China's Perspective on Nuclear Deterrence

AssassinsMace said:

Humankind's little toys are no match for the awesome power of nature. If someone calculated the energy of a tsunami you'd probably find out it's just a watse of a nuke and might as well drop it directly instead of creating some indirect effect.

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Since we continue this topic, you can check when Russians test their "10M" ton thermo-nuclear warhead at west pacific, the tsunami actually hit Chile at the other side of the ocean, in compare, this time the "tsunami" created 25 kilometer below seabed (which is really deep), didn't creat even more than 3m height wave over Fijian beach.

I am not saying mother nature is not powerful, she is fearsome actually; but pin-point aimed "human's toy" strike at the right place at the right time, could be fearsome also.

Red___Sword said:

Wow, Martian, IF you are in China, you will be banned from every modulator, for you to BROADCAST this kind of information. (Otherwise the modulators wil be having a warm chat with the NSA, believe or not.)

But since you are HERE, - ME as a common citizen of THERE, thank you. Thank you to clarify some entertaining assumptions that China have had a inferior nuclear strike capability, than UK and France.

Wrong idea kills the cat. Although EVERYBODY do not intend to kill the cat.

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To compare oranges to oranges, China is both geographically and population-wise a much larger country than either France or the UK. This means China attracts more targeting by others (on the scale of the US and Russia), therefore for China to have a credible retaliatory capability it must be able to deliver a comparable amount of pain it expects to receive, AFTER taking a hit, anywhere in the world.

This means China's current stockpile is nowhere near enough for a retaliatory capability because they don't have the strategic bombers and ballistic missle subs (neither in quantity nor quality) that the US and Russia have for surviving a first strike and then hitting back.

Also, Martian, your posted list does not include India, Pakistan, or Israel's estimated stockpiles. If you have that information can you post those as well?

Rankings of world nuclear (thermonuclear/hydrogen P-5 and atomic/fission) powers


Stunning, Frightening, Explosive and Destructive Power: Detonation of an 11-megaton Thermonuclear Bomb, March 26, 1954
Operation Castle, ROMEO Event
Bikini Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands

Rankings of world P-5 (i.e. Five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council) thermonuclear powers by megatons of firepower:

1. Russia - 1,273 megatons

2. United States - 570 megatons

3. China - 294 megatons (China has over half the nuclear firepower of the United States)

4. France - 55 megatons

5. Britain - 16 megatons

Humorous fact: A single Chinese DF-3A/CSS-2 IRBM or DF-4/CSS-3 ICBM with a 3.3 megaton warhead has over three times the destructive firepower in the entire Indian nuclear arsenal. In general, a thermonuclear warhead is roughly 100 times more powerful than an equivalent atomic warhead.

References:

Russia:
United States:
China:
France:
Britain:

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Rankings of atomic/fission bomb powers:

6. Israel: 1500-4000 kt (or 1.5 to 4 megatons)

7. India: 800 Kt ~ 1000 Kt. (or 0.8 to 1 megaton)

8. Pakistan: 600 kt - 1000 kt (or 0.6 to 1 megaton)

[note: 1,000 kilotons equal only 1 megaton]

References:

Israel:
India:
Pakistan:

Red___Sword said:

I am not saying mother nature is not powerful, she is fearsome actually; but pin-point aimed "human's toy" strike at the right place at the right time, could be fearsome also.

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It's simply a matter of physics. Energy dissipates. There's resistance that will absorb the energy in trying to create an indirect effect. Just drop a bomb on a city and the resistance is what is targetted to be destroyed anyway. Look at the Mount St Helens eruption in Washington State. It's said it was equivalent to a 400 megaton nuclear explosion and caused a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. Now take that energy underwater and underground like what happened in Japan with a 9.0 magnitude. How many nukes will it take to create a tsunami just so it can go several kilometers inland like it did in Japan?

China's Perspective on Nuclear Deterrence

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Is China more cautious about Russia or India?? Because for the former I think China must resolve matters peacefully. It is in the nuke race that Bear must not be challenged. Regarding India well you can say »>Bring it on!!

AssassinsMace said:

It's simply a matter of physics. Energy dissipates. There's resistance that will absorb the energy in trying to create an indirect effect. Just drop a bomb on a city and the resistance is what is targetted to be destroyed anyway. Look at the Mount St Helens eruption in Washington State. It's said it was equivalent to a 400 megaton nuclear explosion and caused a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. Now take that energy underwater and underground like what happened in Japan with a 9.0 magnitude. How many nukes will it take to create a tsunami just so it can go several kilometers inland like it did in Japan?

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Buddy, while I pay respect to your credibility in other threads and other posts, you are dodging the ball in this thread.

You are explicitly ignoring the difference:

The human made X mega ton nuke warhead explode IN THE MIDDLE OF WATER;
and the 9.0M earthquake that took place at 25,000m BENEATH THE SEABED (underground).

You explicitly emphasis that mother nature have a bigger "bang"(which is true); but dodging the point of the difference of IMPACT that human made warhead precisly delivered by water, and random earthquke that the energy is "far far away" dozens kilometer benath seabed.

