metalblue
Well-Known Member
Sounds slightly comforting. But not very. Russia has around 6,800 nuclear weapons, and even if they only launched 10% of them and only 1% of those made it through to their targets, that's still 68 nuclear strikes and hundreds of millions of lives lost.
And worse, I am reminded of van Moltke's quote: "No plan survives first contact with the enemy".
@metalblue - you are spot on with your last paragraph above:
I hope the talks can bring an end to this, they need to be able to give Putin something he can sell - such as joint governance of the disputed eastern regions - not great but sometimes you have to be pragmatic. The west/NATO needs to look at their relationship with Russia and find common ground and work from there. Putin won’t last forever and doesn’t represent the Russian people, we just need to swallow deeply, hold our noses, smile sweetly at him and be nice once the fighting stops and an agreement that is acceptable to Ukraine is found. In the meantime we need to continue to support Ukraine and not pay any attention to Putins rantings, honestly if he wanted to make a nuclear strike he wouldn’t have broadcast it on TV - he sees the west as weak (or did until a couple of days ago) and it’s for the benefit of the flappers to try and create disunity.
Russia has about 400 ICBMs that are estimated to carry about 1200 warheads.
Obviously depending on targets it is estimated that one warhead kills 150,000 and injures 93,000. If all got through it would mean about 204m people are killed and 130m are injured in the west probably less for Russia given its sheer size and population distribution although most are on the western side. So you have a 21% chance of dying and 13% chance of being injured in the west and probably 70+% chance of being wiped out if you are in Russia. Although modern missiles are far more accurate so instead of targeting cities for value they are just as likely to target military installations which would significantly reduce that - estimated to be between 51-88m deaths for the west and Russia. Obviously life will be pretty shit for those that survive for some time so let’s hope we can stop arguing over borders and start agreeing over humanity.