China Vs. USA

[Gen. Volkov]

A good response! And I meant just some random full-scale, all out war. Each side doing everything within it's power to destroy the other.

Then the US wins, hands down. China is simply not a nuclear power on par with the US. They aren't even close. We could turn every square inch of Chinese soil into fused slag and still have nukes left over. They could take out our major cities, and that's about all. The problem is, if we all out launch at China, we will not only kill them, we would kill all life on earth. Bioweapons are scary, an all out nuclear war is terrifying.

Bjorn, once we hit the 1970's, the US and Russia had enough nukes between them to kill everything on this planet. Nowadays the US alone has the capability. It would take about 200 megatons worth of nuclear weapons to replicate the effects of a major asteroid strike, on par with or slightly bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. The US has over 3000 megatons worth of nuclear weapons. That replicates the impact of a true planetkiller. Something like if the asteroid Ceres hit Earth. And, even supposing life somehow survives that hellish scenario, there is also the radiation from all those bombs going off, which is more than enough to kill anything that did survive. Maybe some bacteria survive in the deep earth, but as for anything bigger, they're dead. It's fifty-fifty on whether even any eukaryotes would be left after an all-out nuclear war. You're right about the probable effects of a limited nuclear war though. It would still be very very bad for both countries involved, but we wouldn't kill all life on earth. We would probably create a nuclear winter though.

If the Cold War had every turned hot, Russia wouldn't have even needed to launch it's nukes at us to kill everyone in the US. They could have simply detonated their nukes on their own soil and achieved the same effect. This is the essence of MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction. It's also way an all out nuclear war will never, ever happen. The most we'll ever see is limited use of nukes.

Which is why bioweapons are scarier than nukes, because all it takes is one guy releasing modified smallpox, and 90% of the population is dead or dying. Given the way people travel, that's probably over the entire world too, not just were the virus is released.

In terms of conventional war, the US still probably wins, as long as their is a clear, limited objective, like making sure Taiwan stays free or eliminating China's ability to make war on Taiwan and the US. We never lost our conventional weapons manufacturing capacity. China makes a lot of piddly crud, but lots of heavy industry is still located in the US. A majority of cars sold in the US are made in the US for example. We still manufacture the majority of the world's aircraft, both commercial and military. And I know for a fact, that if the US ever went to war, we could build more than 5,000 new Abrams tanks within 6 months of hostilities breaking out. We also have the best pilots in the best aircraft in the world. The Chinese don't have anything that even comes close to matching the F-22, or the B-2.

If it got to the point that we actually invaded mainland China, the only thing that would save our ground troops is the USAF, if anything saved them at all. China's population is just too freaking huge. Once we took out their standing army, we'd have to make sure than no organized training centers emerged to create new troops. We'd have to basically take out all their military infrastructure. Otherwise they'd just swamp us. China has more fighting age males than the US has people. A large US army, properly trained, organized and equipped could deal with huge numbers of untrained peasants. That same army could not deal with huge numbers of trained soldiers. We'd almost have to use nukes, and from there it gets very very ugly.

In terms of trade wars, both sides would be hurt deeply, but both sides would probably survive.  I suspect the re-emergence of the US as a major industrial power would eventually come back to haunt the Chinese though.

[fexfighter]

dont worry about nukes an astroid is going to hit the earth (cant remember what year)verey soon and it will have opcoliptic efects on this planet unless nasa are building somthing to stop it im dying at twentey three

[Shade]

dont worry about nukes an astroid is going to hit the earth (cant remember what year)verey soon and it will have opcoliptic efects on this planet unless nasa are building somthing to stop it im dying at twentey three

I'm gunna hate myself for asking...but how do you know this? :P

[Firetooth]

His colonies mageman asked fluffy bunnykins and they told him :P

[fexfighter]

no there was a two hour special about it on the discovery channel and a news report and if youre insulting our preists and oracles than back off i already told im going to limit my religiis talk to a minimum
                 please stop insulting us we already have enogh problems and we dont need any more such as ridicule you guys dont even give the time to eben understand us  >:( >:( >:(

[Gen. Volkov]

dont worry about nukes an astroid is going to hit the earth (cant remember what year)verey soon and it will have opcoliptic efects on this planet unless nasa are building somthing to stop it im dying at twentey three

There was one they thought was going to impact Earth in 2029, but after further calculations, they decided it's going to be a narrow miss. It's also too small to really hurt us. Some people would die, but it would not create a global catastrophe.

[fexfighter]

maybey thats the one but its going to hit earth those conculations are wrong well unless we stop it or the 4 stop it

[Gen. Volkov]

Um, I'm going to trust NASA over you. NASA originally thought it would hit earth, but upon closer inspection, they found it won't. There are no other asteroids that are going to pass as close to earth as this one though, at least in the near future. This asteroid is the same one they were talking about in the Discovery channel special. I saw it too.

And it's spelled "calculations".

[Firetooth]

no there was a two hour special about it on the discovery channel and a news report and if youre insulting our preists and oracles than back off i already told im going to limit my religiis talk to a minimum
                 please stop insulting us we already have enogh problems and we dont need any more such as ridicule you guys dont even give the time to eben understand us  >:( >:( >:(

Im joking, yes I saw something about it, but it's gonna be a near miss like volkov said.

[fexfighter]

ok sorry i do have a really bad memory so i guess youre right