City of Angels? (moved from archive)

[Legbreaker]

Actually I have the canon to back me up on what nukes were actually used - i.e. Allegheny Uprising confirming that the only nukes that hit in PA were the ones on the refineries near Philly

One state does not detail an entire nation.
Also, Urban Guerrilla is only detailing one relatively small area directly involved in the module. The rest of the state is glossed over.
It also does not rule out other strikes, and actually states "Florida was hit by a series of selective nuclear strikes..."

Want more evidence How about Howling Wilderness which specifically states "With certain exceptions, only places that received .5 megaton or more are covered here."
Also, "represented by the megaton(Mt) rating of the weapons exploded there (not necessarily as a single weapon)".

Going back to the actual warheads in the missiles most commonly carried by Soviet boomers at the time, their yield is either 100 kt or 200kt. That's a LOT of warheads spread around, even if you just dump them on only those locations which received .5 Mt or greater. As has been discussed many, MANY times in the past, there's loads of potential targets which deserve a nuke, but don't require an ICBM with their correspondingly larger (usually over 250 kt) warheads.

Again, the books only detail the larger strikes and leave the individual Referee the freedom, even duty, to allocate smaller hits as they see fit.
Note that all versions include nuclear craters as a possible random encounter with no restriction on where they can be found. Only France and Australia (according to the scenario "What's Polish for G'day") have not been hit, although that information is really just anecdotal.

Therefore your proposition that all nuclear targets in the US are already listed in the books is clearly and definitively proven wrong.

[kalos72]

I think Leg you are assuming the developers KNEW the size of all the different warheads and the like when they wrote it.

There is almost ZERO documented cases of nuke sites NOT on the cannon list...and with the one exception of Shreveport, they are ALL military/government or oil refining related.

I think its not a reach to say, if its not on the list it didnt happen.

Now of course, its your game, play it how you like as always. But if there were hundreds of other 100kt hits, we would be playing GammA World...

[Legbreaker]

Except warhead yields were known at the time of writing, at least well enough for the purposes of writing the books, and as is stated clearly in black and white in several books, ONLY STRIKES GREATER THAN 0.5 MEGATON ARE LISTED.
Absence of evidence in this case particularly is absolutely not evidence of absence.

[rcaf_777]

As has been discussed many, MANY times in the past, there's loads of potential targets which deserve a nuke, but don't require an ICBM with their correspondingly larger (usually over 250 kt) warheads.

Question, after years of war how many booomers and bombers would be left in the US and Soviet inventory and how many mobile launchers are left

[Olefin]

"Want more evidence How about Howling Wilderness which specifically states "With certain exceptions, only places that received .5 megaton or more are covered here."
Also, "represented by the megaton(Mt) rating of the weapons exploded there (not necessarily as a single weapon)".

Yes and those exceptions are noted everywhere in the list - which is why they showed what the mega-tonnage was for those strikes

I am taking the list as being complete - what you see is what you get - and the Urban Guerrilla, Allegheny Uprising and Red Star Lone Star modules match up with the listed attacks - and Urban Guerrilla does a great job of detailing out exactly what HW meant by not necessarily as a single weapon

i.e. the 1 megaton attacks in Florida were actually a series of ten 100 kiloton strikes

thus the canon modules and the HW description match

And one state is very indicative of the rest of the US - the FMC plant in York, the Macungie Mack plant, Three Mile Island, the National Guard bases in PA are all ones that if the Soviets used smaller nukes all would have been big time targets - and yet none of them were hit - not even cities like Harrisburg (i.e. the bridges over the Susquehanna) or Pittsburgh with vital transportation links were hit

so if there were no other strikes at all on those areas then the idea of large or even medium scale use of smaller nukes to hit targets in the US is basically repudiated

if they had done that then most of the targets I mention above would have been radioactive debris and rubble - yet not one of them was hit - the fact that the only plant in the US making SPG, Bradleys, M88's and M8 Bufords is untouched and that the bridges over the Susquehanna are intact alone shows that the Soviets did not engage in the use of smaller weapons outside of the HW canon - and keep in mind the attacks in Maryland which were detailed - i.e. meaning there is no lack of delivery of weapons into that area - and yet the state, outside of Philly, Per Canon, is untouched

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Wasn't there something in one of the books that basically said the writers decided to leave some nukes unaccounted for so that individual Referees could add a few more targets to the hit list if they wanted

[Olefin]

Oh I agree with you SSC (hey thats a long name to type) - if an individual referee wants to add more nukes thats up to him - except in places like PA or northern to central FL where the canon modules basically dictated what got nuked and what didnt (i.e. Allegheny Uprising says it plainly - the only nuclear targets in PA were the refineries in Philly - thats a fact if you want to stay with the canon) - but if you want to disregard the canon you can add as many nukes as you want

but otherwise its up to the referee what he wants to do - but one big reason I dont see more nukes hitting the US is the simple fact that doing so would probably have led to the final all out exchange that would turn the world into Aftermath - either the war is a limited exchange or its goes general - and hitting every target you can think of with nukes pretty much means the world is a smoking radioactive ruin

now you can play the game that way if you want - but the canon nukes did more than enough damage all on their own

[kato13]

Wasn't there something in one of the books that basically said the writers decided to leave some nukes unaccounted for so that individual Referees could add a few more targets to the hit list if they wanted

There is the note about listed strikes being over 500kt in both the BYB and Howling wilderness (not sure if it is in the challenge articles that both of these were based on).

My issue with that is that only around 8% of the USSR long range warheads were under 500kt. So I personally would only add an extra 10% or so of the US and Canadian Lists. Nato had way more sub 500KT warheads (due to greater accuracy), but the tit for tat nature of the strikes leads me to add a similar number to the USSR.

Note the above logic applies is strategic strikes only. West of the Urals you can also add tactical strikes as units from both sides were inside the Soviet Union when the exchange started.

Of course if you want to say the USSR had more smaller warheads that is cool, I just try to use real world data whenever I can.

[Olefin]

For instance one place you could see battlefield nukes being used in the US or Canada would be with the Soviet forces that you see invading Alaska, Canada and trying to get to Seattle -but as far as I can see no nukes are mentioned in any of those units histories - i.e. you dont see the US nuking the Soviets or the Soviets bringing battlefield nukes with them

and there are canon smaller nukes as well - lots of the refinery strikes were 250kt or warheads with 100kt to spread out the 1 Megaton total

but the issue is as Kato said - the Soviets really didnt have much in the way of lower kt nukes back then - i.e. their sub nukes were so inaccurate they were using citibusters not small nukes - thats one reason I can see the Lima strike not hitting the tank plant by the way - i.e. that it missed so badly that it didnt hit the plant at all even considering the size of the warhead