Does anyone know of any sites or documents out there that have any information on some of the plans the US or the Soviets had in case a nuclear war did break out?

I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets planned to hit every American city and military target with a warhead once ever 30 seconds for an hour - i dont remember the numbers but it was really ridiculous.

Seems like it would be an interesting read.

Look into the sky.

Does anyone know of any sites or documents out there that have any information on some of the plans the US or the Soviets had in case a nuclear war did break out?

Those plans change all the time depending on conditions of the world. There was no "single plan" that was to cover all contingencies.

Seems like it would be an interesting read.

Unless you're a military man, knowlegeable in military matters, you wouldn't be able to understand much about it.

Baron Max

Man, you're a real prick, arnt ya?

No kidding they change all the time. I just wanna see something.

Does anyone know of any sites or documents out there that have any information on some of the plans the US or the Soviets had in case a nuclear war did break out?

I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets planned to hit every American city and military target with a warhead once ever 30 seconds for an hour - i dont remember the numbers but it was really ridiculous.

Seems like it would be an interesting read.

You might find something here:

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nwarplan.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/warplan/index.asp

http://www.archives.gov/research/cold-war/
http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/cold-war-and-marshall-plan.html

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB139/index.htm

http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA272982&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Nice dude.

That NRDC link was particularly interesting.

Who woulda thunk the NRDC would have put out something interesting?

Look into the sky.

lol. ICBMS' sure do shine.

From 1950 or so on, the US had mathematicians, statisticians, engineers, computer programmers, et cetera developing so called war plans. I am sure the USSR had a similar group fo war planners.

These war planners added to and updated plans as more intelligence data was gathered. The idea was to provide the Joint chiefs and the White House with plans which would do one of the following (A sample list, showing a few choices).Destroy 90% of the steel industry. Get 35% of everything Destroy all cities with a population greater than Whatever. Get 90% of the electric power. Get 90% of the petroleum industry Repeat each including all countries behind the Iron Curtain.The idea was to provide the Joint Chiefs and the White House with a fairly extensive menu of options to be selected from when/if WW3 started.

Many of the plans included targets other than those in the USSR, some in friendly countries likely to be over run by the USSR

The people working on these war plans probably had the highest clearances ever granted. They knew the size & details of the nuclear stockpile. In the manned bomber era, They knew how many planes & crews were available. They had access to CIA, NSA, and files from all other intelligence agencies. They had aerial photographs obtained by U2's and later by satellites.

The paranoia was amusing.Aerial photos were stamped with WW2 dates and Luftwaffe flight numbers. This was to hide the existence of the U2's and later the satellite surveillance. Of course the Nazis never had planes capable of flying to ditant areas in the USSR, and the USSR knew of the U2's before Gary powers was shot down. Many of the photos showed buildings not in existence during WW2. It is unknown how an unauthorized person could ever get access to those photos or any of the other data used by the war planners


People working on war plans would be told to avoid Washington DC neighborhoods near certain embassies. If a war planner was seen in those neighborhoods, his boss would have to fill out a mountain of paperwork to justify not firing him. Those areas were under constant surveillance (early on by motion picture film, later by video). A large staff watched the films/videos and attempted to identify every one shown. If an unidentifiable person appeared more than once, an FBI agent (or an agent from some other organization) would be assigned to watch for the person and follow him/her in order to identify him/her. Of course employees of the embassies, people who lived in those neighborhoods, et cetera became familiar to those watching the films/videos. Photos of previously identified people were available to the watchers.


Every 6-8 months or so, each war planner would be put under surveillance 24 hours per day for a week to ten days. This was to check if he/she was in contact with foreign agents. I guess that there were phone taps and investigation of mail to further check on war planners.


Naturally, war planners were told to never divulge where they worked or what they did. If one applied for credit, an FBI agent would identify himself and vouch for the individual who could not supply any information about his job, salary, et cetera. This was a bit silly, because it alerted the personnel of credit card issuers, auto dealers, mortgage companies, banks, department stores, et cetera that the person was somebody very likely to be of interest to spies.

