Okay, so. Blah-blah-blah alt.war project yadda-yadda writing up Russia.
So, as we know from SoA, T:SH and Sturmvogel novel, Russia is a militaristic state possessing a large nuclear stockpile, some of it on submarines.
As we know from RL logic, nuclear weapons are meant as a part of checks and balances in a system like the Cold War one.
Now, the question is - who is Russia arming against with nukes? Who are they trying to keep parity with? UCAS, CAS and other NA nations are hardly a threat; JIS is checked on by the Pacific Fleet, the Chinese are busy with their internal affairs; the AoA is not too likely to reappear any time soon...
So, why the nukes?

You need something to keep the more powerful dragons honest...

I may be new to Shadowrun, but I got the impression you'd need more than thermonuclear weapons to faze a more powerful dragon...

Well, I'd suspect a sort of "we've always had 'em" thinking. I guess Britain and France won't have given up their nuclear arsenals either. IIRC the JIS is also a nuclear power, so you'd want nukes to keep them in check.

On a less rational level, nuclear weapons are a kind of status symbol, a "great power" insignia.

Or maybe the Russians know something that other countries don't.

Certainly possible with Evo being in their back yard now to apprise them of things Man was not meant to know...

I don't know, perhaps it is my biased "ocidental point of view" about russians. But russians seem to me like the kind of people that would burn down their houses and salt the earth before allowing someone to take it from them. Even nukes becoming unreliable in the Sixth World, no one is going to try and see how much unreliable nukes have become. Ok, they lost Yakut, but I think the higher ups still think they are some kind of temporary rebellion that will soon be dealt with, somewhat similar to Taiwan and China.
Just my opinion anyway.

I don't know, the Russians were certainly selling a lot of stuff at Fire Sale prices when the Iron Curtain rusted away from what I recall...

I really kick myself for not getting one of those Titanium Crowbars I heard they were selling.

See, it's all fun and games, and I see the logic behind your assumptions.
But nukes are frigging costly to maintain. Subs on alert in the ocean, and a reliable com system to send the command over should the shit hit the fan? Even more so.
If it was done purely out of "great power" ambitions (something SR Russia doesn't really that much basis for), perhaps they'd at least scale it down? Stop producing nuclear devices, at least, like the man-portable ones of which they lost a bunch back in the 50ies?

Oh, and in what comes to dragons - ICBMs aren't too useful against something that mobile. Maybe if you nuked the lair...

Horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons.

India's still around and nuclear armed, and they've made out better than most of today's powers. It'd be interesting to see a new Great Game play out in Turkestan, on that note...

I doubt Russia has any specific threat in mind but they're bounded in the East by Imperial Japan and Lung's China, in the West by various European entities, most prominently Llofwyr, and in the South by a variety of competing parties. Without nukes they'd be open to the predation by others, if nothing else.
Edit: Remember the fact that Russia has historically always sought to expand its territory and nukes would be a precondition for that for any SR Russian state.

As for the nukes themselves, well, SR generally treads that area very carefully. The core problem is that a lot of the major in-game powers (Dragons, IEs, and Mega Corps to a certain extent) could be challenged or eliminated by even a moderately powerful nation-state with a few nukes and a decent delivery system. So, in order to keep the setting constant, nukes are consistently weakened in-game. There's a limit to that, however, because in RL we all know how dangerous nukes are and they should only be more so given SR tech. Having a dragon survive even a low-yield nuclear blast would strain believability. So I'd kinda stay away from nukes in an alt.WAR book, there's a lot of awesome stuff in the setting which simply doesn't work in a nuclear world.

The Russian had a puppet government in Poland from 2039 to 2064, maintaining a military presence in the country all along (the reason for Russia to start the first Eurowar itself and controlling Poland is bit more blurry : Nationalist electoral strategy ? Access to industrial or agricultural assets ? Securing seaport access and international natural gas pipeline ?)? Anyway, a Russian nuclear arsenal would be a solid deterrent against a German-Austria-Czech joint force trying to free Poland.

The situation evolved in Poland following the crash in System Failure, but that was only eight years ago. The Russian militaries should only start considering a policy shift on nuclear weapons by now.

