Mushrooming.

This is coolbert:

Forty stages of escalation possible prior to the use of atomic munitions by warring factions!

"Forty. The magic number. End of one age, start of another. The Hebrews spent forty years in the wilderness. It rained for forty days and nights. JESUS spent forty days in the wilderness. Aisha was awarded with forty handmaidens in the aftermath of the Battle of the Camel. Gobind Singh the last guru of the Sikh had forty acolytes die with him in his last battle."

From the Internet web site of the Distinguished Israeli military historian/theoretician Martin van Creveld as extracted from his latest post and thanks to same.

"On Escalation"

POSTED ON OCTOBER 14, 2022.

"To most people, whether or not a ruler or country 'uses' nuclear weapons is a simple choice between either dropping them on the enemy or not doing so. For 'experts,' though, things are much more complicated (after all making them so, or making them appear to be so, is the way they earn their daily bread). So today I am going to assume the mantle of an expert and explain some of the things 'using' such a weapons might mean."

That path and process of escalation in the nutshell as outlined by the Professor.

1. "Making verbal threats."

Russians through a number of official sources having threatened nuclear weapons use under certain specific circumstance and done so repeatedly.

2. "To put some muscle behind the threat, weapons may be moved out of storage and put on display." 

See the Russian nuclear train on the move a previous blog entry.

See also Russian strategic bomber warplanes forward deployed in a time of crisis.

3. "Raising the state of alarm."

See Russian poster highlighting the actions to take in case of atomic attack.

4. "Going a step further, weapons and delivery vehicles may be tested."

See the atomic test of a Russian atomic weapon the Black Sea.

Additionally:

"There are, however, additional ways states might put their nuclear weapons to use."

5. "Launching a limited nuclear strike at some less important enemy target"

6. "Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s nuclear or, in case he does not have them, conventional forces."

7. "Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s industrial infrastructure."

8. "Launching a nuclear strike at all of the targets mentioned in bullets 5 to 7."

9. "Launching a full scale nuclear strike at the enemy’s main demographic centers."

Consider # 9 as complete and total global thermonuclear war with consequences too terrible to contemplate. Use those nukes or you lose them. Let fly with everything you got. Total devastation, nuclear winter, death from radioactive fallout, famine and disease on a monumental scale. The living will envy the dead!

Indeed, at this moment we might be well facing the end of one age and the beginning of another. And from what I am reading, don't necessarily expect cooler heads to prevail.

coolbert.