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In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
- Moral_ 10y agoProtip for wired articles. Ctrl-save and read them offline to get around the stupid ad blocker popup
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- em3rgent0rdr 10y agothanks! Did the trick!
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- thomaskcr 10y agoI don't have an ad-blocker and didn't even notice there were ads until I read your comment. Why bother with the effort of denying them a little revenue when their ads aren't even intrusive at all?
- Synaesthesia 10y agoCrazy that the spectre of instant destruction still haunts us today.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI wonder if this will ever change now. As technology goes forward, we're creating a world in which an individual can gain more and more destructive power, and in which when something goes terribly wrong, it can wider and wider consequences. We're at global level now, and fast approaching extinction-level. Two areas to highlight the point: - High-energy anything. There's a saying that any propulsion system that could allow us to travel between planets in a reasonable (for human) timespan is also a weapon of mass destruction. And it's not just space travel - history of technology in general is about getting, storing and making use of bigger and bigger quantities of energy. - Self-replicating system. The best-known example of these is also known as "biology". Something we're only beginning to play with on a serious level. Mishaps, or worse - deliberate malicious actors by crazy individuals - could have planet-wide consequences as our ability to manipulate biological nanomachines grows. Sleep tight :). (Also, alt-text from https://xkcd.com/728/ https://xkcd.com/728/ - "Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in really cool ways.")
- 7952 10y agoOf course a lot of the risk comes from the trend for technology to operate at larger and larger scale to achieve efficiency. We could see a trend in the opposite direction where individual households and communities can be more self sufficient. For example, efficient small scale energy production could reduce the risk of nationl level grid disruption. That same biotech industry could enable local food production without needing to depend on complex infrastructure for evey meal.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI agree those may be desirable directions for development, but they don't change the overall dynamics - we expand our capabilities by dealing with more and more powerful, and thus dangerous, stuff. As individual demand for electricity increases with each appliance we incorporate in our lives, the household battery/generator of 2050 could very well be powerful enough to level a city block if weaponized. Even more likely, the same biotech industry that can enable local food production will enable creation of new, deadly pathogens. Humans, unfortunately, are very optimistic when it comes to workplace and household safety, while at the same time extremely resourceful when they need to make weapons out of mundane objects.
- pdkl95 10y agoExactly. We need to find ways to manage powerful technology socially, or we are going to have serious problems in the near future. Unfortunately, I'm not sure[1] our species can adapt fast enough. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThanks for linking to your old comment, it's pretty insightful. I agree that we seem to be accumulating technological advances faster than we're maturing as a civilization to handle them.
- douche 10y agoIf we ever achieve some form of reasonable, in-system spaceflight, then we are really going to have to start worrying about every crazy person with a spaceship bumping a smallish space rock into an impact orbit with earth. Or even just unfortunate accidents. But it wouldn't take much of an asteroid to burn down through the atmosphere and create a Tunguska-level impact. The most recent Expanse novel is an interesting take on how apocalyptic such an event could be http://amzn.to/2aD2AFl http://amzn.to/2aD2AFl
- tajen 10y agoI'm always wondering what PR is behind articles of journalists visiting nuclear silos. This one looks like a first-person account, so was a military allowed to write about his job? How comes he writes so well? He could have been a journalist... Also, was the piece read, checked and corrected by a commandant before being published? If so, which parts were left out? Why did they leave the part where he admits not dressing with the uniform, installing a hammoc, playing video games and so on? Last question, he describes his role as reading a console, decrypting and triggering a button at request, and at the same time saying human error is the most probable cause for a nuclear winter: Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message to another missile-launching machine? Couldn't both machines be wired up together? Sure it would allow hacking the launch of the missiles, but at the same time, if he receives the correct message, he's going to send them anyway...
- XorNot 10y agoBecause you can't account for all eventualities. He is presumably trained in other aspects of maintaining and operating the base. And probably more importantly: because presumably when given that order, he might know some context a machine doesn't and actually disobey.