If you want the meta reason, there are three things which make up the popular cliche of the Russian army
1.) It consists only of generals (fanatical, giant hats) and an endless supply of conscripts (expendable, drunk), from time to time one of the fanatics with the funny hats has to shoot one of the drunk expendables to enforce some semblance of discipline
2.) Russian tech is primitive yet durable, and if something breaks the only tool you need is a hammer
3.) They've got an endless supply of nukes in all shapes, so that just about every book and movie plot about the Russian army can use at least half a dozen

So of course them ruskies got nukes. As somebody once wrote on this board, FASA basically took the country descriptions of SR straight from the big book of stereotypes.



As a more IC reason, nukes still are a significant power factor which even great dragons are afraid of. They may not be great for offensive use, but work great for telling people to get off your *~'+*$ lawn. and looking at a map, Russia still has plenty of lawn to defend. Given the general balkanization of the world what happened to Russia actually is a joke, even the North Caucasus region did not break ranks.

I got the impression all those powers have their own problems to deal with. Besides, Russia won its part of the Second Euro War without nuclear weapons...

Everyone ever has historically always sought to expand their territory. An uh, against someone with similar destructive capabilities - like NAN, for example, - you don't need nukes to know better than to attack them.
For shoving minor powers around, nukes would only be needed if there was someone else to threaten the NSS with a nuclear strike if it doesn't behave; and I don't think there are any such powers left, at least not ones carrying about anyone surrounding Russia.

I don't really think so. See, to begin with dragons and IEs are ultra-powerful magicians and cunning politicians. Add to that the fact that dragons are highly mobile, and thus ICBMs are no good against them; and using short-range delivery methods means being in range for draconic magic and counter-strikes by their affiliated powers. IEs are just civilians of other nations (or Russia too, are there any immortal elves in Russia?) And it's not like you can nuke a foreign city without major repercussions.
Megas just have THOR platforms, that is, they are neck-deep in nuclear parity mentality, and you can't touch them.

I can't just drop a part of canon fluff from previous editions, can I? It will in no way be the focal point (as you can see), but it's not like it's possible to describe the Russian Armed Forces and just drop the RVSN.
I just can't understand - sure, yeah, Russia could have reasons to be in possession of tools for nuclear deterrence, like the ones you and others described, from "super power" nostalgia to using them as a big club to intimidate others in international politics. I just can't see any reason for producing and employing very expensive tools intended for very specific purposes - like boomer subs. You don't really need those if you don't expect an all-out war with another super-power that'd wipe your whole country clean.


Well, the way I understand from T:SH and SoE, during the first round of Border Wars in 2005, Russia moved to occupy the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine, prompting a campaign some dozen years long.
Polish forces aided Belarus and the Baltic states throughout the 2010ies, and in 2012 entered Belarus "to protect refugees", occupying Grodno and Brzesc.
When in 2030 Russia was so obviously defeated by Awakened forces in Yakut, nationalist forces in the occupied countries started a full-out rebellion, restoring their countries' independence and starting the second round of Border Wars. Russia promptly moved to fight on two fronts (it's not like this has always been a bad idea), and during that fighting used the good excuse of Kaliningrad accident to get the Polish-occupied territory back.
Now, why they moved on to Poland may be explained - they were at war already, so why the hell not?
The only believable reason to attack everyone else after that was suggested by one of my players - there was physically no place in Poland to station all the troops Russia is said to have moved there. :3

And start the third Euro War after one they almost lost, even without the nukes involved from any side? Fighting against the bulk of Russian army, and not the 200k in Poland?
Besides, what would their interest be? It's not like France, England or Poland were too eager to help Czechs in 1938, despite the alliances; same goes for Poland itself in 1939 with the Phony War, so leaving it be, especially with their own pseudo-legitimate government in place, would be quite in the traditions of European diplomacy.

God.Damn. Why didn't you mention that book in the alt.war thread? D: I'll have to change quite a lot in my draft.
Still, that development in System Failure just doesn't make much sense to me - in Shadows of Europe, everyone including the Free Poles agreed that Free Poland had absolutely no chances in a direct military confrontation with National Republic of Poland, if only because of vast Russian air superiority that kept them pinned. Besides, the core of Free Poland's forces were the Husaria mercs - that is, the remains of Polish Army Group West, one that those same Russian forces employed in the National Republic of Poland in 2064 easily defeated. Okay, yeah, Rybinsky escaped along with his minions (to Russia), and the Russian forces were withdrawn to their bases - but why did he, if there was no realistic reason for him to lose? God. That is a rather... unexpected development for me, let's just say that.
Thanks for mentioning it yet still...


