India vs. Pakistan "Hot War" over Kashmir

Well if both sides want to maximize fatalities and are attacking cities they would use air bursts which will produce relatively little radioactive fallout.

Well I for one welcome our glow-in-the-dark three headed penguin overlords! Speaking of animals getting nuked, there's a fox at Chernobyl who knows how to make a sandwich!
Let's not sell getting nuked short!

Well that's one way to turn lemons into lemonade.

“I do not know with what weapons Shithole vs Street Shitters I will be fought, but Shithole vs Street Shitters II will be fought with shit.”

Do India and Pakistan even own enough devices to cause any sort of "nuclear winter"?

I could buy that from a large exchange between say, the US and Russia (unlikely, but whatever), but do India and Pakistan have very many bombs?

^Think they have around 140 nuclear warheads apiece, give or take maybe 20 each. In contrast to US and Russia (with about 6450 and 6850).

Evil psycho perhaps, but didn't go far enough.

Some right winger with great sense of humor pointed out if the Leftists were sincere about the severity of risk if we don't stop CO2 output, the best answer for US is not to crash our economy but invade and conquer (and then crash?) the planet's two greatest CO2 emitters: China and India. By far the best.

Your way's a shortcut.

Also it turns out that even Chernobyl and Fukushima didn't actually kill nearly as many people as the death toll forecast by even the least alarming of the AGW alarmists. So using more nuclear power would appear to be a rational response from the true believers claiming "man is directly responsible for all the increase in CO2, & CO2 is directly responsible for the greatest impending catastrophe ever to face mankind" (purported rising temps or sea levels, or melting north pole).

Well, if they touched them all off I suppose that could do it.

I don't think you pull that trigger unless shit gets existential. Otherwise, it's better to lose territory than to launch and then suffer a devastating retaliatory strike.

Agreed.

I've never thought that all-out, "if one flies, they all fly" nuclear war was ever a serious possibility even between the US/USSR. At least not in my lifetime.

Not as many bombs as me after a night at Taco Bell.

Glad to see my hypothetical garnered some discussion.

Goddamn right it would be, and the scientists who study such things largely agree with that. The problem there is very, very much the rank-and-file liberal and progressive enviro-wannabes who don't understand anything beyond "nuclear == bad" (you'll find them right next to the "GMOs == evil", "atrazine == gay frogs", and "Monsanto == the Devil" folks, often in the same body, even) who pressure their elected representatives into working for a very nuclear-hostile and nuclear-uneconomical regulatory regime, and they've been doing it since the Clinton administration.

By far and away the best lasting impact of the Trump administration (or any near-future Republican administration) might be improving the regulatory environment to enable new nuclear plant construction on a large scale -- strictly to own the libs. And as horrible as he is at just about everything else, I will call him the goddamn savior of humanity if he succeeds at that*. He's not even close to there yet though.

*there will be other adjectives prepended - orange, corrupt, venal, moronic, felonious, etc... but if it brings down CO2 emissions enough, he'll deserve "savior" too.

Yes, good comparisons.

It's particularly bad thinking in light of what looks to be very promising "fourth generation reactors" that vastly mitigate the risks typically associated with nuke power (eg meltdown, reliance on human element).

If Trump can get someone like Gates (any high profile proponent with strong credibility) to endorse and play spokesman for the merits of safer nuke power, it will become much more doable imo.

I think what's most likely to happen, if tensions continue to escalate between India and Pakistan, is that one country will decide to "remind" the other that they have nuclear weapons by conducting an underground "test." (I put that in quotes because they know full well the bomb will work, they're just setting it off as a dick waving exercise.) While the other side scurries to conduct their own "test," nuclear powers like the US, Russia, etc., will be making lots of phone calls to the capitals of India and Pakistan to tell them to settle the fuck down. The second country will "test" theirs, and both sides will then try to solve the thing without either side losing face. I think the only way you see any kind of exchange of nukes is if massive unrest in Pakistan threatens to destabilize the government. (Or a Pakistani general goes rogue and launches.)

