I don’t think it would happen that way. Nuclear weapons use was avoided several times by luck only.
One of the Russian submarines in the Cuba crisis in the early 60s was equipped with nukes and the
US Navy nearly started fighting the submarines. Which would have made the submarine fire its
nukes. In the 80s the Russian radars showed an attack from a ballistic rocket that would
usually trigger a massive strike by the Russians. One Russian officer decided that one
rocket alone made no sense and stayed put. It turned out being false alarm. For things like
that happened on US side is unknown. These things got public after the socialist east block
disassembled 1990. Nowadays is clear that the SU had a similar security system for use of
nukes as the USA had. No idea about the French and English ones. Or the Chinese or the
ones from North Korea, India, Pakistan or Israel. Russia is not clear anymore. The SU
had an official gremium at the top – after Stalin that is. Nowadays its a one man show again.
No idea how he is limited in his decisions today.
Any government would decide that the cyber attack was a first strike,
if you suddenly lost contact with any and all assets, any military would
try to find out from who and why. When they couldn’t reach their
satellites and assets, but could still fire nuke manually, they would,
and at everyone “to be sure”. And since everyone was in the same
boat, everyone would fire what they could. Primary targets would
be major cities and known bases and silos, to limit an enemy
counterstrike.
I don’t think it would happen that way. Nuclear weapons use was avoided several times by luck only.
One of the Russian submarines in the Cuba crisis in the early 60s was equipped with nukes and the
US Navy nearly started fighting the submarines. Which would have made the submarine fire its
nukes. In the 80s the Russian radars showed an attack from a ballistic rocket that would
usually trigger a massive strike by the Russians. One Russian officer decided that one
rocket alone made no sense and stayed put. It turned out being false alarm. For things like
that happened on US side is unknown. These things got public after the socialist east block
disassembled 1990. Nowadays is clear that the SU had a similar security system for use of
nukes as the USA had. No idea about the French and English ones. Or the Chinese or the
ones from North Korea, India, Pakistan or Israel. Russia is not clear anymore. The SU
had an official gremium at the top – after Stalin that is. Nowadays its a one man show again.
No idea how he is limited in his decisions today.
Any government would decide that the cyber attack was a first strike,
if you suddenly lost contact with any and all assets, any military would
try to find out from who and why. When they couldn’t reach their
satellites and assets, but could still fire nuke manually, they would,
and at everyone “to be sure”. And since everyone was in the same
boat, everyone would fire what they could. Primary targets would
be major cities and known bases and silos, to limit an enemy
counterstrike.