That's got to be one of the saddest infographics ever made. I don't like infographics, they tend to simplify complex things to the point of uselessness. But this one is in the 'food for thought' category, one of those things that we think is solidly in the past when actually it is very much in the present.
Pakistan/India is the most worrisome combination in that graph.
At the same time, unless they are used as a desperate weapon against an undefeatable opponent, most likely nuclear weapons are relatively pointless, because they cause escalation and way too much collateral damage. Conventional means are largely sufficient to destroy military equipment, and nuclear war has for only purpose to destroy civilians more than anything else.
However, I am more concerned about the accidental use of nuclear weapons because of current procedures and measures in place. See the excellent book "Command and Control"...
Having read it, I found the point Schlosser made to be that, while working with nuclear weapons (and more specifically with large liquid-fueled rockets) is a profession relatively rich in personal danger for those who pursue it, the danger of accidental nuclear detonation per se is mitigated practically unto negligibility by the measures put in place to prevent it -- otherwise, at least one of the accidents he relates in such loving detail would've had a yield measurable in kilotons.
Not as negligible as we were previously led to believe. There have been at least five "incidents" each of which could have started WWIII -- and as far as physical safeguards, a single switch once kept a bomb from detonating on our own soil:
And yet WWIII hasn't started, and there have been no accidental nuclear detonations since we started building the weapons in the first place. Nuclear engineering, like any field of industrial or weapons technology, has inherent dangers. That's why both civilian and military engineering disciplines include safeguards.
On the civilian side, the profit-motivated nature of nuclear engineering has resulted in a variety of serious industrial accidents, which have produced a widespread but erroneous perception that the technology is just too dangerous to have, when in fact it's merely too dangerous to have in the hands of people who care only about making money off it.
On the military side, conversely, the safeguards around nuclear weapons have, thus far at least, been exactly as effective as we need them to be, and nuclear warheads are as safe as anything can be that's inherently dangerous. That's not to say they are perfectly safe, but neither is anything else; all life is risk, and I'd much rather take the risk of having them, than of not having them and being at the mercy of someone who does.
(And military power reactors tend to be a lot safer than civilian ones as well, thanks to an engineering safety culture which I gather is best described as fanatical. Me, I'm in favor of purchasing all civilian-owned nuclear power reactors and placing them in the hands of an eighth federal uniformed service, the US Nucleonics Service, staffed with Navy-trained engineers and operated as a cost center of government. But I appreciate that makes me sort of weird.)
That's the ultimate form of selection bias though. As long as it doesn't happen we can continue to discuss this and if it does happen it's moot and we likely won't be discussing it at al.
Your view is a bit US centric, there are lots of nuclear installations outside of the US. The US is probably the least of the problem in this particular respect.
I don't see how selection bias enters into it, when no matter what selection method we use, the rate of accidental detonations remains zero. I don't doubt that that will eventually change, but even a large industrial accident is hardly the end of the world.
As for US-centricity, well, that's where I live, and as cold as this no doubt will sound to a universalist, I really don't see another nation's accidental nuclear detonation as being my problem; contrary to popular belief, the mechanisms involved in commencing nuclear warfare are a little more nuanced than "oh, hey, a nuke went off somewhere on the planet? Empty the silos! Tell the subs to flush their tubes!"
I'm not so sure. So far the threat of nuclear annihilation has seemed to reduce the incidence of major wars, but perhaps that's merely correlation.
It is interesting how nuclear war focuses the mind. In previous generations a cavalier attitude was often taken about war, often because nobody believes they will be on the losing side of a war. But with nuclear war there are no winners, only differing degrees of losing. In truth most war is the same, but it's difficult for most folks to see it that way.
"But with nuclear war there are no winners, only differing degrees of losing."
One huge problem is the historical fact of the number of American deaths from the invasion of mainland Japan. That being zero. And given past behavior, frankly losing only two cities means Japan came out ahead in the game too.
Looking at the mess we've made of Afghanistan and Iraq and Vietnam and everywhere else, you can imagine a guy calculating and "either this makes them back down completely, or we lose maybe just two cities... either way it'll be better than letting them invade for a generation..."
