There is no world in which the US "lost or expended 80% of its arsenal" that it would matter at all whether we could produce more. I can't even think of a good analogy. "Should I store a box of extra smoke detectors in my attic in case I have a house fire and my current ones are destroyed?"
I think the more realistic need to produce new nuclear weapons is that for some reason parts availability for the existing ones becomes a maintenance problem. If Warhead A requires Part B which must be produced via an industrial process that was last widely used in the '70s, you no longer have a credible warhead.
It may not even be possible to spin that process back up even on a bespoke basis because it may depend on yet further now-outdated processes. Even if that's not the case, executing to a high enough degree of precision for the application may depend on a lot of now-lost trade knowledge.
But yeah, apart from the sustainment problem, there's definitely no way that replacing 80% of the US nuclear arsenal matters if the warheads were expended in anger or destroyed on the ground by nuclear weapons.
The sustainment problem is solved as well - there was the infamous example of the "fogbank" aerogel that we lost capacity to build. It turns out it's easy enough (with an unlimited pile of money) to reverse engineer any component we might need and rebuild capacity. Nuclear weapons aren't "complicated" once you've figured out the science, they're just expensive to engineer.
Since we have maybe 10x more warheads that we need, we can easily salvage any components from decommissioned ones which is actually what's leading to the plutonium storage problems from the article.
Taking everything in the article at face value (and assuming the substance actually exists and isn't an elaborate disinformation campaign), it took over a decade and $100,000,000 to recreate this single part of the warhead.
I don't know if we can call this a runaway sustainment success story. It's not as though we actually have limitless piles of money to throw at weapons systems.
I respectfully disagree. In the 12 months following a nuclear war, Americans would still need to file their taxes before the April 15 deadline, the federal and state governments would still have to pass annual budgets, software vendors like Microsoft and Apple would still need to push updates to their products, homeowners would still need to pay their annual property tax bill, people would still need to refill their drug prescriptions.... life could recover and go on. I'm not convinced that a nuclear war would be so destructive that civilization wouldn't survive. Most nuclear attacks would probably target missile silos in rural North Dakota and airbases anyway, not cities.
But, as I outlined in my comment, there are situations other than nuclear war where the US might want to restart nuke production.
You're talking about a full scale nuclear exchange -- that's so far beyond North Dakota silos I don't know what to tell you. As one obvious example since you brought up Microsoft -- our Pacific Fleet Trident nuclear subs are based within 20 miles of Microsoft's campus -- they and many of our SLBM and warheads are stationed there. Nobody is going to be shipping software following a nuclear attack in Puget Sound.
That's a rather... optimistic view of what total war between nuclear powers would entail. The goal would not be only to destroy missile silos, but industrial capacity, the electric grid, military and political leadership at all levels, and the population's will to fight. All major cities and all forms of civilian infrastructure would likely be targets.
Infrastructure is a huge problem if you live in a dense population center, but a manageable one if you don't live in a big city.
Electricity isn't a requirement for survival; we lived without it only a century ago. My folks in New England can pretty much live indefinitely with a wood stove, a groundwater well, and local agriculture. It might be a rough time figuring out how to feed everyone. It would certainly be a brutal existence, and a lot of people wouldn't make it, but the world would go on.
Right, you would have some survivors, but people would not be concerned with paying taxes or anything related to tech/the internet.
Even rural areas would be very rough. Supply lines for gasoline would probably be disrupted so unless you can grow enough food for subsistence on your own land, local agriculture wouldn't help you much. We'd have to go back to horses and carriages, but with the exception of Amish areas, I doubt there are enough horses and related equipment around to make it work. And then there's security, which is probably the biggest issue. Even if you can sustain yourself, you'll need a way to deal with packs of hungry, desperate people going around with guns.
> I'm not convinced that a nuclear war would be so destructive that civilization wouldn't survive.
Civilization would survive, somewhere far from NA, Europe, Asia (ie in South Africa).
There is only two scenarios for a global nuclear war:
a) first, pre-emptive strike - then you need to take out not only nuclear arsenal of the enemy, but it's C2 and weapons production capabilities, including any administrative centers, eg Moscow or Washington
b) retaliatory, responding strike - then you need to make sure nobody from the enemy attacked you could ever wage war against you, so not only you destroy enemy nuclear capabilities (silos? why though? they are already used and empty) but any C2, weapons production capabilities, including any administrative centers, eg Moscow or Washington
In both scenarios there is no way you will see an IRS agent on the porch of your bunker in less than 10 years from the war.
