Did NATO Nuke Russia?

Have we become death; the destroyer of worlds?

Issues discussed:

• Circumstantial evidence suggests that NATO conducted a nuclear attack to Russian national weapons storage at Toropets.

• The world would change radically, if nuclear weapons would enter the theatre of war.

• We are edging closer to a nuclear conflict, and I will provide an updated guidelines for preparation at the end.

On May 30, we at GnS Economics issued a dire warning. We warned on the possibility of a nuclear strike in Europe. The basis for the warning were the strikes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on the Russian early-warning system (over-the-horizon radars) operating in Krasnodar Krai, near Ukraine, and in Orenburg region, near Orsk, some 1500 km from Ukraine. We noted that:

Nuclear deterrence operates on three dimensions: time, distance and altitude, in addition to the actual arsenal of nuclear weapons. Time and distance are crucial for the response (retaliation, effectively) and altitude where missiles fly, is crucial for anti-missile and other defense systems to operate. Over-the-horizon radars are crucial for all three dimensions, as early warnings give authorities time, distance and altitude to react and enact defensive measures. If they are taken out, or their ability to detect an approaching intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) seriously hindered, modern nuclear deterrence simply fails. This is the reason, why Kremlin would be forced to react if the early-warning system of Russia would become compromised by a foreign party (Ukraine/NATO). This applies also to the U.S. and all other nuclear powers. Everybody would eventually be forced to react under such a threat.

The 2020 issue (see the updated version below) Russian nuclear doctrine lists four conditions under which nuclear weapons "will (almost) definitely be used":

1. Credible warning about the launch of ballistic missiles against the territory of Russia or its allies.

2. Nuclear strike against the territory of Russia or its allies.

3. Conventional strike on nuclear forces and command and control systems.

4. Conventional attack against Russia, threatening the very existence of the State.

Ukrainian strikes were definitely conventional strikes on nuclear forces and command and control systems. Yet, there was no Russian nuclear response, which indicated that the “almost definitely” has some actual leeway.

I argued in my article, Strategical asymmetry in a game theoretical model of a tactical nuclear first strike that:

The decision on the use of nuclear weapon is also likely to be both political and personal. What kind of an attack constitutes as justified response with nuclear weapons in the minds of the constituencies, considering the risk it carries? Moreover, considering both the first strike and especially the possible retaliatory strike, how and under what circumstances can leaders of nuclear powers assure their constituencies and their families that the risk of a nuclear holocaust is an acceptable strategy? The threshold is likely be rather high, especially to any use of strategic nuclear weapons to defend an allied country far away engaged in a proxy-war against another nuclear power. We can assume that such a threshold applies to all imaginable scenarios on nuclear deterrence, with the unlikely exception that a group of actual psychopaths would be in charge of the nuclear arsenal.

Now, I wonder does this last sentence refer to the current leadership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as NATO? This is because there is some rather convincing evidence that the national ammunition deposits at Toropets, Russia, was attacked with ‘tactical’ (low-yield) nuclear weapons.

Whether the attack to Toropets was nuclear or not, we are heading steadily into the direction, where (tactical) nuclear weapons will enter battlefield use. The changes it would bring would be eart-shattering, like I noted in my article:

The risk is that any usage of tactical nuclear weapons would permanently change the world. While MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction] would likely to be avoided after the tactical first strike, wars would be likely to become inherently more destructive and the threshold for an all-out nuclear war would become permanently lowered. This quite straight-forwardly implies that the first (battlefield) use of tactical nuclear weapons would greatly increase the likelihood of MAD, in the longer run.

This is why I want to address them now. Let’s start with some basics of nuclear explosion.

How do you recognize a nuclear explosion?

What I am going to write now goes well beyond my expertise, and thus we need to accept the (heightened) possibility of an error. I will correct my text accordingly, if those arise. My analysis is based on the reading of the works of several analysts working at the field.

This is the video that caught my attention (I had also a video without the watermark, but I seem to have lost it). This video is from the explosion following an “Ukrainian” attack on Russian national ammunition deposit at Toropets in Tver region some 250 miles from Moscow and around 300 miles from the Ukrainian border.

The video was shared by many accounts in X.

