If a nuclear war breaks out, will both sides target civilians, military targets, or both?

It is difficult to predict things, particularly the future. We don’t know what would actually happen, nor what the current secret orders are for any nuclear forces. This is also one of the reasons why no one wants to see it happen. However, if you really want to know about nuclear targeting, we actually know this quite well.

There is a very popular and vague idea, that in case of nuclear war, everyone targets all the biggest cities launch and then we all die and the world collapse. The reality is that the world would not end, even if we detonated all nuclear weapons over cities. Cities in Europe, USA and Russia, are in fact not the world, and fallout would not cover the world either, no matter how pessimistic you are.

Additionally, far more thought has been put into strategic nuclear targeting than merely kill everyone, and while we do not know the details now, it is safe to say it is an evolution of previous doctrines, and we have a pretty good idea about those actually.

Soviet Doctrine:

80% of ICBMs deployed by the USSR in the 1980s had the purpose of targeting NATO nuclear weapons, particularly those in the USA such as the US ICBM silos. The nuclear SS-19 and SS-18 rockets were designed specifically with this target in mind. Other targets would include US air force bases with nuclear weapons. That doesn’t mean that the Soviets would not target cities. However, the priority was without a doubt military targets, particularly western ability to use their own nukes. As such, you could say the priority mission of a Soviet nuclear first strike would be to prevent an actual city annihilation exchange.

It should also be noted that according to Soviet/Russian doctrine, a front commander is an semi-independent strategic war leader, authorized to carry out nuclear strikes in strategic depth once nuclear weapons are released.

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