I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
Compiled By Ewa Historian John Bond
What A Nuclear Missile Attack On Hawaii Would Look Like
“The mountains will reflect the blast back onto the target. Most homes in Honolulu are wood-frame construction, so there is a significant chance of a firestorm following the blast which was what really devastated Hiroshima, much more so than the blast.”
“The fallout can be worse in terms radioactive exposure than the blast itself because it can come from hundreds of miles away.”
“Civil defense will only make a difference for a small number of people at the margin"
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2018/01/what-nuclear-missile-attack-hawaii-would-look/145319/
Minutes after the people of Hawaii received an emergency alert on their phones last week, they began calling loved ones to issue tearful goodbyes and putting their children in storm drains . This tells you that the government has a long way to go to better educate people about the realities of nuclear attack.
Hawaii, for all its beauty, is a relatively poor location to experience a nuclear strike. Its isolation offers little chance for swift evacuation and would likely complicate government efforts to provide medicine and food relief. Its prevailing high winds could have an unpredictable effect on the dispersal of radiation. Yet there is much that government officials could do that might reduce panic before a strike and hardship afterwards.
Plug those variables into Nukemap, a tool from Alex Wellerstein for approximating the devastation of nuclear events, and a terrible picture emerges: such a strike would kill nearly 158,000 people and injure 173,000 more.
Which kind of explosion is it more likely to be? Says Lewis: “it would be an airburst. If the warhead hits the ground, it’s going to splatter. The only question is what the optimal height would be given the sort of damage you want to maximize. For a 200-kiloton device, the optimal height to maximize blast would be between 1 and 2 kilometers.”
Escaping death beyond horror in Hawaii: People running for shelter refused at Walmart, but welcomed at Home Depot
Walmart closed their doors yesterday morning to people in Hawaii, panicking over the imminent ballistic attack warning message displaying on their phones, and trying to find a building to shelter. Walmart kicked everyone out of their stores to their parking lot, so did Target and 24-hour Fitness in Hawaii. A commercial establishment living up to the spirit of Aloha was Home Depot. They invited people to seek shelter in their hardware stores.
Yesterday a father put his daughter in a manhole to protect her, Pearl Harbor went on Alert with the false alarm, other parents hid their children in bathtubs to protect them, people out walking fell and hurt themselves trying to get to shelter, people got out of their cars and hiding underneath their vehicle, and the stories go on and on.
Waikiki Hotels told their guests to stay indoors away from the windows and shut window shades; other hotels in Maui pushed hotel guests into their basements where families with their crying children stayed put in panic.
To make it worse some local emergency centers triggered air rade sirens on their own without seeking re-confirmation. The nuclear alarm was coming three ways: Phones, TV, and sirens – all with the assurance “This is no drill.”
How to Survive a Possible North Korea Nuclear Strike in Hawai‘i
Hawai‘i residents are used to scrambling to the grocery store to stock up on bottled water and disaster supplies in preparation for a hurricane. Now the Hawai‘i State Department of Defense recommends stocking up on a 14-day emergency food supply to prepare for a possible missile attack from North Korea.
“Everyone can prepare for this type of hazard the same way they would prepare for another natural disaster,” says Lt. Col. Charles Anthony, Hawai‘i state Department of Defense spokesman. “Their emergency preparedness kit should be virtually identical.”
To alert folks to the different threat, the state’s Emergency Management Agency announced it will begin each month testing using an “attack-warning” wailing siren that hasn’t been used since the Cold War ended in the 1980s.
Here’s a hint: If you hear the sirens, duck and take cover. There are no designated fallout shelters in Honolulu, so go inside a nearby building and stay there. If you’re at home, then stay home, Anthony says. Just avoid windows and, whatever you do, the department warns, “DO NOT look at the flash of light.” Following the detonation, the department recommends remaining in the shelter until “you are told it is safe to leave or two weeks (14 days) have passed, whichever comes first.”
