Nuke Targets Elsewhere

[Targan]

Originally Posted by comped

EDIT: And could anyone give the rationale why most of Canada's populous cities were hit, when not even most of the US' were?

You have my rationale, which it seems wasn't sufficient. I'm interested to hear other opinions (that's not sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested; rationalizing why things turned out the way they did in the published material is an interesting exercise to me).

[kato13]

My view

There were 40,000 plus nuclear warheads in 1989 yet the game only mentions 322 of them (IIRC). Yes mostly strategic nukes were mentioned but they were nearly half of the 40k total so you are talking about 2%.

Everything reasonable to be thought as an explanation for the discrepancy probably did have an effect.

Fizzles
Missile Failures
Warhead Failures
Targeting Failures
Destruction of C3I Facilities
ABM systems
Lack of control codes
Destruction of Launch facilities from enemy action, entropy, or accidents
Lack of Intelligence on what actually was hit (or missed and deserves a second strike)

As normal from the Russian perspective any quality issues would normally have been addressed with quantity. This was not an option here. When looking at strikes in the US, lets say they wanted 300 targets, normally they would launch say 1000 warheads for those 300 targets. That would have probably triggered full blown MAD.

So they launch 40 at a time over a couple of days with lets say a 25-33% success rate for the first go (remember they have been a Tac nuke target for months). They get hit in retaliation and then strike again. Each time their C3I and launch capabilities are degraded even further.

In the end they have 84 successful strikes in the US at the cost of 59 known strikes back. In the USSR i assume that the count is a little low as the US had far more warheads that were under GDWs 500kt threshold. I expect it was a very tit for tat.

Canada gets 30 strategic hits, my assumption is that the US responded with 30 strikes outside the USSR (Vietnam? Bulgaria? North Korea? Iraq?). I believe these strikes were earlier in the war and were that natural extension of the existing tactical strikes and not considered a threat to escalate to MAD. Being earlier there might have been better C3I and post strike analysis. That might explain why proportionally they were hit "harder".

[FPSlover]

I think i got some answers

Originally Posted by comped

So, while they didn't have direct control over them, they did have them on their soil at the time, under some sort of nuclear sharing agreement. Perhaps this could have extended into the T2K era... Or would it have? My timeline's a little rusty.

Maybe attempt to make up a moduel about having to rescue the nukes from falling into Warsaw Pact hands (if deployed in Europe) or American hands (if deployed within a few hundred miles of the border)?

Originally Posted by Targan

You have my rationale, which it seems wasn't sufficient. I'm interested to hear other opinions (that's not sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested; rationalizing why things turned out the way they did in the published material is an interesting exercise to me).

The most probable explanation is that the strikes that hit Canada were meant to cripple her population and oil/manufacturing production.

[comped]

Originally Posted by FPSlover

The most probable explanation is that the strikes that hit Canada were meant to cripple her population and oil/manufacturing production.

Did they ever say, in cannon, what military bases were hit? (don't recall it being so...) Or anything about what parts of the goverment were left over? I don't presume much, since a nuke hit Ottawa, which would most likely kill a large chunk of the Parliament (if they're in session), and the PM, along with their cabinet. Given that not even much fan material was written on the Canada, and I can't seem to find much even in the books about what happened (Am I wrong? Were things mentioned?), perhaps there may be some pertinacity for someone to write this.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by comped

Did they ever say, in cannon, what military bases were hit? (don't recall it being so...) Or anything about what parts of the goverment were left over? I don't presume much, since a nuke hit Ottawa, which would most likely kill a large chunk of the Parliament (if they're in session), and the PM, along with their cabinet. Given that not even much fan material was written on the Canada, and I can't seem to find much even in the books about what happened (Am I wrong? Were things mentioned?), perhaps there may be some pertinacity for someone to write this.

There was a reasonably comprehensive write up on Canada in one of the first editions of Challenge magazine to come out after Twilight 2000 was launched in the 80's which I think mentioned some of the bases that were nuked. I can't recall the issue number off hand, but someone may be able to assist - my soft copy is on my now defunct previous laptop.

[Olefin]

Some of the nuke targets in the Caribbean would have been basically country/island killers considering what a nuke could do to someplace like St. Croix which had to have been hit or Trinidad's refineries or Curacao

a single 250kt airburst over St. Croix's refinery would basically wipe out most of the population of that island, same with Curacao - and Trinidad has three nuclear targets that would destroy the central and southern parts of that island

really goes to show how the game's idea of just hitting petroleum targets in neutrals really doesnt cut down the amount of casualties that much as compared to going city buster - and applied to France for instance or Japan how much the "neutrals" may have lost as to population and industrial base - not if the Soviets idea of a surgical strike is a 250kt nuke

[John Farson]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Some of the nuke targets in the Caribbean would have been basically country/island killers considering what a nuke could do to someplace like St. Croix which had to have been hit or Trinidad's refineries or Curacao

a single 250kt airburst over St. Croix's refinery would basically wipe out most of the population of that island, same with Curacao - and Trinidad has three nuclear targets that would destroy the central and southern parts of that island

really goes to show how the game's idea of just hitting petroleum targets in neutrals really doesnt cut down the amount of casualties that much as compared to going city buster - and applied to France for instance or Japan how much the "neutrals" may have lost as to population and industrial base - not if the Soviets idea of a surgical strike is a 250kt nuke

Well, when all you've got is a hammer...

Though I wonder how different T2k would be in a total exchange scenario, considering that T2k13 has 90% of the world dead a few years after its limited nuclear war. That game at least seemed to posit that having 9 out of 10 people dead was no impediment to T2k-style role-playing...

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Targan

You have my rationale, which it seems wasn't sufficient. I'm interested to hear other opinions (that's not sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested; rationalizing why things turned out the way they did in the published material is an interesting exercise to me).

Push the population of Canada into the Continental United States to overburden the infrastructure and further destabilize the U.S. split government.

[Olefin]

You can add the following nuke targets officially now with the new canon material

Africa -

Soviet nukes

Egypt - Cairo, Suez, Alexandria - refineries

Morocco - Casablanca, Mohammedia and Sidi Kacem - port being used by NATO, refineries

Tunisia - El Borma oilfield

Nigeria - every refinery and oil shipping terminal hit by nukes

South Africa - Durban, Sasolburg - refineries

Diego Garcia - US bases

Ivory Coast - Abidjan - refinery & port

US Nuclear strikes

Guinea - Conakry - Soviet air and naval bases

Algeria - Skikda, Algiers, Arzew, Oran - refineries

Libya - Ra's Lanuf, Tripoli, Benghazi, Zawiya - refineries

Egyptian desert - multiple tactical nukes - Libyan armored formations

Seychelles - Victoria - Soviet naval shipping

South African nukes

Angola - Luanda - government, refinery, Cuban bases

Mozambique - Maputo - Soviet shipping, government buildings, air and army bases