posted 04-03-99 06:34 AM ET     

I think the U.N. should nuke Kosovo.

The reasons are simple, and they are lessons I learned from history and SMAC (I do not mean this as a joke).

First, when are your Planet Busters most effective? When you cannot or don't want to commit ground troops or other means to effectively secure a base or area. This is essentially the U.N.'s dilemma: They cannot (public opinion, particularly in the U.S.) or will not (again, for political reasons) risk the potential public relation's disaster of sening troops in to be killed. True, Cruise Missles and bombing runs are effective to a point, but can your Penetrators really do all the work for you? Can a conventional missle deliver the knock out punch?

Second, one Planet Buster does the work of countless units--and does it relatively cheaply and absolutely lethally. No questions. The U.N. is fighting a war of attrition, and I simply believe that the troops in Kosovo are too well trained and have too much experience to ever lose a war of attrition. A single Cruise Missle itself costs an enormous sum of money--and the U.N. pops them like Pez candy. Tell me, is that an efficient use war resources?

One well-placed nuke could end this whole thing in seconds at a fraction of the cost of fighting an air war of attrition or a bloody ground war. We simply warn the civilians to leave the area. Hell, they are being pushed out as it is. Then we drop the bomb.

I always laugh when people come back at me with the moral argument: The Bomb is an atrocity. Tell me, what's the greater atrocity: spending billions of dollars for a war the U.N. might never win using its hit-and-run tactics, in the process sending clear signals to future rogue armies that the U.N. lacks the spine to deliver the final blow OR ending not only this war but any similarly-minded attempt to usurp democracy and freedom?

WWII taught us some lessons on this point, but I need not raise them here. I will simply say that an unquestioned peace ensued and people and the land recovered.

Do not get me wrong. I hate the very idea of the need for nuclear arms. But if we are to truly put an end to fighting in Europe--the hot bed for both world wars--we should do it effectively, unhesitatingly, and with courage.

I could go on, but I'm eager to read your ideas on this.

posted 04-03-99 06:54 AM ET         

No, I don't really like to entertain the idea of a nuclear holocost. Thanks for the thought. (yin style)

posted 04-03-99 09:20 AM ET         

What kind of mad nut wants a nuclear war?

posted 04-03-99 01:32 PM ET         

and the fact that guided (loaded) nuclear warheads have not ever been tactically tested

posted 04-03-99 04:56 PM ET         

The greatest effect on surface bursts is caused by the ground. Unlike in the air, the gamma rays cannot escape the blast in all directions. For this reason, near-surface bursts are also in this category. Although they may not be on the ground, they have similar effects. The ground absorbs many of the gamma rays. This produces an asymmetric field. The resulting field is very similar to that of a hemisphere that is radiating upward. The electrons also are able to return to the burst point through the ground. This makes the area near the center of the burst contain a high concentration of highly ionized particles. This net movement of electrons creates current loops that generate a magnetic field running around the burst point. This is the basic model of a near-surface burst.

When the nuclear explosion occurs in the medium-altitude range, the effects of the ground are much. A medium-altitude range would be away from the ground but below the upper atmosphere. As the height of the burst increases, the asymmetry of the field produced decreases. However, the asymmetry increases, after a point, with altitude due to changes in the atmospheric density.

Since the ground is absent, the magnetic field produced in near-surface bursts will be absent. The electric fields will be similar to those of near-surface bursts.

High-altitude electromagnetic pulses (HEMP) produced by high-altitude bursts occur in an area of the atmosphere where the density of the air is low. Because of this, the gamma rays can travel very far before they are absorbed. These rays travel downward into the increasingly dense atmosphere. Here, they interact with the air to form ions as previously described. This region, called the deposition or source region, is roughly circular. It is thick in the middle and thinner toward the edges. It extends horizontally very far creating source regions that are over 1000 miles in diameter. The size of it depends on the height of the burst and the yield of the weapon. The EMP in this source region gets deflected downward towards the earth due to the earth�s magnetic field. Although the fields produced from a high-altitude burst are not as great as those for a near-surface burst, they affect a much larger area.
Because of this huge potential, high-altitude bursts could be the most dangerous type of EMP.

Effects of an electromagnetic pulse:
The electrical field produced by the EMP only lasts a very short time before it quickly tails off. The electric field has a rise time of about 1 nanosecond. Even with such a short pulse, the effects can be tremendous. For a high altitude burst, the effects can also be far reaching. By many calculations, one properly placed nuclear bomb detonated above the center of the United States (for example) could produce huge electrical fields on the surface of the earth. The EMP from a single medium-heavy payload missle exploded 300 kilometers over the heart of the United States could set up electrical field 50 kV/m strong over nearly all of North America. Since EMP is electromagnetic radiation traveling at the speed of light, all of the area could possibly be effected almost simultaneously.

