Full scale Cold war?

by chr155

Hi, I'm not to sure if this is the correct place to post, but if the cold war were to go full scale, what were the nuclear attack plans of NATO and Warsaw nations. Also, what would be the aftermath? I remember reading that the USSR had a plan to start a ground war where all remaining soldiers would fight to the death, to wipe out any chance of the enemy ever rebuilding. Was this true for either side?

noisette915

I'm not sure if this is permitted as an answer or not, but this thread contains this link which describes a theoretical timeline of a full-scale global nuclear war occurring when the nuclear stockpiles of the US and USSR were at their peaks. It does not address your question of whether either side had plans to launch an apocalyptic ground war to completely wipe out whatever was left of the other side, however.

Reading that timeline is a bit terrifying, actually. It kind of made real what had always been a remote and academic kind of fear for me, since the Berlin Wall fell when I was 3 years old.

NotARandomNumber

Well, first, a 'full scale Cold War' as you put it, is just a war. A Cold War is called a cold war because there wasn't any large scale fighting.

Second, I'm sure most of the battle plans are still classified, but both sides pretty much realized that a full scale war between the Soviet Union and the United States was a zero-sum game that ensured mutually assured destruction. ICBMs moved slow enough to where the other guy could detect them and launch his own

crashC

Sheehan, in A_FIery_Peace_In_a_Cold_War describes a discussion between the then new Secretary of Defense, MacNamara, and SAC General Curtis Lemay. MacNamara asked Lemay aomething like, "If I told you right now that the Russians were just crossing the Dew Line, how many of your bombers could you save?" Lemay replied "None." MacNamara was completely boggled and queried Lemay about why he didn't have a better plan and what good SAC was, given the situation. Lemay replied that if the Russians were just now crossing the Dew Line, he would have destroyed them on the ground a couple of days ago. To me, that sounds pretty much like a full-scale Cold War.