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Nelson Cunnington
Enthusiastic amateurUpdated Mar 15
What are three places to be hit the hardest in a prolonged nuclear war?
There won’t be a prolonged nuclear war; it will be over in the space of a few hours, maybe less than an hour. An ICBM will be in flight for half-an-hour or less, and will be launched at the latest when it is clear that their silos are being targeted, and may just be launched when enemy missiles are observed being launched.


The three main targets in the US are the ICBM squadrons in Montana, North Dakota, and the Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado complex in red above (the black areas are silo fields that have been shut down). These will be targeted by roughly one- or half-megaton Russian weapons exploding quite close to the ground in order to destroy the heavily-constructed silos. Each silo is more than the diameter of the detonation of a large warhead from another, so each will be targeted by at least one warhead. The warheads will make impressive craters, set fire to the farmland for miles around, and kick up a lot of fallout.


In Russia, the fixed silos are in the south-west of the country, at Kozelsk, Tatischevo, and Dambarovsky. The other sites are home to the mobile launcher battalions. These bases are much less hardened than the fixed silos, but the launchers are, you know, mobile, and the idea is that when the balloon goes up they will get out of their garages and motor down the road to get away from the American (or Chinese) missiles’ ground zero. Whether their launch sites are also targeted following observations of exercises is not known to me.


In China, new ICBM sites are being constructed at Yumen, Hami, and Hanggin for the latest DF-41 ICBMs, with silos at each site for around 100 missiles. The DF-5 missile silos only house a handful of the old DF-5 ICBMs each.

So, the “three areas” are either the US ICBM squadrons as above, or the American Mid-West, the south of Russia, and north China, depending on how US-centric you’re being.

Edit: The question is about which areas will be hardest hit. The question is not about the most important targets, it’s not about the most vulnerable. In my opinion, the combination of the potential lethality of the ICBM sites, their dispersion, and their fortification means that they will have a lot of nukes thrown at them. If any area is going to get nuked, the ICBM squadrons will get hit the most. Hit the hardest, if you like.

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