I doubt any remotely rational actor would look at things that way. Nuclear weapons are more potent than they were in WWII and more numerous. And also more deadly, due to increased population density in most urban areas. If the same nuclear bombs were dropped in the same locations today as in WWII nearly ten times as many people would die.
Moreover, the economic loss would be extreme, which serves as a further deterrent.
I think a lot of people have died in the "low-grade" proxy wars that have taken the place of major wars, as well as the chronic unsupervised regional conflicts.
If we had major wars, then the major wars would take the place of the proxy and chronic wars, through direct replacement. American general: "Yay, now we can kill Russians openly, instead of paying our unreliable clients to kill their unreliable clients!"
The problem isn't how we kill each other; we always find a a way. The problem is that we are killing each other.
> I think a lot of people have died in the "low-grade" proxy wars that have taken the place of major wars, as well as the chronic unsupervised regional conflicts.
A lot of people, yes. But far far fewer than died in the major wars that preceded them.
Statistically, major wars have become increasingly less common and dying in a war has been an increasingly less likely cause of death. That can be difficult to see because war still exists and is still gruesome and in the 21st century it gets in your face in a way that is hard to ignore, but war is still growing less common.
this only works with rational actors. there are some powers aspiring to nuclear weapons that are not rational, some are openly irrational and use that as leverage
I would agree with that as well. Perhaps the reduction in conventional warfare due to nuclear weapons might be a short-lived phase. Given that Iran has as much capability to produce nuclear weapons now as the US did in 1945, and North Korea already has a nuclear stockpile, and many other countries have the technology to begin building nuclear weapons with a lead time of at most a year or two, one can't help but be concerned.
The larger the threat by the opposite country, the larger the deterrent you need. In Pakistan's case, it was India's entry in the nuclear club that spurred it to develop its own capacity.
I'm not sure who fired first matters too much when you are on the receiving end.
This is a serious point: the most serious "near misses" during the cold war were mostly caused by errors in early warning systems or procedures.
Given the instability of Pakistan there is a non-zero chance that a non-government-authorised launch could occur. What would India's response be to that?
Except that India and Pakistan did have a low-intensity war _right after_ their reciprocal nuclear tests in 1998.
Also, India has whooped Pakistan's ass every time they have been at war, both before and after nuclear weapons, so Pakistan has a much smaller incentive to trigger an all-out war. India isn't interested in capturing Pakistan and tilt its own demographic balance.
Nothing of that contradicts the premise of what I said.
Neither India or Pakistan would jeopardise the very existence of the other nation, because rather than just lie down and die they'd get a farewell message from the other side.
Just something to keep in mind NFU's are just pledges. Russia, just out of the Soviet union had the pledge only to drop it.
If you look at the countries that have the pledge its none of the earlier adopters (Nato or former Soviet states). This is important because it signifies that the pledge is more of a political statement to provide comfort to existing nuclear states at the time the pledge was made. India similarly changed its pledge to only apply against nuclear states more recently.
I assume he's including it because of its relation with Pakistan. For whatever reason Pakistan is a concern, India will remain a concern for its willingness to retaliate.
(Note, I'm not saying they'd be wrong or right to retaliate, I'm simply sharing your parent's point of view that it's a worrisome combination).
It's interesting that the UK uses solely submarine-launched missiles and the rest of the world isn't represented by nuclear submarines at all. I would imagine there are a few advantages to submarines, such as stealth, range, ability to lie dormant or operate far from home for long periods, etc. Why only the UK? Are plane-delivered warheads 'better' in some tactical capacity? Or does the delivery essentially not really matter and each country is using their most economical technology?
Also, it's a really sad infographic. I visited Hiroshima last year and it was heartbreaking (also a very beautiful city).
The rationale for the Trident fleet was for "second strike purposes": in the event of nuclear war, the UK is small enough to be completely obliterated. The sub fleet provides a single submarine at all times capable of retaliating in this event.
This leads to the letters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort . In the event of surfacing to the horrible silence of not being able to contact HQ and the BBC having ceased transmission, open the letters and follow orders.
I think the really interesting thing about the "letters of last resort", is that the captain can decide what he wants to do when he opens the letter in that horrible event.
