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People don't seem to understand how close to the edge of disaster we still are. The message in movies like Threads and The Day After are quite relevant today, d
by throwaway12201 10y ago
People don't seem to understand how close to the edge of disaster we still are. The message in movies like Threads and The Day After are quite relevant today, despite how impossible they may seem. While an intentional war may be less likely today, the danger of an accidental one is just as real.
- finid 10y agoWith the US finding any way to tease Russia into attacking first, intentional war is just as likely now as an accidental one.
- yarrel 10y agoYour low opinion of Russia is showing.
- finid 10y agoActually because of the restraint Russia has been showing in the last few years, I hold their leadership in very high regard.
- int_19h 10y agoRussia was the first country in Europe to invade and annex a part of a neighboring country since, what, WW2? If that's restraint, I hesitate to ask what the lack of it would look like.
- jacquesm 10y agoTurkey, Cyprus.
- int_19h 10y agoTurkey didn't annex Northern Cyprus. Nor did Albania annex Kosovo, nor Russia itself annexed South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria before. It's the combination of invasion and annexation - effectively, waging war for a formally acknowledged territorial gain - that makes the situation in Crimea unique post WW2.
- jacquesm 10y agoWell, technically it was Greece that tried the annexation and Turkey does maintain a large military on Cyprus. But you're right, the Crimea is both in scale, scope and ambition on a different level.
- xnlvkYDNCXjJw 10y agoDidn't Russia annex Crimea? How are the sanctions not Russia's fault??
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoWhich restraint would that be?
- enraged_camel 10y agoIt's the opposite: they have shown an incredible amount of restraint in the face of overwhelming opposition and crippling sanctions from Europe and USA.
- dagenleg 10y agoWell, nobody wants to die in a Nuclear War.
- vkou 10y agoIt might surprise, and horrify you to know that a large number of high-ranking US staff think that nuclear war is winnable [1]. It makes my blood boil. [1] http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-war-becoming-thinkable/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-w...
- shrimp_emoji 10y agohttps://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4?t=47 https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4?t=47
- ekianjo 10y agodo your smoldering bones care about whoever wins ?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> a large number of high-ranking US staff think that nuclear war is winnable The article [1] cites two retired generals as its examples of "senior military officers" who "might be eager to get things started in the belief that a war with Russia could actually be winnable". [1] http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-war-becoming-thinkable/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-w...
- fallingfrog 10y agoThere's a reason the last official declaration of war by the us was ww2- and why the great powers never make hard and fast alliances with smaller states, or aid them too openly. And the reason is to avoid world war 3. Relations between countries are always in a big muddy middle ground between peace and war because they have to be.
- dba7dba 10y agoI truly believe the reason we have not had WW3 is because of nukes. It is one small frignge benefit.
- lurker456 10y agoIt's the reason we have not yet had WW3. The jury is out on whether that is a good thing. Perhaps we'll find one day that several smaller conflicts (as horrifying as a WW without nukes would be) would have been preferable to one larger civilization-ending one.
- BrandonMarc 10y agoSeveral smaller conflicts ... yep, sounds like the last 70 years of history since WWII. In a sense, we're in the middle of finding out. I agree the jury's out, but it's probably preferable to WWIII, or even a limited nuclear exchange.
- SubiculumCode 10y agoperhaps we live in a multiverse, and only the surviver you-s still exist because their universes have still avoided WWIII... ;-)
- tomjakubowski 10y ago> the great powers never make hard and fast alliances with smaller states, or aid them too openly. Really? US-Israel? US-Saudi? Russia-Syria? All examples of basically untouchable alliances with smaller states and blatant, public military aid. If I were better educated/informed I'm sure I could come up with more.
- cookiecaper 10y agoThe desire for positive relations with Russia is one of the reasons that Trump was elected. I'm not sure I'd characterize our government's behavior as "teasing Russia". The media is a different story.
- anovikov 10y agoThe scale of potential disaster is much lower now than then. We have many times fewer nukes, and counterforce is supposed to work a lot better for the attacking side leaving even less to be thrown on cities.
- throwaway12201 10y agoWhile our (and presumably Russia's) counterforce capability has improved, a lot of likely counterforce targets are still near major population centers. An all out counterforce exchange would result in tens of millions of civilian casualties. Such an event would probably end our way of life (speaking as an American).
- jacquesm 10y agoYes, but the present batch of leaders does not strike me as any more stable than those in the past.
- vkou 10y agoIt will only kill high tens of millions of people now, instead of hundreds! It's an improvement, but not much of one. Also, consider the aftermath of nuclear war. Consider how many people live in cities. Consider that cities are not at all equipped to survive without massive, and consistent shipments of food, water, and electricity.
- pmoriarty 10y agoWe'd be lucky if billions, not millions, of people didn't die in an all-out nuclear war between the US and Russia. It's still debatable whether any humans anywhere in the world would survive.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> It's still debatable whether any humans anywhere in the world would survive Is it?
- cookiecaper 10y agoUnrivaled global superpowers go out with a whimper, not a bang. If war comes to the U.S. in the near future, I fully believe that it will be due to internal issues.
