But think of all the potential gefilte fish you'll be wasting!!!
On second thought, having tried gefilte fish several times with unfortunate reviews each time, go ahead and massacre 'em!

This is all true. The attack was an airburst (canon) so there's a chance some of the facilities not too close to ground zero would be still at least slightly usable (though the radiation might well put paid to that idea).
Given the information available to the writers at the time (as SSC has pointed out), it would seem very likely two 500kt warheads were used, although it's possible they believed 250kt warheads were a possibility. The two locations you've identified look like prime targets for one of those warheads, and are certainly close enough to be considered part of the one single strike.

T2K was written in the 1980's while the cold war still "raged" and details were hard to come by. We should not be using information gathered since then to try and explain why the books are written the way they are, but as SSC mentioned, alter what we now know to fit the books.

Thanks for telling me what I should and should not be doing when it comes to how I play T2K Legbreaker, but I think I'll ignore your instructions and continue to interpret information as I wish.

Ah, well... perhaps we should all take a step back here and remember that everything posted here is based on personal preferences/beliefs/experience etc. etc. What's good for one may not be so good for another.
I tend to agree with Leg but I also have the opinion that he is not saying "You must all do it my way!" It seems that Western society has manufactured a culture of offence and people feel a need to take offence at the drop of a hat when none was ever intended.

Exactly right. Play the game the way you want, but in a public forum like this keep in mind that your way is not everyone's way and behave accordingly. Nobody has the right to demand others follow your own interpretation of the published materials, no matter how well you think you've thought it out and written it.

Now this particular thread started as a question on who, if anyone, was known to be stationed in the Norfolk region. The published materials on that are sparse at best and wide open for interpretation. This has led to a discussion on how many nukes were targeted at the area, and again, the information is limited to listing only a total payload delivered (1MT). Some disagree with my proposition that it was likely (I've never said definitely) multiple warheads, and that's their right, however the limited evidence seems to lean towards two 500kt warheads (nearby strikes are listed as 500kt, a likely launch vehicle carried 8 warheads of this yield, RN7 has stated to his knowledge differing yields were not carried on the same rocket, the 8 warheads fit very neatly into locations on the map with no overlap).

Now if somebody wants to say a single missile delivered a single 1MT warhead to Norfolk, I'm not going to flat out say they're wrong - could well be the case - but from my reading of the available information, two warheads are more plausible. There is nothing in the books to say either scenario is wrong.

If however somebody were to say (for example) twice that yield was dropped and then try to convince the rest of us they were right and the books totally wrong, well, then we'd have a problem wouldn't we...

You know Legbreaker I find all of this ironic considering it is you who has been arguing for a multiple nuclear strike against the Norfolk region.


There is a detailed target list with the severity of the attack on each target represented by the megaton.


Not quite here are the targets listed across this region...

Delaware City, DE (0.75 Mt)
Andrews AFB, MD (0.5 Mt)
Fort Meade, MD (0.5 Mt)
Camp David, MD (0.5 Mt)
Linden, NJ (1.5 Mt)
Perth Amboy, NJ (1 Mt)
Paulsboro, NJ (0.5 Mt)
Westville, NJ (0.5 Mt)
Arlington, VA (0.5 Mt) ground burst
Quantico, VA (0.5 Mt) ground burst
Norfolk, VA (1 Mt)

Also when I stated that the R-36M which carried 8 warheads was entirely replaced by the R-36UTTh from 1983, what part did you miss?


So the book says Norfolk was hit by a 1.0 Mt warhead, and then clearly list other targets that were hit by 0.5 Mt warheads. But I was wrong to quote GDW and have been trying to convince the rest of us about what the book stated which was totally wrong, and we should ignore what GDW stated to fit your idea that Norfolk was hit by a multiple MIRV strike carried on an ICBM which was retired in 1983.

Far be it for me to inject some logic into this increasingly tedious conversation, but might some of the disparity between the published T2K materials and the actual capabilities of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal and delivery systems lie with the fact that the writers were writing about fictional events in their (at the time) future, we now know far more about the Soviets' nuclear weaponry than the writers did, and there were changes and advancements in real-world Soviet nukes and delivery systems in the intervening time between the writing of the T2K materials and the future time in which they were set?

Given that situation, a GM is left with a number of options: ignore canon; assume that for the published materials to remain canon, only the weapons and delivery systems that the writers knew about can be assumed to have been in use during the T2K timeline; or integrate what we now know about the Soviets' real-world weapons and delivery systems into the timeline.

Unless all the participants in a debate such as this are on the same page with one of those options, the discussion is very likely to go round and round in circles with no-one feeling satisfied at the end. Ya feel me?

