all our finest minds are from CSUN.
I feel terrible pulling an elitist attitude,
I am afraid the rankings for that school are about what I would expect.
Lots of respected assholes from Stanford floating in the punch.
all evens out.
it's the ideas, not the background that matters.
Northridge..
this is what I get for praying for annihilation.
shoulda asked for lottery numbers.

some folks who think nuclear war is winnable.

You won’t find too many of them around these parts, though.

I prefer to think of cretins like that with a great deal of pity, and say a lot of quiet little prayers of thanks that they aren’t close enough to the levers of power to actually immanantize the eschaton. Or perhaps they are now, in which case it’ll be over quickly.

Longtime readers here know that I keep the makings of a perfect Manhattan, and my tux, close at hand. All I want is enough warning to get changed and make a drink, so that I can go out onto my patio and become one with the early plasma. I’m within fireball radius of 5 major targets, so I’m all set for getting the hell out of here in the first wave.

It wasn’t survivable yesterday, isn’t today, and won’t be tomorrow. I wish they’d get that through their heads…

I am honestly blown away that ANYONE thinks escalating this war is a good idea. WTF is wrong with people? You really think putin won't use nukes? I'm not willing to bet my life (or anyone else's) on it. AND I have very little doubt usa would retaliate if he did. Where does it end? No place good.

@chknltl Glad to see you here. I so enjoyed the experience of being a member of that community, and miss it a great deal.

As for the instant topic you bring up, I know something about strike planning, not only from studying 20th century wars for several years, beginning as a teenager, getting a degree in modern world history, but also having some relevant training for several years after. I may be long out of date because I'm a grouchy old man now, but I contend cities will be primary targets in a nuclear war. There are several reasons for this.

Lines of communication are centralized in cities. As Eisenhower believed, throughput is everything in making and winning war. Therefore, port facilities, railheads, major airports, fuel depots, energy grids, major bridges, and communications centers have to go. These are invariably associated with or near major cities. Command centers also have to go (this is called decapitation). Is there anyone who thinks the Pentagon wouldn't be a target? New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, cities are the major centers of logistics and the economic support for war making. It is simply wishful thinking to believe they are not targets in a major nuclear war. I think one mistake made in the analysis that one cannot afford to "waste" nuclear weapons on cities, is probably based on analyses of WWII saturation bombing strategy pursued by the Allies in Europe, which was proven to be relatively ineffective, with Germany still having an industrial capacity largely intact after a massive saturation bombing campaign largely targeted on cities. This is in fact true. However, the destructive power of nuclear weapons resolves this "problem."

The precision of warheads is evolving so that one doesn't need to expend the lion's share of delivery systems on a remote fields of ICBM launchers. In fact, fixed land based ICBMs are regarded as obsolete by many strategic war planners for this very reason. It is true that many military facilities may be located in remote regions, but nuclear war planners who think these will be taken out surgically in a nuclear war that doesn't target urban infrastructure is simply making assumptions based on personal bias common to those who work in the business. Think of the major urban areas that have military industrial infrastructure associated with them. There are also major military bases and industries that have urban infrastructure grow up around them.

In fact, if one considers certain features of modern strategy, economic and financial centers, would be primary targets. What I call the restrained nuclear war, what Kissinger called limited nuclear war in a book he wrote a long time ago, focuses on military targets. It is an idea that the so called game theorists like to play around with, because the notion of an unrestricted nuclear war is just futile, stupid and impractical and does involve the destruction of major urban centers. The absurd theory goes like this, we can do a limited nuclear first strike, on a country, because they wouldn't dare to retaliate in kind, because our response would be so overwhelming. This is a theory based on psychology. LOL. Limited nuclear strike, and first strike and counterstrike war strategies revolve around these psychological game theories.

I would dispute the contention that a nuclear power such as Russia doesn't still have large thermonuclear warheads, just one of which could vaporize Manhattan or Washington DC inside the beltway.

radiation sickness prevention pills in Poland to school children.
Kinda creepy. Maybe tape them under their desks?

Polish teachers have been asked to hand out iodine anti-radiation pills to students in case of emergency. Local officials say they are preparing for a potential nuclear incident