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This general problem discussed in this article, a technological change affecting the perceived nuclear arsenal balance, is a reminder of the existential peril o

This general problem discussed in this article, a technological change affecting the perceived nuclear arsenal balance, is a reminder of the existential peril of nuclear weapons that we have seemingly forgotten since the fall of the Soviet Union. In some ways this peril has never been greater than it is today with unpredictable leaders of nuclear powers and ever-decreasing barriers to entry for nuclear weapons (e.g. North Korea). As Einstein said in 1955, when the existential threat was both new and real, “You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.” We are complacent at our species’ peril. How many intelligent civilizations in the universe have ended shortly after the dawning of their nuclear age? That’s one possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Thus far, humans have been unable to resist use of a technology to gain power and the abstention from use of nuclear power seems only as strong as the current world power structure, which will inevitably fail. There are no easy solutions to this problem but it’s one we must solve to survive. Perhaps we even need to change ourselves biologically, as a species. To engineer ourselves off the paleolithic savannah into one fit to survive in the modern world of nuclear powers and interconnection.

Retric 9y ago
Nuclear weapons are not currently a threat to the existence of the human species. Modern civilization might be at risk, but there are a lot of people spread across vast stretches of land and not enough nukes to kill them all. Granted they make it vastly easier to kill everyone in a city or even a small country, but people have done similar things for the last 10,000+ years.
- nerpderp83 9y ago
  A nuclear winter might be arguably better for the long term survival of the human species than an uncontrolled thermal runaway from global warming. Previous ELEs either ejected seeds-of-life into LEO or were Ice Ages, not hot ages. The oncoming arctic methane positive-feedback loop looks "interesting".
  - adrianN 9y ago
    I find it very unlikely that a total collapse of modern civilization in addition to poor, irradiated harvests due to nuclear winter is easier to survive than poor harvests and extreme weather while having access to modern technology.
    - nerpderp83 9y ago
      Survival is that of the Earth, not people. Nuclear winter could stop uncontrolled thermal runaway, which would have a worse outcome than nuclear war.
- portofcall 9y ago
  The truth is that we don’t know what the long term impacts of a total exchange would be. Theories range from extreme nuclear winter events, to just the fall of civilization. I sure won’t pretend to know where on that scale the reality is, and hope never to find out. Here is some food for thought though, about the potential for our civilization to fall; it will not rise again. We’ve accessed far too much petrochemical wealth and burned it, and the same is true of coal, and metal resources. We get around that by using our existing industry and technology to go deeper, refine more, and in general access resources which require advanced technology to exploit. There is nothing left which can be accessed by primatives, and so no way to claw back from such a reduced state. It will be many millions of years before those resources are reconstituted, far more years than the history of our species so far by orders of magnitude. This is our chance, and if we burn it away in nuclear fire, we are done. It probably won’t happen overnight, but the fall of our civilization is the fall of humanity. Let’s try to avoid that. The same goes for any cause of systematic civilization-wide collapse, we would be done. The reason we clawed back in the past is that we has only scratched the surface before, but we’ve fully plundered global resources now. It’s onward and upward, or lights out.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Coal is still easy to access in many areas even with just hand tools and can be converted to liquid fuel or used directly for ships / trains. Hydropower and wind power are both easy to access and can scale up to cover modern needs even without coal. Metal resources are a complex issue. They are arguably much easier to access now as people can just mine old city's.
    - portofcall 9y ago
