The role of geology in a Rus-US nuclear exchange

The author of the article argues for Nuclear "Super Weapons" (he says they will be fielded in the period of 2020-2025) designed to take advantage of 2 main US geological vulnerabilities.

1. Mega Tsunami

First of all, Russia is on the Eurasian continent where is the basic, fundamental part of its territory, on which is located a large part of the population, removed from the ocean and sea. The average altitude almost guarantees protection from flooding even if the catastrophic large-scale phenomena, accompanied by a powerful tsunami (mega-tsunami).

A different picture in the United States. In coastal areas, with a slight excess above sea level, it is the main part of the population - more than 80 percent. On the coast are also located the country's main production facilities. Even relatively weak tsunami the height of several tens of meters, can lead to disastrous consequences for the United States. This was very clearly demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

vulnerable area of ​​the United States from the geophysical point of view is the San Andreas Fault between the Pacific and North American plates. It runs along the coast of the state of California.

In parallel to it are the San Gabriel and San Hosinto faults . This is an area of ​​geophysical instability generating earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter scale. Exposure to sufficiently powerful nuclear warhead can initiate catastrophic events that can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States on the Pacific coast.

Finally, we must not forget about the Atlantic and Pacific transform faults. Lying parallel to the shoreline, respectively, lying along the eastern and western coasts of the United States, they can be a source of a major tsunami that will cause catastrophic damage to a considerable distance inland (up to 500km).


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2. Yellowstone Supervolcano

Another feature of geophysical Russia is that the main part of its territory in Siberia rests on thick (several kilometers) layers of basalt. It is assumed that these platforms are the result of supervolcano eruption, which occurred about a quarter of a billion years ago. Therefore nuclear strikes even if extremely powerful, will not lead to catastrophic geophysical consequences.


Attention is drawn to Yellowstone National Park, where located in the caldera of the same name lies a supervolcano.

According to geologists, it's close to the period of its activation, which occurs at a frequency of 600 thousand years. About as long ago was the last eruption. The power of this supervolcano several orders of magnitude weaker than a similar Siberian one, whose eruption led to the mass extinction of living beings on the planet as a whole.

However, the Yellowstone eruption was for the American continent no doubt, disastrous. Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could erupt at any moment. Signs of growth of its activity are noted. So enough of a relatively small shock, such as the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States - the country would disappear. All its territory would be covered with a thick (several meters or tens of meters) layer of ash.


Source (full article):

Nuclear Special Forces by Konstantin Sivkov
http://vpk-news.ru/articles/24405

Attacking a caldera would be idiotic. The eruption would destroy crop production around the world for at least two years in a row if
it is short lived but it could last for many years and that would bugger humanity, including Russia, totally. This is assuming that
Russia develops some sort of sci-fi crust penetrating nuclear bombs with yields running over dozens of teratons of TNT. This ain't
gonna happen. We'll need some new physics to build such devices first, i.e. they are sci-fi. You can get an idea of the size of
these things by scaling up the Czar Bomba. Energy = amount of hydrogen fused <-- proportional to mass of hydrogen/tritium. A
bomb with a yield of 100 teratons would be too big to move.

People have a hard time grasping how relatively weak are even the most powerful nuclear bombs in affecting the landscape and
the atmosphere. None of them can penetrate through kilometers of crustal rock (mostly basalt). And they can't even force the
weather since the energy they release is a tiny drop in the bucket.

As for the tsunami idea, I have been hearing about this "plan" since forever. Instead of being attributed to some super bomb
it was supposed to be a bunch of regular nukes launched from submarines off the east coast that would swamp New York, etc.
This idea was silly since all this achieve would be to dissipate the bomb energy in the ocean. It would be vastly more effective to
throw the bombs at the target.

An unrelated potentiality in the not too distant future is that the Greenland ice sheet experiences catastrophic collapse and
slides into the sea along the east coast over a substantial span. This will produce an epic tsunami that will do severe damage
to Europe, including water surges approaching one kilometer in some bays where it can get focused. We are talking about
billions and billions of tons of ice. Right now the Greenland ice sheet is being lubricated by surface melt. Meltwater ponds
form at the surface and then develop burrowing drains that flush them all the way down to the base (they do not freeze
as was believed in the past). This process is intensifying and after a certain stage there will be both a weakening of the
ice sheet structure from the years of "pre-conditioning" melt and dramatically increased lubrication. The ice flow rate
can jump catastrophically.