What happens next, is a bit iffy. If India can rapidly respond with their own nuke, they probably will, if they have to put the weapon together, they may not get the chance. Almost certainly, after the Pakistani nuke goes off, the US and Russia (in agreement with the other nuclear powers, if not with their active assistance) will give the two countries an ultimatum: Stop this shit now, and let outsiders dismantle your programs, or expect to have your programs destroyed by military force in the coming hours. How that would play out, I've no idea. Ideally, India and Pakistan would come to their senses, give up their weapons and things would settle down. We can expect a lot of economic disruption on a global scale because the moment the first city gets nuked, the stock markets around the world are going to fall, and I expect people are going to hold off on a lot of purchases while they wait to see what's going to happen.

But it may be in a Pakistan/India conflict.

Pakistan is small compared to India and Pakistan may decide that it can never win a conventional war against India.

Once nukes start going off Pakistan may decide that it's still going to lose so might as well just carpet bomb India with Pakistani nukes.

India is not giving up it's remaining nukes after being nuked.

Pakistan is not giving up it's remaining nukes after being nuked.

Nor would the USA, China, or Russia want to engage in a military conflict with two countries that have just used nuclear weapons. Especially China and the Russians given they are in the area and more easily nuked than us. That's more likely to lead to WWIII than it is to solve anything.

Hopefully the shock of seeing the horrors of a nuked city in each country would cause both sides to step back and declare a truce.

But yeah the world economy will go straight into the shitter the moment nukes start flying.

IIRC, correctly, the Pakistani nuclear program's "safety controls" have the warheads stored in one location, while the missiles are stored in another. Not sure what the Indian system is like. I doubt that either country has weapons targeted at places in Russia or China, and if their systems are like the Russians, when it comes to reprogramming the targets, it's not a quick process. Nor would I expect the US and the other nuclear powers to give the countries an ultimatum until they had the necessary forces pre-positioned to deal with the matter. We have a number of military bases in the region where we could launch the operations from, not to mention naval forces who could strike and I'm sure plenty of intel on the locations of the nuclear weapons.

Supposedly, and I make no claim to the veracity of this, the US government has the means to track the movement of nuclear material from orbit. If true, and if the Pakistanis do keep their warheads at one location and their missiles in another, then we would have advance warning that something was about to happen and could begin readiness planning before anything was launched. I would hope that the various other nuclear powers have plans in place to deal with the run-up to states like India and Pakistan going to war and are engaging in back-channel talks, but I don't know.

Disclaimer: I agree part of the solution is to improve nuclear technology

However, comparing Chernobyl to the consequences of a nuke airburst is misleading to say the least. The isotopes involved are completely different leading to a very different profile of effects.

I'm not sure what figures you are using either for the actual deaths or the projected ones but last I checked the death toll from Chernobyl was still ongoing in terms of the elevated cancer risks, infertility rates and the damage to the ecosystem and food chains over a wide area meaning no one has any real certainty how many deaths can be attributed to the disaster.

Radiation. They say it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. You can survive a hundred chest x-rays a year! And you should have them, too! Seriously, it's not as bad as once thought. http://m.spiegel.de/international/w...tion-as-dangerous-as-we-thought-a-519043.html

You have a very 'wishful thinking' view of the realities here. Of all the nuclear powers on Earth, these two have the least incentive to give up their arsenals, ever. Any country wanting to unilaterally disarm one of these countries would have to try and do it to both simultaneously. Bottom line- that ain't gonna happen. If you think for a moment they wouldn't fight such an attempt AND use their nukes in the process, you're naive beyond belief. India even has an SSBN capability to keep them in the game against just such an attempt. Indian SSBN Program India doesn't just have the Pakis to worry about, but China as well, and their long-standing dispute with the latter over the Doklam Plateau.