Have you not read what I wrote? I have not claimed there absolutely were multiple warheads, just that's it's plausible!!!
And in the accompanying notes, which I have already quoted several times, it states not necessarily as a single weapon.
Delaware city, Linden, Perth Amboy, Paulsboro, and Westville are all outside the probable area which one missile can deliver warheads. They are almost certainly a separate issue not relevant to Norfolk.
You will note that every other strike on your list is a multiple of 500KT - this fact lends weight to the possibility of them coming from one missile.
The part where the GDW writers had access to updated information we do today?
The part where anything more modern is utterly irrelevant with respect to canon?
And again I quote for what must be the sixth time in this thread, and certainly the second in this post alone:
Yes, you are correct that the listing states 1MT, but you're ignoring the above quote in order to deny the possibility of a second (or even third, etc) warhead being used on the Norfolk area.
As previously stated there is no evidence to say there was more than one, just as there is no evidence to say there wasn't! It's a personal choice for the individual GM to decide. I've stated my belief with evidence as to why that it makes sense for two, you believe otherwise yet we're still to see anything from you besides cherry-picked information from the books, and irrelevant information available only after the books were written.

Please, if you've got something relevant and meaningful which doesn't rely on post publication information, lets hear it. Otherwise, lets just let this one go shall we?

Ummm, hate to break up a good argument but...

We still have no clue what units/troops/equipment might be there to receive TF34. :)

Correct. My guess is whatever Milgov managed to scrounge up and convince to occupy a location that still probably glows in the dark.

Well, even that is not exactly consistent.

You have groups living in locations that have been nuked all through canon, why would Norfolk be any more irradiated then San Antonio for example?

Air bursts, to my limited knowledge, don't create much ground radiation.

How come I don't think this line of conversation will go any easier? :)

Considering they brought them there when they could have sent them to the bases they have in New Jersey there had to be troops and facilities there that could support feeding and housing that many troops, let alone getting them re-organized back into fighting units.

Most likely were logistic units of various types along with military police units to keep order as well.

And can see one big reason to send them to Norfolk - which would be either for operations against CivGov troops in the Carolinas or possibly to move against the CivGov troops that were in Frederick - MilGov was previously lacking in troops to do anything about that but 43,000 troops would go a long way towards giving them a power base again in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern states

As for glow in the dark - if Warsaw is habitable and crops can be grown there after how many nukes it took then Norfolk definitely is as well - I don't see there being any lasting radiation in the area - especially with an airburst instead of a ground explosion

Also keep in mind just how big the area is around Norfolk and that we don't know the exact ground zero for the nuke - depending on where it went off there could be a lot of facilities that are still very useable

look at the tank plant in Ohio - if you look at HW that plant should have been nuked and gone - but if you look at the article on the tank plant in Challenge it survived intact - meaning that the nuke that hit the area was significantly off target or ground zero was nowhere near the plant -

and the base is huge - it wouldn't take much of a deviation for the nuke to leave large parts of it useable - if it went off right on top of the base it would leave the Naval Air Station and Virginia Beach untouched for instance

on the other hand if it went off over the Air Station then the naval base Is untouched - either way one single detonation is going to leave a lot of overall base area useable

Yes I have and to be honest I don't really have a much of a problem with a multiple warhead strike on Norfolk, but I would prefer if it was a plausible one.

And it doesn't state that it was not a single weapon, and why give a list of targets with different megaton yield used against them if they were trying to imply that they were all being deployed from one missile?

They are all located in the Middle Atlantic States according to Howling Wilderness. And yes they are all outside the probable area which one missile can deliver warheads, but they are in the same region as Norfolk.

I haven't seen any reference by GDW that states that an R-36 (SS-18) missile was used on Norfolk, so why are you using the fact that GDW writers had access to updated information we do today when dismissing actual facts?

The missile (R-36M) which you are using as basis for a MIRV strike on Norfolk simply didn't exist by the time of the Twilight War. The reason it didn't exist was because its engineering design was flawed and the Soviet Union scrapped it and replaced it with the R-36UTTh in the mid-1980's and the R-36M2 from 1988. Both the R36UTTh and the R-36M2 were MIRV capable. But even if we ignore that the yields of the later two models warheads were not 0.5 Mt, both of these missiles were designed to hit hardened American ICBM silos not soft targets like Norfolk.

The rest......

You know in this post and the previous one your imply everything that you do yourself. In a post before that you used Wikipedia about the R-36 missile and Wikipedia didn't exist in the 1980's.

Norfolk is listed as been hit by a 1 MT strike. The Norfolk region is a big area and there are many other military and strategic targets in the Norfolk region but they are not listed as been hit by nuclear weapons. A 1 Mt warhead is a big nuclear warhead, it would have done enough damage on its own to destabilise the whole region.

