Australia Twilight War & After...

[Jason Weiser]

As would I James. Nurrungar probably not, it's an early warning facility associated with the DSP, which is not something the Soviets wanna screw with considering the nature of the T2K exchange.

[boogiedowndonovan]

"Candygram!"

sorry couldn't resist, and no, I am not saying Leg is Mongo or Webstral is Sheriff Bart...

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Ever heard of Pine Gap I'd be shocked if it wasn't on the Soviet target list.

Yeah and that's just one of the places that were on the target list.

There was also the Harold Holt US Navy submarine communications base near Exmouth in Western Australia that provided naval communications as far afield as the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and the western part of the Pacific Ocean.

There was also the Australian Army communications base in Melbourne that provided direct comms from Australia to Canada, the UK and the USA. One of it's secondary functions was to provide alternate comms for any of those three northern hemisphere nations to any of the other ones should their normal comms go down.

There were some others that aren't common knowledge but in general, there were at least five potential targets for Soviet nukes and two of them were in major Australian cities.

Edit:
A quote from Current Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 59, No. 7, December 1982, pp. 14-26 by Brian Martin titled "The global health effects of nuclear war"
In the main, the section quoted below was lifted from the following source:-

Desmond Ball, 'Target Australia No 1: Pinpointing the US Installations', Pacific Defence Reporter, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 1981, pp.25-33; D. W. Posener, 'Target Australia No 3: Planning for Radiological Defence', ibid., pp.42-52; Desmond Ball, 'Limiting Damage from Nuclear Attack', in Desmond Ball and J. O. Langtry (editors), Civil Defence and Australia's Security, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.

"The prime targets in Australia are the United States military bases at Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North West Cape. Attacks on these bases would kill perhaps a few thousand people. There is a smaller chance of attacks on Cockburn Sound and on Darwin RAAF base, which are hosts for United States strategic nuclear ships, submarines and aircraft. Nuclear bombing of these two facilities, which are close to the population centres of Perth and Darwin respectively, could kill up to one hundred thousand people, depending on the wind direction at the time. Perhaps least likely, but certainly most devastating, would be nuclear attacks on major population centres. For example, the ports of major Australian cities could well be bombed if United States warships carrying strategic nuclear weapons were in harbour. Major population centres might also be hit as a consequence of attacks on associated military or economic facilities. Such attacks could kill from a few hundred thousand to several million people."

[RN7]

Weren't all these potential targets in Australia covered in my list

[Webstral]

Perhaps independent confirmation was needed for some. Your list was quite good, RN7.

[Jason Weiser]

My attempt at a list...YMMV

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Weren't all these potential targets in Australia covered in my list

Not diminishing or disputing your list, trying to add weight to it by showing that like any country that was allied to the UK and US, Australia too was on the target list no matter how insignificant we might have seemed during the Cold War.

While the ANZUS treaty has been mentioned, Australia was also part of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) until it's end in 1977. SEATO was a directly anti-communist pact developed from the Truman Doctrine.

We are still part of the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA), a series of defence relationships established by a series of bilateral agreements between the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Australia, by virtue of British colonization, is intimately tied in with the UK and the US. While not part of NATO, we are definitely part of the allied nations for the UK and the US. While that may or may not rate an immediate nuking, it certainly means we were kept under observation by the Soviets especially after being actively involved in attempting to stem Communist influence in Korea, Malaya and Vietnam.

[Legbreaker]

There is now a target identifier with the label oeLegbreakers house. When asked why I wanted to invest a 20Mt warhead on a ground burst in the Australian boonies, I replied,

oeIf were making any plans at all to hit Australia, this guy has to go. Hes not the sort we want to leave alive. I say we nuke the site into orbit. Its the only way to be sure.

Awww, only 20mt I feel so.....slighted! Surely I'm worth more than that!

[Webstral]

Awww, only 20mt I feel so.....slighted! Surely I'm worth more than that!

For what it's worth, I asked for three warheads of 20Mt each. There was some grumbled mention of diverting nukes from targets like land-based ICBMs, overkill, and the like... They just don't know you like we do.

[Targan]

Why do you think I moved to Tasmania where the air is the cleanest in the world and there's no nuke targets

I'd always assumed it was due to the lack of extradition treaties with the rest of Australia

[RN7]

My attempt at a list...YMMV

For those of you who think that Australia survived T2K without much nuclear damage then Jason's list must be a disapointment!!

The combined population of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Newcastle, Geelong and the other targets is about 13 million people even in the 1990's. It includes most of Australia's manufacturing capacity, oil refineries, major sea ports, strategic intelligence and communications facilities, airports and air and naval bases.

What survives of note

Major cities over 100,000: Gold Coast (QLD) (probabaly damaged from strike on Brisbane), Wollongong (NSW), Sunshine Coast (QLD), Hobart (TAS), Townsville (QLD), Cairns (QLD), Toowoomba (QLD), Albury (NSW/SA), Launceston (TAS) and Ballarat (VIC). Basically NSW, Victoria, South Australia, southern Queensland and Perth gets hammered. Tasmania, northern Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory outside of Perth and Darwin are the best places to be.

Oil Refineries: The Exxon-Mobil refinery at Alton (Vic) 75,000 bbl/d and the BP refinery at Bulwer Island (QLD) 90,000 bbl/d. But both probably damaged from nuclear strikes on Melbourne and Brisbane.

