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Seeker
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London Ontario
Jan 1970
time: 00:19
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-India has a population of over 950 millions.
-A nuclear strike might cost them 5-15 million, but they might be able to put a 'friendly government' in place and eliminate the threat of Pakistan forever.
-India loses millions per year anyway to disease, malnutrition, natural causes. War might only cause a small bump in their natural population growth.
-Pakistan only has 'Hiroshima' type bombs. Contrary to talk about fallout dangers, radiation being blown by the wind, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both quickly rebuilt and populous within less than a decade, cancer and radiation poisoning was only significant at the bomb site, and even in those places it was relatively minor, and in terms of total population insignificant.
-The fallout fears are from much much more powerful Soviet hydrogen 'dirty' bombs, Pakistan is far away from such advances. Such bombs might indeed make a 'death cloud' in numbers, but info from Bikini, other tests seems to indicate that a nearby population would not be decimated by fallout from a small number of nukes. There would be many casualties, a great increase in cancer rates, etc, but the population as a whole would only be somewhat impacted.
So:
Are India's nationalist parties and ministers making a 'Stalin equation' (i.e. in World War 2, Stalin knew that USSR with 300 million could lose 20 million with much overall impact) in their conflict with Pakistan?
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H Tower
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what about the fallout of indian nukes being blown back over india?
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Seeker
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London Ontario
Jan 1970
time: 00:19
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Think of the Gulf War frankychan.
Many American soldiers died, in tragic ways. Their deaths were, of course, not 'minor' to them or their families.
But in terms of the whole Allied force in Desert Storm of over 100 000, the loss of a few hundred is statistically insignificant.
Now think on a larger, national scale:
Japan with a population of some 60-75 millions.
"It is believed that more than 140,000 people died by the end of the year. They were citizens including students, soldiers and Koreans who worked in factories within the city. The total number of people who have died due to the bomb is estimated to be 200,000" (this after a year and includes the initial blasts)
Obviously a national tragedy, and the cause of many personal tragedies.
But in terms of total national population...?
And about the fallout from their own bombs...it is Pakistan whose strategic position would force them to use a-bombs. India can win in a conventional way and claim some flimsy moral superiority if they do.
And, if they were really fanatical and brutal, they could just 'eat' the fallout, I don't think it would have much of an effect on the 'big picture'.
Oh, and obviously I'm not advocating this! I'm just drawing your attention to the way a hypothetical Indian strategist might be thinking. This was not an issue in the Cold War because of the threat of Nuclear Winter, which meant that the majority of the population would die regardless.
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Mr. President
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The leaves that are green turn to brown
Jul 2001
time: 15:19
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I think it was David Eddings who wrote (through one of his barely-developed novel characters) "Thy force should outnumber thine opponents by a third to be certain of victory".
It's horrible but it's true. Well, mostly true. India's army is around twice the size of Pakistan's, but they've failed to conclusively win any of the wars to date. Nuclear weapons are probably looking better and better to their high command, as an option to eliminate lots of enemy troops and equipment at once without the face-to-face fighting that they can't seem to get right.
As for Pakistan, the numbers might lean them towards nuclear exchange. The same consideration remains, that high-explosive weapons like hydrogen bombs or, on a smaller scale, daisy-cutters and those fifteen-ton bombs they dropped in Afghanistan, remove a large amount of enemy materiel quickly. Since they are severely lacking in numbers, nukes may constitute a way for them to even out the spread.
Notwithstanding the fact that neither country would survive a nuclear exchange (which would be compounded by the fact that neither has developed more sophisticated nuclear weapons like depleted uranium or neutron bombs), of course.
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02-06-2002 02:41
Its the first in a series.
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