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The only people who win in a worldwide nuclear exchange are the immediate dead; everyone else loses. Why anyone in their right mind would even risk such a thing

The only people who win in a worldwide nuclear exchange are the immediate dead; everyone else loses. Why anyone in their right mind would even risk such a thing is beyond crazy. I also wonder what the benefit of doubling your nuclear capacity is if you already have enough to ensure worldwide destruction several times over?

dragonwriter 10y ago
The immediate dead obviously lose, too, even if by some metrics they lose less than others. That said, excess capacity has a plausible value if your threat model includes the potential of a surprise counterforce strike where you may not be able to identify the aggressor before the strike lands. In that case, excess capacity is essential to ensure that appropriate response caapcity survives any such strike. The fact that you have enough that, if it was all launched in an optimum distribution of targets to ensure maximum global distribution of damage it would kill the world multiple times over is irrelevant when you are planning for a threat model in which a substantial fraction of the capacity would be destroyed prior to launch.
dogma1138 10y ago
Depending on how large the exchange is; if only a few major metropolitan areas and some hardened military targets the world would be just fine. We've detonated close to 2500 nukes in testing; unless the US and Russia unleash their 20-30K arsenal all at once (the other powers are negligible at these amounts) there isn't going a massive global environmental effect. Infact even a fairly large depletion of the global nuclear arsenal is likely to produce little to no environmental global lasting effects. So unless your life is dependant on the real estate market in London, Berlin, Moscow, DC or NYC I think you just might want to live through a nuclear war unless you really are eager to die.
tlb 10y ago
Having more weapons is a more effective deterrent against an enemy who thinks he can destroy most of your weapons before launch. Suppose country A estimates it can destroy 90% of country B's weapons before launch in a first strike, and can spend $100B to get to 99%. It'd be highly motivated to do so. But if country B doubles its number of weapons, it would be beyond country A's resources to get to an acceptable level of destruction. That's one of many dynamics that causes arms races to go far beyond one weapon per target.

dragonwriter 10y ago

The immediate dead obviously lose, too, even if by some metrics they lose less than others. That said, excess capacity has a plausible value if your threat model includes the potential of a surprise counterforce strike where you may not be able to identify the aggressor before the strike lands. In that case, excess capacity is essential to ensure that appropriate response caapcity survives any such strike. The fact that you have enough that, if it was all launched in an optimum distribution of targets to ensure maximum global distribution of damage it would kill the world multiple times over is irrelevant when you are planning for a threat model in which a substantial fraction of the capacity would be destroyed prior to launch.

dogma1138 10y ago

Depending on how large the exchange is; if only a few major metropolitan areas and some hardened military targets the world would be just fine. We've detonated close to 2500 nukes in testing; unless the US and Russia unleash their 20-30K arsenal all at once (the other powers are negligible at these amounts) there isn't going a massive global environmental effect. Infact even a fairly large depletion of the global nuclear arsenal is likely to produce little to no environmental global lasting effects. So unless your life is dependant on the real estate market in London, Berlin, Moscow, DC or NYC I think you just might want to live through a nuclear war unless you really are eager to die.

tlb 10y ago

Having more weapons is a more effective deterrent against an enemy who thinks he can destroy most of your weapons before launch. Suppose country A estimates it can destroy 90% of country B's weapons before launch in a first strike, and can spend $100B to get to 99%. It'd be highly motivated to do so. But if country B doubles its number of weapons, it would be beyond country A's resources to get to an acceptable level of destruction. That's one of many dynamics that causes arms races to go far beyond one weapon per target.