I'm looking for the source, but I read an article with a few former captains and they pretty much unanimously said that they wouldn't launch and would seek sanctuary in the nearest friendly harbour instead. Because what would be the point, the UK would essentially be gone, and all they would be doing would be adding to the misery. Can you imagine what that knowledge would have done if it had been known in Soviet circles, for instance?
We may as well launch, because the captains won't retaliate. Scary stuff.
The Soviet Union was for the majority of the cold war and before on the receiving end of the aggression. For the most part it reacted to existential threats, like in the case of the Cuba missile crisis, which was preceded by the US placing mid-range missiles in Italy and Turkey. In most of the proxy conflicts each side behaved in approximately equally despicable ways, in most cases the US backed dictatorships, like Suharto in Indonesia murdered hundreds of thousands.
There also is no evidence that the Soviet Union ever intended to use nuclear weapons as an offensive measure, whereas the US toyed with the thought on multiple occasions (Cuba crisis, Korean war).
Right, because on the soviet side of iron curtain they weren't extensively training for an attack at all
Also, soviets were never heavily investing into first strike capability, both nuclear and conventional
So much sarcasm.
Please don't revision history
They did train for fighting back in case of an "imperial aggression". Their strategy was to push back any offensive with overwhelming conventional force (massive amounts of tanks). See for example here:
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=...
Pretty much all their nuclear arsenal was deployed in a way that ensured excellent retaliation potential (mobile ICBM launchers etc.), their nuclear subs etc.
I highly recommend "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute, as an exploration of exactly this scenario. The movie was decent too, but the book should not be missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)
i think they only admit to thinking this because it's peace time atm. In the height of the cold war, i don't think they'd be stupid enough to really admit that!
An interesting case of "the bomber always gets through" were the mock attacks the RAF did against major US cities as part of an exercise with the US - the Vulcans managed to beat US air defences fairly easily - something that was kept quiet for a long time:
"[...]the process by which a Trident submarine commander would determine if the British government continues to function includes, amongst other checks, establishing whether BBC Radio 4 continues broadcasting.[4]
Submarines on patrol were reported to have briefly gone on nuclear alert in 2004 when Radio 4 mysteriously went off the air for 15 minutes.[5]"
I really love how the british decides to _write a letter_ as a final set of instructions, unlike the US with it's 24/7 flying command centers that cost an arm and a leg to maintain. And i would guess both is just as effective as each other!
Well, the difference is that Britain would be completely dead, while the US probably won't with the size of its land mass and the amount of personnel around the world it has.
We wouldn't have any one left to command, you would.
Many other countries have SLBMs. They're possibly the most reliable "second-strike" weapon. This was a particular concern for the UK as it's very close (relatively) to the USSR; in the event of a nuclear war the US would have had enough warning to scramble bombers / evacuate the president / etc. in a way that the UK wouldn't.
That's one part of the reason the UK doesn't have air-launched nuclear weapons. But really they fell out of favour ever since Gary Powers was shot down; ballistic missiles are inherently a lot harder to intercept than planes. I suspect the reason other countries still have them is mostly residual, and a reflection of the fact that those are the countries that still fly heavy strategic bombers. If you already have your B-52 (or Russian equivalent) fleet carrying heavy bombs and air-launched cruise missiles, it costs relatively little to maintain the capability to put nuclear warheads on those missiles. AFAIK the UK simply doesn't fly a heavy bomber any more - only the Tornado.
Land-based silos make sense for countries with large areas of empty, relatively unpopulated land, which the UK isn't. France doesn't have any either. I suspect India only uses land-based weapons because it can't maintain a sufficiently reliable submarine fleet.
Non-ballistic nuclear missiles still a purpose beyond the intertia of keeping them in service, they're the "stealth strike" option. A cruise missile is designed to hug the terrain, avoiding radar detection through proximity to ground clutter and its small radar profile which can be mistaken for an aircraft.
ICBMs are impossible to intercept once they're past the initial launch stage but they are very easy to detect which kicks off a retaliation. A cruise missile with "modern" stealth design would be an incredibly threatening weapon as you'd only need ~100 or so to cripple the retaliation capability of another nuclear power.
