Quote:
Originally Posted by robj3
ArmySGT wrote:
Sorry.
That's a crappy explanation in our timeline, and not much better in the TM1-1 one.
As previously noted - as soon as the U.S. ICBMs lifted off, the early warning satellites would have detected them.
We know from the Petrov incident that individual missile launches could be detected, let alone the large fraction of the 1,000 available ICBMs that would have been part of the U.S. first strike.
The General Secretary, Defense Minister and chief of the General Staff were required to have access to launch codes 24/7, like the U.S. President's 'football'.
Which would have been activated shortly after the SLBMs landed if we're trying to minimise possible Soviet response time i.e. U.S. first strike was with SLBMs.
Mikeo80 wrote:
It wouldn't have in our world. The other side had launch on warning capability.
The TM1-1 alt-history is very different - the Soviets got bio-ICBM warheads to operational status - but their early warning capability matured quickly in the 1970s and early 1980s. I just can't see it being radically different from what actually got deployed.
The two superpowers attained effective parity of strategic nuclear forces in the 1980s.
Prior to this the U.S. had the larger and far more advanced force.
Either side could produce a global catastrophe in their own right.
Rob
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Well, remembering news articles of Boris Yeltsin being returned to the Russian official residence in Washington D.C black out drunk wearing only his underwear.... I find it not surprising.
Then a great number of them can be out of the Moscow Military District in their little (laughs) Dachas.
Lastly the Soviet Machine after Stalin was not about personal initiative. So everybody could well have been waiting for someone else.
The launches are a complete surprise to the American Officers in the Silos too and the Submarines too. There is no great crisis or political showdown. There no grand diplomatic displays.
http://www.historyorb.com/date/1989/november/18
It is a Saturday, most everyone is a home and Americans are planning their upcoming Thanksgiving feast.
Private E-1 Snuffy isn't bragging on the phone to all his friends and relatives that Armageddon starts Saturday.
The NSA and CIA parking lots are empty.
There is nothing to indicate anything to anyone that 18 November 1989 is the day the world dies.