Pakistan returns Indian pilot

Already de-escalating. Boring.

The way I see it, they simply have no alternative. Do you really think that the rest of the world will simply allow to minor nuclear powers, who've used their weapons in war to keep them? In an era where we will be endlessly flooded with pictures and video of the results of those weapons?

You're right. Who ever heard of a multi-national military force coordinating a massive military assault on a nation perceived as an existential threat?



(For more recent history, see the combined US and British attack on Afghanistan, roughly a month after 9/11.)

As long as India and Pakistan keep to killing one another conventionally, nobody in the rest of the planet really cares. When they start popping nukes off at one another, they get the planet's full attention. Sort of like Bin Ladin and 9/11, nobody, not even W, was terribly concerned about what Bin Ladin might do, so long as he kept to blowing up the odd thing. However, when he demonstrated both the willingness and ability to create large amounts of devastation in a single blow, we suddenly decided that simply lobbing the odd cruise missile in his direction wasn't enough. The same thing would happen with India and Pakistan if one (or both) of them used a nuke against the other. At the very least, it's bad for business. TPTB are going to want to shut that shit down as fast as possible. So long as the two of them retain their weapons after a nuclear strike has occurred, the global economy is going to be on very shaky ground. Too much and/or too long of a dip, and the economies of First World nations will start teetering. What then? Military action is seen as swift and decisive, and produces immediate results, at least in people's minds, if not reality. And come election time, no politician, regardless of party, or country, wants to be seen as weak or indecisive in a time of crisis. Especially when you have a nuclear power, like Pakistan, which is known to be cozy to terrorists. The media will no doubt be circulating rumors that the Pakistani military is riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers, and the talking heads on TV will start saying that if Pakistan feels too threatened, they'll hand the weapons over to terrorists, so we have do something to disarm them. The media, after all, does love a good war, even if they don't like the President in office.



It drives up their ratings, so they can charge more for ads.

Of course, it's always possible that the rest of the world could stand by and do nothing, except for enact a few sanctions on the two countries. But do you really think that we'd do that as a result of the first use of nuclear weapons during war in almost 100 years? What do you suppose North Korea's response would be to a world which did very little to a country that popped off a nuke? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Israel?

The premise of MAD was that a nuclear war would be unthinkable if both sides knew from the beginning that they would be utterly annihilated. If you show minor nuclear powers that we won't do much of anything if they use nukes, then what's to stop them? What will stop other countries from seeking to acquire nuclear weapons if they know that the world will largely ignore the use of those weapons?

India or Pakistan using nukes in war will disrupt what most people see as the "order" of the world, and replace it with disorder and chaos. That tends to scare people, and frightened people demand action. What would you suggest TPTB do to restore order and calm the population who is seeing (thanks to social media, as well as the various news outlets) image after image of people dying from radiation and cities reduced to rubble?

It is all about duration of the exposure. I remember a story about the Communist dictator of Romania Ceaușescu. Back in the 1970s I think it was he had some problems with several hundred miners. So at their next scheduled physicals their doctors were told when doing their chest x-rays to leave the x-ray machines on for as long as five minutes per person! Within a year almost all the miners developed cancers that proved lethal.

India's PM wants French warplanes, it seems.

Ahhh, the venerable MiG-21. Welcome to 1960!

And the NATO reporting name for the MIG-21 is not "Bison" it is "Fishbed". All NATO reporting names for Soviet era fighters start with an "F".

"Bison" is the NATO reporting name for the M-4. A Soviet built heavy bomber. All NATO reporting names for Soviet era bombers start with a "B"

NATO reporting names are not in play here. If you had done any reading into military aircraft (it seems it's a topic you don't know much about), you'd know that "Bison" is the name of a version of the MiG-21 that was first introduced in 1976 and introduced into the Indian Air Force in the 80's.

And helicopters with an H, antitank missles with an S, and so on.


FYI, it’s MiG, not MIG. As in the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau.

Sorry.