A single red buzzer squawks loudly, and immediately there is a flurry of activity from the assembled
flight and ground crews.
At a civilian airport somewhere in Oklahoma, men rush to a line of seven waiting B-52 Stratofortresses.
Ground crew personnel pull the blocks holding the big plane's wheels in place and do last
minute mechanical checks- the jets have been ready for short-notice takeoff for two days
already as the world hung on the brink of full-scale nuclear war.
Now, somebody's gone and pushed the earth over the edge.
Inside the B-52, flight crews make ready to fly.
The radar navigator and electronic warfare officer perform last minute checks on their
equipment- the electronic warfare suite especially will be critical in the coming hours, and
will be the giant bomber aircraft's sole defense against enemy surface-to-air missiles.
At the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot fire up the engines and run over their last minute
checklists.
The navigator breaks open the classified documents detailing the different nuclear attack missions
the aircraft may be called upon to undertake.
The men won't know which mission to fly until they are past their positive control points-
the last chance to recall the big bombers.
The giant planes are carrying over 70,000 pounds of nuclear weapons in the form of pylon
mounted nuclear-tipped cruise missiles in the wings as well as cruise missiles in the
bomb bays which they share with eight large gravity bombs.
One by one the planes edge up to the runway, almost nose to tail in the tight space of
the small civilian airport.
Normally, the B-52s would operate from a military base, but with the threat of nuclear war the
Air Force scattered its most important aircraft across hundreds of smaller, civilian airfields.
Any enemy wishing to knock out the US's airborne nuclear fleet would have to launch hundreds
of simultaneous strikes at once- well beyond the capability of any of America's enemies.
With the assistance of JATO units, small rockets that help speed the big planes into the air,
the B-52s begin their ascent, leaving clouds of billowing black smoke belching out behind
them from their massive and powerful engines.
Each plane carries aloft enough nuclear firepower to decimate a small country, and there's dozens
of them taking to the air from airfields all over the United States and in bases overseas.
OPLAN 8010-12 dictates the US's response in a nuclear confrontation, and each B-52 lumbering
into the sky is one small part of an overall strategy involving thousands of moving parts.
Deep under the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic, emergency war orders are flashed out to the
ballistic missile submarines of the United State's silent service.
Theirs will be the first strike in what will become humanity's third, and possibly last,
world war.
From fifty meters under the waves, the hatches on a dozen launch tubes holding nuclear-tipped
Trident ballistic missiles are popped open by hydraulics.
The sound is unmistakable, and Chinese submariners desperately searching for the stealthy American
subs scramble to locate and neutralize these nuclear strike platforms.
In seconds though, it'll be too late, and killing any American sub they do locate will
be a meaningless gesture, as a rush of air forces each Trident missile out of its housing
and into the water.
Chinese sonar operators clearly hear the tell-tale firing of Trident rocket motors, and in moments
the ballistic missiles are lifting up out of the water and screaming high into the sky.
The first wave of attacks undertaken by subs closest to the Chinese shores target air defense
networks and military airfields.
The goal is to knock out as much of the Chinese anti-air capability as possible, allowing
the Air Force's airborne nuclear force to do its job.
Anti-ballistic missile defenses activate across the Chinese coastline, and hundreds of interceptors
are fired to try to knock out the nuclear-tipped missiles.
But there's little warning time, and to make matters worse, each Trident is equipped with
multiple warheads which are released just before the missile re-enters the atmosphere.
Packed with penetration aids like clouds of chaff and radar reflectors, the vast majority
of Chinese interceptors are completely ineffective, and in moments nuclear fire rains down on
Chinese military installations.
The next wave of Trident attacks is aimed at Chinese infrastructure, wiping out major
airports, industrial centers, and government sites.
One strike destroys the Three Gorges Dam, largest hydroelectric dam in the world, and
releases trillions of gallons of water all at once.
The resulting inland tsunami devastates communities downstream and kills almost as many people
as a nuclear attack.
US Air Force B-2s, the stealthiest aircraft in the world, are already penetrating Chinese
air space.
Normally, the B-2s are hard to spot, but with much of the Chinese air defense network destroyed
by American ballistic missile submarines, stopping them now is nearly impossible.
Yet stealth is not a complete guarantee of safety.
The B-2s fly a pre-planned route through various air defense zones, making course corrections
as they navigate so as to always present their stealthiest side to incoming radar.
This makes them very difficult to pinpoint, but the Chinese are well aware that B-2s are
in the air and are scrambling dozens of interceptors.
Most of the B-2s make it to their targets, but with so much air defense radar in the
air and on the ground all looking for the stealth bombers, five of them are discovered
and shot down.
Those that survive pop open their bomb bay doors and fire off nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
The B-2's targets are more dangerous, and only the stealthy planes can reach them- their
job is to eliminate Chinese military installations in central and western China, requiring them
to penetrate deep into hostile territory.
The nuclear cruise missiles the planes fire off allow them to safely attack targets from
hundreds of miles away, though the planes each carry gravity bombs as well to be delivered
to secondary targets.