RAAF Bases: RAAF Curtin (WA), RAAF East Sale (VIC), RAAF Pearce (WA) (probably damaged from strike on Perth), RAAF Scherger (QLD), RAAF Tindal (NT), RAAF Townsville (QLD), RAAF Wagga Wagga (NSW) RAAF Williams (VIC) (probably damaged from strike on Melbourne) and Woomera (SA)

Naval Bases: HMAS Cairnes, HMAS Stirling (probably some damage from the strike on Perth).

[Legbreaker]

Wollongong is high priority on my list of targets due to it's coal mining and heavy industry. It may survive if the warhead hits a couple of miles off course inland (the escarpment might partially protect it), but I doubt it.

[Jason Weiser]

True, but without the oil from the now dead refineries, the coal mining and manufacturing is coming to a screeching halt. It was an argument Chico and I had, do you take out the tank plant, or the oil refinery providing fuel for the tanks and power for the plant

I remembered that in 1944-45, as the Allied bombing campaign switched to hitting Germany's synthetic oil refineries, you had Germany making more fighters and tanks than ever...that just sat where they were, with no gas to power them....

Sure, there's two refineries left, but they are low output, probably damaged by the blasts from other attacks and there's a lot of competing priorities now for whatever gasoline is left.

[Targan]

For those of you who think that Australia survived T2K without much nuclear damage then Jason's list must be a disapointment!!

Well, yes. If we go off that list with every warhead doing roughly the level of damage to it's target that it was intended to, that's it, game over for Australia as the nation is now. Pretty much permanently. I guess the people that came here after the Twilight War and founded whatever nation or nations that came to exist on this continent might still use the name Australia but anything resembling my Australia in terms of its culture, society, governmental institutions would likely be gone. The Australia described in Traveller: 2300 sounds very much like the direct descendent of the pre-Twilight War Australia so for me it couldn't have been so thoroughly cleansed by nuclear as that list suggests. I happily recognise that not everyone regards T2300 as a believable future timeline for the T2K universe but I do.

What survives of note

Naval Bases: HMAS Cairnes, HMAS Stirling (probably some damage from the strike on Perth).

Are we going off your list or Jason's According to Jason's list HMAS Stirling is literally carpet-nuked. Coming up with feasible Twilight War strike lists is quite a tricky process and I wouldn't expect everyone who assembles a strike list is going to have the time or patience to make themselves extensively familiar with the geography every every target. But the strikes listed for the Perth area in Jason's list are a fairly obvious case of massive overkill. Two of the three targets listed (Kwinana Refinery and HMAS Stirling) are about 7km apart and face each other unobstructed across protected, open water and between them receive six (count 'em, six!) 800kt warheads.

Just... why Why would you pour a combined 4.8mt of nuclear destruction onto an area less than 10km across which is completely flat and not hardened against that sort of attack One warhead would do all the damage needed, but why not say two for good measure. And lobbing three 800mt warheads all at Perth Airport Is there a vast hidden subterranean military-industrial facility buried under there And why would you throw three warheads at one airport but not throw even one at the biggest RAAF fighter base on this part of the continent, RAAF Pearce, which is just north of Perth

[Jason Weiser]

Well, yes. If we go off that list with every warhead doing roughly the level of damage to it's target that it was intended to, that's it, game over for Australia as the nation is now. Pretty much permanently. I guess the people that came here after the Twilight War and founded whatever nation or nations that came to exist on this continent might still use the name Australia but anything resembling my Australia in terms of its culture, society, governmental institutions would likely be gone. The Australia described in Traveller: 2300 sounds very much like the direct descendent of the pre-Twilight War Australia so for me it couldn't have been so thoroughly cleansed by nuclear as that list suggests. I happily recognise that not everyone regards T2300 as a believable future timeline for the T2K universe but I do.



Are we going off your list or Jason's According to Jason's list HMAS Stirling is literally carpet-nuked. Coming up with feasible Twilight War strike lists is quite a tricky process and I wouldn't expect everyone who assembles a strike list is going to have the time or patience to make themselves extensively familiar with the geography every every target. But the strikes listed for the Perth area in Jason's list are a fairly obvious case of massive overkill. Two of the three targets listed (Kwinana Refinery and HMAS Stirling) are about 7km apart and face each other unobstructed across protected, open water and between them receive six (count 'em, six!) 800kt warheads.

Just... why Why would you pour a combined 4.8mt of nuclear destruction onto an area less than 10km across which is completely flat and not hardened against that sort of attack One warhead would do all the damage needed, but why not say two for good measure. And lobbing three 800mt warheads all at Perth Airport Is there a vast hidden subterranean military-industrial facility buried under there And why would you throw three warheads at one airport but not throw even one at the biggest RAAF fighter base on this part of the continent, RAAF Pearce, which is just north of Perth

Ok, some notes, I chose the SS-18m5 as it had a 16,000km range thus the oomph to GET to Australia. It's the longest ranged ICBM in the Soviet arsenal. It's got 10 800kt warheads. So, sadly, the overkill factor is a given.

I double teamed a lot of targets on the assumption one or more warheads might fail to fuze. It was a Soviet preoccupation. Not to mention their warheads tended to be higher yield to make up for their higher CEP.

As for Perth Airport, I wasn't sure if RAAF Pearce had such a role. I can switch that. I hit the airport as the Soviets would see it and say "Ah, B-52s could land there comrade".

To do an airfield, you want to parcel out three per runway. One warhead at either end and a third right on the middle.

Finally, in terms of overkill...it's the Soviets When have they not been into overkill