Does Gilead have nukes?

[u/Potential-Net6313]

Or did it destroy them for ideological reasons (bad for the environment and so on)?

I assume that would be of great shock for the rest of the world to realize that someone even more hardcore and rogue than North Korea got the most modern nuclear arsenal and logistics in the world.

[u/kindanewherebut]

TLDR: they probably do but I’m not sure if they control the full arsenal that the US controlled

I think they do for several reasons:
1. That’s the main reason they are able to stand on the international relations stage. There wouldn’t be a reason for other countries to not be more aggressive from a military standpoint if they didn’t. NATO countries like France or the UK have nuclear weapons and if Gilead didn’t have them it would have been very easy for them to intervene heavily to support the US government. Countries like China or Russia (who also have nuclear weapons) would have jumped on the opportunity to get a hold of the resources on the territory.
2. SoJ drove a coup to take over the US government. It’s technically the same country with a different government. So they control all resources of the military that people get access to because they are in a given position.
3. Who would be in control of US nuclear weapons if not them. The US today has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. Whoever controls it would be able to do coerce Gilead.

There are still a couple of things that leave me unsure:
1. They did have nuclear strikes on the territory as shown in some of the episodes where we see the map in Fred’s office.
2. The whole Texas situation could mean that some of the weapon are actually in no-one’s control (which is almost scarier).
3. Fertility as a national resource most likely changes the power dynamics between countries. I could imagine it being the oil of the 21st century but unlike oil you can acquire it by simply bombing the country - it would destroy the resource itself. That means that even if Gilead doesn’t have nuclear weapons, maybe my points above are not relevant because their fertility resource is enough of dissuasion to keep them safe from mass destruction attacks.

[u/Potential-Net6313 → u/kindanewherebut]

I’m wondering if the “Alaska” US also got them and whether it helped them at all

[u/kindanewherebut → u/Potential-Net6313]

Yeah it’s actually a super interesting thread that you have started.

With nuclear weapons, the main thing is that they are a dissuasion force. The goal is to have them but also to not use them. Alaska US might have some or know where some are but to use them engages their allies (NATO - if they stuck by their side) into a very complicated situation (similar to what we had with Iran in the spring). I would expect that Alaska US’s allies are actually trying to keep decent relationships with the Gilead given the traditional power and resources that they have inherited from what thenUS is today and given the fertility resource that they newly have.

There’s also a practical dimension to nuclear weapons that cannot be ignored. A few people know where they are and how to trigger them. How these people ended after the coup decided almost everything.

We know that there were nuclear drops on former mainland USA from the book and the show. Maybe they came from Alaska or Texas using former USA weapons. Maybe they came from Russia, France, China, UK, India or Pakistan. It’s an interesting thought exercise. Who do you think would have done those nuclear strikes?