Turkey & Nuclear Weapons

[bobcat]

So an attack on the storage sites - which of course the KGB knew exactly where they were - could have taken out the nukes allocated to the Turks before they ever had a chance to get them out of the bunkers. Especially if they had compromised US or NATO communications and got a heads up for the release request and hit them before the President could respond.

that right there is a good plausible reason for turkey falling out from under the nuclear umbrella. hell with foreknowledge of where the bunkers are located it could even be done with conventional bunker busters.

[James1978]

So an attack on the storage sites - which of course the KGB knew exactly where they were - could have taken out the nukes allocated to the Turks before they ever had a chance to get them out of the bunkers. Especially if they had compromised US or NATO communications and got a heads up for the release request and hit them before the President could respond.

In the case of the gravity bombs, taking out the storage site might not do the job. Toward the end of the Cold War, NATO was starting to move away from keeping the gravity bombs in central storage areas and toward storage in vaults built into the floors of individual HAS. The idea was to shorten the reaction/load time by eliminating the weapons convoys from the WSA to the individual HAS/QRA pad.

Which isn't to say that you can't take out each individual HAS, but they are often more numerous and more spread out than storage igloos. And I believe it would require simultaneously hitting at least five Turkish air bases.

All the above assumes a conventional attack. If we're talking nukes, well that's different.

[The Rifleman]

When I first saw this title, I actually thought it was about the Soviet surprise nuclear attack on Thanksgiving, 1997, thus "turkey and nuclear weapons".... it actually got me thinking quite abit about that topic. Really, why What could they possibly gain I know its off topic, but just the title got me curious.

[Legbreaker]

But was it really all that much of a surprise I mean really, isn't it just the logical next step in escalation of the war
The only surprise may have been in the timing of it (but even that makes sense when you consider many of the emergency services people would have been out of position on holiday with their families).

[The Rifleman]

But was it really all that much of a surprise I mean really, isn't it just the logical next step in escalation of the war
The only surprise may have been in the timing of it (but even that makes sense when you consider many of the emergency services people would have been out of position on holiday with their families).

Well yes, your right, I think that everyone knew that sooner or later, it would happen. But as both sides were gently toeing the line, it was a big step. The story line in the opening books don't give the T-day attack justice. In the modules, it fills in a lot better. If I were the US getting hammered all at once, on a holiday, like they were, I probably would have thought it was the big one.

After all, if all they were after were just production centers, what difference would it make if you hit them a week apart

[Olefin]

Thanksgiving is the biggest travel holiday in the US - so it is a day when a lot of people are visiting family, out of town and not where they normally should be - including a lot of first responders. That would add to the disruption of the attack - i.e. you have the chaos of the attacks and of literally millions of people trying to get home afterward adding to that chaos. And other holidays would add a lot of symbolism to the attack that could make people want revenge even more - i..e Fourth of July or Christmas Day would really be bad ideas for attacks as that would only inflame US desire to hit back and pay them back even more.

And actually hitting on Thanksgiving Day would have also lessened the US civilian casualties - i.e. a lot of people were not at their jobs at the industrial centers that were hit, instead they were at home or grandmas's or wherever celebrating the holiday. And the attacks really werent going for a lot of civilian deaths as their main modus operandi - if they were then the NY attacks would have been on Manhattan Island and Queens and Brooklyn, not the oil refineries.

[The Rifleman]

Thanksgiving is the biggest travel holiday in the US - so it is a day when a lot of people are visiting family, out of town and not where they normally should be - including a lot of first responders. That would add to the disruption of the attack - i.e. you have the chaos of the attacks and of literally millions of people trying to get home afterward adding to that chaos. And other holidays would add a lot of symbolism to the attack that could make people want revenge even more - i..e Fourth of July or Christmas Day would really be bad ideas for attacks as that would only inflame US desire to hit back and pay them back even more.

And actually hitting on Thanksgiving Day would have also lessened the US civilian casualties - i.e. a lot of people were not at their jobs at the industrial centers that were hit, instead they were at home or grandmas's or wherever celebrating the holiday. And the attacks really werent going for a lot of civilian deaths as their main modus operandi - if they were then the NY attacks would have been on Manhattan Island and Queens and Brooklyn, not the oil refineries.

There are some really good points in that. The deaths probably were lower. But where I'm going with this is that all the missle silo operators were on duty. Wouldn't hitting all these major cities at once cause the US leadership to say, oh, crap, they are going for broke, launch them all NOW.

[Legbreaker]

From the three "official" timelines (V1, V2.0, & 2.2):

NATO's theater nuclear missiles were launched against an array of industrial targets and port cities in the western Soviet Union. Throughout October the exchanges continued, escalating gradually. Fearful of a general strategic exchange, neither side targeted on the land-based ICBM's of the other, or launched so many warheads at once as to risk convincing the other side that an all-out attack was in progress. Neither side wished to cross the threshold to nuclear oblivion in one bold step, and so they inched across it, never quite knowing they had done it until after the fact.
First, military targets were hit. Then industrial targets clearly vital to the war effort. Then economic targets of military importance. Then transportation and communication, oil fields and refineries. Then major industrial and oil centres in neutral nations, to prevent their possible use by the other side. Numerous warheads were aimed at logistical stockpiles and command control centres of the armies in the field. Almost accidentally, the civilian political command structure was first decimated, then eliminated. The exchange continued, fitfully and irregularly, through November and early December, and then gradually petered out.

