World War III?

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mezsat2
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World War III?

#1

Post by mezsat2 » 14 Sep 2022, 09:18

I don't post this lightly for amusement. I believe there's a realistic chance this could escalate into a large nuclear war. I don't take Medvedev's or Putin's threats lightly as many have.

We've seen what this regime is capable of doing in a moral sense, so why not?

In May, I calculated it at around 1% and estimated from reports that both sides would simply exhaust themselves and their resources and have no choice but to call a cease-fire. Now, with the undeniably spectacular success of the Ukrainians (inasmuch as they're capable) and increasingly belligerent talk from Kiev, Russia (and NATO, for that matter), I'm guessing around 10% for nukes to be used in Ukraine and around 3% for gradual escalation to nuclear holocaust.

One thing I'm sure Putin has on his mind is that if he strikes NATO with nukes, he'll have a massive number of targets to take out, and when he's done, NATO will still have enormous conventional forces available while his have been severely degraded. In other words, if he pulls a Dr. Strangelove, there won't be a mineshaft deep enough to hide in and all the leadership will be captured, tried as war criminals, and hanged.

Otherwise, I'd calculate the risk to be much higher.

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Re: World War III?

#2

Post by OpanaPointer » 14 Sep 2022, 11:43

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Re: World War III?

#3

Post by mezsat2 » 14 Sep 2022, 12:03

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Re: World War III?

#4

Post by OpanaPointer » 14 Sep 2022, 12:31

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Aida1
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Re: World War III?

#5

Post by Aida1 » 14 Sep 2022, 12:40

Rattling with nuclear weapons in a scenario of MAD is simply a scare tactic. A country could maybe use tactical nuclear weapons if it's existence is at stake and even then the question would be whether this is the correct action as committing suicide is very final.
In the war in the Ukraine only the existence of the Ukraine was at stake in the beginning and it has no nukes. Russia wanted to do regime change and now only wants limited territorial objectives. Not a scenario in which you go nuclear as it will also have an impact on yourself.
There is zero reason to be reticent in the extent to which one supports the Ukraine because of a so-called threat of nuclear war. Putin wants to scare the west and there are certainly some weak minded individuals that fall for this bluff.

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Re: World War III?

#6

Post by mezsat2 » 14 Sep 2022, 12:54

Aida1 wrote:
14 Sep 2022, 12:40
Rattling with nuclear weapons in a scenario of MAD is simply a scare tactic. A country could maybe use tactical nuclear weapons if it's existence is at stake and even then the question would be whether this is the correct action as committing suicide is very final.
In the war in the Ukraine only the existence of the Ukraine was at stake in the beginning and it has no nukes. Russia wanted to do regime change and now only wants limited territorial objectives. Not a scenario in which you go nuclear as it will also have an impact on yourself.
There is zero reason to be reticent in the extent to which one supports the Ukraine because of a so-called threat of nuclear war. Putin wants to scare the west and there are certainly some weak minded individuals that fall for this bluff.
Absolutely correct. This is why I still calculate this as 3%, but even so, the end of civilization as we know it...it's an alarming figure. Plus, the two options are likely highly correlated, so if Putin chooses to nuke Kiev or blow up the Zaporozhe plant, there will be unpredictable consequences in terms of NATO reactions. I don't think you necessarily have to be "weak minded" to believe these are plausible scenarios.

My personal feeling is Putin wants to nuke Kiev very badly, and may ultimately do it to prove his "strength". All bets are off at that point.

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Re: World War III?

#7

Post by Martin_from_Valhalla » 14 Sep 2022, 13:14

I'm afraid, Russian nukes are in the same state as Russian army was before war. Everything is great on the paper but in reality, 1/3 of missilies won't go out of mines, the other 1/3 will explode over Russian territory even if it leaves the nuke mines, the last 1/3 will be shot down.

Corruption permiates every sphere of state, if you don't fight against it. But if you encourage it in exchange for loyalty, you get a failed state in a few decades and army is not an exception. Nuke charges should be changed once in ten years, we don't know if money given for recharge were not wasted or stolen by peolple responsible for the process.

