Cold War Kid here. This is cute. Y'all now just figuring out the nuclear apocalypse is only ever minutes away? I grew up with this shit being shoved in my face every single day. I was the generation where they stopped doing atomic bomb drills at school because we had thermonuclear warheads and there was no point - and they told us that!
Then they wonder why Gen X is so apathetic. Between Nixon and The Bomb how else did they expect us to turn out? It's a natural self-defense reaction.
And there was a bunch of primetime TV content about the nuclear apocalypse when a large part of Gen X was at an impressionable age.
"Threads" (UK), "The Day After" (US) are two big ones. Two lesser known ones that had a profound impact on me were "Special Bulletin" and an episode of the new Twilight Zone called "A Little Piece and Quiet"[1]
If you missed those (or had parents who wouldn't let you watch it), those only aired once or twice.
But the made-for-rental movies you could get to watch over the weekend, there must have been a dozen of those. I still remember the one where the space station astronauts that crashland after, and the cannibals "rescue" them within minutes of touchdown.
* By the way, there only ever was one Zathras, but he used the Great Machine to time travel so that he could work more than 24 hours per day. Or maybe someone used it on him, that part's unclear (I mean, why would he do that to himself?).
I realized that I am a cold war kid when I got repeated dreams of the final blast around 15 years ago. Tells you something about political environment you grow up with if you find your subconscious manufacturing final blast events...
Interesting how people who have been through acute hardship, meaning random and senseless death of their immediate community, are less apathetic. Ie your parents', my grandparents', generation. Something about the human animal does poorly with existential precarity but no actual hardship.
Though they made sure to tell us the music we listened to sucked! We weren't into all that Vietnam protest music the Boomers thought was great. No. We were the generation the anti-war Boomers sent to war after they'd seized the reins of power. Funny anecdote, I worked with a lady who's husband was all in for the Gulf War. She was like wait, you were protesting Vietnam - so you're for war when it's someone else going and against war when you're the one being sent? She divorced him! I always thought that was funny.
> I worked with a lady who's husband was all in for the Gulf War.
Gulf War I was about forcing an invader back from the independent nation he had decided to annex, and it enjoyed wide support from the international community. It also exposed a much smaller amount of American troops to potential harm than earlier American wars, and so sparked less domestic outrage. There is no reason to expect a person who protested the war in Vietnam to oppose that defense of Kuwait, unless they were part of that relatively small demographic opposed to all Western intervention in general. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a totally different story, and I have seen an increasing amount of online comments that erroneously conflate the two.
> Gulf War I was about forcing an invader back from the independent nation he had decided to annex
Yes, that was the story that was told. It's the same story being told now about the Ukraine war. But that's what it is - a story. The invasion is part of the story, but it's not the whole story and it's not the entirety of the reasons we went to war with Iraq and why we're currently aiding the Ukraine.
> And you are seriously suggesting that it is other people who are uninformed about these matters?
Not at all! Like I said, the common story has a kernel of truth, it's not an outright lie, but it's not the whole truth. Some people dig further, others have plenty enough other things going on in their lives to deal with digging deeper. The very same people dig at different rates at different times in their life. For example, I was a kid when Vietnam was going on. Didn't exactly dig deep into what we were doing there and what we were hoping to achieve. To be honest, I didn't dig too deep into the Gulf War or the Iraq War either - at least not at the time.
>Cold War Kid here. This is cute. Y'all now just figuring out the nuclear apocalypse is only ever minutes away? I grew up with this shit being shoved in my face every single day.
Yeah. This is definitely an 'everything old is new again' moment. Anyone remember the music video for Genesis' Land of Confusion and how that ended? Amazing how history rhymes! Here we are again with a dementia patient in the White House and everyone pretending that's OK somehow...
EDIT: To the people downvoting me, could you please explain the difference between Reagan having the nuclear football and Biden having the nuclear football to me rather than just mashing the downvote button? Thanks.
The two problems I spot are (1) You had to include an edit to your original comment to try and clarify what your original post was referring to (Reagan vs Biden) rather than just stating that and (2) the seemingly unnecessary "dementia patient" reference in the context of what you posted. FYI, my account is young so I am unable to downvote anything.
> could you please explain the difference between Reagan having the nuclear football and Biden having the nuclear football
Seeing as the protocol is for the President of the United States to have control over the nuclear arsenal, I don't think there is a difference. Are you suggesting that there is a difference? It is unclear your intention. Perhaps someone else will care to know what your discussion goal is here.
