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Russia is largest country in Earth and Soviet Union + sattelites had even larger teritory. But Iran or North Korea? Do you really need 6400 nuclear warheads to
by chewz 7y ago
Russia is largest country in Earth and Soviet Union + sattelites had even larger teritory. But Iran or North Korea? Do you really need 6400 nuclear warheads to cover their teritory in response? Perhaps 1609 would be enough?
- leetcrew 7y agowhy do you think Iran and north Korea are the only countries that we need to deter from launching nukes?
- chewz 7y agoJust saying that you don't need 6400 to effectively obliterate large country or even few countries. Unless you plan a war against all.
- leetcrew 7y agoit's hard to say how many you need for a truly effective deterrent when you don't know how many launch sites can be destroyed before launch or how many missiles can be intercepted in flight. iran or nk almost certainly can't hit any US launch sites and probably can't intercept many missiles, but it's hard to know exactly what Russia or China would be capable of in a hypothetical conflict.
- chewz 7y agoSo you are going for 12 thousands and then some? :-)
- leetcrew 7y agoall I'm saying is there's no number where you can say with 100% certainty "we have enough missiles to meet our strategic goals". this doesn't mean you devote your entire production capacity to making nukes, but it makes it sort of silly for laymen to sit around talking about whether we have too many. we don't have enough information to make even a halfway-educated guess.
- Meph504 7y agoYou don't need that many, but you aren't accounting for several factors. Firstly, missle defense, depending on the target some area have about a 20% success rate for ICBMs. Secondly, secondary strike, if many of our sites are taken out by their misses, ground attack, or terrorist attack, we still need an arsenal that serves as a deterrent. Lastly, failure to launch, there maybe several missle crews that refuse the order, the soldiers on the button are trained and constantly studied to insure they will do their job. But when push comes to shove many people are unwilling to end the world as we know. In addition to that, some sites may not be able to authenticate the orders, communications maybe lost, or the missle may simple not fire. These are just a few scenarios that have to be accounted for, and when you do that, have a massive surplus only makes sense.