Nah, of course I see the OOC reasons. But it's not like I can write "Russia has nuclear missile-bearing submarines because Russia always has and has always had nuclear missile-bearing submarines" in my draft IC, can I?

There was trouble in Caucasus region mentioned, if I recall, it just ended pretty much the same as in RL - it was more or less dealt with.
And I don't believe losing half your territory, along with the majority of large resource deposits, counts as a joke.
Actually, I have no idea how Russia manages to afford even its conscripted army upkeep, minding that it has little to no natural resources to sell, and there are barely any mentions of Russian companies, firearms or vehicles in the books.

Never underestimate the power of "we've always done it like that"


Sure, Russia lost Siberia, but compared to the balkanization of other countries they're still in good shape. They kept the Caucasian region with its oil fields and strategic significance, because while just about every more-or-less repressed ethnic group around the world claimed their own state and Russia was fighting wars left and right, the Caucasian folks just decided to stay. The far east is still Russian and not occupied by the JIS, who preferred to invade California. And what sparse detail is available about the Eurowars suggests most of it took place outside Russian borders, so the industry did not get ravaged like that of other countries.

All in all, Russia could easily be the one remaining national superpower...if all this strength was not just due to the fact that everything east of Germany got mostly glossed over, so probably FASA just didn't remember to break up Russia properly

The Japanese never invaded California. The Californian government required their help to stop the Aztlan and Tir Tairngire invaders. They actually avoided landing troops in Los Angeles because an UCAS naval force was too close.

The Japanese deployment over unrest and riots in the Philippines in 2021 was an actual invasion, though it doesn't seem they encountered resistance from the Filipino military. Otherwise, I think the only time Japan was involved in a real war in SR was 2006 in Korea, only after North Korea lobbed missiles at them.

Japan probably doesn't want to look an aggressor, and the Russian never offered them an opportunity to intervene under the guise of stabilization mission (I guess they could have publicly sided with the European in 2031 and opened an eastern front, but they obviously didn't ; maybe they weren't ready, because of the 2029 Crash). And as that piece of land is stuck between the awakened forces of Yakut and Manchuria, an attempt to destabilize the area on purpose may not result in the desired result.

Russia was heavily involved in the EuroWars, however, weren't they?

40 years ago a group of primitives up and offed the most powerful nation on the map.
30 years ago a dragon appeared and ate a jetliner.
20 years ago a major metropolitan area was consumed by strange, extra-dimensional critters too strong for conventional tactics.
10 years ago someone dun broke reality itself, and a bunch of weird, body-stealing monsters came flying out.
Like six months ago, someone tried to destroy the entire world.

Yeah, even if nukes aren't fully 100% effective, if I were in Russia's position, I'd probably hold onto them too. Seems like they might JUST come in handy.

Yeah, I can certainly see that. But for the resources that go into maintaining unreliable nukes, so much more could be made into nice, reliable conventional explosives. FAE/MOAB (Actually, Russia apparently has a FOAB!) is still a very effective weapon, and doesn't have any of the nasty connotations that nukes have. As well, the radioactive material can be used as fuel for nuclear reactors, so, double-bonus.

I remember finding out that weapons-grade radioactive material was driven through my town, and the military base there only found out a month later. The city was far from happy, to say the least, but had to confess that operational security was required.

That said, there's still the psychological reaction to Nukes, so there's reason to keep at least a few around.

We are talking about the future of the 80s here, were it looked like Japan would become the new economic superpower. At least in my view, the pre-reform JIS in its fallback to chauvinism and racist iddeology wouldn't have given a flying fuck about other nations calling them aggressors.

And yes, "invade" was the wrong term for Calinfornia, as the Japanese were invited in. Still the result for the people living there was more or less the same as an invasion, because the protection force they invited turned out to be an occupation force

Yeah, requests for help really went downhill after Canada was no longer around to be called upon to help.