> Given the incalculable risks, one may wonder why nuclear arsenals still exist at all
Because everybody is thinking that "if we don't arm ourselves, our adversaries will, and therefore gain the upper hand". That there are risks involved doesn't count, as long as they don't prove to be real (i.e. actually happen). If they prove to be real then we'll have a moratorium of a few years until the default reasoning takes over again.
I'm sorry, but I don't think we are capable of breaking out of this "highway to hell".
I think it's worth gaming out a world without nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war.
It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation.
Not only that, surely by this point both sides would be dusting off plans to start construction once again. That immediately opens up the likelihood of preemptive strikes to prevent your opponent actually achieving a new nuclear weapon.
>>I think it's worth gaming out a world without nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war.
I'm not so sure - someone else might equally argue that if Ukraine had nuclear weapons it wouldn't have been attacked in the first place, so maybe that's the path that it should have taken.
And equally - "both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation."
Maybe. Or maybe it's posturing. I think EU's support for Ukraine is huge and populations of many countries still support sending them weapons and supplies, but if they had to send their men and women to die in Ukraine the discussion would be different. Not saying they wouldn't, just that it's easy to say "oh if only Russia didn't have nuclear weapons we'd definitely go and fight them". It's theoretical.
> It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation.
The only reason Russia is willing to engage in a direct conflict with Ukraine is their nuclear weapons make them feel secure that that won’t evolve into a direct conflict with NATO, which, without nuclear weapons, would be immediate ruin for Russia.
Nuclear weapons enable direct aggression by nuclear powers against anyone except other nuclear powers.
> It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation.
Without nuclear weapons, Russia would likely not have invaded in the first place, because a NATO intervention would have been likely and would have ended in the annihilation of the Russian military in just a few weeks.
I wrote a research paper on nuclear weapons back around 80.
The amount of nuclear weapons the US and especially the Soviet Union built was absolutely nutter loony Cocoa Puffs insane. Part of that was a disturbing fact that they are the cheapest way to kill people as long as you don't mind killing hapless schmucks indiscriminately. And you want to make sure you get them all. Flip side is enormous amounts of resources needed to create arsenals the size the US and the Soviets had.
Also, keep in mind we haven't had a massive casualty war like WW1 or WW2 in nearly 80 years. I believe M.A.D. and nuclear deterrent has a lot to do with that.
I think also because the launch a nuclear weapons is not a simple task. There is no big button on the desk. Furthermore, it is highly questionable, if antagonistic nations even have the capability to use their nuclear weapons. There is a school of thought that the nuclear weapons of countries, like Russia have deteriorated so much, that even launch one would be a considerable, and noticeable effort.
As for tactical nuclear weapons, I think we are still looking at a major hurdle to put that theater and launch.
>>There is a school of thought that the nuclear weapons of countries, like Russia have deteriorated so much, that even launch one would be a considerable, and noticeable effort.
I don't know why this keeps being repeated though - it sounds more like something people wish for rather than something than experts actually believe. The problem with Russian nuclear weapons is that as part of various treaties they had to let other countries, including US, inspect their facilities missiles and core storage, to make sure it's all in tip top condition and nuclear arms aren't being kept in an unsafe way and maybe getting stolen/sold off. So paradoxically we have made sure that Russian nuclear forces are probably the most well kept, inspected and funded out of all of Russian departments, because they had to allow international inspections regularly.
Foreign inspectors might warn the Russians about the risk of theft, accidents and so on. But would they warn them if they noticed that the weapons were degraded or nonfunctional, unbeknownst to the Russians?
No, and that's kind of hard to assess - but if they are inspecting facilities for maintainance of nuclear weapons and they appear to be in good order, then it would be weird for those facilities to not be actually used for their stated purpose of weapon maintenance. No one, not even the russians, is pouring billions into keeping those facilities operational and up to scratch and then not actually using them - I think it would be very unreasonable to assume so.
It is hard to assess, so this is just speculation, but I would guess that it is far easier to keep a facility in good working order, shining, nice and presentable when you don't actually use it but just pretend.