From Howling Wilderness:

In Late November, data from various sources indicated an attack might again be imminent. Congress declared an early recess (ostensibly for the Thanksgiving holiday, but this fooled no one). The teams were sent out once again, and even though some provision was made for families of team members, less than half of the required personnel showed up for duty. Everyone, from the President on down, seemed to think the whole thing was another false alarm.
The day after Thanksgiving, an orbiting military surveillance satellite picked up a number of IR signatures, characteristic of the launch of SLBMs. Within minutes, messages were zipping through established channels and alarms began ringing across the nation.

It seems clear the strikes against continental US occurred at the tail end of the 1997 nuclear attacks. Everyone had probably gotten very used to reports of "yet another nuke somewhere not here" and become quite blas about the whole thing (those not on the receiving end of them at least).
With an established policy of one warhead in retaliation for another, a few dozen missiles fired at the US would not have been enough to prompt a massive response.
We also know from the above quotes that there wasn't all that much of a civilian command structure left at this time. While in Europe the destruction was undoubtedly a direct result of conventional or nuclear weapons, in the US riots and general panic coupled by the draining of manpower for the front lines would have had a similar effect. With government and supporting organisations stripped in this way, a handful of nukes aimed at strategic locations would probably have been enough to at least time what survived over the edge and beyond recovery.

Note also that the attack didn't happen until the day after Thanksgiving, and it wasn't the first time longer range nukes had been used, it was just the first time that we know of nukes being used against the US homeland.

[Panther Al]

From the three "official" timelines (V1, V2.0, & 2.2):
From Howling Wilderness:
It seems clear the strikes against continental US occurred at the tail end of the 1997 nuclear attacks. Everyone had probably gotten very used to reports of "yet another nuke somewhere not here" and become quite blas about the whole thing (those not on the receiving end of them at least).
With an established policy of one warhead in retaliation for another, a few dozen missiles fired at the US would not have been enough to prompt a massive response.
We also know from the above quotes that there wasn't all that much of a civilian command structure left at this time. While in Europe the destruction was undoubtedly a direct result of conventional or nuclear weapons, in the US riots and general panic coupled by the draining of manpower for the front lines would have had a similar effect. With government and supporting organisations stripped in this way, a handful of nukes aimed at strategic locations would probably have been enough to at least time what survived over the edge and beyond recovery.

Note also that the attack didn't happen until the day after Thanksgiving, and it wasn't the first time longer range nukes had been used, it was just the first time that we know of nukes being used against the US homeland.

Not sure how well you know of Thanksgiving over here leg, but it's not, despite what the calendars say, a one day holiday. It always falls on a Thursday, and because of that, Friday is always taken off along with it to make for a long weekend. So for all intents and purposes, its a four day holiday - with Friday being the most dead to the world day of the bunch.

[Legbreaker]

Well then, perhaps it didn't happen during the holiday at all...

The day after Thanksgiving, an orbiting military surveillance satellite picked up a number of IR signatures, characteristic of the launch of SLBMs.

Perhaps it caught most people on the move back to their homes and jobs, away from their hoarded supplies, emergency weapons and carefully laid out disaster reaction plans. http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=3558

[Targan]

Not sure how well you know of Thanksgiving over here leg, but it's not, despite what the calendars say, a one day holiday. It always falls on a Thursday, and because of that, Friday is always taken off along with it to make for a long weekend. So for all intents and purposes, its a four day holiday - with Friday being the most dead to the world day of the bunch.

I didn't know for sure until this post, but I'd always assumed that the Thanksgiving Day holiday would be a long weekend. That's how most of our public holidays work here.

[Bullet Magnet]

Not sure how well you know of Thanksgiving over here leg, but it's not, despite what the calendars say, a one day holiday. It always falls on a Thursday, and because of that, Friday is always taken off along with it to make for a long weekend. So for all intents and purposes, its a four day holiday - with Friday being the most dead to the world day of the bunch.

And don't forget, it's also Black Friday. If the Soviets wanted to reduce the civilian population by 50% or more on this day, they'd target the malls.

[Olefin]

Where it caught them was at Grandma's or their cousins or their parents place - i.e. wherever they had traveled for the holiday. So now you have a huge fraction of the US population - perhaps as high as 25 percent or more - not at home, possibly several hundred miles away, all trying to get home after a nuclear attack, many of them with fried electrical systems in their cars preventing them from starting.

Or caught out on the road, either shopping or going back home and in monumental traffic jams caused by the strikes.

In our game when we did Allegheny Uprising we found a huge traffic jam of nuked cars sitting on the 81 west of Harrisburg that got nuked when the Soviets took out the Army War College with a 100kt nuke as part of the Massacre.

[Jason Weiser]

Or the exact opposite. Everybody's expecting a strike. I mean everybody. People are like a coiled spring, so they're doing what the Pembertons did in HW

"Marsha dear, let's have our folks out here. It's better than them being downtown with all that's happening with the constant alerts. And just in case things get real bad, let's send the kids on a trip with Jim and his kids, they're all friends and he has a fishing cabin. We'll have dinner early."

A lot of families in the suburbs may have simply decided staying home to make sure they had those supplies would be a very good idea.

[The Rifleman]

Or the exact opposite. Everybody's expecting a strike. I mean everybody. People are like a coiled spring, so they're doing what the Pembertons did in HW

"Marsha dear, let's have our folks out here. It's better than them being downtown with all that's happening with the constant alerts. And just in case things get real bad, let's send the kids on a trip with Jim and his kids, they're all friends and he has a fishing cabin. We'll have dinner early."

A lot of families in the suburbs may have simply decided staying home to make sure they had those supplies would be a very good idea.

It isn't the exact opposite. They weren't suspecting a thing. Even President Tanner got nailed.... I think perhaps a few smart families thought otherwise, but overall, its been since the war of 1812 a foriegn power hit the mainland....