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Comment by Auracle | Hacker News Reader

*Without using their nukes

Nuclear weapons can't take and hold territory.

Turning it into a barren wasteland makes it easier to take or hold with disposable conscripts.

It really doesn't. The front in eastern Ukraine has been shelled into oblivion at this point and it hasn't made it easy for Russia to advance.

That's because Russia is also short on shells. The bulk of their advance in April-July was facilitated by their mass artillery fire.

I'm not sure that's true. Operating in a radioactive environment makes every single task so much harder. When Russia can barely afford the time to teach its recruits how to shoot, how could they possibly spare the time to teach them how to manage radioactive contamination?

In this case "nobody can have it" is effectively the same as "we have it" in terms of keeping NATO at a further distance from the important parts of the federation. Or whatever the Kremlin justification is these days.

Is Russia low on land? Are they running out, that depopulating several nations and holding their territory with conscripts makes strategic sense?

In the hypothetical of them using nukes, we'd probably be past the point of there being any reason other than to wipe out the other side and show force to the rest of the world. That they control/own it by might sheerly for the sake of doing so and not by any other rationale.

That will be the end of Russia entirely.

> That will be the end of Earth entirely.

FTFY

Nukes are useless tactically. Especially when you can't provide CBRN uniforms and training to all your troops.

That's a stretch. Imagine Russia could use their nukes without retaliation. They could have completely destroyed every military base and city in Ukraine before the invasion, along with the people's will to fight.

Or just used the threat of doing so to take Ukraine piece by piece.

The consequences of using nukes are an inherent part of using them. We might as well imagine they could use their tanks without maintenance or supply lines, or use their infantry without providing any training.

Russia has been continually threatening to use nuclear weapons and it hasn't affected anything.

If Russia were to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it would be a pariah for centuries, assuming it didn't lead to global thermonuclear war.

> Nukes are useless tactically

This seems to be the case, but no one knows for sure. It's likely that there are people in power who think they can gain an advantage using tactical nukes. Some weapons are specifically designed for this purpose, such as the American ER weapons (PDF) https://www.llnl.gov/sites/www/files/1975.pdf

Nuking the country right next to your country sure seems like a great idea. Cause everyone knows that radiation stops at the border!

Today's nukes can be very "clean". Even the old Hiroshima/Nagasaki did not cause that terrible residual radioactivity (neither city stopped being continuously inhabited).

Chernobyl released ~400 times as much radioactive material into the environment as the Hiroshima bomb. The nuke isotopes are also much shorter lived than what Chernobyl released.

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