The worst part of a Canadian Invasion is that we'll drink all the beer and complain about it's quality.

I don't think nukes are unreliable in the game. Sure one or two fired at strategic targets didn't impact or go off, Magic can have that effect. However, if a country were to launch a full scale strike on a target, with land, air, and sea born missles, thousands of individual warheads. I would have to argue that that target is blown from the face of the earth, even with Magic, some of the warheads would get through. The few times nuclear weapons have been used in the game it was a few missles, and yes they where stopped, I just don't see a large scale strike being contained fully. So that's why a country would keep it's stock pile. You may stop fifty, but good luck with five thousand. It's just numbers, as to how they would target, anyone they wanted to, not to be silly, but countries with large nuclear arsenals plan to strike anyone and everyone. Rememeber, the only winning move is not to play.

And having a nuclear arsenal would help against any of those how?


The nukes used during Crash 2.0 worked reliably.
And yes, it looks like SR Russia is still preparing to nuke the whole world at once into fine gray dust.
I just not see anyone worthy of such power to be kept in check; and it's not like Russia's using it for nuclear blackmail - hell, it can't deal with a small rebel city mere kilometers from one of its largest harbours!

There are most certainly Immortal Elves in Russia.

Barsaive is in Russia (Eastern Ukraine, and the area north of Georgia.)

Kratas =Volgodonsk
Throal being around Volgograd
Blood Wood = Somewhere between Liski Bonsoglebsk

They wanted to keep the Old School Russia feel, After all when the game came out, we weren't sure the Iron Curtain would ever really fall.

On a different note:

Having Nukes did not help the US one bit, against the Indian Insurrection.
Even with the Russians more willing to nuke themselves, I just don't see it happening. That's not the reason why the Russians have nukes. Btw, with the Shedim, I see cremation being on the rise, potentially even a state mandated health requirement for disposing of bodies.

Uh, you mean Borisoglebsk? It's named after St.Boris and St.Gleb (the saint prince brothers) with -sk being the standard suffix for Russian cities (see Krasnoyarsk, Kursk or whatever).

Also, if, as per System Failure, there are Ukrainian Urals, I believe there can be Russian Barsaive, Russian Immortal Elves, and pretty much whatever.

...I am sorry, lol what?!

Look at a map of Barsaive:

http://pages.infinit.net/ebernier/map1.html
now compare it to:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=47.....511719&z=6

That's what I mean when I say that Barsaive is in Russia

As for the Nukes, I was saying I don't see Russia nuking it's own land, to keep the natives from getting it.

I would think the UN Security Council would be the balance to that, I can see UCAS, Britain, France, Russia still having perminate seats, since China imploded, India would probably get a seat, or the CAS. The SR timeline never has mentioned that the Security council just went away or that the other world Nuclear powers just decomissioned all of their nuclear stockpiles. Nuclear weapons are more of a backburner issue in SR, the game's just not about nuking each other. So the developers and writers have never really done a good job explaining individual countires nuclear arsenals, because there really is no need to, in terms of the game. So if your writing for the war.alt project. keep it as real life as you can, and use the fluff as way to rationalize what you've written. Take that with a grain of salt though as your writing as there may be no backstory to help with this issue. WMDs are just something the game has always steered around. There's only a few places I can recall where they have been used in story terms. So I would say use your own judgement as to what the nuclear capabilities of a country are, and use RL as a way to explain your motives. The UN is still around, so is the World Health Organization, so I would think the UN Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the UN Security Council. Use those to your atvantage., think outside the box too. Not a lot has been done to cover the topic of nuclear stockpiles in story terms so do your best. Try not to over think though you'll just go crosseyed, and rememeber, The only winning move is not to play.

Nukes may not help with those specific instances, but the point is that the past 70 years have been an almost non-stop train to weirdsville, and if I was a major power, I would not drop a single tool in my arsenal for fear that it may be critical when the next freaky thing comes down the pipe. To do otherwise is like throwing away your screwdriver because your last five home improvement projects have only used your wrench and hammer.

"... And there's still another 30-odd years to go until the next century and what it holds in store for us." - Jon "Money" Johnson.

