not planned Nukes, Please....

[cfrag]

8 hours ago, Tank50us said:

provided they're [UFOs] actually vulnerable to such weapons

Indeed, and unlikely. If a civilization has harnessed energy in a way that it allows them interstellar travel, their mode of transportation would certainly not be susceptible to a primitive (from their perspective) energy-based attack, much like today's tanks aren't susceptible to [primitive kinetic-energy] attacks like small rocks flung from a sling -- and that technology gap is only some 10'000 years. Nuclear bombs may seem awesome for us today; to a Kardashev Level II type civilization, they are likely to be quaint jokes; spit-balls and similar, what children get to play with in kindergarden.

Edited November 30, 2024 by cfrag

[cfrag]

17 hours ago, Beirut said:

19 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

The only way to win is not to play. 

We have to protect our precious bodily fluids.

Huh. Not one, but two classic quotes in a single comment. My hat is off (if I had one) to the DCS community  !!

[Beirut]

33 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Huh. Not one, but two classic quotes in a single comment. My hat is off (if I had one) to the DCS community  !!

 

The honour is to serve. 

[SharpeXB]

10 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

They typically use airburst detonation, which not only produces minimal fallout

Sure… minimal fallout would still be a catastrophe. We can only hope this nonchalant attitude towards the use of nuclear weapons is not prevalent among the world’s governments or militaries. The only real purpose for having these weapons is as deterrence, the actual use of them would still be in an unthinkable doomsday scenario.
In a sim game I’m sure we are all interested in “fun” wargaming and there’s nothing fun or challenging about two armies simply obliterating one another and the world. And in any near modern scenario there are simply more effective and less damaging weapons systems.

Edited November 30, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Dragon1-1]

20 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Sure… minimal fallout would still be a catastrophe. 

No, it would not. I only said "minimal" because to claim "no fallout" would ignore a slight residue you'll get from particulates in air and bomb material itself, and hence inaccurate. Honestly, if you're close enough to detect it, then slightly elevated levels of background radiation will be the least of your problems (the biggest would be either being flattened by the blast wave or incinerated by the fireball).

You're welcome to either show your sources or your calculations as to why it would be otherwise. My sources is extensive university education in how radiation actually works, including working with actual radiation sources. However, since linking all that would be cumbersome, have a look at this handy utility:
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=1000&lat=55.754626&lng=37.617939&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=10245&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&zm=10
It's accurate, as far as I can tell. You can flip between air and ground burst to see the stark difference in effectiveness. Even if you don't deliberately set the nuke off high to minimize fallout, aiming for maximum immediate destruction will not result in a major contamination. To create fallout, you either have to deliberately set out to do so, or use an older model of nuke that can't do airburst. Worth noting that aircraft dropped strategic nukes will typically not use airburst, as they tended to use laydown delivery in order to minimize the risk to the bomber. Cruise missiles don't have this particular problem, and tactical nukes are small enough that escaping is not a problem.

20 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

In a sim game I’m sure we are all interested in “fun” wargaming and there’s nothing fun or challenging about two armies simply obliterating one another and the world. 

Once again, "obliterating the world" doesn't happen in most actual nuclear war scenarios, only in a handful that would play out between the world's two nuclear superpowers. Again, play around with the calculator. Effects from a single nuke going off are catastrophic, to be sure, especially if you happen to live within the blast radius, but it's not the end of the world. In fact, I suspect that even in the event of a US-Russia nuclear exchange, the rest of the world would continue on, sans those countries, and probably much diminished by the resulting economic chaos. Far more like modern day poor countries than post-apocalyptic fiction (admittedly, there's significant overlap depending on the country and the piece of fiction). In fact, unless China and/or India got hit, I'd expect the economic fallout to claim more lives than nuclear one, or even direct effects of the bombs.

It's still not a war worth fighting, as it is true that it can't be won. Such wars are nothing new, even Sun Tzu already knew there are fights that you can only lose, even if the other guy loses it more. Wars like that must not be fought, because it's not in anyone's interests to do so. Your panicky attitude is less helpful than realizing the actual capabilities and limitations of nuclear weapons. People operating those things would be keenly aware of those parameters.

[SharpeXB]

45 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

My sources is extensive university education in how radiation actually works

I’ll trust your math. Using nuclear weapons would still result in a totally unacceptable level of collateral damage. And in a sim like this they don’t really and any appealing gameplay IMO. 

[cfrag]

45 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

In fact, I suspect that even in the event of a US-Russia nuclear exchange, the rest of the world would continue on, sans those countries, and probably much diminished by the resulting economic chaos.