The B-2 attacks devastate Chinese missile sites deep in the country, but it's mostly
too late- the nation has already launched a nuclear counter-attack.
The initial strikes have eliminated part of the enemy's nuclear capability, even if over
a hundred missiles have still been successfully fired off towards the American continent.
Still, every missile destroyed in its silo or mobile launcher is thousands, perhaps even
millions of lives saved.
There is no winning nuclear war, but the US Air Force Global Strike Command has one job:
make the other guy lose harder.
Now it's time to ensure that when the nuclear dust settles, China cannot rebuild or resupply
either its nuclear or conventional forces.
After a 16 hour flight, American B-52s and B1 Lancers are at last approaching their targets.
The crews have purposefully not been told of the damage caused at home by the Chinese
nuclear attacks, and none of them want to ask.
Ground-based interceptors along the American Pacific coast attempted to intercept incoming
missiles, but with a terrible success rate against practice targets, they are largely
ineffective up against the real deal.
Nuclear hellfire rains down across American cities and military bases.
At least the submarine and B-2 strikes have curtailed the extent of that attack somewhat.
Approaching the enemy's coast though, the pilots of the B-1 Lancers leading the attack
descend to barely a thousand feet above the deck in an attempt to evade surviving Chinese
radar.
The B-52s will mirror this tactic, but only once they've come closer to their targets.
Aerial refueling aircraft from the Air Force's tanker service have topped up each plane,
but flying low means more drag and exponentially greater fuel expenditure.
The B-1s are fast and somewhat stealthy, but the B-52s are giant targets in the sky for
any surviving anti-air artillery or enemy fighters.
To create a safe path through hostile airspace, a few modified B-52s fly ahead of the rest
of the incoming bombers, creating an electronic screen of digital noise to jam and degrade
enemy radar.
Hundreds of anti-air missiles are fired, but just like in the skies over Hanoi during the
Vietnam War, the B-52s do an impressive job of defeating enemy anti-air systems.
A few B-52s are lost, but with dozens of them penetrating deep into Chinese airspace, the
losses are largely insignificant.
America's land-based ballistic missile forces have long ago done their job, marking the
second wave of attacks.
Both nations have each other's land-based missile sites targeted by missiles of their
own, and both sides know that if they don't launch immediately, they will never get the
chance to as enemy nuclear strikes attempt to destroy missiles in their silos.
Every major Chinese city has been hit by at least one, many by three to four direct strikes.
Every major US city has been likewise targeted.
The B-1 and B-52 crews find themselves flying over a nuclear wasteland, with major cities
like Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongping now mostly rubble.
The land-based ballistic missile force has laid waste to every single major enemy city,
and many of its moderately sized cities as well.
Now Global Strike Command's airborne element is here to ensure that China cannot easily
rebuild.
The bombers fly to their designated targets across the nation, leveling major industrial
centers that have so far evaded attack as well as important natural resource depots.
Strategically important mines are collapsed by direct nuclear strikes, as well as ore-refining
and raw goods manufacturing hubs.
Seaports all across the coast are obliterated, as are major swathes of China's most important
farmlands.
Next on the list are food distribution centers, important universities and research complexes,
and large stockpiles of both military and civilian goods or equipment.
National defense armories and reservist bases for the People's Liberation Army and Air Forces
are destroyed with nuclear hellfire, as is every major hydroelectric dam left standing.
The destruction of these dams are as devastating as the nuclear strikes themselves, flooding
thousands of square miles and washing away entire communities.
Lastly, the B-52s move to their final targets- known government shelters.
These sites are buried deep underground, and despite being secret, many are known to American
planners thanks to intelligence gathered by spies and cyberattacks.
The B-52s use deep-penetrating munitions to target these sites, flying high and letting
loose bombs capable of burrowing deep into the earth before exploding.
The resulting shockwave is enough to bury all but the sturdiest of underground shelters,
killing thousands who thought themselves safe from attack.
Their job done, the American bombers turn and head for airfields in Japan and the Philippines.
Most of them won't make it, their fuel largely spent, or the airfields they are heading for
obliterated by conventional ballistic missile attacks from the People's Liberation Army
Rocket Force.
The crews of the bombers all knew that the trip was likely one way anyways, though few
of them imagined that doomsday would actually ever come.
Now, two countries lay in utter ruin, though thanks to the massive penetration power of
the US Air Force's Global Strike Command, China has suffered a far worse fate than the
US.
The mission of Global Strike Command was never really to win a nuclear war, but instead to
deter one- and failing that, to make sure that America's nuclear enemies were so thoroughly
destroyed that they could not hope to match the US's own efforts at rebuilding.
The men and aircraft of GSC wage the most complete and total war ever dreamt up by man,
eliminating not just the enemy's forces, but the ability itself to support a society capable
of threatening the United States ever again.
If that even matters in a post-nuclear world though, is still anybody's guess.
For more nuclear war stories check out Doomsday plane, or click this other video instead!