Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
Well, yes. If we go off that list with every warhead doing roughly the level of damage to it's target that it was intended to, that's it, game over for Australia as the nation is now. Pretty much permanently. I guess the people that came here after the Twilight War and founded whatever nation or nations that came to exist on this continent might still use the name Australia but anything resembling my Australia in terms of its culture, society, governmental institutions would likely be gone. The Australia described in Traveller: 2300 sounds very much like the direct descendent of the pre-Twilight War Australia so for me it couldn't have been so thoroughly cleansed by nuclear as that list suggests. I happily recognise that not everyone regards T2300 as a believable future timeline for the T2K universe but I do.
Are we going off your list or Jason's? According to Jason's list HMAS Stirling is literally carpet-nuked. Coming up with feasible Twilight War strike lists is quite a tricky process and I wouldn't expect everyone who assembles a strike list is going to have the time or patience to make themselves extensively familiar with the geography every every target. But the strikes listed for the Perth area in Jason's list are a fairly obvious case of massive overkill. Two of the three targets listed (Kwinana Refinery and HMAS Stirling) are about 7km apart and face each other unobstructed across protected, open water and between them receive six (count 'em, six!) 800kt warheads.
Just... why? Why would you pour a combined 4.8mt of nuclear destruction onto an area less than 10km across which is completely flat and not hardened against that sort of attack? One warhead would do all the damage needed, but why not say two for good measure. And lobbing three 800mt warheads all at Perth Airport? Is there a vast hidden subterranean military-industrial facility buried under there? And why would you throw three warheads at one airport but not throw even one at the biggest RAAF fighter base on this part of the continent, RAAF Pearce, which is just north of Perth?
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Ok, some notes, I chose the SS-18m5 as it had a 16,000km range thus the oomph to GET to Australia. It's the longest ranged ICBM in the Soviet arsenal. It's got 10 800kt warheads. So, sadly, the overkill factor is a given.
I double teamed a lot of targets on the assumption one or more warheads might fail to fuze. It was a Soviet preoccupation. Not to mention their warheads tended to be higher yield to make up for their higher CEP.
As for Perth Airport, I wasn't sure if RAAF Pearce had such a role. I can switch that. I hit the airport as the Soviets would see it and say "Ah, B-52s could land there comrade".
To do an airfield, you want to parcel out three per runway. One warhead at either end and a third right on the middle.
Finally, in terms of overkill...it's the Soviets? When have they not been into overkill?