      Coal in the quantities needed to rebuild a shattered civilization are not easily accessed unless you’re thinking of existing mines (which without maintenance would be inaccessible before we were done desperately trying to stay alive as a species). Hydropower and wind power both require advanced industry to work at any useful scale beyond the individual, and there would be no industry. Mind you, I’m ignoring the loss of knowledge, and just how people would remember to do these things, and I’m assuming a “best case” nuclear apocalypse. I’d prefer that our fate as a species not rely on begging the question of industry and technology.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Nuclear weapons are not currently a threat to the existence of the human species. Modern civilization might be at risk. Frankly, on almost all metrics meaningful to us today, those are nearly equivalent. If a nuclear exchange causes modern technological society to collapse, then sure - the humanity will likely rebound. After couple thousand to couple million years, which is what it'll take for Earth to regenerate enough of the easily accessible, high-density energy sources to allow for the new industrial revolution. If we want life for people to keep getting better, it's crucial to ensure our deeply interconnected, global technological civilization doesn't collapse. And that civilization is much, much more fragile than survival of our species in general.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- adrianN 9y ago
  I'm not convinced modern civilization could recover from a total collapse.
  - amdavidson 9y ago
    I suppose that's what makes it "total".
jjxw 9y ago
Command and Control by Eric Schlosser covers many close call nuclear incidents that the US military has had since WWII. The incident which has been seared into my memory is one where an aircraft carrying a nuclear bomb flying over the east coast of the US had a critical engine failure which resulted in the crew bailing out. After the crew bailed out, an object in the cockpit inadvertently armed and dropped the bomb as the aircraft disintegrated. The only thing that prevented the eastern seaboard of the US (including Washington DC and New York City) from being irradiated with fallout was a failsafe switch which prevented a circuit from being completed in the bomb. It is a wonder that we (still) haven't blown ourselves up yet.
- dboreham 9y ago
  The more horrifying truth from that book is that time and again, for decades, the military actively blocked the implementation of safety measures. They were concerned about the small increase in chance that a bomb would fail to detonate when intended.
- thansz 9y ago
  I completely agree that it is amazing we have not blown ourselves up yet. Unfortunately, the risk of a nuclear exchange is only rising... stress of climate change + 7 billion people + human nature == war (very possibly nuclear) Nuclear weapons have proliferated from just the US having access, then to only a few super powers, to now 8 or 9 countries. That list will only go up over time, not down. The weaponization of nuclear technology is the first time our species created something that is outright able to kill us all (or most of us). Couple that with the disturbingly long list of near nuclear accidents publicly made available (who knows what the actual number is): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls In the short period of time we have had access to nuclear weapons, we have come very close to nuclear war between superpowers: * Cuban Missile Crisis - Vasili Arkhipov prevents launching of nuclear torpedo while his Soviet submarine flotilla is being bombarded by depth charges (happened to be signaling depth charges). Turns out the US warships above them just wanted the submarines to surface so they could communicate the end of hostilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov * Computer Malfunction - Stanislav Petrov holds off alerting officials of multiple incoming nuclear ICBMs because he "suspected" they were a glitch, preventing a likely nuclear counter-attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov * Science experiment looks like nuclear attack - Boris Yeltsin correctly decides to wait launching a counter-attack based on an incoming rocket. All the while sitting in front of an activated nuclear briefcase and being pressured by aids to launch within the 12 minute response window. The rocket was meant for atmospheric testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident * Many, many more... (your example just being one) Now throw in the ramifications of climate change like political instability, infrastructure strain, resource scarcity, and refugee migrations into the mix. Things do not look good for the human race.
username223 9y ago
> a reminder of the existential peril of nuclear weapons Yeah, this was a real walk down memory lane. I haven't read an article discussing the strategy of all-out nuclear war since the fall of the Soviet Union. The idea of the US launching a preemptive strike against the USSR's... er, I mean Russia's siloed ballistic missiles and command structure is absurd and terrifying. Trading nukes with North Korea would be bad enough, but at least they don't have hundreds of sub-launched missiles carrying MIRVs. Maybe it's time to watch "Dr. Strangelove" again.