With such a possible threat, it is important to consider what may be affected. Because of the intense electromagnetic fields (about 10 kV/m) and wide area of coverage, the HEMP can induce large voltages and currents in power lines, communication cables, radio towers, and other long conductors serving a facility. Some other notable collectors of EMP include railroad tracks, large antennas, pipes, cables, wires in buildings, and metal fencing. Although materials underground are partially shielded by the ground, they are still collectors, and these collectors deliver the EMP energy to some larger facility. This produces surges that can destroy the connected device, such as, power generators or long distance telephone systems. An EMP could destroy many services needed to survive a war.

Society has entered the information age and is more dependent on electronic systems that work with components that are very susceptible to excessive electric currents and voltages. Many systems needed are controlled by a semiconductor in some way. Failure of semi-conductive chips could destroy industrial processes, railway networks, power and phone systems, and access to water supplies. Semiconductor devices fail when they encounter an EMP because of the local heating that occurs. When a semi-conductive device absorbs the EMP energy, it displaces the resulting heat that is produced relatively slowly when compared to the time scale of the EMP. Because the heat is not dissipated quickly, the semiconductor can quickly heat up to temperatures near the melting point of the material. Soon the device will short and fail. This type of failure is call thermal second-breakdown failure.

It is also important to realize how vulnerable the military is to EMP. Military systems often use the most sophisticated and therefore most vulnerable, electronics available, and many of the systems that must operate during a nuclear war cannot tolerate the temporary disturbances that EMP may induce." Furthermore, many military duties require information to be communicated over long distances. This type of communication requires external antennas, which are extremely susceptible to EMP. Also, some military duties require information-gathering techniques. Many of these techniques use electronic devices connected directly to antennas or radar. Although the devices may be inside shielded buildings, the antennas bring the EMP inside to the electronics. Therefore, the effectiveness of shielding must be examined.

As you can see, this makes for a very unpleasant scenario for any country trying to detonate a nuclear missile.

A viable alternative to this, however, would be detonating over the atlantic, but that would depend on russia (or any other country)'s ability to detect the missile and intercept it after it was off us shores and before it reached eurasia.

posted 04-03-99 04:59 PM ET            

First: Why the hell are you discussing the Kosovo war in a GAME FORUM?!?
And second, didn't I get the sarcasm or are there really people out there, who consider a NUCLEAR ATTACK as a possible option?
Now, how insane is this proposal? Perhaps you in the USA don't realize the problem we got here in Europe (I'm from germany), but at least your president does.
A nuclear strike against any country for any reason would cause millions and billions of dead, and most important, I N N O C E N T people. The only person responsible for the slaughter in Kosovo is this crazy Milosevic. But hey, who cares: It worked fine in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so why not nuke the whole Balkan region? Oh, yeah, some million people would die, but for sure Milosevic would, too. That'd be really worth it.
My point is just, that all the insane guys who want to nuke something, should perhaps first THINK and then TALK. And if their opinion hasn't changed through thinking about it, they should think again. It's that easy.

posted 04-03-99 07:28 PM ET            

You want to nuke Kosovo?? You have got to be the most unstable sonuvabit....

Hey...wait a sec, something's not right here...SMACTrek asked for...Planetbuster on Kosovo...he said he'd use a new identity...could it be??

MY GOD, IT IS!!!

ROFL

posted 04-03-99 11:39 PM ET            

Seems like some people dislikes planet Earth. I don't. It's my home. Moon is not an option. Where in the hell I will find cold beer in the moon?

posted 04-04-99 12:31 AM ET            

I didn't want to mention it because it seems inappropriate, considering your posts on the subject are extremely knowledgeable.
Or appear that way to a layman :|

I say nuke BOTH Kosovo and Russia, thereby eliminating the possibility of Russia counterstriking.

posted 04-05-99 05:49 PM ET         

All nation in the world are just waiting for the spark to set off their nuclear launching. Nuclear weapons haven't been used offensively since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Countries want that spark just as an EXCUSE to launch all they have at the most strategic and most devastatable targets on the planet.

The nuclear fallout from that nuclear war would ensure the EXTINCTION of the ENTIRE human race. Food supplies would dry up within years and the fallout from such a war would create a nuclear winter lasting decades.

We don't want to lose the entire human species because of some small-fry war in Kosovo. If anything just start bombing Belgrade with "Dummy bombs" that were used during WWII. Just don't use a nuke.

Russia has over 20,000 nuclear missiles, teh US has about 8,000. EVERY major city could be vaporized on the planet.

posted 04-05-99 06:18 PM ET            

The problem with the Situation in Kosovo is that we are not hitting the Serbs hard enough. You don't prick them with needles and ask them if they'd had enough, you impale them with a spear and check them to see if they're still breathing.