Yet every book mentioning Russia consistently has something on Russian nuclear supply.
UN is a CC puppet, and has been for a long time by 72.

Yeah, but if I have a very specific soldering iron used for soldering a specific type of chips, one I'm not going to encounter any time soon, I could at least replace it with something more universal.
The boomer subs being said soldering iron.

Actually, nukes as a whole work well against a specific kind of threats - comparable superpowers, ones that the balkanized Sixth World is not that rich with. And even then, it's only good for assured mutual destruction, not much more.

Radiation causes a background count, which makes it very effective against some magical threats.

Uh, there are magical threats worthy of a nuke somewhere where you can drop one? In Antarctica?

Amazonia, the day, Aztlan/Aztechnology decides it is better them dead dead than keep fighting...

How many rifts have been created that had magical based creatures spawn forth from it?

If a magical rift like what happened following dunkie opens up somewhere in Russia, they have a nice first-line defense. Indeed, as was stated, it probably would be effective against a dragon (or many mid- and low-level horrors). It might also be handy should Renraku ever decide to buy out Moscow, if as nothing more than a deterrent (okay, on that one the fact that it's nuclear vs. a large conventional warhead isn't so important). But like I said, the nuke is a specialized weapon with rather unique mission characteristics which is effective against magical and technological threats in ways that conventional weapons aren't, in what is clearly a hugely unstable future. Unless the cost of maintaining them is truly crippling, I just can't see any reason to scrap them, no matter how often you point out that they've been less then effective in past occaisions, or that THESE specific missiles are unlikely to be used in the future.

It's also a giant, metal penis that they can still wave in the air and say 'haha, we have an army of giant, metal penises!'

And ruin all their hard spin work?

How would nuking one help?

A nuke against astral beings? Even if UCAS had a nuke at Dunkelzahn rift when Ghostwalker emerged, would it really hard him (unlike them)?

We've discussed already why not.

Oh, and what can nukes do in the Sixth World that a good aircraft carrier flotilla or a Great Ghost Dance can't?

I've met quite a number of people who tried to explain everything in the politics from space race to ICMBs and large-caliber cannons, basing solely on two ideas: "boys made those things" and "boys are obsessed with penises". Somehow, those people tended to be girls.
I am sure uncle Sigmund would find a word or two to comment on that.

Yakut. It's not like a nuclear detonation by itself is the end of the world, otherwise after decades of above-ground tests we'd all be dead by now (anyone have the link to that youtube vid with all the tests?EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAnqRQg-W0k). It's the political implications which are problematic, using nukes could lead on a slippery slope and using ICMBs is even worse, because everybody else has nothing more than your word that the nukes are not aimed at them...

Russia is still hoping to get back Yakut resources (and between the recent Yakut rebellion, Russian population outnumbering Yakuts 10 to 1 and the enemies Yakuts made among the Triple As, it just might succeed), they don't need a nuclear wasteland.
Besides, Yakut is not that much of a threat - they can't deal with their own problems right now.

Since your doing this for the alt.war project, i suggest just making it up as you see fit then. If the story line says russia has a strong nuclear arsenal, but doesn't give any info on other contries nuclear option or counterbalance, make it up. it's your job as the writer to make it seem logical and have use in the larger SR world. So add a section detailing the UCAS military having a large nuclear stockpile, or the french Monarchist threating retalitation for Russian aggression. Build a senerio that suits your needs and doesn't overwrite the SR cannon written so far. If the info is lacking, it's because no one thought it mattered or jsut never wrote any thing on it. So the alt.war project seems a good place to add those facts in. You seem to have done a good amount of research on the subject. Do your best to write a good counterbalance to the Russian Nuclear threat, since one is not already in the SR cannon. Britain, France, the UCAS, all good candidates. I think your gonna have to do a good deal of your own writing on this subject though. Since it's not really covered all that much by the current SR cannon

There is a theory about where exactly FASA people intended the Blood Wood to be...
- Blood Wood was previously called Wyrmwood (when Alamaise ruled over it)
- Wormwood is a common name in English of Artemisia genus of plants.
- Artemisia is called Чорнобиль in Ukrainian.
- Чорнобиль is the name of a place, written Chernobyl in English.

