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But these devices always exist as one part of a wider technical and human system. It seems unwise to separate the two when safety could be comprised by a failu
by 7952 9y ago
But these devices always exist as one part of a wider technical and human system. It seems unwise to separate the two when safety could be comprised by a failure in any part of the system.
- hydrox24 9y agoPerhaps I am ignorant and don't know it, but the USSR collapsed, its nuclear arsenal was split, and nothing awful happened. Even during one of the most spectacular system-wide failures in modern history, a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons was largely kept safe and in tact.
- 7952 9y agoMaybe we just got lucky? I don't think 60 years of history is enough to draw conclusions about the systematic safety of nuclear weapons. Especially when so many facts are unavoidably restricted. It is easy to become prone to a sort of survivorship bias. But nuclear proliferation guarantees that we will have more and more opportunities to test that safety. It only needs to fail once to be catastrophic at which point your argument would seem a little flawed.