Retric 9y ago

Nuclear weapons are not currently a threat to the existence of the human species. Modern civilization might be at risk, but there are a lot of people spread across vast stretches of land and not enough nukes to kill them all. Granted they make it vastly easier to kill everyone in a city or even a small country, but people have done similar things for the last 10,000+ years.

nerpderp83 9y ago
A nuclear winter might be arguably better for the long term survival of the human species than an uncontrolled thermal runaway from global warming. Previous ELEs either ejected seeds-of-life into LEO or were Ice Ages, not hot ages. The oncoming arctic methane positive-feedback loop looks "interesting".
- adrianN 9y ago
  I find it very unlikely that a total collapse of modern civilization in addition to poor, irradiated harvests due to nuclear winter is easier to survive than poor harvests and extreme weather while having access to modern technology.
  - nerpderp83 9y ago
    Survival is that of the Earth, not people. Nuclear winter could stop uncontrolled thermal runaway, which would have a worse outcome than nuclear war.
portofcall 9y ago
The truth is that we don’t know what the long term impacts of a total exchange would be. Theories range from extreme nuclear winter events, to just the fall of civilization. I sure won’t pretend to know where on that scale the reality is, and hope never to find out. Here is some food for thought though, about the potential for our civilization to fall; it will not rise again. We’ve accessed far too much petrochemical wealth and burned it, and the same is true of coal, and metal resources. We get around that by using our existing industry and technology to go deeper, refine more, and in general access resources which require advanced technology to exploit. There is nothing left which can be accessed by primatives, and so no way to claw back from such a reduced state. It will be many millions of years before those resources are reconstituted, far more years than the history of our species so far by orders of magnitude. This is our chance, and if we burn it away in nuclear fire, we are done. It probably won’t happen overnight, but the fall of our civilization is the fall of humanity. Let’s try to avoid that. The same goes for any cause of systematic civilization-wide collapse, we would be done. The reason we clawed back in the past is that we has only scratched the surface before, but we’ve fully plundered global resources now. It’s onward and upward, or lights out.
- Retric 9y ago
  Coal is still easy to access in many areas even with just hand tools and can be converted to liquid fuel or used directly for ships / trains. Hydropower and wind power are both easy to access and can scale up to cover modern needs even without coal. Metal resources are a complex issue. They are arguably much easier to access now as people can just mine old city's.
  - portofcall 9y ago
    Coal in the quantities needed to rebuild a shattered civilization are not easily accessed unless you’re thinking of existing mines (which without maintenance would be inaccessible before we were done desperately trying to stay alive as a species). Hydropower and wind power both require advanced industry to work at any useful scale beyond the individual, and there would be no industry. Mind you, I’m ignoring the loss of knowledge, and just how people would remember to do these things, and I’m assuming a “best case” nuclear apocalypse. I’d prefer that our fate as a species not rely on begging the question of industry and technology.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Nuclear weapons are not currently a threat to the existence of the human species. Modern civilization might be at risk. Frankly, on almost all metrics meaningful to us today, those are nearly equivalent. If a nuclear exchange causes modern technological society to collapse, then sure - the humanity will likely rebound. After couple thousand to couple million years, which is what it'll take for Earth to regenerate enough of the easily accessible, high-density energy sources to allow for the new industrial revolution. If we want life for people to keep getting better, it's crucial to ensure our deeply interconnected, global technological civilization doesn't collapse. And that civilization is much, much more fragile than survival of our species in general.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
adrianN 9y ago
I'm not convinced modern civilization could recover from a total collapse.
- amdavidson 9y ago
  I suppose that's what makes it "total".

jjxw 9y ago

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser covers many close call nuclear incidents that the US military has had since WWII. The incident which has been seared into my memory is one where an aircraft carrying a nuclear bomb flying over the east coast of the US had a critical engine failure which resulted in the crew bailing out. After the crew bailed out, an object in the cockpit inadvertently armed and dropped the bomb as the aircraft disintegrated. The only thing that prevented the eastern seaboard of the US (including Washington DC and New York City) from being irradiated with fallout was a failsafe switch which prevented a circuit from being completed in the bomb. It is a wonder that we (still) haven't blown ourselves up yet.

dboreham 9y ago
The more horrifying truth from that book is that time and again, for decades, the military actively blocked the implementation of safety measures. They were concerned about the small increase in chance that a bomb would fail to detonate when intended.
thansz 9y ago
I completely agree that it is amazing we have not blown ourselves up yet. Unfortunately, the risk of a nuclear exchange is only rising... stress of climate change + 7 billion people + human nature == war (very possibly nuclear) Nuclear weapons have proliferated from just the US having access, then to only a few super powers, to now 8 or 9 countries. That list will only go up over time, not down. The weaponization of nuclear technology is the first time our species created something that is outright able to kill us all (or most of us). Couple that with the disturbingly long list of near nuclear accidents publicly made available (who knows what the actual number is): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls In the short period of time we have had access to nuclear weapons, we have come very close to nuclear war between superpowers: * Cuban Missile Crisis - Vasili Arkhipov prevents launching of nuclear torpedo while his Soviet submarine flotilla is being bombarded by depth charges (happened to be signaling depth charges). Turns out the US warships above them just wanted the submarines to surface so they could communicate the end of hostilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov * Computer Malfunction - Stanislav Petrov holds off alerting officials of multiple incoming nuclear ICBMs because he "suspected" they were a glitch, preventing a likely nuclear counter-attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov * Science experiment looks like nuclear attack - Boris Yeltsin correctly decides to wait launching a counter-attack based on an incoming rocket. All the while sitting in front of an activated nuclear briefcase and being pressured by aids to launch within the 12 minute response window. The rocket was meant for atmospheric testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident * Many, many more... (your example just being one) Now throw in the ramifications of climate change like political instability, infrastructure strain, resource scarcity, and refugee migrations into the mix. Things do not look good for the human race.

username223 9y ago

> a reminder of the existential peril of nuclear weapons Yeah, this was a real walk down memory lane. I haven't read an article discussing the strategy of all-out nuclear war since the fall of the Soviet Union. The idea of the US launching a preemptive strike against the USSR's... er, I mean Russia's siloed ballistic missiles and command structure is absurd and terrifying. Trading nukes with North Korea would be bad enough, but at least they don't have hundreds of sub-launched missiles carrying MIRVs. Maybe it's time to watch "Dr. Strangelove" again.