A bunch of the immortal elves known to reside in Bloodwood during the Earthdawn era have traveled the world since. There was a lot of finer place to spend their time waiting for the Sixth World, like Roma, Constantinople, Paris, London, Los Angeles...
So, as I said above maybe by the time magic returned, Bloodwood became a irradiated wasteland. Maybe also they did not want to give Alachia her throne back, and created a new nation instead. Crater Lake is the only reason I can think of to choose Oregon, and have them manipulate geopolitical events (supporting the SAIM and having the Salish-Shidhe council taking a pro-metahuman stance) so as to create Tir Tairngire.

Loose Alliances, had the Second Charter of the United Nations in 2045 making Amazonia, France, Japan, UCAS and Great Britain permanent members of the UN Security Council. However, they no longer have a veto, getting two votes instead.

Note the permanent seat on the Security Council has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. Only the US had nuclear weapons in 1946. China, France, Soviet Union, UK and US were winners of the war and had the largest population and territories (as that was before the end of the British and French colonial empire). It just happens that assessment they were the most powerful countries in the world was somewhat right in that they also happened to be the first five countries to get nuclear weapon technology.

Loose Alliances, had the Second Charter of the United Nations in 2045 making Amazonia, France, Japan, UCAS and Great Britain permanent members of the UN Security Council. However, they no longer have a veto, getting two votes instead.


There you go Fatum. Again, if the cannon doesn't give a clear cut example of a balance for the Russian military or nuclear stockpile, make one up, the alt.war project looks good so far you guys are doing a good job. My fear is that some of the support from the SR cannon my not be there, so use your best judgement as to how you would feel would be the best balance to Russia's might. do the best you can with what you have, and remenber, the only winning move is not to play

Just saying that if bad comes to worst, I think Aztlan/Aztechnology would use the final solution. I mean, the magical equivalent to a nuclear bomb (Ghost Dance) against Amazonia probably wouldn't work or it would extremely weakened by whatever Dragon mojo Hualpa and Sirrurg have there. Nuclear strikes on the other hand...

Nuclear weapons in submarines are immune to first strikes, they can be targetted and fired within 45 minutes, and they do not require the massive resources that a flotilla would or blood magic like a GGD would. Magic is generally ineffective against them because the missile is either in the upper atmosphere where magic is weak or falling to earth (with decoys) at somewhere around Mach 12. If you can catch them in the boost stage they're vulnerable but a technological SDI would probably be more effective and there's no evidence that even SR tech has overcome the tech challenges of that and there's no mention of any of the permanent installations such a strategy would require.

Consider the GGD. Presume the US actually knew something like the GGD was possible and kept track of the people capable of such magic (like the hundreds of shamman the GGD required). Once you have any evidence of such a gathering, finding the location would be easy in SR and even possible with modern tech. Within an hour of such a gathering, any nuclear state could probably have hit the gathering with a limited strike, although the ritual time of the GGD is unknown it's unlikely at a minimum they could even escape the blast radius. An SR Russian state would be likely to take all of these precautions.

Put simply, any non-nuclear force might be able to duplicate the effects of a nuclear strike but they're more vulnerable to attack than nukes are, easier to find and track, and harder ot use.

On the vulnerability of Dragons to nukes

A couple of points:
#1 All of them have political bases which are the actual threat to a state like Russia. Compare Llowfyr and Sirrug. Sirrug is nasty but he's not a threat to Russia as a nation, SK and Llowfyr potentially are. However, because of that power, their mobility is limited. Yes, Llowfyr could theoretically fly away from a blast (see #2) but his infrastructure can't and it's that infrastructure in SK, Tir Tiagire, etc which is the actualt threat. Llowfyr without SK is like Sirrug: a very powerful and dangerous terrorist entity, nothing more.
#2 The rapid launch time and sheer devastation that even a small nuclear launch would cause makes any attempt to flee pointless. The primary delay in a missile launch is due to planning and target acquisition, these things can be safely hidden from prying eyes, meaning that the first warning the target will likely recieve is at launch. At that point I've heard various estimates of the time from launch to target, mostly in the range of 15 minutes although most of the info I looked at was for relatively short range targets. That's 15 minutes for a dragon or IE to detect the launch, determine that he is the intended target, and get to a safe distance, which may be more than 60 miles away. 15 minutes (at best) to cross a distance of 60 miles is challenging to say the least. There is no effective magical defense I can think of; as previously stated the missiles are either in the upper atmosphere where magic will be of almost no use or falling to Earth at Mach Silly at which point speed is a pretty effective defense since it'll be passing into and out of anybody's LOS before they can cast.
#3 Thors are dangerously vulnerable. Besides the fact that a Thor type sat can be hit with modern missile tech, it's also virtually impossible to defend them because they're vulnerable to both missile saturation and the nuclear option, where by instead you shoot the sats with nuclear missiles. A single nuclear blast could hit several sats, doesn't have to get that close to the sat, and any sat is unlikely to be able to resist the nuclear heat, radiation, and EMP.

