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Pakistan and India have enough nukes to cause major famine across the world. Russia alone has enough nukes to nearly if not surely end humanity even if only 1% of the human population were killed directly from a nuclear explosion. I think the only way NATO could take Russia is if they were to somehow disarm their nukes.
Also, we have to consider alliances. Russia and North Korea are closely aligned. If the entire world went to war with NK, it is still possible that South Korea would be devastated because they have setup their entire military to shell the fuck out of South Korea at a moment's notice and have an extensive underground tunnel system for retaliatory purposes. However, it's possible that NK would value self-preservation over maintaining it's alignment with a Russia that will definitely not exist anymore.
Not to argue, but shit hitting the fan on this scale makes loyalties much harder to predict.
That depends on how well maintained their nuke arsenal is. I can see a couple launches that will be shot down but other countries would not rick nukes for the sake of Russia.
I wonder what would be required to surreptitiously disable most or all Russian nukes
The Russian government.
Honestly, I don't think so. It would be a huge and slow project. I'm pretty sure there are a ton of measures to prevent Internal sabotage.
Well the good news is that we do have some ballistic missile defence in place. The bad news is that we don't really have enough of it. We could probably shoot down a couple hundred nukes... I'm highly doubtful that we could shoot every nuke out of the sky, if Russia decided to unleash everything they had.
I'm imagining some sort of three-pronged strategy. One, espionage to convince people in the nuclear chain of command to disregard any orders to fire nukes. This would involve converting people that have likely been thoroughly vetted by the Russian government. It would also be risky in that all it would take is for one person to snitch for the Russian government to catch on.
Two, a cyber attack that disarms nuclear weapons firing systems. This would likely involve gaining physical access to many launch systems, infecting their computer systems, then letting the infection stay dormant without getting caught yet somehow activating it when necessary. Say for example they run a dummy drill without nukes, the infection could be discovered.
And three, a interception system for nukes that are launched. This would be the most risky because it would involve intercepting nukes immediately after being fired. For ICBMs, we'd have to get them right after launch since once they're in space, it's nearly impossible to intercept, especially after the warheads separate from the rocket. Submarine-launched weapons might be easier to intercept if they're strapped to a rocket until detonation. Bombs would be nearly impossible, but it would be a lot easier to intercept the planes they're on.
Overall, I would guess we'd be able to stop some Russian nukes from hitting NATO targets, but not all of them. It would be a wild guess to calculate the percentage that get intercepted/through. Russia has about 1,710 nuclear weapons deployed. Let's say they fire half of them as a retaliatory strike saving the other half as defense in case the retaliation stops a NATO attack. If only 1% of that half make it through, that's still ~~85~~ 8.5 nuclear strikes. ~~If only a 10th of that were aimed at major cities, that would be 8 major NATO cities that are obliterated and then require major recovery efforts.~~
Not one country is prepared to recover from a nuclear strike because that's virtually all natural disasters in one. Imagine the devastation if London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. There would not only be major loss, but the rest would have to dedicate immense resources to helping those areas recover, further pulling resources away from defense and counterattack. ~~We would also have to consider that the other 75 nukes attacked infrastructure and military targets, so we'd be severely incapacitated.~~
tl;dr: stopping and surviving a Russian nuclear attack is practically impossible
I like it. 1% of 850 is 8.5 though!
Good catch! I'm still waking up this morning 🥱