It is indeed not my purposed to discuss "how to wreck mankind with nuke", but to use the japan's tsnami as an example to warn people that "how bad it could be" when people treat nuke like a toy to use it as please.

In fact, the "technical evaluation of how to use nuke to suits all kinds of scenarios" - is total rubbish for human moral. Nuke's total idea is to WIPE OUT THE ENEMY, different warhead may have different "bang", but the ultimate idea do not change. It is A MORAL PROBLEM for someone (especially "proffessional people") to think like "as long as I play like this, it is SAFE to use nuke, with consequences that I can foresee." (I am not saying you, AssassinsMace.)

"Someone don't have enough nuclear counter-strike capability, so that I can use nuke as I please." - especially this conclusion is based on "current evaluation" - it is the very thing that bites back to every persons' ass.

Here's the THING: when the war realy getting to the line of "wipe each other out", the TECHNICAL issue became relatively small. That "can you hit this, can you hit that?" is pointless already.

HIT THE WATER!

Detonate "X" megaton of warhead at 100m below sea level, at 100miles off-caost of your enemy... game over for even a "coast to coast" country. - not even mention if I hit both coast. (and every major city of the country)

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How many megatons does "X" represent? That's the whole point. If you're just trying to create a tsunami as a deterrence because a country doesn't have enough nukes... well they won't have enough nuke power to even do it in the first place. One would figure if using nukes to create a tsunami that powerful were that easy, it would create a lot fear if it were that simple.

The simple laws of physics say it wouldn't work the way you say it would. Yeah maybe the immediate area but not coast to coast. Mount St Helens was said to be equivalent to a 400 megaton nuclear explosion and measured as a 5.1 earthquake. The Japan earthquake was 9.0 and how much megatonnage would you need to replicate that tsunami that was created? Of course they're different but it's all about release of energy in whatever circumstance. And if you know about the Richter Scale a 9.0 earthquake is not almost double the power of Mount St Helens at 5.1. It's more like hundreds maybe even thousands of time more powerful. And how much damage did the Japan tsunami do? It didn't wipe out the entire east coast of Japan.

Mount St Helens at 400 megatons according to Martian's post is up there with the total of the US nuke arsenal. So a country with a few nukes won't be creating much of a tsunami.

AssassinsMace said:

How many megatons does "X" represent? That's the whole point. If you're just trying to create a tsunami as a deterrence because a country doesn't have enough nukes... well they won't have enough nuke power to even do it in the first place. One would figure if using nukes to create a tsunami that powerful were that easy, it would create a lot fear if it were that simple.

The simple laws of physics say it wouldn't work the way you say it would. Yeah maybe the immediate area but not coast to coast. Mount St Helens was said to be equivalent to a 400 megaton nuclear explosion and measured as a 5.1 earthquake. The Japan earthquake was 9.0 and how much megatonnage would you need to replicate that tsunami that was created? Of course they're different but it's all about release of energy in whatever circumstance. And if you know about the Richter Scale a 9.0 earthquake is not almost double the power of Mount St Helens at 5.1. It's more like hundreds maybe even thousands of time more powerful. And how much damage did the Japan tsunami do? It didn't wipe out the entire east coast of Japan.

Mount St Helens at 400 megatons according to Martian's post is up there with the total of the US nuke arsenal. So a country with a few nukes won't be creating much of a tsunami.

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Richter scale is a logarithmic scale ... so scale 6 is 10x bigger than scale 5 and scale 7 is 10x bigger than scale 6 or 100 times bigger than scale 5

Japanese earthquake (9.0) is 7,943 times bigger than Mt St helena (5.1) ... so if St Helena earthquake equivalent to 400 megaton ... the JApanese one would be 3,177,313 megaton

A multi-megaton warhead detonated at precisely the right altitude and location off the Japanese coast could probably cause the same amount of damage as the tsunami, but said warhead would cause much more damage detonated over a Japanese city. The tsunami killed people in the tens of thousands (not belittling the effects of the tsunami, for it is a terrible tragedy), but even Hiroshima cause ten times as many fatalities.

AssassinsMace, first you missed the point when I say "hit both coast of the "coast-to-coast" country, and X means certain amount of mega tons of firepower, I didn't specify how many warhead should be used (to "hit the water")" - and I really did not intent to argue that man-made stuff is comparable to mother nature.

Second, it is true this is simply physics. Let's talk about shock wave. How many percent of shock wave, as the engergy of the bomb's blast, are actually doing the job of "damaging enemy city infrustracture", when it blow up in the air (in the open air)? Yes, people "in this business" can caculate it, and MAXIMIZE the effect. But we then can argue people "in this business", can also caculate the shock wave delivered by water, and maximize the effect.

Sorry to bring up historical argue: the warhead blow up over nagasaki, didn't kill as many people as expacted by the "people in this business", thanks to its terren and a list of other reasons (considering the shockwave only). Flood in the other hand, do not go to sky or even exile to the universe, in a sense, compare to the shockwave's effect to air itself. Flood itself absorbs much more of the shockwave blast engergy, from the warhead's explosion - and it can also be caculated to maximize the effect.