9 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 26.5 ms ] thread
This a low quality article. There is no real analysis of why the US loses so badly, how the US's immense superiority in nukes factors into these simulations, the comparitive battle readiness of each nations common solder (US get lots more experience than Russia or China), etc.
"...superiority in nukes..." Seriously? Is it relevant how many more times one can destroy the planet the once?
So tell me, which US cities are you going to swap for that "immense superiority in nukes"?

It always amazes me that US commenters never seem to think that nukes can go in both directions at once. Certainly the US has lots of nukes. But so do the adversaries.

China, so it appears, has only about 300 nukes. I once did the exercise of using only those 300 nukes on the US's largest 300 cities. By the time I got down to city number 300, I found that that city was only a quite smallish town of roughly 10,000 people. In other words, a mere 300 nukes would completely destroy the US. Russia has 10 times that many.

  never seem to think that nukes can go in both directions at once
Actually, the USA's strategic defense has been predicated on this concept for over two generations, hence the Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident programs.
Nukes don't factor into it. Both sides have enough nukes to destroy each other.
We lost every simulation Japan ran in the 1930s, too. That's why we lost the war and all speak Japanese now.