If the warming was more gradual like during the Eemian about 125,000 years ago, then the melt would take thousands of years.
But we have a forced regime where the fun stuff can happen in the next 200 years.

If I understood him correctly, in the Yellowstone super volcano scenario he's arguing for single mega-warhead missiles with greater power than the Tzar Bomb exploded in 1961 (50-100 MT). Unlike the Siberian volcano which is under layers of bazalt rock, the Yellowstone volcano isn'r protected by layers of rock, therefore he thinks it's doable.

There is a single warhead SS-18 version with a 20MT warhead designed to attack hardened targets (NORAD for example)


As far as the Tsunami scenario goes it was researched in Soviet times...I remember reading about plans to set off a nuclear torpedo. I don't think the Tsunami scenario is too far fetched....an underwater nuclear mine would do the trick IMO

Sounds like one of those trash movies which are alligned with Shark-Nado universum, with a big 500m long aligator monster that was rampaging a small of maybe 20.000 population island with a huge vulcano that was literally the entire island and to kill the alligator they tried to use a Minuteman to kill that beast and one of the generals screamed, "Are you crazy that will erupt the Vulcano and destroy the entire island" like the 1.2 MT Minuteman wouldn't destroy that tiny island and kill all population.

So finally someone raised this topic . I read the same article in english on one of my favorite military blogs .


I'd like to discuss it .

1) Yellowstone is a nice target . There is a single warhead SS-18 version with a 20MT warhead designed to attack hardened targets like norad. but satan icbms were dismantled under START Treaty isn't it ?


A Yellowstone supervolcano eruption would kill millions of people in the initial blast and bury much of the United States in volcanic ash. According to some experts, it could cause the end of the world.
The last time a supervolcano exploded in Siberia, 85 per cent of all land species and 95 per cent of all ocean dwellers were completely wiped out.

In 2013 it was revealed that the magma below Yellowstone was two and a half times larger than previously thought, giving the park’s supervolcano the potential to cause an eruption 2,000 times more powerful than Mount St. Helens.


2) He is talking about San Andreas fault line . Russia’s geography protected it from the threat posed by tsunamis , one could be triggered in the United States with an attack on the San Andreas fault.

Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault – 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates … a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States

Sections of the San Andreas fault are overdue for major earthquake activity. Researchers found that three sections of the San Andreas Fault system in Northern California — Hayward, Rodgers Creek and Green Valley — are either near or past their average recurrence interval and have accumulated sufficient strain to trigger earthquakes of magnitude 6.8 or greater .



Sivkov says that Moscow is in a much worse position than it was 50 years ago because it has far fewer allies and cannot compete against the military might of NATO and its allies.

Voevoda/Satan's are still in service....they're meant to be replaced by the new Sarmatian ICBM.

He says that the treaties limit the number of warheads, not the power of warheads...therefore he thinks Russia should develop these mega-warheads as a response to the new cold war


Articles by the same author

http://vpk-news.ru/authors/4962

I've only browsed through the rest and he seems a bit of an alarmist, but has interesting thoughts/ideas

HOW MANY WARHEADS DID SATAN USE TO CARRY AND CURRENTLY HOW MANY WARHEADS THEY CARRY AFTER START ?

WHAT ARE THEIR YIELDS CURRENTLY ? MT ?

i read US dismantled all their KT bombs and Russia also dismantled their KT bombs ? I guess they still have one in service which is due to retire .


chinese have KT Nuclear bombs i guess . i read it somehwere . Will share the links .

the question is if nuclear strikes can cause natural disasters to USA? i think the whiping out of a city like los angeles and new york would be more effective

max steel wrote:HOW MANY WARHEADS DID SATAN USE TO CARRY AND CURRENTLY HOW MANY WARHEADS THEY CARRY AFTER START ?

WHAT ARE THEIR YIELDS CURRENTLY ? MT ?

They can carry from 1 to 10 warheads with up to 1 MT yield.