Chill Out
 

Hey guys, let's all just chill-the-ef-out, please.

These canon "debates" rarely lead to consensus. They've often led to user bans.

Sometimes you have to choose between being right and being a member of this community. Capiche?

Seriously, the game designers did the best that they could with the information that they had at the time. If it doesn't work now, it's up to the GM to "fix" it for his/her game world. Leave it at that. If one or two opinion posts don't change someone's mind, another dozen surely won't. Please leave the dead horse alone.

The Moderator Team

How DARE you impugn Western Society's alleged oversensitivity! Flamethrowers at Dawn, Sir!;)

Not necessarily.
When a force is sent overseas, they don't expect to have food and lodging ready and waiting for them do they?
It's possible TF34 included the logistical support they'd need for a month or so, although my guess is there was at least some sort of support already in place, otherwise they'd have probably landed somewhere less irradiated.
It's also worth noting from the mission orders: Sounds to me like the majority would be demobilised and sent on their merry way. Of course how many is completely up to individual interpretation.
These are probably the most likely to remain active the longest.
Except as we know 43,000 were not kept in service. This issue has been discussed in quite a bit of depth in other threads.
Yes, but the main reason people were living in Warsaw was the radiation - it scared other, more predatory types away. Also those who remained generally had a pre-nuke attachment to the area.
Very true.
Take a look at the nuke effects map I linked to earlier in the thread and you can see the likely damage areas. Outside those areas there's still quite a few useful facilities, although it's likely many people would have fled in the immediate period after the nukes from fear of fallout and follow up strikes. Some may have filtered back if food, etc supplies could be guaranteed, but most would probably either die of starvation, disease, radiation, exposure, marauders, etc, or have resettled in a better area.
Another reason why multiple warheads are more plausible than a single one. What Soviet commander would leave half of the home port for the Atlantic fleet still intact?

Keep in mind that the nuclear strike that the Soviets launched had a lot of holes in it - there were a lot of facilities that were never touched, a lot of targets left off the list - in other words it dovetails with a limited war as the creators of the game stated

This wasn't an all out strike hitting every target there was - if that was true then places like Niagara Falls and Hoover Dam would have been gone for sure just to take out the huge hydro facilities there, let alone the big list of army and navy bases that were never hit

As for what Soviet commander would leave the port possibly intact? Keep in mind what we know from Last Submarine as to an oversight - that's a pretty big base for subs and it was left intact

Last Sub doesn't actually give us any information on Norfolk though, just that the sub is to be transported there once recovered.

Which shows that Norfolk is operational enough to base the sub there and prep her for the European mission - its a priceless asset as are the people who are manning her - they aren't going to risk them to radiation poisoning - so that pretty much shows Norfolk as being relatively radiation free, at least to where the sub is.

You don't bring that sub to an area full of radiation, expose priceless nuclear techs to that as well as the last crew you have and the strike team going with it when you could have it go somewhere else instead.

By the way what I was really referring to was the fact that the Soviets never nuked the sub base in Connecticut - as per Last Submarine it was intact till a mob overran it and destroyed it - way past the TDM

Oh and by the way I am not saying the base is mostly intact or the nuke missed big time or whatever - that base is huge - and you aren't looking at being able to operate a lot of ships by 2001 - you are probably looking at small to medium area of the base that is radiation free that was unaffected by the nuclear strike and still able to support operating a few destroyers and smaller craft and has at least a few piers that can take unloading and docking ships the size of the Omega Task Force ships - which would also be able to handle one nuclear sub as well

but not one that if the Atlantic Fleet was still as big as it was pre-war could be supported in any way from that remnant of the base

The character biographies from the Last Sub series also mention the Naval Chief of Staff being in the Norfolk area. Given the power the remaining Joint Chiefs have, I certainly see them migrating towards areas where they can find support and infrastructure.

From Armies of the Night, Page 3:

"The Characters are members of the US Army 5th Division recently returned to the United States from Europe. Characters from Europe will have crossed the Atlantic by means of Task Force 34, the evacuation fleet discussed in Going Home. After a long and mal de mer-ridden voyage, they returned to America and landed in Norfolk, Virginia, on November 25, 2000. There they were organised into a holding company pending further orders, and spent some brief time on garrison duty at the Military Government enclave in eastern Virginia. Finally, early in December, new orders came through from Norfolk."

So this would imply that there are functional docks and infrastructure in the Norfolk area that were able to process thousand of returning American troops from Europe, and that there is also a functional MilGov command structure in the Norfolk area.


