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That's not how these systems work, at least in the US and Russia. "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" by Daniel Ellsberg (who was invol
by stephen_g 8y ago
That's not how these systems work, at least in the US and Russia. "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" by Daniel Ellsberg (who was involved in war planning before he leaked the Pentagon Papers) has some fascinating and scary info about this.
Apparently there are backup systems in both countries that will fire nuclear weapons automatically (!) at predefined targets if certain cities are hit with nuclear attacks - e.g. Washington, Moscow, etc.
That's why deterrence is effective - because any strike can automatically lead to hundreds of millions of people dying (and, if the modelling of nuclear winter is correct, potentially pretty much all large mammals within a few years)...
- everdev 8y agoThe point is more about even countries with a minimal nuclear arsenal being in relatively equal military footing as the countries with large arsenals because no country seems willing to risk losing one of their major cities to nuclear attack. So, threatening 100 cities is about the same as threatening 1 - no one will attack you.
- Retra 8y agoThat's pretty much the main reason north Korea hasn't been attacked since the Korean War: even without nuclear weapons, nobody wants to risk war when Seoul is all but guaranteed to be leveled.