Interestingly, I'm under the impression that a nuclear attack in space would NOT create an EMP wave, as it has no atmosphere to excite to the necessary degree to create one. There are probably dedicated EMP devices, or you could aim your nuke at a habitat with an atmosphere, though.

So is the Bloodwood actually Chernobyl? That is so hard core. I love it.

+++

Once again I mourn for never having an opportunity to play my Stalker runner

It's a bit hard to tell.

Vivane is in Romania.
Blood Wood seems to be Moscow
The scale is off a little.

See, I got into SR in the height of fourth edition; that is, while I've read quite a number of books from previous editions, there is still much more unread by me. As brilliantly demonstrated by Nath in this thread alone, that means that large chunks of fluff escape me.
That's why I ask the community, which by its nature has read every SR book in existence: is there anything canonical out there that I'm missing?

Yep, and Russia was ousted after the beginning of the First Euro War, and... never bothered to return? decided to gather its toys and go home? Even Soviet Union joined the League of Nations after some ten years of diplomatic work, and it was all about exporting Revolution then (well, less by the time it joined the organization, but still).

Well, I don't think that if the Greats have a weapon against the GGD, they don't have anything against the nukes. Besides, does Atzlan even have nukes?

Well, Russia is stated to possess aircraft carriers and a major fleet in the Pacific, so they are already paying for the flotilla.
Besides, subs can be located with SR tech, if not with LR sonars, then with astral spotters (especially minding that the bodies of water those subs are based in, be it the NW Pacific, the White Sea, the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea, are pretty much controlled by the forces hardly friendly towards Russia). And I don't see any reasons for a ritual casting first strike not to work.
Though missile silos are a different can of worms, those are more secure in that regard.

Uh, US was fully aware of GGD effectiveness during the Indian rebellion; and they knew that GGD is being used against them pretty much continuously. Yet, no luck.
Same with Russia which lost Chukchi Peninsula to TPA after a GGD (and, arguably, after a similar story with Yakut).

See, doing things like that against the dragons with actual political clout is pretty much starting a nuclear/all out war. And unlike a president of a foreign nation, a Great has a chance to survive the initial attack.

ICBMs don't do "target acquisition", their targets are hard-coded, and changing them is a major undertaking (actually, informing about such a move is a part of a good old nuclear blackmail). Also, nukes aren't magical - arrival time is about 45 minutes worldwide, with the majority of time devoted to climbing up the well and maneuvering up there. That leaves a Great plenty of time to get scarce.

It's not like THOR sats fly in tight groups. And yes, of course you can bring them down from the sky - same as how your spec-ops units can sabotage a couple of nuclear missile silos. It just, again, means starting a global all-out war, including getting hit from the platforms remaining. That's what I mean when I say it's the good old nuclear deterrence situation all over again.

I don't remember where I read it, perhaps the Aztlan sourcebook, saying something about Aztechnology and other AAA corps with nuclear power.
Also, the US didn't think the Great Ghost Dance would work and even considered the eruption of the three mountains as a coincidence or at least told the population it had nothing to do with magic. Of course, this was 60 years ago, when Magic was fairly ignored and misunderstood by the great powers. The magical playground might be somewhat equal by now.

Aztlan, page 110 and SOTA:2064, page 15. Most only have a few warheads ; only Ares Macrotechnology, Saeder-Krupp and MCT have real arsenals (the later reclaimed the North Korean program and maintains the nuclear capacity Japan cannot officially have).