What if Pakistan nuked India in 1999?
- Thread starter Bullmoose713
- Start date
Pangur
Donor
India would have returned the `compliament' and nuked parts of Pakistan. End result, millions dead, maybe nuclear winter and for both sides an unwinable war
Think of the worst humanitarian crisis you could possibly imagne.
Then multiply it by Hitler.
guinazacity
Banned
India nukes Pakistan, Nuclear exchange plus food crisis will make ww2 look like a drop in the bucket.
Pakistan ceases to exist as a nation, India will probably ride this out almost dead, but alive.
The Zhongnanhai throws a party.
There is no plus side to this one.
Pakistan ceases to exist as a nation, India will probably ride this out almost dead, but alive.
The Zhongnanhai throws a party.
There is no plus side to this one.
India would have responded, with more weapons, and more potent ones at that. India has multi-stage weapons and has had them (including testing) since before the POD, Pakistan does not.
As noted, a LOT of people die. Hopefully they "only" die on the sub-Continent.
Escalation, considering the close relationship between Mumbai & Moscow and between Islamabad & Moscow, along with the somewhat tense relationship between India and the PRC is not to be discounted. Fortunately, by 1999 the Russian missile forces were not quite at the same instant launch status if the deep Cold War, and the U.S. was also in a very much lower tension level, not that any usage wouldn't get things REALLY tense, really quickly. The two main players also had fewer mounted warheads, thanks to START, something that would be slightly stabilizing.
As noted, a LOT of people die. Hopefully they "only" die on the sub-Continent.
Escalation, considering the close relationship between Mumbai & Moscow and between Islamabad & Moscow, along with the somewhat tense relationship between India and the PRC is not to be discounted. Fortunately, by 1999 the Russian missile forces were not quite at the same instant launch status if the deep Cold War, and the U.S. was also in a very much lower tension level, not that any usage wouldn't get things REALLY tense, really quickly. The two main players also had fewer mounted warheads, thanks to START, something that would be slightly stabilizing.
Probably not even a Nuclear Autumn. Insufficient throw weight.
Orville_third
Banned
Except that it's likely Bin Laden and company do not flee to Pakistan, that there is pressure to get rid of nuclear weapons, Israel get pressured to join the NPT, and North Korea faces sanctions if it gets out. Still not enough to outweigh the megadeaths.
Yep. Pretty much.
Pakistan would be cutting their own throats, and the country would cease to exist.
India, Iran and the Soviet Union divide the remains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and anyone who even looks like they might support a Taliban or AlQaeda or other militant versions of Sunni is shot out of hand.
Pakistanis who a) survive, and b) have relatives in Canada or the UK do ANYTHING to get there.
Gan
Banned
Off-topic: Not in 1999.
On-Topic:
The butterflies for this will probably be massive. Who knows how different things a few years down the road will look compared to OTL.
Because to hypothetically cause a possible nuclear winter then the Pakistani and Indian nuclear arsenals combined. Remember that since trinity something like a thousand nuclear weapons have been detonated by the us, ussr, the uk, france, India, pakistan, and possibly israel/south Africa.
An Indian pakistani war at this point would have involved at most two or three dozen nukes all of relatively low yield. The tsar bombs alone would have been several dozen times more destructive.
As I said, insufficient throw weight. In 1999 neither side had more that 25-30 weapons (there are a couple sources that go higher for India, but the overall number never exceeds 50). Simply not enough, especially when you consider that a significant number of the weapons will never reach target (neither side had missiles with enough reach to most of the other. The Indians at the time could reach Karachi, assuming they launched almost at the frontier with Pakistan. The Pakistani's, at the time, were limited to a battlefield launcher with a range of around 100 km. Most deliveries would have been via manned systems, the loss rate on those would be substantial. There is also the matter of mT that would be involved. A single SS-19 could put out the same throw as either of the combatants, a couple Trident D-5s the same (the big boys in this game really are BIG)
Best guess would be 20 maybe 30 actual detonations. Bad, massive death tolls, but the particulates wouldn't be a patch on Mount St. Helen's eruption and would pale compared to Mount Pinatubo with its 2.4 Cubic MILES of particulates (11,000,000,000 TONS) and 17 MILLION tons of sulfur oxide. Nuclear winter (which is more than a bit dodgy as a concept) and Nuclear Autumn (which seems to stand on much more solid ground) assumes, as a minimum requirement 100 city size firestorms. In this scenario, assuming no escalation, that simply isn't happening.
Probably finishes Pakistan as a functioning nation. India probably still functioning as a state but badly damaged
For nuclear winter purposes, the yield of the bomb is critical since the maximum height of the mushroom depends on it: below 50 ktons, most of the cloud remains in the troposphere/tropopause, above 100 ktons more and more goes into the stratosphere.
Troposphere is very active and currents, termal/humidity gradients and rains efficiently work as deposition mechanisms for suspended particles. Stratosphere is a complete different environment and particulates can remain there for months to years. For example, a large fire cloud will be gone in hours/days, the materials from a large volcanic eruption remain suspended for months.
With the limited power of indo-pakistan nukes, the disaster would be geographically limited. A larger scale 1960's dr. Stranamore US/URSS exchange is completely different.
Troposphere is very active and currents, termal/humidity gradients and rains efficiently work as deposition mechanisms for suspended particles. Stratosphere is a complete different environment and particulates can remain there for months to years. For example, a large fire cloud will be gone in hours/days, the materials from a large volcanic eruption remain suspended for months.
With the limited power of indo-pakistan nukes, the disaster would be geographically limited. A larger scale 1960's dr. Stranamore US/URSS exchange is completely different.
Not often you see Pakistan described as a functioning nationProbably finishes Pakistan as a functioning nation. India probably still functioning as a state but badly damaged
India comes out on top. According to wikipedia, India has 110 nukes to 120 for Pakistan (none active on either side ATM), but at 1 bomb per city (and assuming that bomb wipes out the cite, irrespective of the physics), the world population review site puts it that Pakistan's largest remaining city will be Sibi, with 64,069 people, while India's largest will be Muzaffarpur, with more than five times that (it's among 9 that reach that mark). Interesting to note, the total loss of those cities would see Pakistan's population drop by more than 23%, while India's would drop by less than 11%.