Roleplay Guide for WMDs

Greetings!

This is my out-of-character roleplay guide on nuclear warheads, atomic bombs. It includes some tips on how to determine how much your nation should have, what is considered a small amount, what is considered large amount, and what is considered oh God stop you'll blow us all up!!!

Types, methods, things to know.

Let's start with a nice overview of aspects you should take in consideration:

Stockpile: This includes how many WMDs you have. This can be grouped into several sub-categories, which are important aswell.
Active and reserve WMDs, intercontinental and short range WMDs.

Strategic arsenal: This is about your methods of delivery. How many bombers, missile stations and submarines do you have that are able to launch nuclear missiles?

Maximum missile range: There are two sub-categories here aswell: land and submarine launched missiles. Usually, land missiles are the intercontinental ones, and submarines use the short range WMDs.

TNT equivalent: Also known as megatons. This is the way to tell how big that boom is going to be. Click here for a small list of bombs and their explosive values.



But how much?!

Now that we know what aspects to take into consideration, let's get to the numbers!
Wikipedia articles like this one usually cover up the WMD situation of nations. You can align your nations technology and defense force levels to some IRL nations, look up their stockpile, make some modifications, and there it is. If you need a list of nations with their nukes and other aspects mentioned above nice and neat in one document, look no further, because The Guardian made some research and published this table, showing pretty much the majority of the countries with WMDs and their statistics.



And in roleplay?

The U.S. has a maximum range of 15,000 km-s of their land missiles, and on Earth, the Equator is about 40,075 km-s long.
In the Global Federation, we use a custom map, though, which is slightly bigger than Earth. Luckily, we have a 5000 measure put on the map, so it'll be fairly easy to determine which areas are in your range and which are not.
To avoid long-RP debates, and godmodding, etc., please note that the longer a missile stays in the air (the further the target is), the easier it will be for the enemy to detect and deter it.



Nukes are expensive.

After doing some resarch on the internet (fortunately for you I did it instead of you), you can find out that nukes are really expensive. Here and hereyou can read articles about it. Also take into consideration when determining how many nukes you should have, that they aren't simply money to produce - they need to be tested several times, contained, overwatched, and secured. This is why reserve/old warheads are being dismantled - they are simply not worth to keep. It's also not logical to keep more warheads than how much you can deploy, and in this aspect, the types of warheads matter aswell, which we discussed earlier.



Wait... tests?

That's right. In order to produce a WMD, you need several tests first. These aren't things that should be taken lightly, as minor mechanical failures can cause you to blow yourself up. Therefore nukes must be tested, and for that, you need testing grounds. Usually there are 3 types of tests a bomb must undergo: detonation on ground, sea and mid-air. All of these tests must be done in a highly secured, optional location. For this, deserts are the best areas. If your nation is small, but has a high population density, you'll have a hard time finding suitable place to test nukes. In the end, this will limit on how many nukes you can have. Alternatively, you can ask other nations to provide testing grounds for you, or you can buy nukes from others. For a lot of money.



That's it, you're ready to have your own WMDs now!

Kind of. There are many more things that are good to know about nukes, for example their fallout effect, but these are the main points you should take into consideration when talking about your nations nukes.

I hope this little guide helped clarify some things! If you found this useful, and would like to see more roleplay-guides about military matters, just ask, and I'll make one once I have the time. I'm studying to be a military historican, so I'll be glad to make some guides for you!


Thanks for reading!