“If people are in shelters, we’re quite confident that a lot of people should be able to survive without dealing with the impacts of radiation sickness,” Anthony says.
What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated on Oahu?
https://thebulletin.org/2019/09/interview-with-alex-wellerstein-on-nukemap-vr/
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2017/07/13/the-reinventing-civil-defense-project/
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap3d/#
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/missilemap/
MISSILEMAP is an interactive data visualization by Alex Wellerstein, an assistant professor of Science and Technology Studies in the College of Arts and Letters at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
MISSILEMAP is designed to make it easy to see the relationship between missile range, accuracy, and warhead size. It is especially developed for assistance in understanding the power of nuclear warheads and long-range missiles.
For more information about using this application, the making of this application, the limitations of the underlying mathematical models, and various simplifying assumptions applied to this visualization, please read the FAQ.
For more details about the explosive power of nuclear weapons, see NUKEMAP.
China Has ‘First-Strike’ Capability To Melt U.S. Power Grid With Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon
The phenomenon of a large electromagnetic pulse is not new. The first human-caused EMP occurred in 1962 when the 1.4 megaton Starfish Prime thermonuclear weapon detonated 400 km above the Pacific Ocean. Starfish Prime resulted in an EMP which caused electrical damage nearly 900 miles away in Hawaii.
Last week, the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security issued a scary report on China’s ability to conduct an Electromagnetic Pulse attack on the United States. The key takeaway, according to Dr. Peter Pry, executive director of the task force, is that China now has super-EMP weapons, knows how to protect itself against an EMP attack, and has developed protocols to conduct a first-strike attack, even as they deny they would ever do so.
Dr. Pry outlines how China has built a network of satellites, high-speed missiles, and super-electromagnetic pulse weapons that could melt down our electric grid, fry critical communications, and even takeout the ability of our aircraft carrier groups to respond.
The phenomenon of a large electromagnetic pulse is not new. The first human-caused EMP occurred in 1962 when the 1.4 megaton Starfish Prime thermonuclear weapon detonated 400 km above the Pacific Ocean.
One hundred times bigger than what we dropped on Hiroshima, Starfish Prime resulted in an EMP which caused electrical damage nearly 900 miles away in Hawaii. It knocked out about 300 streetlights, set off numerous burglar alarms, and damaged a telephone company microwave link that shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.
A report done while Dr. Pry was a key member of a congressional EMP commission found that an EMP attack on the electric grid could lead to a huge number of deaths.
How to fight a war in space (and get away with it)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/26/725/satellite-space-wars/
In March, India became only the fourth country in the world—after Russia, the US, and China—to successfully destroy a satellite in orbit. Mission Shakti, as it was called, was a demonstration of a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon (ASAT)—or in plain English, a missile launched from the ground. Typically this type of ASAT has a “kill vehicle,” essentially a chunk of metal with its own guidance system, mounted on top of a ballistic missile. Shortly after the missile leaves the atmosphere, the kill vehicle detaches from it and makes small course corrections as it approaches the target. No explosives are needed; at orbital speeds, kinetic energy does the damage.
The idea of shooting down satellites has been around as long as satellites have. The first (failed) ASAT test, by the US, was back in 1958, less than a year after the launch of Sputnik. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviets both developed sophisticated anti-satellite weaponry. The US had missiles that could be launched from fighter jets (successfully tested in 1985) as well as nuclear-tipped missiles capable of obliterating enemy satellites. China’s own first successful ASAT test was in 2007.
This Is How a War With China Could Begin
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/opinion/china-taiwan-war.html
First, the lights in Taiwan go out.
If the United States gets embroiled in a war with China, it may begin with the lights going out here in Taipei.
Tensions are rising across the Taiwan Strait, and there’s a growing concern among some security experts that Chinese President Xi Jinping might act recklessly toward Taiwan in the next few years, drawing the United States into a conflict.
The main worry of military planners here isn’t so much a full-scale amphibious invasion. Rather, they fear the mainland sowing chaos and disrupting the economy as a way of trying to bring Taiwan to heel.
