Golden Dome for America

US cities (other and NYC and SF) are poor targets, Houston could likely survive dozens. Phoenix would need at least 3 (one for each airport) and a few more for critical infrastructure.
 
Desertfox said:
US cities (other and NYC and SF) are poor targets, Houston could likely survive dozens. Phoenix would need at least 3 (one for each airport) and a few more for critical infrastructure.
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I figure Sky Harbor Airport, Luke AFB, the Intel plant, the TSMC fab, the General Dynamics plant, and the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station would be targeted.
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
I figure Sky Harbor Airport, Luke AFB, the Intel plant, the TSMC fab, the General Dynamics plant, and the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station would be targeted.
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There's also Mesa Gateway, the Boeing plant, and Northrop Grumman (but may be close to Intel). Honeywell is right next to Sky Harbor so thats a 2 for 1.
 
Desertfox said:
US cities (other and NYC and SF) are poor targets, Houston could likely survive dozens. Phoenix would need at least 3 (one for each airport) and a few more for critical infrastructure.
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You have it the wrong way around. Houston will likely be one of the worst hit areas, along with the whole Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi to New Orleans. Most of America's oil refining and chemical production occurs there.
 
Yeah but it would need a lot of warheads just do to the spread. American suburbia is quite resistant due to how spread out it is and distance from industrial targets.
 
Desertfox said:
Yeah but it would need a lot of warheads just do to the spread. American suburbia is quite resistant due to how spread out it is and distance from industrial targets.
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You don't have to kill suburbanites directly, it's enough to obliterate their major employment, transportation, and infrastructure/service/shopping hubs (and, being one of them, although I just recently severed my employment ties, I'm all the more keenly aware of all my other dependencies).
 
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martinbayer said:
You don't have to kill suburbanites directly, it's enough to obliterate their major employment, transportation, and infrastructure/service/shopping hubs (and, being one of them, although I just recently severed my employment ties, I'm all the more keenly aware of all my other dependencies).
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You think Russia or China will nuke The Galleria?

In all seriousness, just hitting our oil refineries would bring life to a halt.
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
You think Russia or China will nuke The Galleria?

In all seriousness, just hitting our oil refineries would bring life to a halt.
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I am most emphatically, resolutely, positively, staunchely, absolutely not thinking of nor anticipating any physical communist attack scenarios on the USA *at all*, because Russia, China, and for what it's worth, most likely North Korea as well, at this point probably comfortably rest in awe and wonder at the damage the USA is evidently perfectly capable and willing on its own to inflict on itself, e.g. see the reflecting pool :D...
 
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https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2026/08/golden-dome-congress-general/415355/

The Shield of Damocles is hanging by an administrative thread, it seems.

Thomas Novelly said:
‘There is no Golden Dome’ unless Congress prioritizes funding, general warns

Last year, the Pentagon forbade officials to talk about it. Now the program’s leader is calling for help.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—The sprawling Golden Dome missile-defense program is in peril because the White House decided to seek the vast majority of its 2027 funding via a controversial budget maneuver, the program’s leader said Tuesday.

Gen. Michael Guetlein didn’t explicitly call out the administration’s decision to propose using reconciliation to fund about 97 percent of the program’s $17.5 billion request. But the Space Force four-star did say it creates a “tough budget environment" as lawmakers remain cool to the administration’s request for a third partisan-led defense-funding measure.

“If they don’t figure it out, there is no Golden Dome,” Guetlein told attendees at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, “because there is no funding.”

His public cry for help contrasts sharply with the mysterious gag order imposed by Pentagon leaders at last year’s symposium.

And it comes, Guetlein said, as the program makes good progress. ...
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Intrigued about the "phenomenally successful tests" mentioned in the article.
 
Desertfox said:
Yeah but it would need a lot of warheads just do to the spread. American suburbia is quite resistant due to how spread out it is and distance from industrial targets.
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They're not resistant at all. They're prime firestorm territory and have just enough fuel density with dry foliage to ignite. Palisades is similar to what a nuclear strike on Houston would look like. Urban cores are the only resistant portion. Too little fuel density and it's hard for a fire to jump between concrete structures..
 
Kat Tsun said:
They're not resistant at all. They're prime firestorm territory and have just enough fuel density with dry foliage to ignite. Palisades is similar to what a nuclear strike on Houston would look like. Urban cores are the only resistant portion. Too little fuel density and it's hard for a fire to jump between concrete structures..
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The Palisades fire was supported by several days of extreme fire weather with hurricane-force katabatic winds with near-zero humidity. Most large nuclear weapons (~1 Mt) have their 5 psi and 35 cal/cm^2 radii at roughly the same distance from an airburst, which means that any wood buildings that catch on fire due to thermal radiation are also going to be blown down by shock. A 5 psi shock is the equivalent of setting 1,000 tons of weight on top of a normal American house. That is going to remove a lot of the verticality that generates the high temperatures that an actual firestorm needs to start. Firebombing with incendiaries was always a more effective method of starting urban firestorms because they left the building structures standing. Most emergency preparedness documentation discussing the topic points out that fuel loading in US cities is generally lower than in cities that were firebombed in WWII and that nuclear strikes would probably not induce firestorms in American suburbs. On the other hand, reinforced concrete and steel towers in urban areas could remain standing despite nearby detonations, and fires caused in them by thermal radiation, broken gas lines, or arcing electrical lines would be more likely to contribute to firestorm activity in urban cores.

The vast majority of houses destroyed in the Palisades caught on fire because wind-carried embers caught wooden roofs or eaves on fire. The wind pattern generated by a post-nuclear low pressure system would draw in winds from all direction, so there wouldn't be a significant transfer of embers from the burned area to the unburned area. With wildland-urban interface fires like the Palisades fire, you can see how houses were burned while grass and low shrubbery just a few feet away remained green, indicating that fire propagation was by wind-driven spotting rather than traveling across the ground.
 
