Wait WHAT?

The Imperial Japanese State is still respecting that load of bunk? So Japan can't have nukes because of the Treaty that Ended WW2. But MCT can?

Sometimes you want to take the writers out back and shiv them.

What about the states? I know for a fact Sioux have warheads, but what about the others? UCAS? European nations? Asians?

SOTA:2064 doesn't say they can't, it says they don't. More precisely, they officially don't, while Japanese troops "secured" the North Korean stockpile and the government helped MCT getting the capacity. Besides, as far as I know, the surrender of Japan and the San Francisco Peace Treaty includes no provision regarding nuclear weapons. Japan only signed the NPT when it was established, much later, in 1970.

The death of 150 to 250,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is much more significant in this regards than having lost the war. Economics make Japan a SR world superpower, not military might. Openly fielding nukes would barely increase their clout. So why risk a political crisis ? Much like Israel nowadays, everybody knows Japan has a secret nuclear capacity maintained by MCT. And anyway, much like China nowadays, most countries would find economical retaliations are much more fearsome.

UCAS, CAS, Russia, Great Britain, France, Israel, India and Pakistan retained their capacity. Ukraine, Sichuan, Canton, Henan and Shaanxi each kept a small part of the Soviet and Chinese stockpiles.

Officially, I'm not aware of any fluff cannonically stating that the Azzies have nukes. On the other hand, it strains believability that during the transition from ORO to Aztech and the war that resulted that the Azzies didn't develop some nuclear capability.


Missile silos are actually fairly vulnerable because their position is set, once their position is known then a first strike becomes possible. Nuclear submarines can hide essentially anywhere in the world simply because the oceans are really, really big. Given even minimal magic security, you'd need reasonably intelligent spirits or living mages to scour all the earths oceans to find them and people with that talent are in short supply and don't really like spending years scouring the sea floor for submarines.


Even the dragons weren't prepared for exactly how powerful the GGD was. I'm sure the US had some idea the Indians were planning a magical attack but the US had no real magical talent or experience at that point. Nations in 2070 simply will not be as vulnerable.


Um, if you launch a nuclear attack you are in a nuclear/all out war. You're not worried about escalating the conflict because there's not really a place to escalate to beyond nukes. And Great's would be even more vulnerable to decapitating strikes. Any corp is going to have a clear pattern of succession and will always sequester at least one leader in an ultra-secure location to preserve command. In contrast, dragons are not well known for their ability to delegate or respect for their "inferiors".


Modern ASBM technology is designed to hit things like aircraft carriers traveling at 20+ knots an hour and that's presuming the target is alreay using defensive manuvers. And they actually have to hit, a near miss isn't worth much against the kind of armor an aircraft carrier has. Nukes, for obvious reasons have plenty of room for error. Put a nuke on one and you have a perfect Great killer. And those are hardly cutting edge tech by modern standards.



I'm not sure where this is going. If it has a physical form, a nuke can kill it and a missile can get it there. We can get more technical if you want but there's not much that's going to change the basic formula. SR doesn't have nukes playing a major role and that's fine, there's absolutley no reason to have them in the setting and it's far, far, far from the most illogical part of the SR universe. I recommend you don't spend too much time focusing on it because it's usually not a good idea to focus on the plot holes in your universe. I don't understand what kind of reason you're looking for either. You don't seem satisfied by nations, megas, or other powerful entities potentially threatening Russian interests.. Also, the costs of a nuclear deterrent are tiny on a budgetary level and insignificant compared to the security they provide. Why wouldn't the SR Russians keep their nukes?

It's fairly easy to build a defense perimeter around a missile silo. A sub, however, is mostly protected by its stealth (and, yeah, maybe some spirits).
Minding that you know where the subs are based, and you know for certain which rather narrow channels they have to pass to get to the wider ocean, it's not like you have to really search for them. And any astral-projecting capable magician would go for that.

Did they need the magical talent and experience to shoot said hundreds of shamans? At least when it became clear that their magic actually works?

And it's rather likely that it's a war with the whole world at once, too.
Besides, dragons are old and wise beings, and they know well enough to establish contingency plans for their deaths - see, for example, how Dunkelzahn's death played out. His assets did not fall into disarray.

