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Notes -
The PRC's doing another round of drills around Taiwan.
There's a real possibility that this one is the ruse of war that the others were meant to make believable; all the stars have basically aligned. The charm offensive failed in 2019-20 with the Darth Vader stunt on Hong Kong, there's a shitshow of a US election campaign in progress (two assassination attempts plus a disqualification attempt), the US President is significantly demented, William Lai got elected Taiwanese President earlier this year, and October's a good month in terms of weather conditions for amphibious assault, plus Beijing's adversaries are re-arming and Biden will be gone before April so that puts some degree of time pressure on them.
I wouldn't panic just yet; even if this is the big one (and it may not be), my guess is that they won't open WWIII with a nuclear first strike on CONUS/Europe/Australia (pre-emptive ASAT use to wipe out US satellites - and probably destroy all other low-earth-orbit satellites as collateral damage - is a possibility, though, so you may lose any communications dependent on those). But anything that you might have trouble doing later - beating the rush to buy bottled water/non-perishable food/aluminium foil/iodide tablets or whatever (not all of those are applicable to all of us), or maybe starting construction of a fallout shelter - this is your advance warning. As far as Guam/Japan/South Korea go, there may be pre-emptive missile attacks on US bases, but I still wouldn't expect cities nuked as part of the opening move so my advice is mostly the same. But if you're in Taiwan itself, I'd suggest getting out; if this goes hot there'll likely be a blockade attempt by the PLAN, so you may not be able to get out later.
To be clear, I'm more worried now than I've been since at least 2017 (the Trump-Kim yelling match) - and I was in Melbourne then, and thus personally at risk. I was mildly nervous back in April of this year, but you'll note that I didn't make a post like this then.
Remember that your life is worth a lot more than a few hundred bucks; it is rational to take action even if you rate the chance of nuclear war as "small but significant". Remember also that it is good to survive; while QoL might suck in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, we'll recover, and if you have any ideological goals you will in almost all cases help them more if you're still around to advocate and act for them (note that if you're in the military or can otherwise help win the war, that's a worthy cause; I'm not advising desertion). That said, good luck to us all and I hope I'm worried over nothing.
m9m out.
EDIT: The drills seem to have completed; we seem to be safe for now.
I don't think the PLA Navy is ready yet. I don't think they'll be ready for a few years. But with the ongoing rearmament of Japan and Australia as well as a growing awareness in Taiwan and the USA, there may be a threshold where China decides that future gains in readiness are not worth waiting for given the potential of increased western capabilities to resist.
But in any case I highly doubt that this war would ever go nuclear. China simply does not have the nuclear stockpile to destroy the US; we're not in a MAD situation here so neither side has the incentive to strike first, or strike at all.
Is it even trending towards "readiness"? Admittedly that's a moving target against adversaries who are also preparing thenselves, but as seen in Ukraine it may be a question of whether Taiwan can build anti-ship missiles faster than China can build
targetsships, not ship-to-ship. A blockade would be terrible if it could be maintained, but Taiwan is well-positioned to at least deter shipping to most of China's ports alone, and last I checked both are pretty heavy importers of food. It'd be pretty messy, even before considering the actions of the rest of the West.Not betting heavily on Taiwan, but if they chose to fight I don't think it'd be easy to dislodge them.
Anti-ship missiles (and where they launch from) are targets every bit as much as ships are. China wouldn't sit idly by while Taiwan shot down all its ships, and it's likely their opening salvo would substantially degrade Taiwan's ability to launch missiles.
Embargo-wise, neither China nor Taiwan are going to be doing much commerce anyway in the event of a war, but they're both calorie self-sufficient. Energy is the trickier bit, but China produces more of its own energy and also has a couple hundred thousand barrels/day of overland capacity.
I'd agree anti-ship missiles can be targets, but the Ukraine example suggests they can be a pretty potent force multiplier for an outgunned navy. Did any analysts seriously predict that neither side would have firm control of the Black Sea? Is China equipping it's flotilla with adequate anti-missile defenses? Taiwan also has submarines and torpedos.
Not convinced it's a guaranteed win, but it's certainly a bit of an unknown.
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