I think the 20MT version was decomissioned a few years back

George1 wrote:the question is if nuclear strikes can cause natural disasters to USA? i think the whiping out of a city like los angeles and new york would be more effective

I think the calculus is 1 city versus a large portion of the west coast

people will be surprised to know that nuclear weapons are far from enough to in real practice terms ,defeat US or Russia its capabilities to continue fighting if they want to fight to the 50% of their population size. for example..   They can cause major catastrophic disaster in cities ,in the economy.. but it will exterminate life.. not even half. . US latest studies ..estimated about 46 millions americans killed in case of nuclear interchange with Russia.. mostly cities..  

and US will need far more nuclear weapons than Russia to achieve the same damage of Russia for being far bigger land. People only need to remember that the last meteor who hit Russia.. a year or more ago.. was more destructive than TZAR bomb about 100 times or more, and no one was killed.. So in real practice if Russia manage to shutdown US navigational satellites and European ones.. before a nuclear war start.. and US submarines launch attack at Russia..and all thousands of nukes land far away of cities.. then the casualties could be from No civilians killed to very few in the hundreds of few thousands. even after being hit with everything USA have.. IF the nuclear attacks happens in not very populated zones..

So the idea that the world will end in a nuclear interchange between US and Russia is not really true.. even in the case that they all seek to throw all they have..  Tzar bomb which was the biggest bomb.. only covered 50km range. and most submarine bombs only cover from 5km to 15km. people in shelters underground will be safe from the first nuclear impact.. albeit radiation will do the rest if they live near the attack zone.

here is a time lapse of the world of more than 2,000 nuclear bombs detonations test in the entire world between US and Russia and other nuclear powers.. the number of civilians killed ZERO.



Of course the history will be different if the bombs are detonated in Cities , so this is why Russia needs to militarize space and build capabilities to disable of NATO navigation satellites in case of nuclear war withing an hour or less. This will dramatically tip the balance .. because any american submarines that risk launching a nuke without GPS navigation ,could end attacking an allied country by error.

to really defeat a nation like Russia or US.. a ground invasion with tanks will be needed after a full scale nuclear attack . So Russia needs to pay attention at the NATO militarization of its borders.. and deployment of tanks and heavy armored infantry vehicles. US and NATO have already done simulations and already there are Neocons who believe a nuclear war is worth of it..even if 50 millions americans killed. if in the end Russia is defeated.   a
Already US have dropped nuclear attacks against other nations and they were close to drop bombs in  China too in korea war.. so the sick mentality in TR1 "freedom land" still exist to the human extermination.

but this also will depend on which side the civilians side.. in support of the government or against it..  So this is the reason why is so important the Media ,and public opinion.. If Russia have the public opinion in their favor ,the majority of its citizens.. it will not experience a civil total war to disband the nation.. If US start a war ,without public opinion.. make no mistake..
after the first nuclear attack on Russia ,the possibility of a major revolution and rebellion of generals is very high..and the civilian riots in all cities will do more damage and destruction to the government than any nuclear attack . This is why US have many detection  FEMA camps
in every state.. those are to contain civilians who protest the government in case nation wide unrest start.. and divide the nation in parts.

The creation of psunamis should be seen as the last option.. if  US start a major attack on Russia and civilians do nothing and continue supporting the government..and generals do not rebel.. you know is hard for americans to care about their nation actions when they have been
enjoying the higher economy in the world .

about the video.. notice where the so called "good guys" ,TR1's freedom USA was detonating their nuclear weapons.. right next to Soviet Union borders.. to provoke them. i bet not many americans knows how bully nation was USA in those times, detonating nukes right there near Russia territory..  western media always portraying soviets as the bad guys but good guys never do anything bad.

now if you want to see how people simulations of how a total war with nukes will look.. not 100% accurate.. but if it is even 10% accurate.. it will still show how scary such a war will look.
from a war room of NATO or Russia.



probably between 1% to 20% population lost..in US ,Russia,China and baltic nations. it all depends if people seek refuge on time and if the war goes as a limited nuclear interchange of
full scale..  Nukes will not destroy bunkers if they detonated on the air above cities as they were used in Japan to destroy as much industrial infrastructure as possible. What is scare about all this.. is that americans already have experience of nuking nations and later getting control of the destroyed country without much resistance. That could give them false illusion that Russia will welcome peace after US does a limited strike ,while having a thousand of nukes on hand.. something Japan didn't. Im 100% confident.. that no matter how many nukes are used..
either one or all of them.. That Russia will be forced to destroy US defense industry completely
and US navy too at very least.. and invade the bordering nations that US could use to launch an attack on Russia.. Nations like Israel and Turkey will have to be completely destroyed.. to secure Russia access to mediterranean sea and defend its allies.. and saudi oil fields destroyed
to force Europe buy oil and Gas from Russia. In case of nuclear war interchange.. it will be all about survival .. of your country. and internationa laws will mean nothing.. they are a joke today in time of peace.. completely ignored by the west.