My problem is - you don't use nukes for conventional wars, even with non nuclear-capable states as opponents, much less the threats hidden among your own population, like the Sixth World has been throwing at the humanity so far. Their only use is either wiping everything forever from the face of the Earth, or making sure others with similar capabilities don't wipe you.
Okay, sure, with others in possession of nukes, you may need some, just to maintain parity. But having missile-bearing subs looks like something from the Cold War era.
Right, I can kinda gloss it over when writing about the Russian Armed Forces, but that'd leave the reader wondering, so I'm just looking for good reasons for such an arsenal to write in there.
And yeah, other states and especially megas (MCT in particular) being in possession sounds like a reason enough. I somehow got the impression the whole turmoil of the first half of the century eliminated other major powers with nukes.

The only RL nuclear attacks were in a conventional war against a non nuclear state and the only nuclear attack I know of in the SR timeline was Chicago, against bugs hiding in the Chicago civilian population.

Given what Nath posted where four Chinese successor states have nuclear weapons + Ukraine, I'd say that's sufficient foreign threat. Actually, looking at what Nath posted, SR has more nuclear states than the modern world, China and the US are broken up but many of the their successor states still have nukes.

There's the Lone Eagle crisis. Although the nuke didn't go off, but it was a nuclear strike nonetheless.

Are these nukes not going off due to some magical interference or age? If it's the latter then I question if whether the reason why nations would maintain their arsenals is if the knowledge to make nukes has been forgotten/lost. After all, it's not unheard of for humans to forget how to make something. See the Saturn V rockets. We couldn't make more of them if we wanted to because we don't know how to manufacture them anymore. This could be a reason for maintaining a nuclear arsenal. Additionally, I don't think constructing a nuke would be a quick endeavor if one needed to do so. If a nuke was determined to be need ASAP to have any effect waiting around to build one would likely be too late.

Essentially, nukes have a very limited purpose and have some rather unique side effects that have benefits in this world of weird. You can't know that you will never need a nuke. If the ability to build nukes has been lost, then it also doesn't make sense to reduce the arsenal given the unreliability of the weapons. Sure this weapon may not go off, but the next one could. Maintain the large arsenal so you minimize had large of an impact a single bad nuke has.

AFAIK the neutron sources in nuclear warheads have to be replaced regularly due to decay, conventional explosives also don't have an unlimited shelf life, especially if those explosives have to go off in a precisely controlled manner.

The only thing that has an unlimited shelf life are Military Rations. And that's only because they can be used as weapons in and of themselves when they go "Bad". (Were they good to begin with?).

Also, the Canadian Armed Forces has an Improvised Incendiary Device that can be made up using standard issue IMPs (Individual Meal Packs.).

Rat Packs do not go "Bad" - they go "Worse".

The infamous German "Panzerkekse" (Panzer cookies) can even be used as weapon in "fresh" state. And as Esbit replacement, trauma plate...

Wait, you mean Discworld's Dwarf Bread actually exists?

"We'd have never gotten out of the ocean if not for the Dwarf Bread!" "Used it to beat the sharks off, did you?" "Ah, I see you know your bread!"

As far back as the Roman legions soldiers have valued hard tack for its near limitless uses

Although I hear that in recent years the role of "good for everything, except human consumption" is increasingly taken over by tampons.

Because in RL there was noone by then with WMDs of similar scale.
Crash 2.0 had a lot of nukes detonated, at least seven.
Also, the Chicago nuke wasn't used against the "bugs hiding among the population", it was a very small tactical-sized detonated in the middle of the damn hive.

And still didn't go off as promised by the manufacturer. Who was the group that detonated it, so they are kind of concerned about that...

The Damocles nuclear weapon went off just as promised. What it did was exploding inside a magical barrier powered by narrative forces, resulting in strange and unexpected side effects (it is even possible that Dunkelzahn actually studied this event to pull off his final showdown). The main effect nonetheless was to destroy everything inside the barrier, at least on the physical plane.

Yeah, but, IIRC, everyone doesn't know about that barrier, right? So it looks like it went off "Weird".