what % of their nuclear arsenal you think is faulty?
how many nukes are you ok with being hit with?
Their economy collapsed 30 years ago, and with corruption we know that their stuff was in all likely hood not properally maintained. They have around 6,000 nukes in theory but Id be willing to best most of them have issues. Its a situation where time is on our side and with each day their arsenal most likely gets weaker and weaker.
Id say at least half of them most likely dont' work and that might be over estimating them.
... only half?
I don't know about you but I don't want to be hit by 3000 nukes.
They have ~6000 warheads, but more like ~300 delivery systesms.
If half of those work, you're spreading 150 missiles around Europe, the US, and probably a couple in China, because if Russia launches they don't want to leave the CCP with the ability to take the eastern half of Russia at their leisure.
If we assume the USA gets half, being the most threatening target, that leaves 75 missiles for the ABM shield to work on. In ground-based launchers alone we have the theoretical ability to deal with more than half of that, though I have no idea how much sea-launched intercept ability we have.
I have no idea what our interception rate would be like, but if you assume a 20% failure rate of the warheads, that by itself brings it down to 60 missiles. An ugly, ugly time to have, but the lack of knowing what the intercept rate is key here.
The US & NATO, on the other hand, would be launching hundreds of missiles, expecting a 5% or less failure rate, and a 0% interception rate.
Russia would functionally cease to exist, and in exchange, they might land as many as 60 hits.
Or alternately, they might land six. They don't know either, and that not knowing matters when they're choosing between 'Go out in a blaze of nuclear spite' vs 'have a chance at faking my death and retiring to a private island with the millions I embezzled from the treasury over the years.'
Right now the likely hood is that Russia's nukes are...not in great shape, and it's likely only 1/3rd of their nukes are fully functional.
There are multiple reasons for this, but a big one is that USSR warheads were only good for 5 years before needing to be 'recooked', where as the US warheads can go 15 years without needing to be 'recooked'. The Russian economy and industrial base was gutted by the fall of the USSR, and they haven't got many people set to replace their older engineers/designers, so a lot of the know-how to handled/build/maintain Russian nukes is dwindling away and not being replaced.
As well, with the amount of black market operations and general corruption in the Russian military, there is a real question of how many important/pricey bits of the their nuclear weapons and delivery systems have been pulled and sold over the years, and how much of this Moscow is actually aware of in it's nuclear plans.
This is even before we get to the US/allied ABM systems, which involve not just installations like the Aegis Ashore in Europe or the interceptors in Alaska, but also ABM duty Burkes with SM-6 missiles, which are rated for ABM work. Plus whatever classified goodies we are hiding.
And in any event, it is unlikely that Russia would get all it's functional warheads off as it is, because the US has no 'no first use policy' and if we think Putin is going for a mass nuclear launch, we're likely to hit them pre-emptively to limit how many nukes the Russians get off to begin with. Second strikes by Russian subs or such are somewhat of a risk, but not much of one because they make nice subs, but Russian navy maintenance practices are still shit so their subs get continually louder as they age, so many of them are likely to go down with their missiles aboard.
My guess is the US might sustain...~100 hits in a full on exchange, if Russia doesn't toss nukes at anyone else, but that would be it, and most of those would be on first strike targets, not just random cities, like a full counter-value strike would. And of those 100 hits, many are going to be multiple hits in the same areas, because Russian nukes have shit accuracy that requires saturating everything within 50 km of a target just to ensure a kill, so not that many places will actually be hit directly.
So really, as long as you are not near a first strike target, or in the downwind area from them, you should be rather safe from the exchanges. And if you are near first strike targets, it is not bad practice to figure out how far away you could get with a few days warning and have a plan to survive, if say all the subs in the Russian fleet put to see at the same time, or ours do the same.
Nuclear war between the US/allies and Russia is survivable for most of the US/allies; it would be the end of Russia as a coherent nation. The real wild card is what the CCP would do; if they side with Russia and launch on us, it gets more dicey about the second/third string targets in the US getting hit. However if the CCP decides to keep it's powder dry and not get involved, they would be in a position to make a move on Siberia with minimal, if any, objection from the West and without needing to worry too much about a coherent Russian defense.