Leftover nukes and other WMDs?

[SicOne]

Pardon if this has been asked before, and answered, but...have any game supplements or articles been written about the disposition of remaining nukes or other WMDs on either side?

I've read the 1st Edition timeline, which discusses boatloads of tacnukes being used in the European and Chinese theaters as well as limited strategic strikes being used against C3 targets and refineries and the like, and I've seen a target list of U.S. impacts from the 2nd Edition. From what I remember of the U.S. impacts, most were in the 500 KT-1 MT range and most were refineries and command-and-control targets. I don't remember seeing missile bases, submarine bases, bomber bases, or chemical weapons depots featuring prominently on that list, though it has been years since I saw it, nor do I recall monster nukes like the 25 MT SS-18 Mod 3 or Mod 4 "city-busting" warhead listed.

Am I remembering the target list incorrectly? The Morrow Project target list seemed more...comprehensive, even if some of the numbers didn't really match up; that I attribute to the MP creators not exactly having access to hard numbers of ICBMs/SLBMs at the time the game was created. It wasn't like you could Google that information in the 80s.

And one also has to wonder about some of the numbers of weapons involved in the nuclear phase of the Twilight War. With the Soviet Union continuing to exist well into the 90s, though we did see some real-life diminishing of numbers and types of nuclear weapons through the INF and START treaties, I am thinking that those treaties didn't exist in the Twilight timeline. In fact, I would expect to see increased numbers of more modern weapons and equipment, an expansion of the B-1 and B-2 programs, more Ohio-class boomers, newer and better nukes, etc.

How did the game address these types of things, if at all? And how did you handle such questions in your own campaigns?

Thanks for any input, folks.

[Targan]

As mentioned in our other recent conversation SicOne, the Challenge Mag adventure Crazy Horse centres on recovering one or more nukes from a downed B1B bomber in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The aircraft had been carrying 8 air-launched cruise missiles, each armed with a single B86 200kt nuclear warhead. The adventure also includes T2K rules on nuke detonation effects, and a nice little table for what might happen if warheads are tampered with.

As I mentioned in our other discussion, the Twilight War's nuclear exchanges were a creeping, tit-for-tat affair and the much feared MAD scenario never quite played out. There are a few mentions in various modules of functioning nukes still being in government hands, and IIRC one of the Last Submarine modules has a group of bandits sitting on one or more potentially functional cruise missiles somewhere in New England.

France clearly never launched most of its strategic nukes, so they'd still be a formidable nuclear-armed power in the post war era.

There's a plausible rumour in The Black Madonna module which talks about one of several of the US military's nuclear demolition charges deployed in the city of Częstochowa earlier in the Twilight War not having detonated and having been successfully recovered by another party. In my last campaign the PCs came into possession of that "backpack nuke" when they stormed the catacombs underneath the Jasna Góra. They then deployed the weapon (with the blessing of the DIA station chief in Krakow) to completely obliterate the Warsaw Pact's Reserve Front HQ at Lublin, shortly before the Operation Omega orders were issued. That was one of my favorite couple of playing sessions of the entire campaign.

[Cdnwolf]

I had the Free City of Krakow changed a bit with instead of operation reset the PC had their hands on a nuclear bomb ejected from a bomber before it crashed. The RR gang was very interested in getting their hands on it.

I had the final confrontation occur at a place called... Oświęcim, Poland.... where the PC ran into the caretaker of the souls who turned out to be a retired Israeli nuclear specialist.

They gave the device to him and he set it off to finally destroy Auschwitz forever.

[jester]

Here's a question:

How many aircraft were shot down but didn't burn or explode and the nuclear payload is still functional? The perfect thing for an adventure.

Going after the B-52 flown by Major Kong?

[pmulcahy11b]

Isn't there a scenario in Challenge, Crazy Horse I think, which deals with just that onboard a crashed B-1?

[Targan]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Isn't there a scenario in Challenge, Crazy Horse I think, which deals with just that onboard a crashed B-1?

Jeez Paul, I wrote about that in detail in the second post of this thread LOL! I guess I've been writing the same stuff over and over for so long, nobody reads my posts anymore.