From: "Erin Mills version 2.5" <MILL0622@Badger.Snow.edu>
  Date:          Fri, 12 Apr 1996 12:38:11 MST/MDT

      Okay, so I lied, there have been some changes but not as extreme 
  as I was going to make earlier. As to the whole Nuclear missile 
  reality thing: WHO CARES? It's happened, it's over, live with it!:)

Sorry, not quite.  The tendancy to grossly exaggerate the effects of
nucler weapons both brutalizes readers and discourages serious
responces to the threats of "weapons of mass destruction" (witness our
complete neglect of Civil Defense, and difficulties in funding
Strategic Defenses beyond the research stage).  As one commentator
put it, our (US) attitude that if nuclear weapons start falling on the
US it'll be the "end of the world" is a sin of pride of Biblical
proportions.

My advice (especially so you don't lose the audience who actually can
do math and know about thsi sort of thing): be unspecific about how
the apocalypse came about.  The minor detail that (last time I
checked) Japan doesn't have much of a Civil Defense system certainly
means you'll need some explaination for the shelter Ranma
et. al. ended up in.

   Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 21:09:59 -0700 (PDT)
   From: COLIN LOADER <loaderc@nevada.edu>

   LH REPORT - EYES ONLY - 456370 - CHINA AND THE US AT HIGN NOON.

Sorry, but this is utter garbage:

   A. CHINA VS. U.S.

   China is reported as having 17 ICBMs, each equipped with 10 MIRV 
   warheads.

I think it's unlikely the Chinese state of the art can put this many
warheads on a booster (and still hit the US).  They wouldn't have a
very big yield (sub megaton, probably) even if they had this many....

   This sets the number of possible nuclear hits on the US at 170. 
   Currently, ony 1/3 of these are targeted at the United States. 
   Retargeting would require a week's notice. The result of a 60-warhead 
   stike on the US is unknown, but our current estimate is as follows:
   1 Blast destruction of all major American poplulation centers.

Wrong; the footprint of an ICBM's warheads is of limited size; narrow
roughly E-W, somewhat longer N-S, 750-500 hundred miles at the most if
I remember correctly.  6 ICBMs would leave most of the country
unscathed from direct hits; it would take 4 alone to minimally hit
SD-LA-SF and Boswash.

   2 Radiation deaths of 90% of the American population within 2 months. 
   This figure is subject to weather conditions.

Also wrong; most of the US population would survive.  If you focused
your entire attack on the fuel system, and our crisis response was
*really* lame, you might kill over half from starvation, but I
wouldn't bet on things going this way (especially unless you could
stop imports, since the PRC can't take on the entire world right now).

   3 Destruction of the ecosystem in North and South America. Severe impact 
   on world climate.

Utter rot.

The Southern Hemisphere wouldn't even notice an attack of this
magnitude, and there have been numerous volcanic events in recorded
history that dwarf it (and one or two that would dwarf a total worse
case Cold War US-Soviet exchange). The nuclear winter concept is
scientific fraud, pure and simple (unless you've examined the TAPPS
paper yourself I wouldn't recommend arguing this point with me...).

    The exact number of warheads aimed at China is unknown, but estimated at 
   over 70 ICBMs with 22-piece MIRV units.

Prey tell, which secret ICBM system does the US field with this many
MIRV warheads?  Minutemam-III's have 3 each, the 100 MX missiles have
10 each.  They're all around 300-400 kilotons.

We can also change our ICBM targeting in minutes, although accurate
results would require some advance preparation.

   In addition, rapid-target-selection systems installed aboard the US
   nuclear submarine fleet would allow 40 more missles given 3 days
   notice. The amount of missles that could potetially be delivered to
   China are so large as to be irrelevant. A complete nuclear stike by
   the US, utilizing all warheads, would require 8 days. Result
   estimate is as follows:

   1 Complete destruction of the Chinese poplutation, 1/5 of humanity.

I doubt this, and we wouldn't be likely to do a genocidal attack.  And
don't forget the fallout would end up in the US after a few weeks
(wouldn't be very dangerous by then, though).

   2 Ecosystem damage on irreversible scale, causing massive climate changes.

   3 Fallout from attack likely to devastate Asia and Europe.

Europe???  That's all the way around the world (a complete circuit).
They'd noice it, but wouldn't be that inconvienced.

   4 Dust from impacts will cause new ice age, giving Tokyo a spring 
   temperature of - 20 Farenheit.

   5 Probable exinction of humanity. Exact figure is 97 to 100% likely.

Yeah, right.  Not even close; if this was true the volcanic explosions
that destroyed Crete? (Thera?), and another one that happened within
the last century or so would each have wiped out humanity.

The Earth is very very big, and our ability to affect is really really
limited.  Only those guilty of hubris or ignorance think otherwise.

Even a total US-Soviet exchange back in the old days wouldn't have
even come close (where *are* you getting this from????).  I myself
only worried about an exchange followed up by Soviet Army occupation
of the US; anything less is pretty straightfoward to survive if you
can avoid a blast area and stay fed until the transportation system
gets back on it's feet (so to speak :-).

   Senario 2 JAPAN, US, VS CHINA

   China has 70 medium range missles carrying a mix of nuclear and chem/bio 
   warheads, in MIRV format. Roughly 1/5 of these are currently targeted at 
   Japan. Retargeting time for the others is set at 2 days. In addition, 
   about forty bombers carrying high-yield nuclear warheads are within 
   stiking distance of Japan.

Would the SDF allow this?  You'd have to take out their air defenses
with some of those IRBMs to allow the bombers to get in.

   Results same as senario 1 for US and China.

   Japan would likey be literally bombed out of existance by a full strike.
   A partial strike would eliminate Tokyo and its surroundings, and infict a 
   99 to 100% causualty rate on the Japanese population.

I strongly suggest you read up on what the US was doing to the
Japanese homeland and people; the development of the atomic bomb
merely increased the efficiency of our systematic destruction of their
cities.

One other point: nuclear weapons don't scale when it comes to area
effects.  Somewhere around 10 megatons (+- a few) you reach a point of
diminishing returns, because most of the energy is simply re-radiated
into space.  That's one of the reasons we mostly moved to sub-megaton
warheads.

Anyway, the reason I spent so much effort on this is that I've been
studying the topic for almost 30 years, and I'm appalled that 100's of
thousands of Americans are going to pay with their lives when the
world starts using nuke again, simply because we can't deal with this
threat in a serious and responsible fashion.

					- Harold