Also, the Soviet Union as well as Russia do have a culture of corruption, plan-fulfillment-only-on-paper, diversion of public funds and organized inefficiency on the job. E.g. from the current Ukraine-Russian war, there are reports (to be taken with a grain of salt of course, but there are dozens of confirmed, similar stories from Soviet times) of food shipments containing just canned water instead of canned meat/vegetables because somebody embezzled the money and shipped water to cover it up. I can't really decide either way: maybe all this is even easier, given the secrecy surrounding everything military and nuclear. Yet maybe it is harder, given the increased scrutiny around all things nuclear.
Wired literally has a quote from someone competent who says exactly what I said:
"Provided you make the effort to maintain warheads properly, though, they ought to work. “Russia has a robust nuclear capacity. They refurbish their warheads often,” says Amy Woolf, a US specialist in nuclear weapons policy. Schneider, too, is confident that Russia’s nukes are serviceable. It would be unwise to assume otherwise. "
I can't read the WSJ or NYT articles without subscription so I cannot comment on those.
I read somewhere that even a single small nuclear exchange between countries across the planet from us would cause a Nuclear Winter, which would kill much of the flora and fauna on Earth.
No, it wouldn't. Nuclear winter from a small-scale exchange was a simulation result many decades ago, to be disproven only a few years later by more advanced simulations and observation results from volcanoes, forest and oil fires. Larger exchanges will have a noticable effect, but how large is up for debate.
This is sensationalist nonsense, as evidenced by "just 100 warheads" without giving any yield or burst height. And if you read the Wikipedia article I've given you, the evidence points to the effects of any exchange in the 100MT range (which is far more than one would expect from e.g. India vs. China or UK vs. France) will be noticable, but far from catastrophic. At worst, it will cancel out global warming for a year or two.
Kyle Hill is a sensationalist? Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress are sensationalists? That is an accusation I have never ever heard sent Kyle’s way. Did you actually watch the video or read the article in the MIT press? Why should I believe you and not the authors at MIT?
> There is a school of thought that the nuclear weapons of countries, like Russia have deteriorated so much, that even launch one would be a considerable, and noticeable effort.
I would like to think that is true. I would hate to have to find out.
It's not just that, but also nuclear use would get more probable with less warheads before it gets impossible because there are none. Imagine there are only three nuclear warheads in the world, is the chance of their use higher or lower than when there are thousands between adversaries?
Ukraine gave up their nukes after ussr fell apart, with a territorial independence guarantees from russia... we all see how that ended for side that gave up nukes.
Haha. If I were Stanislav, I'd also find an excuse to not be the one pressing the button. Not saying this is the case or Stanislav didn't actually believed in his excuse though.
I tend to believe an accidental nuclear war having no political reason (just because some quirk happened or because some terrorists either stole a nuke or faked a nuclear attack of another nation to cause a retaliatory strike) is more likely to happen than intentional use of a nuclear weapon by any country.
The analogy that leaps to my mind is when militaries accidentally shot down airliners because they got confused and thought they were under attack. This has happened literally dozens of times [0], well into the modern era. If even superpowers can't help but murder hundreds of civilians due to glorified UX errors, what's stopping them from making the same mistakes with nuclear weapons? It's practically the same thing, on a different scale.
The analogy is a broad one: a stressed human operator thinks they are under attack; they have a tiny amount of unreliable information, and a short time window to make decisions; they have an opportunity to counter-attack, but a false negative means the opportunity is irreversibly lost (because the adversary's aircraft attacked their aircraft on the ground / because the adversary's ICBM destroyed their ICBM on the ground).
But how many of those resulted in some all-out war?
Any accident that looks anomalous, a single ICBM or SLBM, isn't likely to provoke an actual war with reasonable actors. The other side's just likely to then use the threat of war to extract truly painful concessions.
The "reasonable" thing still leaves out Russia, I suppose. But I have serious doubts they could even manage a nuclear strike at this point. How many missiles would make it out of the silos, how many bombs would detonate? The outskirts of Las Vegas have suffered worse than they could manage.
Yeah, you just keep believing that. According to various internet experts, Russia has run out of armored vehicles, out of rockets, out of drones, out of everything five or six times by now. Luckily for me, your military brass and political leadership don't take advice from the internet (since I am unlikely to get bombed if an all-out nuclear war starts, and don't care much for Mad Max-like existence).
Russia still acts rationally, but with poor assumptions (see Ukraine). If they were to actually launch a nuke at the West, for any reason, they would have to weight almost certain annihilation. One side of MAD still holds.
Even deliberate nuclear use might not trigger a nuclear response.