Heavy/precision Nuclear strike on fault line can trigger EARTHQUAKE . These fault lines are in high risk zone and underwater  btwn pacific and north american plates AND SERIES OF QUAKES can trigger Tsunami . In 2006 S-e Asia tsunami was triggered due to underwater earthquake . But exactly how much yield of nuke is required to jolt senstive tectonic plates beneath fault lines is unknown i guess .

GarryB wrote:I am a bit cynical about the capacity for a nuclear weapon to create a Tsunami... sure the explosion will be huge and enormous amounts of water will be vapourised... but not that much will be displaced, and it is displaced water that creates the Tsunami... an enormous ball of vapourised water just makes a really big hole in the sea with water flowing back to fill it rather than being pushed out in huge waves.

I have seen photos of ships being tested with nuclear weapons of about 2KT with an enormous plume of water... but no excessively large waves created.

Actually you could do it but not with one single nuke but with several nukes all lined up and detonating one after another. When first explodes it pushes water, the 2nd explodes so the water is pushed further to avoid it to flow back into the hole of the first detonation and 3rd,4th, 5th and so on. Line up several of such lines to push water masses, while the remaining holes are flooded with water from the other side rather dragging water back from your tsunami water masses.

Of course not really useful, when using so many nukes you could aswell just throw them on your enemy and avoid polluding waters which would spread through all waters and pollude for dozens of countries their food resources.

Ok drop fault line plane but you can bomb yellowstone for sure and it has magma in it .

Okay, I'm going to have to de-lurk and shoot down this ridiculous piece of scaremongering. Despite whatever the late, great Sakharov might have claimed, triggering a sea-based earthquake capable of producing a mega-tsunami is beyond current engineering capabilities. He might of been a great nuclear physicist, but his grasp of geology and general physics was obviously lacking.

Before I get into technical specifics, the first and most important point is this: Triggering a mega geo-cataclysm requires that the natural disaster already be present and primed to go off. By which I mean this - you cannot cause a volcano to explode, unless the volcano is already at the point of erupting anyway. Likewise for an earthquake. You can't trigger an 8 or 9 magnitude quake, unless the fault has already stored that energy in advance.

In practical terms, this means that developing a weapon to trigger a natural disaster is completely useless if the natural disaster wasn't already close to occurring - and remember we are talking about major geological events which can take thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years to prime.

Okay. That aside, lets take a look at the specifics.

1) The Yellowstone Supervolcano

To initiate a mega-eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano will require the simultaneous release of magma across the entire caldera. This is an area of approximately 55km x 70km. Assuming you could even punch through the basalt plug (laughable for a surface strike), a localised nuke would only provide a pressure release as per a normal volcano. However, it doesn't matter whether you use a 100MT bomb or fifty of them, since the magma level under Yellowstone is currently 10km down, and the magma chamber itself is only 6-8% full. So there is no pressure there for any sort of eruption, let alone a supereruption.

2) East Coast Mega Tsunami

400 metre waves sweeping the US eastern seaboard clean sounds impressive, but triggering such a catastrophic event is well beyond the bounds of human endeavour. To place the absurdity of the concept into proper context, lets take the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This was the result of a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and produced a rather more modest, yet still lethal, 10m wave on the Sumatran coastline nearest the epicentre, which rapidly dropped off with increasing distance. To generate 400m high waves (average height, not ones not funnelled by inlets) would require an earthquake of hitherto unprecedented scale, not even recorded in geological record. Its more likely to occur as the result of an asteroid impact and would prove to be an extinction level event anyway.

We will ignore the West Coast for the moment as the majority of America's industrial capacity and population live on the eastern side of the continent.

So cutting back on the colossal exaggeration, lets look at the actual science. Tsunami producing earth tremors of 9+ magnitude are called Megathrust earthquakes and only occur along the subduction zone where two continental plates are pushing together. Unfortunately for those who wish to trigger such quakes, the actual 'slip' from which the earthquake begins, occurs at a depth of between 30 and 40 km depth. That is where you'd have to place the 'triggering' nuke.

