I’ve read this book a few times now. It is quite interesting. I am pretty sure if there was a nuclear war I would just be screwed. I live about 15 miles from a naval base. My entire survival strategy starts with “hope that Russian ICBMs are accurate so I don’t die instantly…”. Not sure anything in the book would help me after that point, but worth a shot I guess.
Pretty sure significant targets - larger cities and significant facilities - would get a barrage instead of a single weapon.
Multiple relatively small warheads spread across an area are far more damaging than a single super-nuke, which is why Tsar Bombas fell out of fashion.
At one point it was rumoured there were hundreds of warheads aimed at Moscow. Even Dick Cheney was shocked when he found out. It's a reasonable guess Washington and London would have had the same treatment.
I'm not sure anyone even knows what that would do to an area, except possibly turn it into a pool of radioactive lava.
> Pretty sure significant targets - larger cities and significant facilities - would get a barrage instead of a single weapon.
Yup, this was already discussed (I forgot where, sorry) before, I think the US back in the 70s or 80s had plans for example to send at least 5 or 6 nukes on each target, just to be sure they would be completely destroyed. And if I remember correctly they had several dozens of thousands of targets, meaning that everything apart from small villages would be nuked to the ground. Even smaller cities, relatively speaking.
