This essay is written as a reaction to watching the Netflix movie _House of Dynamite_.
_House of Dynamite_ movie scenario
Time Critical Options
1) Intercept
In the movie, the Missile Defense Agency from its base at Fort Greely, Alaska fires two GBI missiles at the inbound. One fails and one misses. Due to the ballistics involved, additional defensive launches are not possible using this option. A strong argument can be made that Greely should have fired four or even more GBIs, but this did not occur in the scenario.
The presence of Aegis-equipped US Navy warships in the Western Pacific in a position to fire on the inbound is not discussed. For simplicity, this narrative will assume that no USN warship was in position to fire.
Terminal intercept is technically possible via THAAD and Patriot. However the nearest batteries are at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, nearly nine hundred miles out of position to defend the city.
While other ballistic missile defense options exist, they are all too far out of range, position and/or spin up time to be of any use.
This eliminates the intercept options.
2) Civil Defense
The city of Chicago, Illinois is depicted in the movie as having a population of about 9 million people. For convenience further discussion of populations and casualties will be discussed in the most appropriate unit to nuclear war, megadeaths, or one million.
Referring to
Nukemap with the detonation of a 150kt weapon, the best the North Koreans are likely to have, an estimated 0.3 fatalities will result with an additional 0.3 severely injured. Over 1 are in the effect range.
A larger weapon, a 350kt weapon, would cause 0.4 fatalities but increase the injured to 0.7 with over 2.3 now in the effect range. This is well within the capabilities of all powers but NK.
The largest weapon reasonably used, a 1000kt or 1mt weapon, would cause 0.6 fatalities, injure 1.1 and over 3.3 are in the effect range.
This assumes that the weapon is not a MIRV or multiple warhead vehicle; that it does not fail to reach target or appreciably miss, and that the weapon does not malfunction or "dud." Absolute worst case - it is a modern MIRV with 3 350 kt weapons intended for maximum civilian casualties, which would be 1.2 fatalities, 2.8 injured and achieve effect on all 9 per above. The moderate unusual case would be a 'water shot' in Lake Michigan which would minimize certain direct casualties but add additional issues including radioactive tsunami and making the city uninhabitable due to damage to water and sewer systems. Of course, the best case would be a warhead failure or as said, a dud.
The good news is that the movie overstated the case - 9 megadeaths as opposed to circa 4 in the worst case MIRV scenario.
The most immediate civil defense measure is to take advantage of the several minutes of warning to attempt to remove as many people as possible from the Chicago metropolitan area. This requires a combination of national will, extreme speed and utter ruthlessness. Any hesitation in the command chain will make this ineffective.
North American Air Defense Command can confirm to FEMA and both can reach out directly to the Governor of Illinois and his state police, the City of Chicago and the Mayor, and other regional emergency agencies such as Cook County.
By far the most important time critical intervention will be activating the Illinois and Chicago electronic traffic control signage, followed by radio communications using the Emergency Broadcast System to preempt local FM and AM radio and further information using the National Weather Service radio network.
"Attack warning! Nuclear explosion soon! Get inside now!"
This will provoke widespread panic and cause many people to spontaneously flee. This is the desired reaction.
A further immediate intervention through traffic management will be the implementation of full
freeway reversal. This will require swift cooperation from the Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois State Police, and numerous local law enforcement and traffic management agencies. On-ramps leading into Chicago are blocked immediately, preferably with heavy trucks. Off ramps are reversed to serve as reverse freeway on ramps.
A reasonable estimate for the number of persons saved through general evacuation with freeway reversal is based on a napkin calculation of 10,000 persons per hour per lane, approximately 400 lanes of exit from the Chicago area. Assuming six minutes of throughput (minus establishment time) that would be 400,000 potential lives saved or 0.4 megadeaths.
Lives saved by orders to shelter or stay inside will be significant but less in number. Other immediate measures such as "waving off" all inbound aircraft, instructing mass transit systems to pick up all passengers without payment, shutting down airport security screening and pushing all available persons aboard any aircraft capable of takeoff, will save many lives but not enough to be calculated as megadeaths.
In the first 24 hours, civil defense and public safety messages ("Stay indoors. Cover your nose and mouth, do not breathe in radioactive particles. Do not go to Chicago.") will also save many lives. Disaster relief efforts will fill every hospital from Los Angeles to Maine, from Seattle to Miami ... and yet most wounded will die for lack of treatment, prior to or during rescue or transport. This assumes a maximum effort by all available response agencies throughout the United States, including medical helicopter air bridges to evacuate wounded children and immediate discharge of all non-emergent and expectant patients from all hospitals in America.
Battle damage assessment will be critical in helping to determine who carried out this attack. A small strike will almost certainly be credited to the North Koreans. A large strike or MIRV will be presumptively the fault of Russia or China. The middle range is where questions and doubts will exist. Department of Energy search teams and technical expertise will be required to sift radioactive rubble and gather samples, the criminalistics of nuclear war. These samples take hours to days to analyze, time that the world does not have.
3) Retaliation
The nations that mobilize swiftly in response to this crisis include Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and most notably North Korea.
Of the five powers, the one with the least geospace awareness is the same one that is the notional most likely enemy - North Korea.
It is of immediate strategic interest that these five powers mobilized simultaneously. It suggests relative alliance. While China and Russia would certainly observe the change in US defensive posture, the Iranian and Pakistani regimes do not have the global situational awareness to do so and would be getting their best intelligence from public news media - unless communications channels were established in advance with the senior powers in the alliance.
The United States has more than sufficient destructive power at her disposal to execute any pack of attack options. The question is one of shark-tapping - how to hit back hard enough to deter further attack, but not so hard as to guarantee further attack.
Therefore, attacks on the senior powers - China and Russia - should be approached hesitantly and with great caution. However, both in their public literature and in private discussions, both nations have contemplated offensive nuclear war and have lived in fear of an American offensive attack - equally disturbing as one often attributes to an opponent one's own motives.
Retaliatory strikes on North Korea should be, at a minimum, equivalent to the casualties taken by the United States. The capital of Pyongyang has an official population just over 3 and is an obvious choice for obliteration. It is an unfair contest. The only concern is to avoid using too many weapons which might be needed to deter Russia and China.
Pre-emptive strikes on Iran and Pakistan will alarm the major powers. Again, the question is one of shark-tapping. Frightful retaliation or pre-retaliation on these countries, perhaps innocent, may frighten Russia and China without harming them directly. On the other hand, this may galvanize them into their own attacks.
Certainly any strikes on Russia or China should be on military capabilities - but such attacks would be seen as an attempt to change the calculus of nuclear war.
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lsanderson
