The Russian Debate

[AsGryffynn]

Final-Fan said:

AsGryffynn said:

Technically, you win if your loss is less than the enemy... 

I am aware of this much. However, Russia's non urban population is spread so thinly that it's been discussed that in the event of Russia starting a nuclear war, there would be enough nukes to reduce the US population to a sub hundred thousand number, but Russia's population would probably remain in the million range, even if only a very small figure... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia

With three inhabitants per square kilometer, you're only going to have enough to nuke the major cities because the other locations are near non existent as they are. The only place that would fare similarly would be Alaska... 

Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana all have population densities lower than or as low as Siberia.  Generally speaking, your concept probably applies to the whole region east of the (U.S.A.'s) West Coast states but west of the Mississippi River.  This region is on average more hospitable, I think, to human life than Siberia, but would likely experience worse fallout.  I'm not sure how that would balance out. 

Either way, the better question is, what do you define as Russia "winning" versus the United States in a nuclear war?  Total number of survivors?  Percentage of population reduction?  If its government is totally destroyed, can "Russia" be the winner, even if there is a remnant of the U.S. government left?  Should we factor in the likelihood of a neighbor annexing the remnant instead of helping it back on its feet? 

Well, I took into account that the number of warheads in US stock is probably not enough to target the very sparse selos and rural localities of Siberia, whereas Russian policy is to go for high megatonnage whenever possible, so the fallout would hit the aforementioned regions worse. 

That said, I think we've safely reached the ludicrous part of the conversation where we just go apeshit. My version of winning was basically "who gets hit worse and has a lower ending population". I have little doubt either government is going to make it in some form. Russians have an insane network of underground cities and pathways and strange silos that seem more like hideouts. Americans always could just resort to aircraft carriers or, failing this, the network of refuges and backup command posts. 

The implication is basically that Russia was kind of readying for nuclear war. The US assumed nuclear war would be limited, and so civilian evac networks were not built for a sizable part of the population, whereas Russia had plans to stuff the country underground if the Politburo approved it. Nice to know they didn't and instead invested on the safer and less destructive Dead Hand system. 

Also, I am officially at the end of my rope here. We're thinking about nuking the world solely because a country bought adverts and funded rallies? They must be new here. America did this since the Mexican American war. 

Goatseye said:

LurkerJ said:

An excellent post, I agree with a lot of it.

EVERYONE did something to sway the elections, the democracy of the west is swayed by autocrats of the east and money. This is how it is set up, to be whored and bought by the highest bidder. Anyone with extra cash and enough power can and will sway elections & policies around the world (and why wouldn't they?). News channels like CNN and FOX news report the news in a biased manner to sway elections and opinions, so does Al-Jazzera. You're naive af if you think countries like Qatar & Saudi Arabia will sit on astronomical amounts of cash and sit idly by and not try to have their teeth in sunk into your democratically elected president, and it doesn't stop there. You have lobbyists doing the bidding of governments and corporates around the world affecting internal and foreign policies. Non of this was viewed an attack on US sovereignty, until crooked Hillary lost. 

You don't make sense at all. Lobbying policies is not the same as interfering to change the outcome of people's vote.
And use crooked on people convicted of something. Like Trump when he got fined $10.000.000 by FinCen for not complying with anti-money laundering policies. Or have his kids do the bidding on his crooked real state business and have Attorney General of NY drop fraud charges against Ivanka and Don Jr.

Except the charges are lobbying one way or another. 

McDonaldsGuy said:
Now people are legit talking about NUCLEAR WAR with Russia.

This is even scarier than the Iraq war. People have completely lost their minds just because Trump won.

I think people are unable to fathom the fact that Donald J Trump would've won anyways solely because the country was fed up with the establishment and he was the closest thing they had to a dark horse candidate. If Bernie had won the primaries, he would have probably scored a landslide victory across the board solely due to fact number one: Even Trump admits that it was the indignation of the Bern that helped him win. Many of those supporting Bernie either switched to Stein, voted him in anyways or elected Trump to spite Hillary, since we didn't think about making Mr Ego Almighty president as much as we were determined to make Hillary NOT be. 

Also, people despise racist Trump even though he's no more racist than, say, Dubya... If he can go through a term without starting another war, then he will be better than the previous Republican president.