> A cruise missile with "modern" stealth design would be an incredibly threatening weapon as you'd only need ~100 or so to cripple the retaliation capability of another nuclear power.
You would? Such a thing wouldn't work against nations that maintain a constant submarine patrol, and perhaps not against land-based silos either (which were designed to withstand such attacks, no?) Heck, ISTR some of the Russian weapons were rail-mounted and designed to be hidden in mountain tunnels most of the time.
Aircraft delivery of nukes is cheaper and better for tactical application (easier to disguise the nuclear capability of the strike). But they are far more vulnerable to interdiction and counter-force strikes.
I suspect the UK's reliance on SLBM's is due to the size of the UK which makes finding sites for launch facilities difficult, and would expose their civilian population to too much risk from counter-force strikes (they were going to get nuked a lot already to knock out their airfields and harbors).
Well, what you are saying isn't really true, since about half of France's nukes are also nuclear submarine-launched missiles, as well as a large part of the US nukes and a sizable part of the Russian nukes (and China also has a few of those).
The other countries just don't have suitable nuclear submarines.
Also, I assume the UK have no plane-delivered warheads simply because they lack an aircraft carrier, making those quite useless.
There are two main paths that any nuclear war could take: The first is all-out war, we're all screwed regardless of strategy. The second is a more limited tactical war where the aim is to try and take out the oppositions nuclear capability first and then focus on their military.
Unlike the USA, the UK has only a very small landmass to hide big ICBM sites and they will always be near some sort of major population centre. In a limited war scenario, it therefore makes sense to not have any fixed silos but to keep it all at sea and hidden. They may be able to nuke our submarine bases and catch the subs at rest, but we have a standing policy to always have at least one of the subs at sea at all times.
I guess you could argue in favour of air launched missiles from the back of a carrier, but then you go to all the expense of maintaining multiple launch systems, etc. Even the current Trident system is frequently criticised for its cost, so that's another reason to keep it limited and simple.
Missile silos on land were invented to hold the Blue Streak missile [1] and the problems you describe with hiding them were a large part of the reason to cancel the programme.
Retirement of UK air-delivered Sunshine was based entirely on cost grounds, regardless of loss of flexibility.
Nuclear handling processes, storage, maintenance are all very expensive. The decision was made to concentrate these costs in the Trident force where they are partially shared with the USA. All the associated knowledge and skills have been lost from the Royal Air Force and will not return.
Every now and again the Ministry of Defence issues a 'report' on how SLBMs are the most cost-effective solution for the UK, willfully ignoring their complete non-usability.
What non-usability? The missile has demonstrated reliability (the warhead perhaps less so, but not at the point you'd want to bet your country on it fizzling). It can hit anywhere on the planet's surface, and there's no credible countermeasure short of burying yourself deep underground. The submarines are very difficult to track and we always have at least one at sea.
I guess the missiles are expensive and single-use whereas a bomber might carry enough bombs to make them affordable for tactical "battlefield" use, but that's a terrible idea strategically; a scenario where two sides were both sufficiently committed to a war to drop hundreds of nuclear warheads and restrained enough to not escalate to attacking each other's cities is immensely implausible.
The SLBMs do the job of providing a UK nuclear deterrent, which if you're talking about having nuclear weapons at all is presumably something you consider valuable. We have full second-strike capability. And we have it cheaper than any other nation with the same. What is it you think we're missing?
Despite, or maybe because of, the several thousand nuclear weapons ready to be deployed at short notice we get this from Steven Pinker in his book 'The Better Angels of Our Nature':
• Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict. Five great powers possess them, and all of them have waged wars. Yet no nuclear device has been set off in anger. It’s not just that the great powers avoided the mutual suicide of an all-out nuclear war. They also avoided using the smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons, many of them comparable to conventional explosives, on the battlefield or in the bombing of enemy facilities. And the United States refrained from using its nuclear arsenal in the late 1940s when it held a nuclear monopoly and did not have to worry about mutually assured destruction. I’ve been quantifying violence throughout this book using proportions. If one were to calculate the amount of destruction that nations have actually perpetrated as a proportion of how much they could perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the post-war decades would be many orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history.