Probably, Soviet Army could have taken Ukraine in a few days and half of Europe in a few weeks without any nukes, but the world deals with army mired in corruption whose generals were assured that there won't be big wars anymore, just small operations like in Chechnya or Georgia. Nukes could be the only way out for Putin. The war will last while he is alive and in fear of coup he substituted his surrounding in the last months. He has now fully loyal people around him who are on the same level of madness but, as we know from history, military failures made Hitler unhealthy and he was way younger than Putin.

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Re: World War III?

#8

Post by Hikari » 14 Sep 2022, 13:19

Unless Putin is ready to have a stroke or went to basement.

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Re: World War III?

#9

Post by Aida1 » 14 Sep 2022, 14:45

mezsat2 wrote:
14 Sep 2022, 12:54
Aida1 wrote:
14 Sep 2022, 12:40
Rattling with nuclear weapons in a scenario of MAD is simply a scare tactic. A country could maybe use tactical nuclear weapons if it's existence is at stake and even then the question would be whether this is the correct action as committing suicide is very final.
In the war in the Ukraine only the existence of the Ukraine was at stake in the beginning and it has no nukes. Russia wanted to do regime change and now only wants limited territorial objectives. Not a scenario in which you go nuclear as it will also have an impact on yourself.
There is zero reason to be reticent in the extent to which one supports the Ukraine because of a so-called threat of nuclear war. Putin wants to scare the west and there are certainly some weak minded individuals that fall for this bluff.
Absolutely correct. This is why I still calculate this as 3%, but even so, the end of civilization as we know it...it's an alarming figure. Plus, the two options are likely highly correlated, so if Putin chooses to nuke Kiev or blow up the Zaporozhe plant, there will be unpredictable consequences in terms of NATO reactions. I don't think you necessarily have to be "weak minded" to believe these are plausible scenarios.

My personal feeling is Putin wants to nuke Kiev very badly, and may ultimately do it to prove his "strength". All bets are off at that point.
Putin certainly does not want to nuke Kiev as that would serve no purpose at all, rather the contrary.

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Re: World War III?

#10

Post by ArthurMattje » 14 Sep 2022, 20:47

The way i see it, because Ukraine didn't join NATO soon enough, Europe will only act if Putin goes beyond Ukraine and tries to conquer anything else. Until then, they will only claim to "send equipment to Ukraine". But no, this won't escalate to a large scale nuclear war because it's just not worth it, Putin is only using cheap scare tactics, and it seems to have been working pretty well.

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Re: World War III?

#11

Post by ljadw » 14 Sep 2022, 21:20

Martin_from_Valhalla wrote:
14 Sep 2022, 13:14
I'm afraid, Russian nukes are in the same state as Russian army was before war. Everything is great on the paper but in reality, 1/3 of missilies won't go out of mines, the other 1/3 will explode over Russian territory even if it leaves the nuke mines, the last 1/3 will be shot down.

Corruption permiates every sphere of state, if you don't fight against it. But if you encourage it in exchange for loyalty, you get a failed state in a few decades and army is not an exception. Nuke charges should be changed once in ten years, we don't know if money given for recharge were not wasted or stolen by peolple responsible for the process.

Probably, Soviet Army could have taken Ukraine in a few days and half of Europe in a few weeks without any nukes, but the world deals with army mired in corruption whose generals were assured that there won't be big wars anymore, just small operations like in Chechnya or Georgia. Nukes could be the only way out for Putin. The war will last while he is alive and in fear of coup he substituted his surrounding in the last months. He has now fully loyal people around him who are on the same level of madness but, as we know from history, military failures made Hitler unhealthy and he was way younger than Putin.
The Russian Army could try to conquer, not occupy, Ukraine in a few days, but this depended ,not mainly, but totally on the Ukrainian reactions .
That the Russian Army could advance to Gibraltar in a few weeks in a conventional war is totally excluded .200000 men could not conquer Ukraine ,thus they could not conquer half of Europe,and if they could, the Soviet and Russian leadership would not do it .
Between 1957 and 1972 the Red Army could easily defeat NATO in a conventional war, but it did not do it ,because there was no need to do it and the occupation of Western Europe would be suicidal .As would be the occupation of Russia by NATO today .

