The situation in NK may get out of control. The dictator there is apparently insulated from reality and common sense and may act irrationally with the US naval group in the area and Trump finally putting our enemies on notice.

Also, Obama's aiding of Iran to acquire nukes may already have paid dividends for them, even the awesome Israeli intelligence agencies might not be fully up to date on their capability. They are a theocratic republic and the Ayatollah really may think Allah will either protect them or send them to paradise for starting WW3, or maybe they think they can get away with passing nukes off to terrorists and then claiming ignorance.

There are a few scenarios here.

-NK launches a nuke in the region at SK or (more likely) at Japan or at the US Naval group.
-NK launches a nuke at HI or the West Coast (Seattle or LA)

-Iran passes a nuke off to a terrorist proxy like Hezbollah or Hamas and they sneak it in detonate it in the region (Israel/Saudi Arabia)
-Iran passes a nuke off to a terrorist proxy like Hezbollah or Hamas and they sneak it in and detonate it inside the US
-Iran attacks US ships (likely) or manages to get a missile to the east US coast (unlikely).


What should be the US response to the above scenarios if:
-nuke detonates?
-we intercept and destroy nuke and/or its a dud? (we have a lot of land and ship based interceptors and they have jumped light years in terms of capability and success).

My own thinking is if we or our allies get hit we HAVE to nuke back, or else M.A.D. gets broken and the Russians and Chinese start thinking that a first strike winnable war is possible. For M.A.D. to truly be upheld though we'd be required to launch our missiles before theirs have even hit, which means we hit them even if we stop their missiles or they are duds. How would China react if we put radioactive fallout right next to them?

If we get hit from a land-based nuke that terrorists or even a state snuck in we also have to hit back (and we can easily tell from the radiation where the material came from, where and how it was refined and who created it).

If we stop a nuke and we didn't launch during the stopping of it, I am less sure on what our response should be. Massive conventional bombing campaign? Conventional invasion war?
At the very least we need to send all our blackops guys in to secure all remaining enemy nuke sites and production facilities.

Hi Alpine I think the whole underpinning of MAD is that our similarly armed adversaries are also sane and rational people. That has certainly been the case with the Russians and the Chinese over the history of the Cold War and our current post-Cold War period. Another underlying tenet is that each side has more than enough weaponry to completely obliterate the other. That has been the case with Russia since the late 1950's and certainly by the time President Kennedy took office.

In the United States, General Curtis LeMay oversaw the transition from WWII Army Air Corps through the inception of the USAF in 1947 and formed the Strategic Air Command into a nation killing instrument designed to utterly destroy the Soviet Union and it's allies in order to enforce the MAD principle. An organizational genius and one of the true founders of the modern USAF strategic forces.

The problem with North Korea and Iran is that they meet neither of these criteria. They are led by irrational people motivated by hate and they also lack the nuclear arsenals to inflict nation killing damage on us. The problem with a major nuclear retaliatory response to either of these countries is that either Russia or China could be drawn into an exchange as well leading to globally catastrophic war.

Also our beef is with the leadership of these countries. Hate to see millions of North Korean peasants, already oppressed by their own government, killed by our own retaliatory actions. It's the leadership that needs to go, not the people.

IMO the better course of action is theater and strategic missile defense programs, damn whether the Russians or Chinese are upset by it. The whole purpose of these systems is to knock out a limited number of missiles by a rogue player, not a full scale exchange so they really shouldn't upset the balance of MAD between the major players anyways.

Then we need to attack pre-emptively via conventional means to destroy these countries nuke programs before they get any further out of hand. It's far less expensive and painful to take them out now than to wait for one of our major cities to get glassed before we act.

I, (and you), won't have to worry about anything ever again.

"NK launches a nuke at Seattle."

Not much of a loss IMHO.

Being that MLT is 13 miles from Seattle, I would be worried

NK doesn't have any 20 megaton city ruiners. A 20 kiloton weapon (probably far more in line with what they have) as a groundburst would destroy downtown Seattle but even in Shoreline or Bellevue you'd probably survive.

I'm no military or nuke expert but I'd like to think that in the case NK is stupid enough to launch a nuke toward mainland or even Hawaii, the USA is technologically advanced enough to easily intercept it without issue.

At which point the appropriate response I think would be to tell Russia and China that we're going to fuck their shit up.
Maybe drop some leaflets across NK telling them "Your eternal leaders are full of shit, we're going to bomb the fuck out of Pyongyang, GTFO"

I put ground zero near my office, wishful thinking.


Long loading page
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

I figure all them "SnowFlakes" walking around and the hi-tech buildings Paul Allen has been building down in the Westlake area, would absorb most of the blast. Then the Mayor would suck up the fallout after he slithers out of his bunker. LOL

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Equivalent yield to NK test in 2013 (10kt)
Airburst optimized for overpressure (5psi)
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=10&lat=47.6062095&lng=-122.3320708&hob_opt=1&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=2207&casualties=1&humanitarian=1&fallout=1&fallout_angle=83&therm=_3rd-100,_3rd-50,35&zm=14

Estimated fatalities: 68,550
Estimated injuries: 88,940

Any state that launches or otherwise delivers and detonates a thermonuclear device in the USA or our allies shall be completely and utterly obliterated.

Playing on Nuke Maps with a 20kt in Seattle.

As long as it hits near like 2nd Ave or Columbia Tower and is Airburst, I'll be aight on Queen Anne Ave

Who says he can even aim that thing?

I'm with you on this. I am fairly confident we would be able to intercept anything coming across the pacific. If not from Hawaii, Bremerton or Portland. When a couple flew into SeaTac when obama was in town a few years back in a prop plane it took less than ten minutes for fighters to get from Portland to SeaTac. They were over mcchord before we were even notified. Not really that worried

Ballistic missile defense is pretty complex. The US has been working on it steadily since the days of President Reagan. It is complicated by several factors:
- Defense against liquid fueled (longer boost phase/burn) vs solid rocket motor (shorter boost phase) ballistic missiles
- Variety of different kinds of ballistic missiles (short range, medium range, IRBM/intermediate, ICBM/strategic)
- Whether ballistic missile has a unitary warhead or multiple, independently targeted re-entry vehicles
- Whether ballistic missile is targeted in boost, mid-course, or terminal phase

Basically the US has several dozen interceptor missiles currently stationed in Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg AFB, California which target ICBM strategic ballistic missiles in mid-course trajectory and are designed to shoot down North Korean missile threats approaching the US mainland. This is known as ground-based mid-course defense. Roughly half the tests have been successful so MAYBE a fifty-fifty chance of a rogue missile shootdown exists.
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/usmissiledefense

There are also theater based missile defense programs as well as sea-based defense systems against short, medium, and IRBM threats (Aegis system) which may be more useful to defend South Korea and Japan.

It's far from certain that we can intercept an incoming ballistic missile. Our own LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM, for instance, reaches a maximum speed of 15,000 mph (6-7 km/sec) at booster motor burnout. These incoming warheads are knocked down by a direct kinetic strike. Think of the challenges in hitting a 15,000 mph target with another missile and you get an idea how hard this can be and why we don't have a reliable continental missile defense system after thirty years of development.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-speed-of-an-intercontinental-ballistic-missile