Here is the preceding paragraph to give some context:
I have spent a lot of this chapter on the statistics of war. But now we are ready for the most interesting statistic since 1945: zero. Zero is the number that applies to an astonishing collection of categories of war during the two-thirds of a century that has elapsed since the end of the deadliest war of all time. I’ll begin with the most momentous...
Indeed, and I the way I read it in the context of the chapter, and the book, it was intended to come across as ridiculous.
The infographic emphasises Pinker's point: The world has actually got a whole lot less violent over the past few decades, despite our ability to cause a lot more death and destruction, we choose not to.
Another quote from Pinker, in the same book:
"Also distorting our sense of danger is our moral psychology. No one has ever recruited activists to a cause by announcing that things are getting better, and bearers of good news are often advised to keep their mouths shut lest they lull people into complacency. Also, a large swath of our intellectual culture is loath to admit that there could be anything good about civilization, modernity, and Western society."
If we concede that the guy is not completely ignorant of world history, he must be referring to something else, although admittedly it's not clear from the cited passage.
Indeed, but where they have been used, conventional incendiary bombs had done way, way more destruction than these two nukes. This being said, I'm not downplaying the horror of nukes, but there's certainly no need for nukes to massively kill people. WW2 is a good example of that.
Pinker is making the distinction that the two cases you refer to weren't used in conflict, as such. They were used against civilian targets, not on the battlefield.
This was the second world war, that distinction wasn't really maintained for air bombing. Use of incendiaries against cities was already widespread, and the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than either of the two nuclear bombings.
Not just Tokyo. Most large cities of Japan were by large totally destroyed by fire bombs. That's why in most Japanese cities there's virtually no pre-WW2 builds left anywhere, with Kyoto and Nara being notable exceptions.
Of course. And Dresden was especially horrific since there was no military target at all in that city at the time. It was purely for the pleasure of killing civilians and wounded people.
I like to believe that almost all nukes aren't actively targeting anything, but I guess all my knowledge comes from documentaries and the like, so I'm not really sure. I'll concede that, probably, almost all nukes, if they were to be used, would target civilians, I just take issue with the use of "are" in your statement.
My understanding of the sequence of events was that WWII had already ended when the US dropped those two bombs, although the conflict with Japan continued in the Pacific theatre.
It seemed to make a whole lot more sense when I read that paragraph in the context of the book, so I'll concede that Pinker's definition of 'zero nukes used in conflict' is debatable.
There is some logic to this, if you want to have the ability to do a retaliatory strike then you need to have your targets selected beforehand and in that case you might as well program that target into the missile ahead of time to save some time.
If you live in a big city in Russia, Western Europe, China, North America or Australia there is likely a warhead with your number on it sitting around somewhere.
It is interesting that you mention the US in the 1940s. After the war the allies were baldy outnumbered in Europe in terms of conventional force. Nukes were the only way that we could possibly defend against a Soviet attack. Nowadays nukes are seen as a detterant against other nukes; a much more distant threat that becomes less plausible. As that happens I wonder if the detterant effect of nukes on conventional forces is becoming diminshed. For nukes to be a detterant adverseries need to believe that we would use them. Otherwise it is the same old sabre ratteling leading to inevitable conflict.
On a positive note: those Nukes are probably what has stood between many state v state wars which may have taken place over the past 60 years had the assured destruction not been there.
That's a difficult assumption to prove, and we have had extremely bloody conflicts nonetheless (Vietnam for once) during the Cold War even without the use of nukes.
I think it's reasonable to assume that a larger land war would've taken place, had there not been the threat of nuclear war limiting the cold war to a very localized region. I would prefer proxy wars over all out war, all said.
> assume that a larger land war would've taken place,
You seem to forget that wars are expensive, very expensive. The US was already running bankrupt before the end of WW2, nobody in any sane state of mind wants an all out war unless they can avoid to do so.
We emerged as the wealthiest nation because the rest of the civilised world had been reduced to rubble. It's really easy to have the best, most productive economy in the world when one's manufacturing base is untouched and one has suffered a relatively small injury to one's workforce.
