I agree that the nuclear threat may be bigger today than in cold war times. More nations now have nuclear weapons and the possibility that one will be used one day is > 0.
When I grew up in Germany in the 80s, there was a real sense that nuclear war could start any time. Unfortunately, we haven't used the short widow of opportunity after the cold war to get rid of all nuclear weapons. Now I wonder what, if anything, can happen to convince us as a species to get rid of them.
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand, the amount of damage we'd suffer is a lot lower now that the average weapon might be a few hundred kilotons and dropped precisely on a military base rather than a 20-30 megaton weapon tossed roughly in the direction of a city center. On the other hand, the fact that there would be so much less collateral damage (but still a ton) could make people much more willing to use them.
I think the changes you cited (less damage due to high precision use of low yield weapons) make it on balance more likely they'll be used.
The real barrier to nuke use is gaining entry to the club. U235 enrichment, Pu239 synthesis, implosion, initiators, etc. In contrast, the entry barrier to precision delivery is small and diminishing.
If you're new in town (IN, PK, NK), your noob inefficient, unoptimized weapons can be really effective if precisely delivered. And it doesn't necessarily mean ballistic delivery. Moves the "unthinkable" threshold downward. It's worrisome.
Suppose some little country wants to start working with U and Pu. So, they set up a building, get it some utilities, surround it with some security, and then go shopping for a long list of lab supplies and equipment.
Then, likely, presto, bingo, the intel agencies of the more advanced countries will notice what is going on inside the building just from what is on the purchase orders going outside the building. Then have some drones and/or satellites fly over the building with some neutron or gamma ray detectors or some such. Then have a little chat with the leaders of that little country.
I'm not sure it would be easy to hide such activities now.
And if they do get some fissionable materials, then they would have to test a bomb, and can't hide that.
I have to believe that the "more likely to use them" is offset (I hope entirely) by the taboo of deciding to do so. If deciding to use a nuclear weapon is an open invitation for retaliation in kind, then you would expect the established players in the nuclear power game to shut it down with extreme prejudice for exactly that reason.
A smaller opening volley doesn't feel like any increased incentive to initiate said volley.
It's assured destruction. The degree and ferocity of the conventional military response to any state which opens with a small scale nuclear attack would be unlike any wars to date.
You do it and you'll get to watch the US, China and Russia briefly join forces and annihilate your infrastructure with extreme prejudice - with options to use their arsenals if anyone suspects you'll try to while this is happening.
I didn't understand the last paragraph. What you said makes sense, and the fact that countries like IN, PK, NK don't have access to tactical/precision nuclear armaments makes it less likely that they will use them, doesn't it? Because setting off a megaton device is clearly a sign for the commencement of nuclear war and certain MAD.
And sorry, I see I wasn't clear about the precision delivery aspect.
While newer members of the nuclear club may not have the greatest in precision delivery, that capability is almost completely a matter of electronic technology. Which means it's getting easier and cheaper in the same way that our cheap smartphones eclipse yesterday's mega$ supercomputers. I'm sure IN is already there, probably PK as well. NK, not so much. Yet.
That in turn makes unoptimized weapons with only say, 5kT yield very useful. Such "tiny" yields diminish the horror factor associated with using nukes. 5kT is way more "imaginable" - it's only 250 truckloads of TNT (single big rig load of 40,000 lbs).
In short, precision delivery makes low yield (cheap) bombs useful. That diminishes the restraint underpinning MAD.
PK is working on developing small tactical nukes to use against massed Indian armor, following...wait for it...NATO tactical first-use doctrine in the 1980s in Europe.
The odds that a nuclear weapon was used in combat in Yemen and it didn't make the mainstream news are so remote as to be laughable. This video is likely just a large conventional explosive misinterpreted as nuclear by people who think that "mushroom cloud" must mean "nuclear."
Another sign that this is BS is the fact that "bunker buster" and "neutron bomb" make no sense together. A neutron bomb is designed to decrease the explosive force while increasing the amount of radiation produced, with the idea that tank crews are easier to kill through radiation (which tank hulls don't protect against very well) than through blast (which tank hulls are great at protecting against). But radiation is a bad weapon against underground targets, where each foot of soil acts as shielding to reduce the amount of radiation by a factor of something like three. To destroy bunkers, you want blast, not radiation.
A mushroom cloud is an artifact of air convection produced by any sufficiently large blast. Peculiar to nuclear weapons is a bright initial flash of light (actually two flashes, but they're close enough together to be very hard to distinguish by eye). If this video depicted a nuclear initiation, such a flash would appear around 0:15, but none does.
Plus, how about terrorist groups or religiously/ otherwise extremist/ crazy governments? They might not even make rational considerations like these if they get hold of a nuke.
I grew up in Canada in the 80s and I remember being very afraid of the possibility of a nuclear war simply because it seemed like it was always about to happen. One thing could go wrong and suddenly we'd be in a nuclear war.
I think that's why "The Day After" scared so many of my friends (and myself). It just seemed like a horror film that could happen.
I always thought Canada would be a safer place in case of a nuclear exchange. I wonder whether there are any Canadian cities which are targeted by Russian nukes at all.
A counterpoint to consider while you're holding those black and white crayons: Germany started two world wars in the last century alone. Nuclear weapons are arguably acting to prevent a third.
And without nukes, that war probably would have devastated Germany yet again.
The argument that nuclear weapons have prevented large-scale wars seems to be sound. The years since 1945 have been remarkably peaceful.
My worry, though, is that it's hard to estimate the risk they add. If nukes prevent massive conventional wars and there's a zero chance of nuclear war, then hell yes, nukes are great, all praise Einstein and Fermi and Teller and Ulam. On the other hand, if nukes prevent massive conventional wars and there's a 0.5% chance per year of an all-out global thermonuclear war, then no way, we just bought a couple of hundred years of peace followed by the end of civilization.
The data from the 71 years that nuclear weapons have been around is consistent with both possibilities.... Actually, I'd argue it's more consistent with the second, given how close the world has come to global thermonuclear war on several occasions in that time.
True, and to some extent it's like any other form of gambling. The odds may not be that bad -- they may even be in your favor in the long run -- but the game ends the first time you go bust. So it's really, really important to keep that from happening by accident.
When I grew up in Germany in the 80s, there was a real sense that nuclear war could start any time. Unfortunately, we haven't used the short widow of opportunity after the cold war to get rid of all nuclear weapons. Now I wonder what, if anything, can happen to convince us as a species to get rid of them.