To be fair it is kind of different, as the gap in quality between both side's delivery systems was so much that the Soviets only got hit in two cities nobody really cares about, while the Chinese got nuked to oblivion.
America Be Watching With The Popcorn: A Sino-Soviet War TL
- Thread starter theflyingmongoose
- Start date
I thought the 20% was from the nukes alone, not counting the starvation and such.
Or the loss of millions of refugees to their neighbors. Which I think is realstic as people will flee the areas near the bombings, the areas hit hard by the infighting, or where famine has hit hard.
And there’s also the fact that China doesn’t really exist right now. It’s a collection of warlords and break off states. So rebuilding will be a bit hard with all the little wars and millions of internally displaced people. Even if China is mostly reunited by the end of the decade (which doesn’t seem likely to me) it’ll take a long ass times to get back to 1970 levels.
So with the starvstion and what not it would be closer to 30% or something like that?
Hmm.
So we got ~150 Million from nukes, so 19% there.
Then ~60-80 Million from starvation. This could conceivably reach 100,000,000 as the aid dries up the more towards the center of China you go.
Then maybe ~10,000,000 from the constant warlord battles, anarchy and war crimes (just over the next few years).
It is possible that up to ~30-35% could be killed. I'll need to do more refined casualty estimates later, but I'll post them here since it seems data could help.
Why would the Soviets use ground burst? They were far nearer to any fallout and all of the targets they were attacking could be done by airburst.
I'm curious about how this affects politics across the world.Is Nixon at all blamed for what happened or is he seen as one of the few sane leaders right now? Will the long-term effects cause the U.S./U.S.S.R. to become more or less adversarial? I could see either one happening really.
One effect will be potentially fatal levels of smugness in the SSBN arms of various navies. This conflict has just guaranteed a few decades of never having to justify their budget.
That might be a factor in slowing nuclear proliferation in fact. You could take the lesson that China shows you either do the job properly, a continuous at sea deterrent in a submarine, or not at all. Anything less just makes you a target vulnerable to a massive strike.
That might be a factor in slowing nuclear proliferation in fact. You could take the lesson that China shows you either do the job properly, a continuous at sea deterrent in a submarine, or not at all. Anything less just makes you a target vulnerable to a massive strike.
To be quite callous: The deaths per se aren't that big a problem for China. Given that in TTL there wont be a One Child Policy I'd wager, the population figures should bounce back and then some by 2020. It's the loss of the societal capital of a China that just climed out of the hole of Warlordism, was starting to recover from The Great Leap of a Cliff and would then from what we know with our hindsight finally grow in per-capita wealth and QoL. As well as the infrastructure and the trauma to the populace naturally.
That said: Given that in OTL most of South Korea was also devastated after Korean War and how it bounced back, in the best case of the warlords being sqashed quickly and the South China ROC and the North China PRC reaching a divided Germany style peace, rather than another few decades of Civil War, then the 21st century might actually see a China in a much better shape than most posters so far assume.
That said: Given that in OTL most of South Korea was also devastated after Korean War and how it bounced back, in the best case of the warlords being sqashed quickly and the South China ROC and the North China PRC reaching a divided Germany style peace, rather than another few decades of Civil War, then the 21st century might actually see a China in a much better shape than most posters so far assume.
South Korea's major cities didn't hit by nukes, it didn't loss 1/3 of population. Surely China will recover, but it is extremely difficult for it to reach OTL 2020 level in several generations.
Last edited:
The biggest problem I can see for the short-medium term is nuclear proliferation for the various warlords and RoC.
The PRC must have had tactical nuclear weapons remaining and nuclear scientists, engineers technicians that are now scattered to the wind.
The PRC must have had tactical nuclear weapons remaining and nuclear scientists, engineers technicians that are now scattered to the wind.
Nixon would be seen as the one of the same ones for awhile, at least until the USSR’s peace overtures are fully revealed. As for relations between Russia and the US it looks like a trade-off to me. On the one hand, the Soviets broke the nuclear taboo and caused a horrendous loss of life to mostly civilian targets. OTOH the US will likely be focusing more on the Far East for years to come.
If someone like Reagan comes in advocating for bigger defense spending (“Look at what happened to China!”) then the Soviets could well bankrupt themselves years earlier than OTL from trying to keep up.
Absolutely. This could be one of the few areas the US and USSR could work together on. Get ahold/disable the nukes and either hire or disappear the nuclear scientists. It’s likely a number of these weapons or scientists ended up in India, Pakistan, and maybe even North Vietnam. In any case I wouldn’t be surprised if the NKVD spend years dealing with legitimate threats involving a nuke going off somewhere in the USSR or Mongolia.
But South Korea expect for the Pusan pocket didn't have any city, town or even village that didn't have an enemy army "pass through" at least once. Twice for many and it's not like the UN forces didn't also cause damage in their counter-offensives. Whereas China despite obviously more damage in the nuked cities, also has plenty of places that were never attacked at all.
The Problem isn't about the extent of destruction, is about the unity of the country.
South Korea can recover quickly is because its land remain unify under one government. While in China this isn't the case. Warlords across the country will scramble remaining human source and material and threw them in the battlefield, major reconstruction would not happen until one side control majority of the county or all major participants exhaust themselves.