Germans were starving to death in 1946; Brits were still rationing meat and food in 1954, and cheese for decades to come.
Wars are not in general good for the economy: they result in the destruction of capital and of labour.
I was merely replying to the parent comment, globally WWII was a disaster, economically the US profited massively, not just relative to the rest of the world and it could probably have carried on fighting the longest. For instance the war effort lead to the industrialization of a much larger part of the country than before and immigration of skilled labor towards the west coast.
As you said it did not suffer any damage to its industry and took over from Britain, France and Japan as the imperial power in the Middle East and Asia.
There have been plenty of conventional land wars in the following years with US involvement, the difference was that while WWII was fought to establish large American spheres of influence, the following wars were fought been to maintain the American empire.
It is pretty hard to quantify, but I'm confident that people in power thought that the net benefit of maintaining hegemony in South East Asia (Korean/Vietnam war) and the Middle East (financing Israel, the Iraq wars), outweighed the cost.
I seem to remember that the UK downgraded the yield of its Trident warheads to be in the range 0.3, 5–10 and 100 kt - Wikipedia has this as "speculative" but I do remember it being reported a while back.
[The wildly different yields apparently coming from unboosted primary, boosted primary and full "multi-stage" - presumably the latter being achieved by removing the secondary].
Martin Hellman (yes, the co-inventor of public key cryptography) has a fascinating blog about the risks of stumbling into a nuclear war: https://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/
>"Most recently, in December 2014, the
Notebook did an exhaustive review of
Israel's nuclear arsenal and concluded
that claims it has 200 to 400 warheads
are probably exaggerated and that the
country's stockpile is more likely in the
range of roughly 80 nuclear warheads
(Kristensen and Norris, 2014b). Getting
the size and composition right is important
because it hints at Israeli intentions,
and can therefore have a significant effect
on threat perceptions in the Middle East
and the potential nuclear aspirations of
other countries in the region"
It's missing but I wonder how many nukes they actually have. And the way they use them is rather like terrorists. They threaten their use, and get financial aid and food in exchange of not doing anything with them. It's like International-level racket.
No you wouldn't, it would only increase the sea level by about 65m. You'd indiscriminately kill a lot of people (including your own) making it a useless weapon. There would be hefty amounts of survivors (billions), again making it useless if you were going for all-out genocide.
The ruined climate might do something to kill off the human race, though.
Some landlocked nations would be virtually unaffected but the sea level itself, though. There's also countries that have most of their main cities in the interior (Russia being one).
Also remember that a "main" or "important" city before the crisis is a mere refugee source after a worldwide crisis.
Before a crisis, the capital of the worldwide financial system and a major world trade port is kinda important. After a crisis ends both the financial system and world trade, its little more than a source of refugees.
If you want to wargame it out, look at the effects on agriculture. The US would be pretty much unaffected, sure we'd lose Florida and N.O. but we'll still have wheat and corn in the midwest, uninterrupted. Rice cultivation and historical hydraulic empires like egypt might have a little more trouble. Of course it depends how slowly it happens. The total solar energy striking the poles, even if it magically 100% perfectly went into ice melting, would take a heck of a long time. Its not going to be like tossing an ice cube into a campfire, no 65 meter tidal wave of water would result.
The capital effects would be interesting. So... your nuclear plant is 40M ASL today, and after the melt it'll be 25M below sea level. Well, at least it'll have plenty of cooling in an accident.
Some cities are important in every category though, just by virtue of concentrating a lot of the population. For instance the US would be pretty much in complete disarray for decades if the coastal cities of California and the East Coast were just wiped. They concentrate a lot of the power in every single respect, and also the brains.
Well, people from the affected countries will be forced to migrate away from sea, so I don't think the landlocked (or large) countries would be safe - on the contrary, they'll be facing a massive invasion of desperate people. This might turn into a "nuke'em all or get conquered" scenario.
This simply wouldn't happen. These countries would have to deal with such an internal collapse they wouldn't have much of an organised military left. Also, there would be widespread division - the powerful wealthy individuals would be welcome to other nations and the ones left would have no means to invade fuck all.
Well in the strictest sense you're not drowning the world, but you'll sure as hell drown a lot of it. Tokyo and New York, for one, would be mostly wiped out.