Hence the concern about a cyberattack that would take out Taipei’s electric grid. Or sabotage of the underwater cables that bring data and internet to Taiwan. Or interference in the South China Sea with tankers carrying oil to Taiwan.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-10/could-china-invade-taiwan-under-president-xi-jinping/12743106
Taiwan: China's next target? | DW Analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkuNWDG3yNM&feature=emb_logo
U.S. Military Has Deployed New Nuclear Weapon That Has Experts Worried About War
https://www.newsweek.com/us-new-nuclear-weapon-experts-worried-1485150
The United States has deployed a new low-yield nuclear warhead that experts warned could increase the likelihood of a conflict going nuclear, according to a new report.
The Federation of American Scientists reported Wednesday that the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead was supplied to Ohio-class USS Tennessee ballistic missile submarine, which deployed to the Atlantic Ocean from Kings Bay, Georgia, late last month. The report estimated that the new warhead was fitted on at least one or two of the vessel's 20 Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles, each of which could carry up to eight warheads.
The report was authored by military analyst William M. Arkin and Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project director Hans M. Kristensen. Earlier this month, Arkin authored a Newsweek article featuring quotes by Kristensen on how the recent introduction of the W76-2 was the result of Pentagon planning a potential first strike scenario against adversaries
While the authors of the February 2018 Nuclear Posture Review said that the new warhead was "not intended to enable, nor does it enable, 'nuclear war-fighting.' Nor will it lower the nuclear threshold," critics have long argued that such a tool could be viewed as more usable in the event of a potential war scenario.
The W76-2 is estimated to produce about an explosive yield of about five kilotons, about a third of that produced by the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the U.S. military in the final days of World War II in August 1945. Other Trident missiles are equipped with either the W76-1, which produces around a 90-kiloton blast, or the W88, capable of unleashing around a 455-kiloton yield.
Though the W76-2 may appear milder in comparison, analysts point out just how destructive such a weapon really is in comparison with non-nuclear assets. Writing for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Publishing Manager Andrew Facini said Tuesday that "it's worth noting that a six-kiloton weapon is still 500 times more powerful than the most powerful conventional explosive in the American arsenal."
What war with China could look like
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/09/01/what-war-with-china-could-look-like/
Pentagon war planners can envision a conflict with China starting in any number of ways.
For example, they fear a scenario that might involve a mass of Chinese military forces posturing along China’s coast near Taiwan and the aggressive reorientation of Chinese missile systems that would start setting off alarms in Washington, D.C.
Top military leaders in Indo-Pacific Command would brace for reports of cyber attacks, satellites shutting down, vessels crowding and swarming various ships and ports across the South China Sea.
More than a dozen experts contacted by Military Times described how this hypothetical nightmare could erupt fully, perhaps as Chinese missiles start hitting targets in Taiwan. A conflict could spin out of control quickly as sensors across the region light up with simultaneous events, stretching the United States and its allies in every imaginable domain all at once.
China and America at war?
It’s a global contingency that Pentagon planners are now studying more than ever before, as both the U.S. and Chinese military are setting up more tripwires across the Pacific Rim that could draw the world’s two largest powers into open conflict.
During a recent trip to Hawaii, Defense Secretary Mark Esper outlined the rising tension between the U.S. and China as the latter looks to extend its military might outside its borders.
The Chinese military “continues to pursue an aggressive modernization plan to achieve a world-class military by the middle of the century,” he said Aug. 26 at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. “This will undoubtedly embolden the PLA’s provocative behavior in the South and East China seas, and anywhere else the Chinese government has deemed critical to its interests.”
Would China Use Nuclear Weapons First in a War With the United States?
China has been exceptionally clear about its intentions on the possible first use of nuclear weapons. On the day of its first nuclear test on October 16, 1964, China declared it “will never at any time or under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons.” That unambiguous statement has been a cornerstone of Chinese nuclear weapons policy for 56 years and has been repeated frequently in authoritative Chinese publications for domestic and international audiences, including a highly classified training manual for the operators of China’s nuclear forces.