Say what? That is entirely not the going educated opinion. Just what sources are you referring to? A "mild" nuclear exchange (say on the Indian sub-continent with some 100 nuclear blasts) is expected to kill a quarter of a billion people world-wide, most of them from hunger. In the event of a Russia-US nuclear exchange and several thousand nuclear explosions happening, the expected result is a nuclear winter with a near-total collapse of trade -- and the hunger-death of a couple of billion people (you do realize that Earth's population can only be sustained by industrial food production that collapses because trade collapses): the resulting famine will kill off 50%+ of humanity worldwide.

Here's some educational material that may be helpful, and it's nicely presented:

 

[sirrah]

Back on topic of nukes in DCS:

Although we know this is not planned by ED, I suppose one could to some extent "simulate" a nuclear explosion, by making use of a scenery destruction zone trigger.

Perhaps when overlapping multiple circular destruction zones, from small to wide, and setting them to activate in very short order from eachother, could give some sort of a massive shock wave effect. (Obviously without the condensate and dust effects)

Maybe adding some wisely placed and timely triggered explosions to it, could enhance the effect a bit.

 

All in all, it'll probably cripple performance (just like a nuke would do if ED would add one)

 

Edited November 30, 2024 by sirrah
typo

[cfrag]

43 minutes ago, sirrah said:

I suppose one could to some extent "simulate" a nuclear explosion,

Perhaps, but IMHO not the most important ones (i.e. the ones people associate with nukes):

• Flash and mushroom cloud
• EMP and shock waves (heat, pressure) moving at different velocities 
• Ionizing radiation that prevents/disrupts radio comms

When I was working on an 'inferno' type script that simulates large-scale conflagrations, I also observed the detrimental effects these visual effects have on game performance, so simulating a firestorm on the ground, although simple to achieve, is also not advisable. 

So if all you want is lay waste to the map and your miz's performance - the destruct zones can be your ticket. And they don't synch over network, so this is a single-player only thing. And if your fps is still above 2, add fire/smoke effects until it drops well below the 1 mark  

Edited November 30, 2024 by cfrag

[sirrah]

14 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Perhaps, but IMHO not the most important ones (i.e. the ones people associate with nukes):

• Flash and mushroom cloud
• EMP and shock waves (heat, pressure) moving at different velocities 
• Ionizing radiation that prevents/disrupts radio comms

When I was working on an 'inferno' type script that simulates large-scale conflagrations, I also observed the detrimental effects these visual effects have on game performance, so simulating a firestorm on the ground, although simple to achieve, is also not advisable. 

So if all you want is lay waste to the map and your miz's performance - the destruct zones can be your ticket. And they don't synch over network, so this is a single-player only thing. And if your fps is still above 2, add fire/smoke effects until it drops well below the 1 mark  

Yes, as I said; it would cripple performance.

No matter if "simulated" with the tools we have now in DCS, or implemented by ED (with all visuals, pressure waves, emp, etc), such a devastating effect would not run on any current hardware.

[Schmidtfire]

+1

We got no nukes (except on the MiG21))  - but the LABS system is modelled on the F-86F, specifically designed for tossing nukes.
It does not make much sense.

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, Schmidtfire said:

but the LABS system is modelled on the F-86F, specifically designed for tossing nukes.
It does not make much sense.

Right. Again it’s like this absurd doomsday mission where you fly a fighter into enemy territory to deliver this weapon. And then since there would be no base for you to return to you’d… uh… bail out over the irradiated countryside. I recall Robin Olds describes this in his book. 

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

You're welcome to either show your sources or your calculations as to why it would be otherwise.

These bombs were airburst at 1,650’ and 1,968’

I guess this is what you consider to be “minimal” radiation and fallout effects

https://k1project.columbia.edu/news/hiroshima-and-nagasaki

Many of the “small” tactical nukes are the size of these WWII bombs. 

[Dragon1-1]

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

Say what? That is entirely not the going educated opinion. Just what sources are you referring to? A "mild" nuclear exchange (say on the Indian sub-continent with some 100 nuclear blasts) is expected to kill a quarter of a billion people world-wide, most of them from hunger. 

...which is more or less exactly what I was saying, in case you haven't noticed. The biggest thing to fear from a nuclear war, particularly major superpowers, is not the bombs or the fallout - it's losing the world's superpowers. Of course, this only applies to a scenario of a full exchange, when US/NATO and USSR/Russia (again, the only pairings which could cause things to go this bad) launch everything they have at each other and essentially cease to exist as functional entities. This is not the only possible scenario.

Also note that nuclear winter is not a universally accepted concept, either. It is based on our experience with volcanic eruptions, which throw up a large amount of particulates into the air. A nuke set to airburst, which would be most of them, does not do that - the mushroom cloud is actually mostly water vapor, and it doesn't linger for especially long. So a nuclear winter doesn't have to happen, either, averting crop failures and a good part of trade collapse that the worst scenarios rely on. The world doesn't end at neither US nor Russia, and it's hard to believe other countries wouldn't at least try to pick up the pieces.