Now the deepest humanity has ever drilled was the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole, which is a little over 12km in depth. Beyond taking 24 years to complete, the heat and pressure turned the rock at those depths plastic, so that the bore hole itself flowed close whenever they changed the drill head. Thus it is currently impossible to even reach the depths where the nukes would have to be placed - let alone make the shaft wide enough for a 100Mt+ warhead - with the added complication of drilling under more than 2.5km of ocean in the mid-Atlantic.

So assuming the Russians were dedicated enough to build dozens of deep water rigs, placing them along the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Then spend years drilling the bore holes, then remain on station to keep the bores open; as you cannot leave the nukes at the bottom of the shafts, due to them being squashed like peas and fried at 300-400 degrees Celsius (and of course making tritium replacement a bit of a bummer). And assuming Russia could afford to sink most of its fissile material into the project. And assuming the US navy allowed them free rein to complete their blatantly obvious doomsday weapon unhindered. And completely ignoring the fact that detonating the nukes might just as likely release the localised tectonic pressure without causing an earthquake... It still couldn't work!

Why?

Because the mid-Atlantic Ridge is a divergent tectonic plate - it doesn't have a subduction zone, so it will never produce a Megathrust earthquake. The Atlantic 'transform zones' mentioned in the article are not only incapable of producing enough 'lift' in order to create a tsunami, but they are pointing the wrong way to display water towards the States (they run east-west rather than north-south).

Returning to the west coast earthquake zones, I think Russia would have considerable difficulty drilling ultra-deep boreholes along the San Andreas fault, as most of its length runs under California itself, as do the San Gabriel and San Jacinto faults. Though, why bother trying to trigger an earthquake when California is likely to collapse as a state with water supplies approaching exhaustion? The only likely site is the Cascadia fault if the Americans let you drill offshore, but its destructive potential is pretty limited if viewed as a means of hurting the US as a whole.

3) In Conclusion

I hope I have shown that Sivkov Constantine is talking out of his posterior. Not only is this scaremongering of the worst kind, but its painful to see from a man claiming to be a Doctor of Military Sciences. If Russia needs to create an apocalypse, simply and inexpensively, then it only need do one thing - keep its current nuclear arsenal. After all, it already exists and has been paid for.

These la-la-land ideas of triggering Roland Emmerich uber-catastrophes are not only scientifically infeasible, but they would cost trillions, take decades to set up, and to be blunt, be ultimately less destructive then simply loosing an airburst nuke over every major US city.

Thanx for the info but magma in yellowstone isnt 10 km down .

max steel wrote:Thanx for the info but magma in yellowstone isnt 10 km down .

Apologies, I mistakenly cited the maximum depth from memory. Its an average of 7-10 kilometres. An extraordinary episode of Yellowstone caldera uplift, 2004–2010, from GPS and InSAR observations

Read this and what you make of it . Latest : http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7153948

How Yellowstone explosion will harm russia and world ? Will it change the earth's temperature ?

Do you think russia deployed arsenal is enough to turn usa into ash ?


Where are you ftom teshub .? A new member i missed your introduction thread i guess .

max steel wrote:Read this and what you make of it . Latest : http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7153948

How Yellowstone explosion will harm russia and world ? Will it change the earth's temperature ?

The article its based on focusses on mapping the magma bodies linking Yellowstone with the underlying plume, revealing that the lower magma chamber currently has a 2% magma component, the rest being 'just' heated rock. The upwelling geological pressure is normally dissipated by stress relieving earthquakes, escaping mephitic gases and convective cooling. The most recent Yellowstone upthrust was back in 2010 and has subsided pretty quickly. If you look at the cross-section diagram on the page you sent, the current state of affairs is that only the bottom 6-8% of the upper magma chamber is filled with magma.

I don't see any normal scale volcanism having any noticeable effect on either Russia or the US. Both countries have active volcanoes and have dealt with the effects of explosive eruptions. A Yellowstone super-eruption would be devastating, if only due to the climatological effects on agriculture and a cascading failure of food supply to an abnormally high population density. However, there are currently no indicators that such an eruption is close.

