3 ms·

Use of nukes is punished with annihilation. That's the unwritten rule. Since it's unwritten, a lot of the fine print is unwritten too, like how soon and by wh

Use of nukes is punished with annihilation. That's the unwritten rule. Since it's unwritten, a lot of the fine print is unwritten too, like how soon and by what mechanism. Maybe, if you nuke your 150m radius it sets in motion a chain of events that five years later culminates in nuclear war. You have no way to know whether you would be opening the door to that. Since the loss is effectively infinite and the probability is finite, the expected value of this action is infinite and negative. People want certainty when it comes to nuclear weapons. The only way to get that is not to use them.

cloakandswagger 7y ago
It makes no sense why use of a small-scale nuclear weapon would somehow escalate to armageddon. It seems to hinge on the assumption that government leaders are completely irrational robots that, once a nuclear weapon of a size equivalent to a conventional bomb is used, take that as license to use nuclear weapons of any size. It's much more likely the "unwritten rule" you speak of would just shift, where nuclear weapons of a certain payload (probably equivalent to conventional weapons) would be acceptable for use. Government leaders, being acutely aware of MAD, would clearly communicate the new accepted boundaries and proceed from there.