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Originally Posted by Spammy  ^Did I just make a connection between I'm Me and China?^ |
Good discovery, much like discovering America after everyone else has found it out and settled there.
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Originally Posted by Spammy Anyway, I have trouble believing that in the event of a nuclear strike, only about 2 million people would die in China. Hopefully it never happens, because I see massive losses not only for China and the U.S., but the world as a whole. |
Its all strategy.
Scenario 1 - If US nuclear attacks aims at maximum casualty for Chinese it would attack non-ABM cities which would maximise destruction but leave the retaliatory options totally open. This would give China greater weapon power for retaliation and if only 100 fusion based H-Bomb warheaded on DF5c ICBMs in released on the major US cities it could quickly eleminate more than 60% poplation (assuming a 75% accuracy in strike rate due to ABM defenses). US wouldn't want that at any cost so it will be scenario2.
Scenario 2 - This would target China's ICBM locations which US could successfully locate. The hidden underground SILOs will be inaccessible to a normal air burst or terranean nuclear bomb. This strategy will cause about 1.5 to 15 million casualties depending in the type and number of warheads used. It would invite a larger scale retaliation using SILOs based DF series ICBMs and submarine launched JL series SLBMs as a last ditch attempt. China's target would be cities for maximising destruction as targeting all nuclear installation with a handful of remaining missiles is bad strategy. This tactic would cause a loss of at least 40 million to 100 million US population if the largest 72 cities were hit.
After the first wave making up of first offensive strike and second retaliatory strike the strategy would change coupled with the movement and relocation of the population which makes predicting the outcome of the full war a near impossible task. US could win the war but with a population of 10 - 50 million it would still be a massive loss. It is a good thing there is this sense among military analysts which keeps world peace.
Both way, it will be destructive and unless it is Russia we are talking about, none have got foolproof ABM defense against multi warheaded MIRVs. Both the US and China's projects are still under development stage, China has a little edge in this area of ABM due to the recent Russian collaboration on ABM defense against US. Chinese forces wouldn't use nuclear weapons against any country unless attacked as they have a commitment to their words.