In the end, the damage caused by the conflict depends on the specifics, such as weapons used, exact targets, and how the other countries responded. All I was saying is that "one nuke explodes=world ends" view of the matter is a myth. It's a widespread myth, no doubt reinforced by most people (especially click-hungry video creators) focusing on the biggest possible nuclear exchange, while assuming the most catastrophic consequences. It does go against the prevailing orthodoxy a bit to point out there are other possible scenarios.

28 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I guess this is what you consider to be “minimal” radiation and fallout effects

Quite a few sentences in the article confirm that. Notice that the incidence of cancer increased in bomb victims, as in, people who were directly affected by the blast, not ones who walked around and lived in the area afterwards. In small nukes, most of radiation actually comes directly from the nuclear reaction that produces the fireball. Larger warheads produce a fireball too large for this to be a concern (which is another reason you don't get much fallout), but tactical nukes can definitely kill by direct gamma irradiation, as well, sometimes quite a bit after the explosion itself. This is actually a disadvantage of tactical nukes (especially neutron bombs) - radiation can produce "walking dead", soldiers with terminal leukemia whose only remaining mission in life is to kill as many of their enemies as they can before they keel over. Fans of Sabaton will recall poison gas being known to sometimes produce a similar effect.

Also worth noting, the early designs were very dirty bombs by today standards, modern nukes, especially thermonuclear devices are much more efficient, and spread much less of themselves out on the wind. Being directly hit by most types of radiation actually doesn't cause the thing that was hit to become radioactive - the only radiation that does that is alphas and neutrons, but the former are ridiculously short ranged and the latter are used up in a nuke to make the explosion (unless it's a neutron bomb, where emitting neutrons is the whole point). Irradiating the countryside with other kinds of radiation doesn't actually hurt it very much, or make it dangerous. Fallout is actually created when soil, bulk water (vapor in the air is too thin) and other solid materials get close enough to the explosion that they receive significant doses of alphas and neutrons, then spread out by the explosion. The lingering radiation comes from those radioactive particulates. The weapon's casing not only doesn't have much mass, but it typically gets turned into vapor anyway, so if it's the only source of heavy elements for the neutrons to activate, the fallout will be spread too thin to be much of a concern.

[Beirut]

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

 . . .  and there’s nothing fun or challenging about two armies simply obliterating one another and the world.

 

Always with the negative waves...

 

Think about how much fun it could be. 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Quite a few sentences in the article confirm that. Notice that the incidence of cancer increased in bomb victims, as in, people who were directly affected by the blast, not ones who walked around and lived in the area afterwards. In small nukes, most of radiation actually comes directly from the nuclear reaction that produces the fireball. Larger warheads produce a fireball too large for this to be a concern (which is another reason you don't get much fallout), but tactical nukes can definitely kill by direct gamma irradiation, as well, sometimes quite a bit after the explosion itself. This is actually a disadvantage of tactical nukes (especially neutron bombs) - radiation can produce "walking dead", soldiers with terminal leukemia whose only remaining mission in life is to kill as many of their enemies as they can before they keel over. Fans of Sabaton will recall poison gas being known to sometimes produce a similar effect.

Also worth noting, the early designs were very dirty bombs by today standards, modern nukes, especially thermonuclear devices are much more efficient, and spread much less of themselves out on the wind. Being directly hit by most types of radiation actually doesn't cause the thing that was hit to become radioactive - the only radiation that does that is alphas and neutrons, but the former are ridiculously short ranged and the latter are used up in a nuke to make the explosion (unless it's a neutron bomb, where emitting neutrons is the whole point). Irradiating the countryside with other kinds of radiation doesn't actually hurt it very much, or make it dangerous. Fallout is actually created when soil, bulk water (vapor in the air is too thin) and other solid materials get close enough to the explosion that they receive significant doses of alphas and neutrons, then spread out by the explosion. The lingering radiation comes from those radioactive particulates. The weapon's casing not only doesn't have much mass, but it typically gets turned into vapor anyway, so if it's the only source of heavy elements for the neutrons to activate, the fallout will be spread too thin to be much of a concern.

None of that really changes the fact that the use of these weapons was/is fully unthinkable. The degree of unthinkable might have varied over these eras but it was always in that realm obviously. Their only actual use was at a time when the mass destruction of cities was considered acceptable or necessary in war and was in reality already being done more severely with conventional bombs. This would not be considered acceptable today or since.
For the last several decades precision guided munitions have made such destructive warheads unnecessary. And the much feared tank armadas are vanished and obsolete. In the near-modern era mostly represented in DCS nuclear weapons would have no legitimate use or value.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

All I was saying is that "one nuke explodes=world ends" view of the matter is a myth.

That’s the trouble. It would never be just one. The dilemma of using tactical or a limited number of nukes is the risk of quickly escalating the conflict. Again a reason using these is just out of the question.