The language, carefully considered in the context of the entire book, articulates a strong reaffirmation of China’s no first use policy. But it also reveals Chinese military planners are struggling with crisis management and considering steps that could create ambiguity with disastrous consequences.
Towards the end of the 405-page text on the operations of China’s strategic rocket forces, in a chapter entitled, “Second Artillery Deterrence Operations,” the authors explain what China’s nuclear forces train to do if “a strong military power possessing nuclear‐armed missiles and an absolute advantage in high‐tech conventional weapons is carrying out intense and continuous attacks against our major strategic targets and we have no good military strategy to resist the enemy.” The military power they’re talking about is the United States.
War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf
War between the United States and China could be so ruinous for both countries, for East Asia, and for the world that it might seem unthinkable. Yet it is not: China and the United States are at loggerheads over several regional disputes that could lead to military confrontation or even violence between them. Both countries have large concentrations of military forces operating in close proximity. If an incident
occurred or a crisis overheated, both have an incentive to strike enemy forces before being struck by them. And if hostilities erupted, both have ample forces, technology, industrial might, and personnel to fight across vast expanses of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Thus, Sino U.S. war, perhaps a large and costly one, is not just thinkable; it needs more thought.
In the United States—as, evidently, in China—systematic analysis of war has been the province of war planners. This is not good enough, for war planners are concerned mainly with how to gain military advantage, not how to avoid economic and political damage. Yet the consequences of war could go far beyond military success and failure: The world economy could be rocked, and international order, such
as it is, could be shattered. Because the scope and effects of a Sino-U.S. war could be much wider than the scope of military planning for such a war, it is crucial to think and plan much more expansively than we have in the past.
Future wars means getting ready for World War II-level losses, the US Air Force's top officer says
https://www.businessinsider.com/future-war-losses-like-wwii-top-air-force-officer-says-2020-9
A future conflict with such adversaries will be a marked departure from recent combat, and losses in such a fight could approach the levels of World War II, the Air Force chief of staff wrote in a recent paper.
The superiority the US Air Force has enjoyed in skies around the world for the past three decades is coming to an end, the service's new top officer said in his first major strategic document, published this week.
In a paper titled "Accelerate Change or Lose," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who took over in August, wrote that the window of opportunity to adapt to future challenges is closing and that changes are needed in how the service develops, acquires, and uses its manpower and technology.
"Future warfare will not remain far from our shores," Brown added. "Overseas, our Airmen will have to fight to achieve localized air superiority."
"Tomorrow's Airmen are more likely to fight in highly contested environments, and must be prepared to fight through combat attrition rates and risks to the Nation that are more akin to the World War II era than the uncontested environment to which we have since become accustomed," Brown wrote.
The Neutron Bomb
https://www.airforcemag.com/article/the-neutron-bomb/
The Post front page article—the first of many by reporter Walter Pincus—charged that “the United States is about to begin production of its first nuclear battlefield weapon specifically designed to kill people through the release of neutrons rather than to destroy military installations through heat and blast.”
Others quickly joined the chase. The New York Times reported that “the nuclear weaponeers have unfolded a new brainchild, the neutron bomb, which will kill people while preserving buildings, tanks, and artillery.”
The uproar over the neutron bomb is largely forgotten today but it was in the news almost constantly in 1977-78 and again in 1981, a blazing international issue that drew in top leaders from the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union.
“Neutron bomb” was the popular term for the enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), a small hydrogen warhead for short-range US Army rockets and artillery shells. It was intended to replace existing nuclear warheads—atomic rather than hydrogen devices—already deployed on battlefield weapons in Europe.
Battlefield Atomics
In November 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced that use of the atomic bomb in Korea was under “active consideration.” US national strategy in 1953 said that “in the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions.”
The firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons came later. The scope of danger was expanded enormously by the hydrogen bomb and its attendant radioactive fallout. Introduction of ICBMs increased the immediacy of the danger and reduced the options for defense against an attack.
By the early 1950s, technology made tactical nuclear weapons small and light enough for deployment with battlefield forces. Among the first was the M65 “Atomic Annie,” a huge atomic cannon that required two tractors to move it from place to place. Annie threw an 803-pound warhead and had an effective range of about 20 miles. There were atomic warheads for delivery by rockets, artillery, and aircraft. Incredibly, there were even atomic land mines. Atomic Annie was superseded by guns packing smaller nuclear rounds.
The strategic nuclear arena was dominated by the Air Force and Strategic Air Command but battlefield atomic weapons were primarily the province of the Army. In 1956, the Chief of Staff, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, reorganized the Army around the “Pentomic” concept. Each combat division had five self-contained battle groups and low-yield tactical nuclear weapons.
The most significant of these were the mobile Lance missile, which could fire a one-kiloton atomic warhead for 75 miles, and eight-inch howitzers, with one-kiloton atomic shells and a range of just over 20 miles. By comparison, the yield of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons; the yield of the Nagasaki bomb was 21 kilotons.
Sam Cohen’s Invention
It is generally agreed that the neutron bomb was invented by Samuel T. Cohen of RAND as a consultant to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1958. Cohen always claimed that he worked out the concept in 15 or 20 minutes with calculations on a slide rule.
The enhanced radiation warhead was a modification of the hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb. Like all hydrogen (or “fusion”) devices, it used a small atomic (or “fission”) bomb as a trigger to set off the hydrogen chain reaction.
The neutron bomb would release more of its energy in the form of lethal radiation. Physical damage would be limited to a relatively tight area while the radiation reached further out to penetrate Warsaw Pact armor, which was shielded against nuclear blast and heat. Since the neutron bomb produced little or no radioactive fallout or residual radiation, the target area could be reoccupied within a matter of hours.
The neutron bomb was tested successfully in 1962, but to Cohen’s dismay, there were few takers for it. The weapons labs were unable to convince the Pentagon of the merits of replacing the battlefield atomic weapons with costly neutron devices. A neutron warhead was fielded briefly on the Sprint anti-ballistic missile, but was retired in 1975 after only a few months of service when the Sprint system was deactivated.
How To Start A War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football
There are three nuclear footballs in total. Two are allocated to the president and vice president, with the last being stored in the White House.
During their presidencies, both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan preferred to keep the launch codes in their jacket pockets.
The nuclear football (also known as the atomic football, the president's emergency satchel, the Presidential Emergency Satchel,[1] the button, the black box, or just the football) is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room. It functions as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system of the United States. It is held by an aide-de-camp.
There are four things in the Football. The Black Book containing the retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, a manila folder with eight or ten pages stapled together giving a description of procedures for the Emergency Broadcast System, and a three-by-five-inch [7.5 × 13 cm] card with authentication codes. The Black Book was about 9 by 12 inches [23 × 30 cm] and had 75 loose-leaf pages printed in black and red. The book with classified site locations was about the same size as the Black Book, and was black. It contained information on sites around the country where the president could be taken in an emergency.
The football dates back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, but its current usage came about in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when John F. Kennedy was concerned that a Soviet commander in Cuba might launch missiles without authorization from Moscow. Kennedy asked several questions related to the release of US nuclear weapons. These were:
"Assuming that information from a closely guarded source causes me to conclude that the U.S. should launch an immediate nuclear strike against the Communist Bloc, does the JCS Emergency Actions File permit me to initiate such an attack without first consulting with the Secretary of Defense and/or the Joint Chiefs of Staff?"
"I know that the red button on my desk phone will connect me with the White House Army Signal Agency (WHASA) switchboard and that the WHASA switchboard can connect me immediately to the Joint War Room. If I called the Joint War Room without giving them advance notice, to whom would I be speaking?"
"What would I say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike?"
"How would the person who received my instructions verify them?"