The Netherlands will probably disappear too.
Pretty useless weapon for strategic purposes though. Only some sort of cartoon dictator would even bother trying that
The numbers calculated for the US and USSR would have been done on the basis of enough nukes to hit every single facility capable of retaliation and all cities over a certain size after allowing for failures and anti-missile systems.
So that you can never destroy them before some get launched at you. Though I suspect that, in case of US and USSR, at some point it turned into a longest nuclear penis contest.
The numbers seem mostly made up. 288 trident II... well OK at 24 per Ohio SSBN thats implying 12 subs are ready to launch 100% of their missiles at all times.
However there are only 14 Ohio SSBNs. And the rotation is 2.5 months on patrol (figure maybe 2 months effective?) and 1 month in port. I imagine a giant crane lowering supplies into the sub might block launched missiles... I don't think they have the compressed air online to launch while in port, although maybe... So more realistically, assuming no long term refits the navy has maybe 7 or so in position ready to launch. So WRT the infographic, maybe 168 ready to launch.
However. Everything from here on is classified so I'm speculating. There are tactical conditions where trying to launch will merely get yourself sunk before launching. So you've got a ASW destroyer and helos overhead pounding the sea with active sonar because we're having a nuclear war here. Speaking of nuclear war, during a nuclear war being on board a deployed SSBN is probably somewhat hazardous duty, so "we" probably don't have 14 floating SSBNs for very long. Also peculiar range issues and launch geometry issues, if theoretically we're at war with China, a launch trajectory passing directly over Moscow is going to totally freak out the Russians at the worst imaginable time. Also from a strategic standpoint using up your entire force in one attack is really dumb. Also there are weather related issues, if you're in high seas you might have launch issues. Sure you can pop a missile out the tube but if it starts its launch in the air sideways thats a mission failure. So I think in actual warfare maybe only 2 subs get to launch, at best. Suddenly we're down to 48 missiles in the air from the 288 infographic. Best case. Good argument for one. Or 24 missiles.
Again more classified BS. The best NASA and the russians can do under ideal conditions is launch maybe half of the time on time without a failure. Of course they put a lot of money into being reliable, but... I feel 50% successful launches might be semi-realistic? I mean, every attack sub and ASW helicopter is going to be all over you the instant the first missile launches, the odds of surviving until the 24th missile launches seem low, which is why we don't deploy subs will 500 tubes because tubes 200-500 will never survive to fire... If some 50 cent integrated circuit fails or some valve, its non trivial to fix the missile while underway and you might not have the spare parts. I stand by about 50% estimate.
The MIRV thing means at re-entry you can attack nearby targets, so the equivalent of Saint Paul and Minneapolis are both in big trouble, but for trajectory and aerospace reasons its hard to hit Seattle and DC at the same time. So you can pack multiple warheads on a missile, but you really only get maybe 30 targets outta 24 missiles. Why do you think we spread our missile launch fields all over the upper midwest instead of putting them all in one county in Texas?
Finally we know from semi-public test results that not every test goes perfectly, so I have a gut feeling that in a real nuclear war no holds barred, high radiation environment, 25 or so hits is reasonable. Hopefully thats enough to discourage any belligerent from starting a war they'd lose.
You can see the motivation to not decrease stocks by 10x or 100x because that takes the odds of 25 hits down to 2.5 hits or 0.25 hits. Decrease the number of nukes by 100x and we'll kill dozens of millions within one generation in WW3, guaranteed, not much changes in human nature. Compared to dozens of millions of human lives, building a couple hundred ICBMs is really cheap insurance!
I think you're underestimating how big the ocean is. Most of the time a strategic missile submarine is not followed; attack submarines or helicopters may be heading there after you've launched but at that point it's too late.
In a first strike scenario overwhelming force is absolutely the way to go. You're trying to completely eliminate the ability to retaliate. It's not a scenario where "holding back a reserve" makes sense.
ICBMs are routine, proven technology; the fair comparison is with commercial satellite launches, not with interplanetary probes. And those have a success rate a whole lot higher than 50%.
Pakistan/India is the most worrisome combination in that graph.