How many nukes does it take to wipe the U.S. or the face of the earth?

Question

and also russia?

ps. mccain or obama?

Answer 1

several countries already have enough... which is too many but they do make good deterrents.

scary thing thinking of obama guarding our country - more like laying down and letting whomever wants whatever we have to come and take it -he will give the term lame duck or wimp a new face = his.

Answer 2

Mutual destruction is usually the policy.  You kill mine, I kill yours.  Only one has to go up and it'd probably mean the extinction of everyone.  Nuclear winter and also the poisons whipped up would probably mean a low likeliness of life.

Answer 3

One single American nuclear submarine has enough nuclear warheads to wipe out every city in Russia with a population above 20,000.

It would take a lot of nukes to blow up a whole country.  But you don't have to do that.  Just a few nukes will poison the whole earth and everyone will die.  The leaders of all nuclear nations know this and that's why we haven't had a nuclear war, and probably won't.

Answer 4

Stockpiled Deliverable:

US:      10,640       6,390

Russia 16,000       3,242

Brit           200          200

France      350          350

China      ~400        ~325

Israel        200          200

India         150         110

Pakis         75           75

N.Korea    ~13         ~13

A mere 100 megaton of detonations is projected to initiate global impact to the biosphere, of course that's just computer modeling.  As far as obliterating the cities, both sides can do it 5-6 times over.

The presence of highly survivable mobile systems, both in the US and Russia, vis-a-vis land-based systems, bombers and subs. has made countervalue and counterforce targeting obsolete. Both sides have recognized MAD and any launch would be national suicide.

The only threat from Russia then is the irrational actions of rogue commanders or accidental launches from an aging control-command system.

The end of the Cold War has brought a sobering awareness of the vulnerabilitys of Russia's nuclear complex, their security is downgraded with some assets left in new and unstable countries. Old habits die hard, the suspicions of US intentions are still there, look at the post-Cold War incident on Jan. 25, 1995 and their recent reaction in our support of Georgia and Poland.

Getting back to your question, let's talk about the targeting of nukes at the US and Russia.  Conservatively let us say that Russia and China combined currently have 7,500 nuclear warheads supposedly capable of reaching the US. So that we do not just scare ourselves to death, let us suppose that with Russia's deteriorating economy that the maintenance on these have made about half of them operational. Let us say 4,000. And let us say that only half of these would be aimed at North America, the rest being aimed at Europe and other places in the world. This means that only 2,000 would be aimed at North America and let us further assume that US defenses are such that we will stop half of them (although I am not certain how one currently stops an ICBM or particularly a SLBM). But anyway, that leaves us with 1,000 nuclear weapons exploding over North America.

And then estimated that each one is more than a hundred times the size of the weapon used on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Many have estimated that a mere 100 detonations would be enough to obliterate primary, secondary and tertiary targets. (command & control bunkers, metropolitan areas & infrastructure such as bridges/electrical plants, etc).  so there you go.

Answer 5

To wipe out america you would just have to drop radioactive Duncan donuts and within a week all the population would be dead

Answer 6

If Obama is elected I sure we will all find out!

Answer 7

a single Ohio class missile boat like the last submarine I was stationed on could make several countries "go away"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_class_...

the russians have their Typhons sub too...

then you have ICBM, tactical nukes etc etc etc..

as for the the entire world?

well, know that some warheads were build up to 50 megatons (russians tested one) and it was talked of an "Earth destroyer bomb" at 100 megatons....which is exploded could crack the earthmantel at the sopt of explosion or so it was said!

Answer 8

Well if each nuc can make a 100 foot in diameter hole.

So to completely destroy an area you need one nuc for every so many feet, You could take out the USA East Coast with lets see.

If the East coast is 1,000 miles long and it takes 5 nucs per mile, then 5,000 nucs could wipe out the East coast for about 200 foot inland. and then another 5,000 nucs for the second 200 foot working Westward. I would guess that you could do it all with 1,000,000 nucs.

Now that would not destroy any of the blast shelters though.