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Old 07-08-2018, 07:55 PM
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Legbreaker Legbreaker is offline
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Location: Tasmania, Australia
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Also bear in mind nukes are essentially a dual purpose weapon.
Firstly there's the blast and thermal damage, basically everything that happens to the target in the first few minutes and hours.
Secondly there's the lasting fallout and radioactive zone which conventional munitions don't have. This is probably an even more important factor than the initial strike when deciding on targets. If an area can be denied to the enemy over a long period of time...
I've mentioned it numerous times over the years how valuable fear can be for an attacker. A factory worker hears a report about the city a few hundred miles away with a plant that builds APCs getting nuked. Their own city has a plant building SP artillery. Will he show up for work the next day, or grab his family, load up the car with everything they can carry, and get the hell out of town?
Nukes are MUCH scarier than conventional weapons, even chemical and biologicals. Conventional explosions can kill of course, but they generally don't have a lasting effect. Chemical and biologicals generally don't have blast damage, and their other, main effects, can generally be mitigated somewhat. Nuclear weapons on the other hand do initial blast as well as the terrifying lasting effects of radiation.

[/rambling]
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