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Re: World War III?

#12

Post by Tom Peters » 15 Sep 2022, 03:21

I have a difficult time envisioning Putin going to WMD before full mobilization. Putin isnt dumb, he is pretty canny, although clearly having miscalculated the UKR situation.

I suspect the US/NATO has informed RU of the "red lines" through back channels - which I would assume are the use of WMD or cracking a UKR nuclear reactor.

This is all entirely supposition on my part.

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Re: World War III?

#13

Post by Cult Icon » 15 Sep 2022, 04:04

Russia has not played hard ball with its air force yet or abandoned "brother war"- Operation Ukrainie Freedom. Small tactical nuclear weapons comes after. Russia at max has only killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. They have the capability to kill hundreds of thousands with conventional weapons.

It has rarely deployed strategic bombers to drop large bombs, outside of special situations, like Mariupol. They have not employed much chemical and biological warfare either, mainly using a lot of thermobarbaric munitions and at times, phosphorous. The Russian air force in the main is restricted to fighters and helicopters.

The obvious first step to escalation is to drop FOAB's on top of Kyiv's government quarter and kill everybody.

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Re: World War III?

#14

Post by Aida1 » 15 Sep 2022, 08:55

Cult Icon wrote:
15 Sep 2022, 04:04
Russia has not played hard ball with its air force yet or abandoned "brother war"- Operation Ukrainie Freedom. Small tactical nuclear weapons comes after. Russia at max has only killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. They have the capability to kill hundreds of thousands with conventional weapons.

It has rarely deployed strategic bombers to drop large bombs, outside of special situations, like Mariupol. They have not employed much chemical and biological warfare either, mainly using a lot of thermobarbaric munitions and at times, phosphorous. The Russian air force in the main is restricted to fighters and helicopters.

The obvious first step to escalation is to drop FOAB's on top of Kyiv's government quarter and kill everybody.
Clearly your sick fantasy borne of frustration. Even Putin is not mad as that. He has scaled down his ambitions as soon as the initial objective failed.

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Re: World War III?

#15

Post by Aida1 » 15 Sep 2022, 08:57

ljadw wrote:
14 Sep 2022, 21:20
Martin_from_Valhalla wrote:
14 Sep 2022, 13:14
I'm afraid, Russian nukes are in the same state as Russian army was before war. Everything is great on the paper but in reality, 1/3 of missilies won't go out of mines, the other 1/3 will explode over Russian territory even if it leaves the nuke mines, the last 1/3 will be shot down.

Corruption permiates every sphere of state, if you don't fight against it. But if you encourage it in exchange for loyalty, you get a failed state in a few decades and army is not an exception. Nuke charges should be changed once in ten years, we don't know if money given for recharge were not wasted or stolen by peolple responsible for the process.

Probably, Soviet Army could have taken Ukraine in a few days and half of Europe in a few weeks without any nukes, but the world deals with army mired in corruption whose generals were assured that there won't be big wars anymore, just small operations like in Chechnya or Georgia. Nukes could be the only way out for Putin. The war will last while he is alive and in fear of coup he substituted his surrounding in the last months. He has now fully loyal people around him who are on the same level of madness but, as we know from history, military failures made Hitler unhealthy and he was way younger than Putin.
The Russian Army could try to conquer, not occupy, Ukraine in a few days, but this depended ,not mainly, but totally on the Ukrainian reactions .
That the Russian Army could advance to Gibraltar in a few weeks in a conventional war is totally excluded .200000 men could not conquer Ukraine ,thus they could not conquer half of Europe,and if they could, the Soviet and Russian leadership would not do it .
Between 1957 and 1972 the Red Army could easily defeat NATO in a conventional war, but it did not do it ,because there was no need to do it and the occupation of Western Europe would be suicidal .As would be the occupation of Russia by NATO today .
You are wrong. Russia could have done things differently and better but was too incompetent to do it.

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