War planners were put on a list of people who were not allowed to travel to certain parts of the world. Somebody might kidnap them and torture them for information. They stayed on this list for several years after leaving the war planning agency.The paranoia was generally silly. Of course the USSR knew that such an agency existed. No one individual could remember enough detailed information to compromise any critical data. So what if the USSR learned that various important targets were included in some war plan? Did those responsible think that the USSR could not do a good job of guessing what targets would be likely to be hit?

It is amusing to note what our government considers secret. A lot of the items stamped secret are merely embarassing to somebody. A lot is not really secret.

BTW: The existence of the installation under a mountain in Colorado Springs was supposed to be a secret long after the USSR knew of its existence. Did they really think that the residents of Colorao Springs did not know of its existence? I suppose they no longer consider it a secret due to the Star Gate TV show, which I think shows the actual entrance to it.

Hahahaha. Damn man, that was interesting. You seem to know quite a bit about that. Say, what was your job in the 60s? :D

"A lot is not really secret."

Secrets are governments' only hope in the desperate struggle to the death against democracy.

BTW: The existence of the installation under a mountain in Colorado Springs was supposed to be a secret long after the USSR knew of its existence. Did they really think that the residents of Colorao Springs did not know of its existence? I suppose they no longer consider it a secret due to the Star Gate TV show, which I think shows the actual entrance to it.

Just a footnote to that: Cheyenne Mountain was built without the expectation of being kept secret. It was placed deep enough and far enough inside to withstand a multi-megaton blast within a very close range. The term used for all that was "hardend site." The entrance was protected by massivly huge blast doors, everthing inside was mounted on shock absorbers and it contained enough food, fuel and water supply storage to operate totally sealed for three months. (Any armed conflict would have ended, for the most part, well before that. Also, the air supply was microfiltered and could remove any radioactive dust.

And a footnote to all this is that it was officially closed during the middle of last year. A few function still remain there and all the rest is fully maintained and ready to be placed back into service on short notice.

DubStyle: You have the right idea. I was a war planner in the manned bomber era, a bit earlier than the 60's.

Read-Only: Thanx for the historical information about the Cheyenne Mountain installation.

You are probably correct in stating that the builders did not expect to keep it a secret. However other bureaucrats stamped secret all over anything related to it, resulting in my having a 3-month vacation at govt expense.

This interesting few months of my life occurred in about 1975 (My time sense is bad, so the year could be wrong). I was working for a company which manufactured an obsolete computer still being used in the Cheyenne Mountain Facility. It was one node in a Store & Forward message switching system. Such systems were similar in programming concepts to the modern internet, but due to slower CPU's did not function in what seems like real time to Internet users.

The system was used primarily by the US military, maybe NSA, and I think the diplomatic people for world wide communications. It was due to be switched over to entirely new software on 1 January of the following year.

In about August, it was discovered that the Cheyenne Mountain installation had a node in the network. This had been overlooked because (for security reasons) no net work map showed that node and the communications lines leading to it.

Because Burroughs manufactured the computer, they were given a contract to write the new software. Burroughs had no employees familiar with the obsolete computer, but knew of two consultants who had made a living maintaining & upgrading software for 2-3 other system still in use.

Burroughs could not be the general contractor on the project unless it was headed up by a Burroughs employee. I had programming credentials relating to message switching systems and a security clearance which made me satisfactory to the govt bureaucrats, but which in no way made me competent to head this project or do anything useful in writing new software.

Never the less, I was in charge of the project. For 3 months (October, November, December) I drove the two consultants to the Cheyene Mountain facility in the morning and picked them up about 5-7PM. Before dinner, they filled out progress reports, alleged to be done by me.

I spent my days skiing and sometimes making friends with some interesting female skiers.

The consultants knew the vagaries of rules about govt contracts and did not mind the arrangement. They were being paid about 3 times their normal rate (they knew the govt was stuck), and were probably happy not to have a boss pretending to know something about the project.

Besides, we often had interesting female company at dinner and later due to contacts made on the ski slopes.