I’ve been looking into the dynamics of nuclear explosions, and what I’ve learned is that you can recognize it from four hallmarks:

1. A very bright flash of light (“another sun”) at ignition.

2. A sound of a shotgun going off (from the explosion) followed by a roar.

3. Plasma generation.

4. Symmetry of the explosion (and damage).

These are explained, e.g., in this video and in a more technical manner here, which is bit too high of a level of nuclear physics to me, at the moment.

In the video above, the first frames are missing, but it looks to start with a very bright flash. The shotgun sound and following roar are present. What comes to the plasma generation, it’s well-beyond my expertise and skills to assess, but analysts claim to see such occurence happening. All major explosions can generate a mushroom cloud, but the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion has a red hue due to formation of different oxides at nitrogen and it’s also very symmetric, like it is above.

The symmetry of the explosion can be seen from the aftermath (picture below). Two bunkers (the other not fully shown in this picture) seem to have been the target. The damage on the ground is very symmetrical.¹

What comes to radiation, I received this piece, which goes through the fourth generation fusion nuclear weapons. The author, Lieutenant Colonel James L. Denton (holding a degree in nuclear engineering), writes that:

These weapons will be difficult to monitor, present significant challenges to treaty verification, begin to approximate conventional explosives with nuclear effects, and are a potential deterrence destabilizer. FGNW threaten to lower the barrier for use by removing the largest impediment one typically encounters in contemplating the use of nuclear weapons, the long-term effects of fallout. The possible end of the non-use nuclear taboo, clean detonation, and blurring of the conventional-nuclear lines threaten to produce a Third Nuclear Age—a dawning of the regular use of nuclear weapons in conflict.

Have we just seen the start of this, the “Third Nuclear Age”, in Toropets Russia?

Like I wrote, I have no expertise to properly assess what happened in Toropets in early hours of Wednesday, September 18. However, a lot of circumstancial evidence points that we may have seen a first use of a fourth generation tactical (low-yield) nuclear weapon by NATO.

Let’s now ponder the geopolitical and strategic implications of this worst-case scenario, i.e., that we have already entered an era of nuclear warfare, or that we are about to enter it shortly. Like I mentioned above, implications of such would be earth-shattering. They were summarized by Joseph D. Becker in his award-winning piece:

It needs to be widely recognized that any act of nuclear aggression will alter the global order as it is currently understood.

Let’s start by assessing why NATO could be seeking for a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

The desperation of NATO

On May 25, the outgoing General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, openly called for deep strikes into Russia, with NATO weapons. The fact remains that Ukraine is losing the war which will be a massive humiliation to NATO, even if many people may not realize at first. NATO has vowed to defend Ukraine, and defeat Russia, many times yet the exact opposite is occurring. It has essentially build two NATO armies with (mostly) Ukrainian men operating NATO -gear. Russian defences and air superiority has grinded all of them to pieces.

The question I find myself asking after so many catastrophic NATO failures is, how credible are the claims of superior NATO gear? I am starting to be rather skeptical, and this interests me alot, because I am a Finn, and we have a lot of NATO military gear. The credibility of NATO is at stake.

The only way for NATO to win in Ukraine is simply through a massive escalation, which I, and we at GnS Economics, have been warning for months (see, e.g., this and this). If NATO could drive Russia into a corner so that she would resort to nuclear strikes, NATO could launch (openly-admitted) nuclear strikes to Russia with a hope of forcing Russia to concessions in Ukraine or to surrender. This, I emphasize, is highly speculative, which would, naturally, run a high risk of enacting a nuclear holocaust. In the bat-crazy option, current NATO leadership thinks that they can win a nuclear war against Russia.

NATO also needs the public to accept deepening escalation of the war into a nuclear conflict. This can be achieved only through A) Russia striking Ukraine and/or Europe with nuclear weapons or B) by making it look like Russia would have struck Europe/Ukraine with nuclear weapons. The latter ‘false flag’ option is likely to include a staged Russian attack to nuclear power plants of Ukraine.

Alas, this (nuclear escalation) is essentially the only play left for Ukrainian/NATO leadership, instead of pursuing peace, of course. The endgame nears.

The endgame

The simple game-tree, I used in my article, can be used to explain why all nuclear powers would be likely to deny that they have become a target of a low-yield (‘tactical’) nuclear weapon attack.