than 4 million sq. kilometers.

Boco- You must have missed the point where I said millions of people still die. You push the button first...

I recall the Minuteman III carried three w-78 warheads. If I remember correctly, they were around 350kt. I recall a response we had to Oscar 8 silo in Montana for an A&F nogo. It was fun responding to the silo during that episode with a blizzard just as we got there. I was at KI Sawyer at the time, and they jinned up a KC135 to fly our team out there. We were a centralized support base, and Malmstrom was one of our bases.

Paul- Can you explain what an "A&F nogo" is (or was)?

Minuteman IIs generally carried a 1 megaton warhead so it would make sense that the first land-based MIRV would carry about the same overall weight of reentry vehicle (350ktx3= 1.15 mt). Did they ever tell you the overall geographic "footprint" of targets that those 3 warheads from a single could reach, such as they couldn't be more than 150 miles from each other? Or maybe that's still classified...

Supposingly the nuclear deal between Russia and u s. ended last year... Perfect time to start a war?

Thats my point,all of us living in the hinterland would just carry on with a few minor inconveniences while yall overpops would be wiped out

A&F no go is an error reading in the warhead. It's an arming and fuzing error message, which required us to go in and render it safe.

The Minuteman II carried the w-56 warhead which was about 1 megaton. I don't know that we have any of the megaton warheads anymore. I remember training on the B-53 which was around 9 or 10 megatons. That replaced the B-41, which was around 25 megatons. I don't think they even have the W-28 1.5 megaton bomb. That's the one that I got a dose of tritium from and had to pee in a bottle for awhile.

How big is the Tsar Bomba?

I don't know what that is.

Its the biggest Nuke known.

I don't think I've ever heard of it, or if I have, I've forgotten about it. I'm getting old ya know.

How many would they have to send to hold a beach head on the west coast? They would have to get them across 6200 miles of Pacific without us knowing about it... Land them... Fight to gain a beach head, and then hold it long enough for reinforcements to start arriving.

Satellites using synthetic aperture radar can bounce a signal into open hangar doors and see the aircraft inside... And they can use thermal imaging to see a ship's powerplant heating up before it leaves the dock.

This isn't WW2, you can't hide significant troop movements anymore. We'll know they're getting ready to leave before their grunts have their rice stowed for the trip.

Mike

I just googled it,it was from 1960,50 MT yeild.
I was 4 YO when the russians tested it,in the arctic,lol.

I would have been 11 at that time going to Catholic school doing atomic attack drills going under my desk. LOL, how fruitless that would have been.

It was a 50 megaton yield. And it was insanely big. Completely impractical to deliver in a wartime setting. You couldn't get it on a missile and couldn't get more than one on a plane. It was a "look what we can build" bomb, but not something you could expect to be able to deliver in actual wartime.

Mike

I bet you were more scared of the nuns than the nukes.

lol, my knuckles took a beating with that ruler more times than I'd like to remember.

LOL.

I think landing troops is basically an end stage operation in today's end. Mop up and come nter insurgency. At least against states with advanced militaries. Any kind if observation sites would either be neutralized or there's nobody lefy thats able to make use of them.

all I remember was for two years as kids we were told not to eat snow because of winter radiation fall-out
yellow snow was well known fact
and the spring snow fleas was because of radiation changing insect life