I know that a deterrant that bases on MAD is meant to not be used preemptively by both - or any - side. These weapons are no military weapons. Their use against somebody who owns them himself, triggers your own destruction. That is the meaning, the essence and core of the MAD doctrine.

And there you have it. No military weapons. It is unreasonable to dream of an "in case of" scenario where these unusable weapons get used in a major exchange and so one must be prepared for it to survive. There is no preparation for assured mutual destruction, MAD. There is no survival worth to be witnessed.

"The only winning move is not to play."

You could as well argue that one needs to prepare to win one's own defeat, or to survive one's own suicide. And that is why all that nonsense about precious staff and perosnell and oublic shelters, is meaningless, and feeds dangeorus illusions. You fall for this illusion yourself: that a nuclear war with a nuclear armed opponent could be "won".

Or would even be worth to be survived.

This folly was fed by both the US and the USSR during the 50s and 60s ("duck and cover!" :haha: ), but already during the 70s at least in the West we started to understand that this was totally misled reasoning. Reagan again started to dream of winnable nuclear wars, but he already had to meet a strong civil movement countering him, and I do not mean the peace movement that was massively infiltrated and controlled by the USSR.

You cannot win nuclear allout exchanges, ikalugin. And even wanting to survive them is not worth it, but means despair and horror. Believe it, its better for you. In hell, the living would envy the dead.

We must not allow a mineshaft gap!!

Americans are working on fixing it, but they prefer improving their offensive potential.

That's news to us. Did you get this information from the Trump-Putin channel?

Skybird, you attribute mystical properties to physical objects - nuclear weapons. I understand the futility of debating a subject matter with a person who expresses irrational behaviour, but I will do this none the less.

The power of nuclear weapons despite being great is finite and can be accessed rationally. That power is great enough to deter any rational adversary from attacking as even 10 percent population losses the USSR suffered in the GPW are too great a cost to bear (not to mention material losses).
However that power is not great enough to assure the total loss of life, especially for protected populations. So it is not a suicide, as suicide implies total and final loss of life by the subject. This means that if there is a chance that deterence may fail and that chance always exists a responsible leader must take measures to ensure survival of the country.

Morever as historic programs show it is quite plausible to both assure general survival after the attack and to both beging rebuilding and maintain military relevant production after the attack.

Because with such measures the attack would not lead to total and final loss of life nor material means to sustain such life I do not see why I should not keep living and working after such an attack. Sure my personal living conditions would be inferior to those I have at the moment, but then I would still have means to improve them through my hard work, so I don't see a problem there.

p.s. Soviet programs were on a qualitevely different level than the "duck and cover" stuff. There were comprehensive plans to not only achieve survival of crtical personel, but also of critical industries, to maintain war production, to initiate post attack rebuilding.

No, open source intel. Here we get enthusiasts who for some reason love underground structures, a group of such enthusiats decided to look for sighns of underground construction that follows the patern of Russian underground construction by the TIS contractor (who amongst other things builds state's underground fascilities) and they found those in Washington DC.

We're modernizing our nuclear weapons stockpile but considering that our minuteman missiles were built in the 1970's and our bombers are even older this is not unreasonable. Of course your government needs the US boogeyman to justify it's own modernization program and it seems from your posts that iit working.

But hey at least we're not inventing dirty tidal wave drone nukes which are a brand new type of offensive nuclear weapon right?

You are just poorly informed. Minuteman series ICBMs currently in service are newly produced weapons as they were completely rebuilt during the modernisation program using newly produced parts and subassemblies.
This process while may appear harmless to a uneducated observer actually lead to improvement in capabilities - I mentioned the changes to the payload before but they were others.

Same applies to the bomber fleet. Not only does US modernise it's current force of various bomber classes, including modern stealth B2As, it also has a program to construct new stealth bombers in the future (B21s) as well as to maintain a significant surge capability by keeping older bombers in allegedly conventional role.

If it was true it would still be better than the first strike US programs which US initiates during the arms reduction negotiations and tries to sell as harmless.