Kat Tsun said:
They're not resistant at all. They're prime firestorm territory and have just enough fuel density with dry foliage to ignite. Palisades is similar to what a nuclear strike on Houston would look like.
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Not really. As NJS said, the thermal and overpressure circles of megaton class nukes are the same, so while everything inside the circle would look like Palisades, everything outside those circles would still be standing and unburned.


Kat Tsun said:
Urban cores are the only resistant portion. Too little fuel density and it's hard for a fire to jump between concrete structures..
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Instead they'd be 6ft deep in shattered glass.
 
Not James Stockdale said:
The Palisades fire was supported by several days of extreme fire weather with hurricane-force katabatic winds with near-zero humidity. Most large nuclear weapons (~1 Mt) have their 5 psi and 35 cal/cm^2 radii at roughly the same distance from an airburst, which means that any wood buildings that catch on fire due to thermal radiation are also going to be blown down by shock. A 5 psi shock is the equivalent of setting 1,000 tons of weight on top of a normal American house. That is going to remove a lot of the verticality that generates the high temperatures that an actual firestorm needs to start. Firebombing with incendiaries was always a more effective method of starting urban firestorms because they left the building structures standing. Most emergency preparedness documentation discussing the topic points out that fuel loading in US cities is generally lower than in cities that were firebombed in WWII and that nuclear strikes would probably not induce firestorms in American suburbs. On the other hand, reinforced concrete and steel towers in urban areas could remain standing despite nearby detonations, and fires caused in them by thermal radiation, broken gas lines, or arcing electrical lines would be more likely to contribute to firestorm activity in urban cores.

The vast majority of houses destroyed in the Palisades caught on fire because wind-carried embers caught wooden roofs or eaves on fire. The wind pattern generated by a post-nuclear low pressure system would draw in winds from all direction, so there wouldn't be a significant transfer of embers from the burned area to the unburned area. With wildland-urban interface fires like the Palisades fire, you can see how houses were burned while grass and low shrubbery just a few feet away remained green, indicating that fire propagation was by wind-driven spotting rather than traveling across the ground.
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Scott Kenny said:
Not really. As NJS said, the thermal and overpressure circles of megaton class nukes are the same, so while everything inside the circle would look like Palisades, everything outside those circles would still be standing and unburned.



Instead they'd be 6ft deep in shattered glass.
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View: https://youtu.be/pGJcwaUWNZg?si=D50jlgKxAUXLtRi9&t=384


They tested this. Unless homes were very poorly maintained, they would not catch fire. The flash doesn't last long enough to ignite thick planks of wood.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Not really. As NJS said, the thermal and overpressure circles of megaton class nukes are the same, so while everything inside the circle would look like Palisades, everything outside those circles would still be standing and unburned.
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Yeah my B I assumed Palisades was caused by ground progression of flame and dry foliage.

exclaimedleech8 said:
View: https://youtu.be/pGJcwaUWNZg?si=D50jlgKxAUXLtRi9&t=384


They tested this. Unless homes were very poorly maintained, they would not catch fire. The flash doesn't last long enough to ignite thick planks of wood.
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Houses are made of vinyl and OSB now. Actual wood is reserved solely for structural/loading bearing elements.
 
Kat Tsun said:
Yeah my B I assumed Palisades was caused by ground progression of flame and dry foliage.



Houses are made of vinyl and OSB now. Actual wood is reserved solely for structural/loading bearing elements.
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But fireproofing standards have moved ahead by leaps and bounds and wood shingles have mostly disappeared on new homes.

Here in Phoenix, we're quite well prepared; our houses are built out of stucco and most of our cars and buildings have tinted windows
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
But fireproofing standards have moved ahead by leaps and bounds and wood shingles have mostly disappeared on new homes.

Here in Phoenix, we're quite well prepared; our houses are built out of stucco and most of our cars and buildings have tinted windows
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No doubt. There was a modern fireproofed house in Palisades that just resisted all fire attack. Those are still rare in much of America which is broadly 1960s-1980s ranch-style vinyl homes. Even now they are still being built in that manner IIRC.

It will require a lot of deflation in the housing and construction industry to improve in this regard. ):
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
But fireproofing standards have moved ahead by leaps and bounds and wood shingles have mostly disappeared on new homes.

Here in Phoenix, we're quite well prepared; our houses are built out of stucco and most of our cars and buildings have tinted windows
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Depends on your HOA, though after Palisades I suspect that insurance companies are going to have words with HOAs about fire resistant construction requirements, not allowing HOAs to refuse to approve them or ban them outright. "You refuse to approve the fire resistant materials and defensible spaces? Then the HOA needs to self-insure for the value of all homes in the HOA."
 
California does have strong regulations for houses, mostly against earthquakes though. Most houses here are all wood, instead of cheap plaster. But on the other hand no block or brick construction.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Depends on your HOA, though after Palisades I suspect that insurance companies are going to have words with HOAs about fire resistant construction requirements, not allowing HOAs to refuse to approve them or ban them outright. "You refuse to approve the fire resistant materials and defensible spaces? Then the HOA needs to self-insure for the value of all homes in the HOA."
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LA banned wood shingles in 1962 after the devastating Bel Air Fire. The ones that burned in the Palisades Fire were built before then.
 
This illustrates how easy it is to protect against the flash. This man was caught outside in the Hiroshima blast and his hat protected his forehead from burns.
 

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40% of homes in Australia have rooftop solar. That will make a huuuge difference in the post-attack period. Mad Max is averted
 

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