46 minutes ago, Beirut said:

Think about how much fun it could be.

Strafing tanks in an A-10 is really more fun. 

Edited December 1, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Beirut]

44 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Strafing tanks in an A-10 is really more fun. 

 

Do both. 

[Mike Force Team]

Using the nukes is likely to escalate the conflict. I would be interested in how much further the conflict would increase; that is, in DCS.

[Dragon1-1]

8 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

This would not be considered acceptable today or since.

One word: Gaza. Second word: Ukraine. Turns out, when the chips are down, "unacceptable" is a much more malleable word than you'd like to think. Even the existence of precision munitions doesn't stop indiscriminate destruction of urban areas, and the world agreeing it's a mean thing to do doesn't seem to faze the people doing it. International law, if not enforced, is just a bunch of pompous sounding words on a piece of paper.

8 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

That’s the trouble. It would never be just one. 

How do you know? Against Japan, two were sufficient. Mostly because Japan didn't have nukes itself. We saw how "escalating the conflict" looks like when one side doesn't have its heart in it. It's a nice thing to tell ourselves it's "too risky" and "out of the question", but the current state of the world suggests that a more practical way of looking at it is to ask how much damage will a nuke actually do, and what are the options if one side drops one.

For instance, the latest word on what would happen if a tactical nuke was used in Ukraine would be a massive conventional strike by NATO, including sinking what's left of Black Sea Fleet. It's not a given that this would lead to further nuclear escalation.

[Beirut]

8 hours ago, Mike Force Team said:

Using the nukes is likely to escalate the conflict. 

 

Yes!

 

More megatonnage is better megatonnage. Efficiency is its own reward. 

[SharpeXB]

@Dragon1-1 Let’s keep the discussion on DCS and not current events.

I don’t think the fictitious conflicts we play at here would not be made more interesting or engaging by including weapons of mass destruction. 

Edited December 1, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Beirut]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

@Dragon1-1 Let’s keep the discussion on DCS and not current events.

I don’t think the fictitious conflicts we play at here would not be made more interesting or engaging by including weapons of mass destruction. 

 

Agreed! Morality is key.

 

Now if you will excuse me, I'm off to the mission editor to have a wing of B-52s carpet bomb a large city. 

[Dragon1-1]

Well, for one, I'd like to see people at least knock off the "simulate nukes by deleting DCS" meme. I would like the discussion to focus on actual issues that stand in the way of implementing nuclear weapons (of which there are plenty), as opposed to ignorant fearmongering. There's surprisingly little practical and basically no moral distinction between dropping a 100kT nuke and 100 000 Mk84s on a city, the energy delivered will be quite similar (yes, the Mk84's payload is only 0.5T, but only half of the nuke's energy is emitted towards the ground). Indeed, if you use an airburst nuke, cleaning up the ruins will be simpler than with conventional bombs, since the nuke won't leave any UXO. If you look at the actual figures, more civilians were killed by UXOs than by anything radioactive, including both nukes and Chernobyl taken together.

For what it's worth, including WMDs would be a thing not to be taken lightly, but at the same time, far from uninteresting, particularly since a Cold War Germany map, probably near Fulda Gap, is coming, and that's where the planners on NATO side expected the "nuclear battlefield" to be (for what it's worth, actual Soviet plans would have thrown them a major curveball there). Also, WMDs are still relevant, especially on the subject of regional conflicts, such as modern on Middle East maps that we already have.

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

For what it's worth, including WMDs would be a thing not to be taken lightly, but at the same time, far from uninteresting, particularly since a Cold War Germany map, probably near Fulda Gap, is coming, and that's where the planners on NATO side expected the "nuclear battlefield" to be

Well that’s certainly the scenario that had a high likelihood of triggering nuclear Armageddon. Our DCS gameplay really has this base assumption that these fictional conflicts don’t escalate. In that event all the conventional modules we control would have little role to play except as targets. That doesn’t result in very “fun” game. Even if the assumption is that these weapons are limited to the battlefield they represent kill stealing to the extreme and your puny A-10 or AH-64 would have no realistic game role to participate in.

Edited December 1, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Tank50us]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

I would like the discussion to focus on actual issues that stand in the way of implementing nuclear weapons

I gave two really good ones earlier.

1. The sheer level of destruction these things are capable of IRL causes the game engine to flip out to the point it crashes servers.

2. The fact that all of the equipment required to deploy nukes in the jets we have is classified to such an extent that very few people in the US Military are even allowed to know the full scope. As I said in my post on the subject, one of my instructors at Fire School had M16s shoved in his face for getting too close to a pair of B-61s in a truck that was on fire. Even though they were there to put that fire out, the SOs there weren't taking chances. That's how seriously the USAF takes nuclear weapons, and the equipment used to deploy them. We will likely never see them in DCS due to that level of classification.