Nuke Targets Elsewhere

[kalos72]

Awesome information here guys! Thank you for sharing...

[Olefin]

I am in the process of trying to put together a list of targets in Spain and Portugal - while Spain was (barely) touched up in Med Cruise it would make for an interesting area to campaign in for Twilight 2000 - especially as Med Cruise does say that British and American servicemen - most likely survivors from Gibraltar or sunken ships in the Med and Atlantic who made it to Spain - may be in Spain still in 2000/2001

[kalos72]

I'd love the Spain/Portugal lists...could really open some doors in my campaign for adventure!

[comped]

What about alternative nuke targets? Having looked at the CONUS nuke map from Kato, it really surprises me what did/did not get hit: IE Fort Devens, Detroit, NYC, certain secretive facilities in the Nevada desert, Washington/Oregon... Hell, many states didn't get a nuke anywhere near them (ex: New England).

Would there be any interest in an alternative list of targets for the US, say one for the regular timeline, and one for now?

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

[Targan]

Remember, it wasn't a general full-scale nuclear exchange like we've all grown up fearing. There was no MAD scenario. It was a slow escalation, with all sides involved pushing things just far enough that they didn't kick off a full-scale, all-out ICBM exchange. Over the couple of years that the tit-for-tat nukings occurred there would have been countless thousands of meetings and discussions and little events and evaluations that would be too numerous for even the most devoted alternate history buffs to flesh out. Unless you're re-writing the timeline of the war and it's nuclear exchanges (and many here have or are in the process of doing just that) there's no point second guessing why some targets were deliberately left off either side's hit lists. Launch failures, targeting problems, detonation failures and the like are a whole other issue though.

It may be that the Soviets nuked major population centres in Canada but not in the US because they judged that nuking major population centres in the US would be likely to kick off a full-scale MAD scenario. There's no risk of that with Canada. They don't have nukes.

[rcaf_777]

Actually a lot of Canada oil production is in the major population centres, also I thinking that when they made twilight the research persons did not have the www so the used books, which I'm guessing are few and far between if your going to a us library

And since Canada and the US have a defence plan for attack since 1940 I'm thinking that attack on Canada is and attack on the US

By late in The Twilight War the US would many assets deployed to Canada

[comped]

Originally Posted by Targan

Remember, it wasn't a general full-scale nuclear exchange like we've all grown up fearing.

I'm a little young to have feared soviet nukes.

Originally Posted by Targan

Unless you're re-writing the timeline of the war and it's nuclear exchanges (and many here have or are in the process of doing just that) there's no point second guessing why some targets were deliberately left off either side's hit lists.

I hope to get around to doing that. Should be for a game I'm running in the next few months.

Originally Posted by Targan

It may be that the Soviets nuked major population centres in Canada but not in the US because they judged that nuking major population centres in the US would be likely to kick off a full-scale MAD scenario. There's no risk of that with Canada. They don't have nukes.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

The warheads were never in the sole possession of Canadian personnel. They were the property of the Government of the United States and were always under the direct supervision of a "Custodial Detachment" from the United States Air Force (or Army, in the case of Honest John warheads).

Through 1984, Canada would deploy four American designed nuclear weapons delivery systems accompanied by hundreds of US-controlled warheads:

56 BOMARC CIM-10 surface-to-air missiles.[19]
4 Honest John rocket systems armed with a total of 16 W31 nuclear warheads the Canadian Army deployed in Germany.[19]
108 nuclear W25 Genie rockets carried by 54 CF-101 VooDoos.[19]
estimates of 90 to 210 tactical (20-60 kiloton) nuclear warheads assigned to 6 CF-104 Starfighter squadrons (about 90 aircraft) based with NATO in Europe (there is a lack of open sources detailing exactly how many warheads were deployed).

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.

[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.

[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

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

I am in the process of trying to put together a list of targets in Spain and Portugal - while Spain was (barely) touched up in Med Cruise it would make for an interesting area to campaign in for Twilight 2000 - especially as Med Cruise does say that British and American servicemen - most likely survivors from Gibraltar or sunken ships in the Med and Atlantic who made it to Spain - may be in Spain still in 2000/2001

Moron (USAF, NASA)
Madrid (USAF)
Gibraltar (UKN)
Cadiz (USN)