I recently heard something I need to correct.

An American military analyst said that high precision weapons eliminate the need for nuclear weapons, because the nukes would be used to spread the circle of destruction and thus increase the probability of the target being destroyed, and the high-precision weapons make it possible to hit bullseye each time and thus destroy the target in one hit.

While this may be true for some types of targets, it is far from being universally true. Yes, the yield of nukes was reduced as precision was increased, so there obviously is some truth to it, but let’s say you want to destroy a big target – an enemy base that spreads across several square kilometers. Let’s say you want to hit it at long distance, even inter-continental. You need very sophisticated, expensive rockets, and if you give each under a ton of conventional explosives, you basically need dozens, if not hundreds of very expensive rockets, to destroy non-pinpoint targets, such as an airfield with assets dispersed over a large area. Also, if you want to sink an aircraft carrier, the best way to do it is to strike it under the water line with a several kiloton yield nuke, or strike it directly from above with a hypersonic missile with a kiloton-range nuke that detonates inside. Also, if you have enemies in WW1-style trenches, striking them with precision weapons would take an immense number of precision weapons to eliminate individual small-value targets, which is extremely expensive and a good way to bankrupt your side. Honestly, once you are in the situation where warfare is massive enough, the precision attacks at pinpoint targets no longer serve any military or political purpose. You need weapons of mass destruction, in order to cover a wide area of enemy’s deployment. Building very expensive carrier missiles that carried a ton of explosive each was how Hitler accelerated his defeat, because the Germans poured enormous resources into weapons that basically killed more Polish prisoners of war during their construction, than they killed the British at the receiving end. You absolutely need extreme destructive power of the nuclear weapons in order to produce effects with modern weapons, because otherwise you end up with the equivalent of paving roads with iPads instead of asphalt.

Of course, the argument against that is that any use of nukes releases the genie from the bottle, and makes total nuclear exchange almost certain. My counter-argument is that when you come to the point in war where you need to destroy cities in order to eradicate stubborn enemy resistance, and the enemy is a client state of a nuclear superpower, you are basically at the point where not using nukes encourages your geostrategic enemy to push you further, because you’re obviously not willing to draw a line. Also, when you come to that point, reducing your methods of warfare to conventional weapons makes you less effective than the WW2 air raids, because modern sophisticated weapon systems are designed to deliver less explosive to the target because post-WW2 warfare was seen in terms of either solving small regional conflicts, or going all-out with nukes. Destroying big enemies with conventional weapons is something modern armies are not designed to do, and, if attempted, it would be so expensive it would bankrupt the side that does it.

So, using Tu-160 “White Swans” to carry conventional bombs produces almost negligible effect at the target, and using them to fire those precious cruise missiles to carry a ton of TNT is like hammering nails with graphics cards. If you need to actually destroy something big, you need to arm those precious, super accurate cruise missiles with something that actually makes a big enough boom at the target to make it worth while.

I am looking through several scenarios here. It would take me a long time to dump all of it into a written form, so I’ll just do an abbreviated version.

Low-probability option, war fizzles out because America runs out of time, and Pentagon decides against the nuclear option for some reason. Funding for the CIA political control projects worldwide runs dry due to total economic collapse. The opposition to the installed and controlled politicians and media grows and grass-roots political options form, but the populace is mentally and emotionally weakened by the Internet hypnosis and is not capable of reversing the fatal economic trends quickly enough to avoid collapse. Welfare financing of Muslims and Africans in Europe ceases due to economic collapse, and they enter a state of perpetual riot outside of the rule of law. Collapse of the petrochemical industry leads to the collapse of the food supply, energetic sector and transportation. America and Europe descend into chaos, with various degrees of kinetic conflict and a paradoxical combination of anarchy and totalitarianism. Russia pacifies Ukraine, and it turns out that without America, all the current hot-spots of conflict suddenly cease to be a problem. Israel is in a desperate situation of either brokering a harmful peace or being destroyed. China replaces the USA with the rest of the world as a market, but the volume of trade scales down significantly due to deindustrialization and impoverishment of the major centres. Taiwan was only ever a problem because of America. Japan suffers a terrible economic collapse. South Korea reintegrates with the North. America and Europe are violent, poor, vicious shitholes sidelined by history.

Low probability option, war escalates to the point of ten million dead but then shock and panic force America to de-escalate. Russia establishes total victory in Ukraine. Poland enters the conflict with 300k troops. Russia responds with an extremely vicious counter-attack, inflicting over 70% casualties on NATO within the first week. American bases in Poland and Germany are destroyed. America responds by attempting a decapitation attack against Russian leadership. This results in several high military officers killed, and the Russians respond by destroying the entirety of American military with nuclear strikes. All the Ohio nuclear submarines are sunk, all the shipyards are destroyed, all the military bases are destroyed, all the aircraft carriers are sunk, CIA HQ and Pentagon are destroyed, America launches an attempted nuclear response, Russia takes down 90% of the ICBMs, Russia loses several major bases and industrial cities. Russia issues an ultimatum, requesting American unconditional surrender or total nuclear retaliation will ensue. Since most of the Russian nuclear forces are intact and most of American nuclear forces are destroyed, America stands down and surrenders.

Extremely low probability option, something unexpected happens and disrupts everybody’s plans – supervolcano, aliens, asteroid, supernova, extreme onset of the ice age or whatever. Since the parameters are unknown, precise modelling isn’t possible.

High probability option, same as above but the Russians are more heavily compromised and shaken, and launch total nuclear retaliation without even attempting a political outcome. Several hundred warheads of 100kT or above pepper American cities, industrial and military installations. Tens of millions dead within days, hundreds of millions dead within the year. Russia and China lost most military and industrial installations and all major cities. UK is completely devastated and its population dies off. Several major points in Europe suffer the same fate. Total collapse of the Internet, total collapse of world trade and finances. Predictive ability past this point lost due to chaos.

Cumulative probability of “good outcomes” is below 10%, but those include totalitarian governmental/corporate/AI control over the populace and a complete loss of freedom, so “good outcomes” might be a misnomer. Probability of Western economic collapse within the timeframe of 5 years is over 99%. Probability of Western civilization recovering to pre-2019 normal is zero. Probability of nuclear exchange within the timeframe of a year is over 80%. Probability of nuclear exchange within a month is over 20%, but then starts growing as several parameters simultaneously converge to the critical points. The main critical point is the collapse of American control over the global economy, and resultant loss of American military budget, creating a “use it or lose it” situation for the people behind this entire mess. In this scenario, it is over 90% likely for them to use the nuclear option to degrade the rest of the world and give the collapsed America a chance of recovering ahead of others, according to the original plan. The likelihood of them proceeding with the plan is exceedingly high because we’ve been living in this scenario since at least 2008, and likely longer.

America (but I can’t eliminate the possibility that sources of power in UK, Israel and elsewhere participate in the problem) still controls the entire roadmap, but approaches the point where they aggravate other actors to the point of no return.

Probability of the sudden global glaciation is showing a non-null percentage within the timeframe of a century, so that too is a “dark horse” to be mindful of. This is due to extreme winter events in North America and indications of permafrost melting in Siberia, which indicates climate approaching the conditions in the last glacial phase. Also, the Sun has been acting strangely, departing from its usual 11-year cycle, which still doesn’t feature significantly in my analysis but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on.