I would agree that an SLBM and not an ICBM was used against Norfolk, just not a MIRV strike. The SLBM would be an SS-N-6 SLBM with a single 1 Mt warhead which is what is listed in Howling Wilderness.

Why was Norfolk targeted by a SLBM and not an ICBM such as the SS-18 (R-36M)? For three reasons

1) The Thanksgiving massacre occurred in November 1997. The R-36M ICBM with 8 MIRV's was retired in 1983, that's a gap of 14 years.
2) The replacement for the R-36M (the R-36UTTh and R-36M2) were designed to attack hardened American ICBM silos not soft targets like Norfolk, and their warhead yields do not match the 0.5 Mt used on targets in the region.
3) GDW implies that the Soviets carried out an SLBM strike on targets across the Mid-Atlantic region.

From Allegheny Uprising...

Page 9: "With less than 10 minutes notice between the rising of sub-launched ballistic missiles from off the Atlantic Coast and their detonation over Washington DC"

Page 16: " Maryland was hit hard during the nuclear exchange, with SLBM strikes against Fort Meade (between Baltimore and Washington DC), Andrews Airforce Base (southeast of Washington), Fort Detrick (at Frederick), and Camp David (north of Frederick)"

Completely agree with the SLBM attack as the most likely way that Norfolk got nuked

it also explains why the nuke was so large - i.e. the SLBM nukes weren't as accurate as the land based ones - so you go big against a big target knowing you may be off center but the big nuke still does the job

and we know that at least one Soviet ballistic missile sub had survived until TDM - from Boomer where it details that the sub launched several strikes and still survived to eventually be abandoned by her crew

I think for once you and I are actually in general agreement! *gasp!* :D
But, as JHart said, there's other facilities in the area which could be used in the event the military base itself was toast (or make likely targets themselves). Even with say 4 warheads of 250kt each, there's still going to be something which can be used by Milgov.

Note that I originally picked the R-36M as just an example of what was possible. There's a number of missiles which could have been used.

SLBM's
R-27U with 200kt warhead
R-29R, 3 warheads of 500kt each
R-29RK, 7 warheads, 100kt each
R-29RL, 1 warhead of 450kt
R-29RM, 4 100 kiloton warheads
R-39 Rif, 10 warheads of 100-200kt each

ICBM's
UR-100N (Mod 3), 6 warheads of 400kt
RT-2PM Topol, 1 warhead, 800kt
R-36M2 Voevoda (SS-18 Mod 5), 10 warheads of .75-1Mt

Cruise missiles
Kh-80, 200kt - 6Mt

As can be seen, there's a great variety of missiles and warheads which could be used either at the same time, or spread over a period of several days.
In fact if it was indeed an SLBM, multiple warheads becomes much more likely.

I think it's unlikely that an ICBM was launched at Norfolk given that GDW states that most of the other targets in this region were hit by an SLBM. Also none of these ICBM's have a singular or combined warhead yield that equals 1.0 Mt or 0.5 Mt for the other targets in the region.


R-27U: In sources other than Wikipedia the yield of each warhead in the 2-MRV variant of the Mod 3 (R-27U) was estimated at 0.4 to 0.8 MT, and the yield of each warhead in the 3-MRV variant of the Mod 3 (R-27U) at 0.1 to 0.4 MT. So the warheads of the R-27U (Mod 3) do not have a singular or combined yield of 1.0 Mt.
R-29R: 3 warheads with a yield of 0.2 Mt. This does not have a singular or combined yield of 1.0 Mt.
R-29RK: 7 warheads with a yield of 0.1 Mt. This does not have a singular or combined yield of 1.0 Mt.
R-29RL: 1 warhead with a yield of 0. 45 Mt. This does not have a yield of 1.0 Mt.
R-29RM: 4 warheads with a yield of 0.1 Mt. This does not have a singular or combined yield of 1.0 Mt.
R-39 Rif: 10 warheads with a yield of 0.1 Mt. One missile with ten warheads launched at Norfolk !!!!! Then Task Force 34 won't sailing to Norfolk in 2000 will it?

And you missed the R-27 (SS-N-6) single RV Mod 1 and Mod 2 with a single 1.0 Mt warhead!!

Cruise missiles: Why launch an intermediate ranged cruise missile when it's so much easier to launch a longer ranged and much faster ballistic missile?

Although I would not quibble about the single 0.45 Mt warhead on the R-29RL. Its close enough to 0.5 Mt listed to have been used on other targets in the region,. But I still think the SS-N-6 (R27) with a single 1 Mt warhead is a better bet for Norfolk. Its matches the mega tonnage and will allow some infrastructure to survive and allow for a MilGov enclave to be established post TGM.