It is a second strike weapon, which improves strategic stability. But I guess if you have a first strike in mind then yes, it may be detrimental to you.

I guess you are not interested in US military construction then?

And if the party/the state has planned it, it must be good. - You are a hopeless believer of state and its authority. But you call me irrational. Well. Irony surely has some twists and turns build into it.

So instead of attacking the nessesity of such a system you attack the fact that it is implimented and provided by the state?

My personal need for such a system is quite well served by the state, as a person affiliated to said state I have the ability to verify the quality of service. You can attack my morality next, but I have repplies to that as well.

Stepping back a moment, let's look at the Russian mindset, they've been the whipping boys for Europe through-out most of the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th. Out of all the nations in the Second World War, only Russia and Germany suffered the greatest of casualties and saw some of the most brutal fighting, this wasn't warfare as we see it, it was warfare at its most base level. Sure, from place to place there was traditional honour in war, but in other places there was systematic extermination, and brutality. The Russian people got trapped between the hammer of the Reich and the Anvil of the Soviet government, and they bled, they bled a lot.

Ever since then, there has been a sort of almost paranoia that someone will try to complete what Hitler failed, whereas in the west the very idea of invading Russia is talked about as insanity, in Russia they still have a generation who remembers what happened when someone tried and did very well (to begin with). That paralysing shock in the opening days of Barbarossa, particularly Stalins three day breakdown, is something that anyone who has the security of the country in mind will have learnt, studied and vowed never to have happen again.

Therefore any threat to the safety of the home nation must be countered or dealt with before it becomes as large a danger as the Third Reich became.

With that mindset it makes sense to work on defensive structures in order to try and protect the civilian population in a nuclear exchange. Of course, such things are primarily hopeful talismans because the aftermath would be so terrible that the living would indeed envy the dead, however if a government did not try to protect its people it would be seen as negligent, especially a government of a country which had suffered so much in a war not a few decades before.

That being said, the whole British approach to protecting its civilians in a nuclear war makes for an interesting comparison, because basically it gave out leaflets, made sure that local government would survive and then left the civilians to it. :haha:

Bull. I don't know what you've been told but a nuke carrying drone designed to swamp coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis is about as offensive as it gets. Besides all of our nukes are second strike weapons because we'll never use them unless it's to obliterate you for attacking us with yours.

Sure I am. I just listen to different propaganda than you do.

Actually August, he did make a fair point earlier in the thread. Now, let's say that a nuclear exchange has begun, it doesn't matter who started it but it's under way. America has a fairly good ABM system under way right now, and Russia is lagging behind there, so let's say both sides fire 100 ICBMs, the Russian ABM system shoots down 25% so 75 ICBMs are able to deliver their payload on target. The Russian ICBMs suffer a greater attrition rate, more like 50%, therefore only 50 Russian ICBMs are able to deliver their payload on target. Now, if the American system gets advanced enough to insure a 100% kill rate, then America could hit Russia and suffer little to no retaliation because of the ABM shield. Now, both you and I know that the US isn't going to launch a first strike, but Russia cannot and will not take that chance, and therefore it needs a retaliatory option and if it cannot retaliate through the US missile shield then it has to find another option, in this case, through an underwater weapon against coastal targets. Not exactly a weapon without its limits, but the point is that it acts as a deterrant rather than a first strike option.

Remember how much we all thought the Russias would be the first to pull the trigger in the Cold War? They thought the same of us, and thankfully, neither side ever did. With any luck it will remain that way.

I think it comes from the WW2 industrial evacuation and post war rebuilding.

The 'Never Again' mentality?

I think though when it comes down to nuclear weapons and first strike use, this clip from 'Yes Prime Minister' says it all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyJh3qKjSMk

"Yes but I probably wouldn't use it."
"Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't!"
"They probably do."
"Yes, they probably do know that you probably wouldn't but they can't be certain, you know!"
"They probably certainly know I probably wouldn't."
"Yes! But even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that although you probably wouldn't, there's no probability that you certainly would!!"
"What?"