Do you think russia deployed arsenal is enough to turn usa into ash ?

No. I think the perceived view of the world's nuclear arsenals is over-rated. Bigger nukes are prone to fusion failure, so most weapons are of smaller and more surgical (tactical) yields. Not only that but the weapons are getting old and less will get through than imagined. There will be launch failures, fouled stage separation, EMP disablements, GPS/GLONASS targeting collapse, counter-missile fire and so on. Also the amount of wildfires started outside of city/base strikes is heavily dependent on the season and ambient weather conditions.

Yet you don't need to turn your enemy's nation to glass to completely collapse their civilisation. A few high altitude EMP bursts is going to do that for you. With the electrical grid down and most modern electronics fried, today's society will self-destruct. The lack of clean water, refrigeration, food distribution and most of all sewage, will claim far more lives than are lost in nuclear fires. The shift to urbanised living has placed the Sword of Damocles over western nation's heads.

So I do believe that Russia holds a credible threat, even if less than a tenth of their missiles get off the ground.

Where are you ftom teshub .? A new member i  missed your introduction thread i guess .  

I live in Sweden. Other than that I'd rather not say. The scent of totalitarianism is in the air.

GB what are your views on his comment ?

max steel wrote:Read this and what you make of it . Latest : http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7153948

How Yellowstone explosion will harm russia and world ? Will it change the earth's temperature ?

Do you think russia deployed arsenal is enough to turn usa into ash ?

It seems that there is more talk about the Yellowstone caldera than it deserves.   So even my sci-fi multi-teraton nukes will
not do much.  Thanks to Teshub for additional explanation.   Supposing we had an actual "primed" caldera, then triggering
the volcanism could be a big deal, like the Toba supervolcano eruption of around 70,000 years ago.   A supervolcano will
release a vast amount, thousands of times more than Pinatubo, of both SO2 and ash.   The SO2 will oxidize to sulfuric
acid in the presence of atmospheric water vapour and will create a fine sulfate aerosol layer in the stratosphere that will reflect
a large fraction of the incoming visible band solar radiation.   The ultra fine component of the ash together with the sulfate
will also have the effect of whitening clouds in the troposphere.   Clouds form thanks to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and not
due to homogenous nucleation since that requires relative humidity to be over 400% which is never observed.   More CCN imply
more water droplets (and ice particles) develop so the mass of the clouds gets redistributed in a way that gives a smaller
average cloud particle (drop or ice crystal) radius.   The result is more scattering and less solar radiation reaching the surface
which will lead to a large temperature drop in the troposphere.   Even the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa produced a 1.2 C drop
in temperature and a year "without" a summer.  

A supervolcano would drop the temperature by over 10 C and the tail of the impact would be much longer.  There would actually
be several years of total crop failure.   Just like 70,000 years ago, humanity would have a near extinction experience.   Billions
of people would die from starvation.   Modern civilization would collapse and there would likely be widespread warfare for food
resources.

Anyway, inducing a caldera eruption is sci-fi BS.   But if it was induced, it would be suicidal.

GarryB wrote:When Russia launches all its strategic nuclear weapons and the US launches all of its nuclear weapons and presumably the Chinese do the same... I think they will have targeted enough human settlements to change civilisation as we know it... to the point where a volcano erupting will only add a bit of colour into the mix.

Things will not be the same... and I doubt the survivors will have learned the correct lessons to prevent it happening again... if we can't control it we seem to want to destroy it so no one else can control it...

I have to say though, I really would be interested in seeing how our country would come out of it. Assuming Russia didn't lob a few our way and the winds proved favourable enough for us to escape the majority of the airborne radiation... We'd probably be the only country on the planet with a semi-functioning government left.

I have a little hint for you guys..
the biggest damage in a nuclear attack will be the population riots..
thats where the real terror will be.. because a nuke will wipe you in a second.
and you will not feel pain.. but if the nation collapse and is without government.

it will be a real disaster.. you will need to fight like in a jungle for food against your neighbors..
then the gangs raping and stealing..no electricity and no fuel for car , thats what is going to really hurt.. THis is why the Feman camps exist.. thousands in all USA mainland.

This are civilian detection concentration camps in case the government lose control
of the civilian opulation. Those camps will be to hold people protesting.

Electricity will go... internet too.. and not all radio and looting in all stores will be
nation wide.