- mcguire 10y agoFrom the bottom of the article: "John Noonan is a policy advisor and defense writer. He served as a Captain in the United States Air Force, assigned to the 321st Missile Squadron in Cheyenne, Wyoming."
- chrisseaton 10y ago> How comes he writes so well? Why does it surprise you that someone in the military can write so well? There's a great history of brilliant writers and poets coming from the military. Many people join the military before doing something else with their lives so you get a tremendous mix of talents and passions in units. I found that a surprising number of people turn out to be excellent sketchers and painters when working in the military, for example.
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- pluma 10y agoWhy do we still pretend nuclear weapons are necessary when the only military power that still reserves the right to use them in a first strike is also the only power to have forces deployed all over the world?
- varjag 10y agoRussia has dropped No First Use policy in 1993. Besides relying on a written statement from a potential adversary is silly. The capability is always there.
- ajdlinux 10y agoA good BBC Radio 4 program about the launch process for British nuclear weapons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1L6dCjhwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1L6dCjhwQ
- a_imho 10y agoHas this piece ever been addressed officially? https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/ https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/
- noenpnqnoen 10y ago> Peter Roberts, a former Royal Navy warfare officer who retired last year after 23 years’ service, said the report contained a number of basic factual errors, from McNeilly’s use of jargon to the safe diving level for submarines. > “Most of his claims about on board the submarines are factually incorrect and there’s a degree of sensationalism. For that reason I can’t place too much weight on it,” he said. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/fallon-urged-act-whistleblowers-claims-trident-nuclear-subs https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/fallon-urged...
- madengr 10y agoWhy does the author state MAD is obselete?
- avs733 10y agothere is an argument by some that the rise of suicide bombing as a weapon of war meaningfully changed the parameters of mutually assured destruction, because there are people entirely comfortable/supportive of their own destruction for a cause.
- merpnderp 10y agoThis outlook seems historically ignorant. In the midst of the very first use of nuclear weapons there were hundreds of suicide attacks in the form of kamikazee suicide runs by aircraft, ships, and soldiers. One of the likely reasons no terrorist group has tried too hard to obtain a nuclear weapon is they know whoever it is they fight for will be targeted for in kind retaliation. Aka MAD.
- sehugg 10y agoI don't know, since those silos were dug in an era when the idea of a winnable nuclear war (i.e. anti-MAD) was a less-radical position. This may just be more whistling past the hypothetical graveyard, which seems distressingly common these days.
- Someone 10y ago"The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal." So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was that those humans would not go through with real orders. If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting cases where the electronic parts of the system fail, that is clear indication that those in charge thought the humans in would sometimes deviate from the script.
- alttab 10y agoIn the age of the internet, having safe-guards from hacks and redundancies in place to ensure that messages are not misread seems like standard engineering IMO. AFAIK, every nuke that was ever launched was supposed to be launched, and we haven't had a single misfire, or lack of launch, that I'm aware of.
- Someone 10y agoI do not see how adding redundancy to such a tiny part of the command chain would help much. You would have to make all parts of the system redundant. For example, were the messages sent in duplicate via two separate channels? If not, Mallory (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_charac...) could send launch codes to a bunker, all persons on duty would verify it to be correct, and they would launch their IBCMs. The only thing this helps against is the single rogue soldier; that risk goes away, too, if you remove all soldiers from the chain.
- TaylorAlexander 10y agoPeople do all these extra checks that computers don't do though. Like, if it's a sunny Tuesday afternoon and all is well, when suddenly launch codes arrive, the humans are probably going to say "ummm... I don't remember nuclear war being on the agenda today. Lets get the commander to call the president." That may be in complete violation of the protocol, but it could be the right thing to do. Humans are more apt to see that something is amiss than computers are.
- drharby 10y agoAll my nuke buddies would bring monitors and gamecubes and have smash bros sessions inbetween working on their online masters