The Eternal Squire wrote:
2) In response to our conventional defense of Taiwan when China
inevitably loses patience and invades, China fires a single large
coldbringer warhead in the ionosphere above the center of the
continental US. The purpose of a coldbringer is not to ruin a city,
although it still might very well do so. It is to generate a large
EMP across the country to ruin a country's ability to communicate or
compute, thereby ruining thier economy and ability to mobilize
anything larger than a single army or marine division for some period
of years.

It is most likely the unwritten policy within members of UN Security
Council that a massive retalitation will never be made in response to
the detonation of a single warhead. China would likely say: "oops,
so sorry, it was an accident, some general had an itchy trigger
finger. We'll execute him and make reparations.". Plausible
deniability. In the meantime, our country is powerless to defend
Taiwan because while our teeth might be there, our supply lines still
originate in the US. China then conquers Taiwan with ease.

In a scenario like this, the entire country will be physically
unharmed but will be in chaos, needing operators with equipment not
damaged by EMP. I'd like my daughter to be able to help out if she
can.

That's all I have to say for tonight.

The Eternal Squire
I think if this happened we just might also have an 'oops' and a single
thermo nuke would go off high in the atmosphere above China. "There,
we're even." (This isn't a "massive retalitation", so it's allowed under
UN policy). Now both sides can blindly stumble about in Taiwan.