- fritzw 10y agoThe possibility of preemptive nuclear strike is still looms. There is also the possibility that the person with their finger on the metaphorical button is not all there, and maybe shouldn't have that power. There is a movement to remove the ability for the president to call preemptive strikes. There is also a movement to remove ICBMs from the Triad. If enemies launch toward the US, an ICBM counter attack launch only allows a 6 minute window. (Assuming they targeted our ICBMs.) A side note: Military doesn't man the ICBMs. They are controlled by civilians. This is by design because the past administrations didn't trust the military to control ICBMs. The fear that they would use them without hesitation was too great. Nuclear attack subs would pick up the slack and don't require the 6 minute response window. This would greatly reduce the currently great risk of thermonuclear war we live under.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y agoOne of the issues is that destroying a nuclear submarine is an ambiguous operation with respect to nuclear war. Are you really going to launch nuclear missiles in response to a sub sinking? With land based ICBMs, it is unambiguously a nuclear attack and you would respond appropriately.
- Tuna-Fish 10y ago> There is also a movement to remove ICBMs from the Triad. If enemies launch toward the US, an ICBM counter attack launch only allows a 6 minute window. The existence of ICBMs has been increasingly questioned in most of the countries that have them, with France leading the pack having phased them out of service. You've described one of the reasons, but the more important one is that their future ability to deliver warheads is now suspect. The SDI project was largely a comedy, but one of it's sub-projects, Brilliant Pebbles [1] was quite successful. While the work on the project as whole was ended, it's subcomponents lived on, most importantly the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle [2], the interceptor of the Ground-Based Interceptor [3], which was developed from the KE interceptor of Brilliant Pebbles. During the 00's, advancements in computers and especially digital cameras have made what were previously the hardest parts of Brilliant Pebbles have become not only realistic to implement but also quite cheap. At this point, it is widely believed that if anyone were to manufacture the ~5000 required interceptors and loft them into low earth orbit, this would provide nearly 100% effective missile shield against any exoatmospheric ballistic missiles. The reason this was not previously considered debilitating to ICBMs was because of the limitations in available rocket launches, boosting all those interceptor satellites into orbit would have taken a very long time, during which you could either seek diplomatic solutions blocking their deployment, start deploying your own ASAT assets, or seek other solutions. Enter SpaceX. Not only will ITS be the largest rocket ever developed, but they are intended to be very rapidly reusable, and SpaceX intends to build multiple of them operating from different pads. If they work as advertised, when they become operational the prompt space launch capability will go up by a factor of 100. This is necessary if we intend to make humanity a multi-planetary species. It will, however, also mean that the Chinese Premier can go to sleep one night in a world where ballistic missiles still work, and wake up into one where one power has deployed a functional ABM shield. And if the other space launch operators intend to be able to compete with SpaceX in the market, they will have to build competing systems. This means that even the US is now looking into other ways to deliver warheads. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#Brilliant_Pebbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#B... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor
- erikpukinskis 10y agoPeople who understand how close to the edge of disaster we are don't seem to understand how far past the edge others already are, and have been for generations. Nuclear strike is only a relevant fear for people who live cushy lives exploiting those who already live in post-apocalyptic landscapes, often just down the street from them. Those who can afford to worry about imaginary disasters are clearly desensitized to current ones. Those who truly care about holocausts are already busy putting out fires. Those who only care about themselves are worrying about nuclear weapons.
- rumcajz 10y agoJust this week, one nuclear state is threatening another nuclear state that happens to border with two other nuclear states. Meanwhile, the nukes are on hair trigger everywhere. What can possibly go wrong? The really scary part, however, is that, obviously, nobody cares. There are no angry tweets, demonstrations, whatever. Politicians must feel like they can do whatever they want without anyone even noticing. On the positive note, there are UN negotiations of nuclear weapon ban going on. In theory, the ban could be approved as soon as this summer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-Weapon-Ban_treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-Weapon-Ban_treaty
- BrandonMarc 10y agoAh, global zero idea, right? Which is cool, if you believe world leaders can be trusted ... and, even if they can, that they'll trust each other. It doesn't help that the Saudis are just one large money-transfer away from having their own nukes (the check is probably already written, just waiting to be cashed, so to speak). The Iranians are closer, and Pakistan's been there for some time. So even if the "grown ups" (USA, Russia, China, India, UK, France, Israel) can be counted on to behave themselves, the upstarts less so. It's also an open question how well the new members of the club would be able to keep their own arsenal under lock and key. If the Middle East gets into a nuclear arms race, to protect themselves from each other, that's all the more opportunities for some enterprising jihadis. In one sense, the presence of nukes has made large-scale war more unlikely, and taking them off the table might have the opposite effect.
- matthewmcg 10y agoThis is the original context for "trust, but verify."[1] There is already a lot of infrastructure for monitoring the development and production of new nuclear weapons. As you suggest, tracking existing weapons is much harder and depends mostly on the cooperation of the club members. It wouldn't be easy, but it can be done. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=JQGHqScEFtoC&lpg=PP1&dq=hoffman%20the%20dead%20hand&pg=PA295#v=snippet&q=verify&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=JQGHqScEFtoC&lpg=PP1&dq=ho...
- rumcajz 10y ago