They've kept strategic ambiguity, but it's obvious that the US has developed a plan (or several plans) on how to react if Russia drops a nuke on Ukraine. And it seems clear that the US feels they can make Putin and Russia regret the use of nukes without using American nukes in response.
It's plausible that we could make them regret it. If the US simply entered the war on Ukraine's side, Russia's options are to wait patiently to be curb-stomped, or to escalate... and I don't think they could imagine that the US wouldn't retaliate disproportionately.
My country had shot an airliner of its own. It was an 'accident'. They shot down the plane which contained some of the best scientists and academicians of the nation, all whom have the vision of bringing nuclear power to our nation. This stuff were everywhere back in the day, from sabotaged national car companies to buried national plane prototypes. Our government was a puppet of US back then.
I wonder how many of those accidents are actually accidents.
IMO, this isn't the cold war anymore. Accident nuclear hysteria is premised on incomplete survivable nuclear triad that pressures launch on warning. Many aren't aware, US nuclear posture has been launch on confirmation since Clinton. Meaning triad survivable enough that more prudent to verify nuclear explosion before assured retaliation than risk of accidental MAD. Which is just as well. We're entering era of global strike especially among US adversaries - CONUS will be increasingly vunerable to conventional strikes. Nuclear use matrix is going to start factoring in risk of 50 icbms likely targetting refineries or carries in port vs nuclear decapitation strike, i.e the entire Petrov saga where it's pretty obvious US wasn't going to start nuclear war with preemptive 5 missile strike. Basically what every US adversaries already calculates on the recieving end of US power projection using short/medium range ordnances that could all be nuclear tipped.
If nuclear annihiliation does happen, then it will indeed be the ultimate prisoner's dilemma. In that case, it would have been better if humanity had never developed any physics or math. Even though physics and math has helped us solve some problems, it's not worth nuclear annihilation in my opinion.
This is not a true story. There was always a bit of a meme about Gandhi because "haha Gandhi and nukes" but he was no more likely to use them than any other AI. The "integer overflow bug" story was invented by apparently a random person decades later who stuck it in a wiki, and then via citogenesis it spread everywhere.
As the link odyssey7 cited (and which you obviously didn't read) states, there is no proof that any such bug ever existed, with Sid Meier himself denying it. odyssey7 was correct to described it as "rumored".
Complete and utter world annihilation from nukes has almost happened a number of times. Nuclear proliferation was one of humanity’s most disgusting and unconscionable mistakes.
If you aren’t familiar, look up Tsar Bomba on youtube and witness how terrifyingly destructive a 50
megaton warhead is. Then look up the abject cruelty that is the Neutron Bomb. Education on nuclear war and fallout is of the utmost importance, to get people around the world in the mindset of disarmament.
Tsar Bomba was a one off and has no relation to weapons of today. Look up what's on top of Tridents, it's mostly W-76 of various kinds, all below 100kt, which is about twice more powerful than Fat Man when you consider that effects scale very sublinearly vs yield.
There is practically no fallout from air bursts.
Nuclear warhead is a late WW2 strategic bombing raid in a 100kg package, delivered in a fraction of a second, and with no protection against it.
> If you aren’t familiar, look up Tsar Bomba on youtube and witness how terrifyingly destructive a 50 megaton warhead is
Tsar Bomba was a one-off experiment – and one designed for some level of psychological intimidation that you appear to have fallen for. No nuclear-armed country today maintains 50-megaton warheads for actual use against an adversary. Instead, planning involves use of a larger number of smaller warheads, and that is already enough to be worried about.
You dont have to kill everyone in nuclear strikes. Destroy every single powerplant, radio station and port in a single strike and watch them going back to dark ages in matter of minutes.
No electricity and no communications means mass chaos. every city becomes a unsustainable trap with no supplies.
It would be terrifying to be in a middle of that. A nation that would tear itself apart for self preservation while all supplies are somewhere far out, 'in a place where food comes from'.
Do they maintain weapons that would cause the same level of destruction when used in tandem? I am not familiar with modern arsenals. I guess I was just ruminating on what is possible, not what is practical that was my mistake.
If they are coming, it will take about 30mins. Far too quick for a headline to make the rounds.
What you might notice (depending on if your country thinks it useful) will be siren signals and radio/TV broadcasts. But I guess it is even too short a time for those, and you cannot do more than "move into the cellar" anyways.
Then they wonder why Gen X is so apathetic. Between Nixon and The Bomb how else did they expect us to turn out? It's a natural self-defense reaction.