11 ms·

Nuclear weapons are utter madness to be "messing around" with, we need to dismantle all of them to make sure no accidents occur.

lolthishuman 5y ago
How would you know they’re all dismantled?
s5300 5y ago
Given the track history of near nuclear accidents, attempting to dismantle all of the existing ones may be statistically more likely to cause an accident, simply in the dismantling process. I'm still mind bogglingly confused at how badly the San Onofre nuclear power plant got butchered that I really think there was sabotage involved. It's hard to believe what happened to the place is all because of sheer stupidity.
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors do both leverage atomic nuclei, but they are pretty darn different. Dismantling nuclear weapons is unlikely to cause a radiological accident. Before nuclear detonation, nuclear weapons aren't all that radioactive. Nothing like post detonation. You probably know this, but nuclear reactors, despite how well known various incidents are, are still among the safest, cleanest, and lowest carbon ways to make electricity we know [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- Johnny555 5y ago
  Given the track history of near nuclear accidents, attempting to dismantle all of the existing ones may be statistically more likely to cause an accident, simply in the dismantling process. Nuclear weapons don't last forever and need to be dismantled/replaced at some point, so dismantling them all doesn't add additional risk as long as it's done over a long enough period that they would have needed to be replaced anyway.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > the San Onofre nuclear power plant got butchered Have you any link to a good summary? The Wikipedia is interesting but doesn’t make us sound as malicious/scandalous as you suggest.
- krisoft 5y ago
  “Dismantling the nukes” doesn’t necessarily mean to monkey with the physical package. You can just change the alert level of the nuclear forces. Instead of paying man and women to operate the silos at hair trigger, you can pay them to move the warheads to storage where they protect them. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition.
zsellera 5y ago
The risk of an accident is much lower than the risk of full-on wars w/o them. Nuclear weapons are the reason I can raise my children in a relative peace.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Are they? Maybe. What if it is like forest fire prevention? The dead timber accumulates, and thus when an uncontained fire breaks out, it is 1000s of times worse as a result. Fully managed forests, sometimes have controlled burns now, to prevent this. Are nukes like this? Maybe, for tension can build, and build, and then? Note: I don't know an alternative.
  - sonofhans 5y ago
    Damn, I wonder about this too. Not to defend nukes (and I know you're not defending them), but I find it hard to believe that the apparent progress enabled by them is sustainable in the long term. And by "progress" here I mean, (a) large countries can no longer engage in total war, and (b) smaller countries are getting their asses kicked in proxy wars (e.g., Korea, Vietnam, Iraq). Have we really left total war behind? Is it really, finally, to awful to contemplate? That would honestly be a huge step forward for humanity. It seems too good to trust. This isn't the terminal phase of history; 2,000 years from now this may be a blip.
    - chasd00 5y ago
      The problem with MAD is it requires perfect decision making or perfect luck with no graceful failure if things go wrong. From the Cuban Missile Crisis portion of Fog of War "Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us. I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today." https://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html https://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html
refurb 5y ago
Agreed. We should make murder illegal while we're at it.
nabla9 5y ago
Not any more mad than any other war. Wars are end of the world for everyone who dies. The idea that nuclear war are mad but lets keep normal wars seems really insane to me.
hackflip 5y ago
You first
- CyanBird 5y ago
  "OK" Said South Africa...
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    ...at the tail-end of the apartheid government's reign, just before handing over power to a majority government and possibly fearing retribution.
    - aerostable_slug 5y ago
      The fear wasn't retribution against the former government. The fear was what the ANC and its leadership (or whatever might follow, because nobody knew what was going to happen) might do with full access to the nuclear/chemical/bio programs RSA engaged in. Tribal dynamics are still a very real thing there, and it's not inconceivable that a leader might decide to slime those jerks across the way that have been rivals since well before colonists showed up.
      - sangnoir 5y ago
        The were very real concerns within the apartheid government about a racial civil war: not everyone in the government was convinced that ending apartheid was a great idea. You also have to remember why the apartheid government developed the nuclear/bio/chemical programs in the first place, and who they considered to be their enemies - looking at the range of the respective payload delivery platforms (or lack thereof) should give you a hint. > Tribal dynamics are still a very real thing there[...] ...and the apartheid intelligence apparatus fanned those flames of division to the bitter end, by supporting, and providing training for the IFP militia[1] to put the ANC on the back foot. > [...] it's not inconceivable that a leader might decide to slime those jerks across the way that have been rivals since well before colonists showed up. The apartheid government didn't consider black people to be citizens of South Africa, instead, they were regarded as citizens of balkanized Bantustans which were supposedly sovereign enclaves, divided by tribe, and forcibly moved (by the apartheid government). I have great difficulty believing the same apartheid government was motivated to denuclearize in order to avoid inter-tribal strife. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Marion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Marion

lolthishuman 5y ago

How would you know they’re all dismantled?

s5300 5y ago

Given the track history of near nuclear accidents, attempting to dismantle all of the existing ones may be statistically more likely to cause an accident, simply in the dismantling process. I'm still mind bogglingly confused at how badly the San Onofre nuclear power plant got butchered that I really think there was sabotage involved. It's hard to believe what happened to the place is all because of sheer stupidity.

acidburnNSA 5y ago
Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors do both leverage atomic nuclei, but they are pretty darn different. Dismantling nuclear weapons is unlikely to cause a radiological accident. Before nuclear detonation, nuclear weapons aren't all that radioactive. Nothing like post detonation. You probably know this, but nuclear reactors, despite how well known various incidents are, are still among the safest, cleanest, and lowest carbon ways to make electricity we know [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Johnny555 5y ago
Given the track history of near nuclear accidents, attempting to dismantle all of the existing ones may be statistically more likely to cause an accident, simply in the dismantling process. Nuclear weapons don't last forever and need to be dismantled/replaced at some point, so dismantling them all doesn't add additional risk as long as it's done over a long enough period that they would have needed to be replaced anyway.
lostlogin 5y ago
> the San Onofre nuclear power plant got butchered Have you any link to a good summary? The Wikipedia is interesting but doesn’t make us sound as malicious/scandalous as you suggest.
krisoft 5y ago
“Dismantling the nukes” doesn’t necessarily mean to monkey with the physical package. You can just change the alert level of the nuclear forces. Instead of paying man and women to operate the silos at hair trigger, you can pay them to move the warheads to storage where they protect them. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition.

zsellera 5y ago

The risk of an accident is much lower than the risk of full-on wars w/o them. Nuclear weapons are the reason I can raise my children in a relative peace.

bbarnett 5y ago
Are they? Maybe. What if it is like forest fire prevention? The dead timber accumulates, and thus when an uncontained fire breaks out, it is 1000s of times worse as a result. Fully managed forests, sometimes have controlled burns now, to prevent this. Are nukes like this? Maybe, for tension can build, and build, and then? Note: I don't know an alternative.
- sonofhans 5y ago
  Damn, I wonder about this too. Not to defend nukes (and I know you're not defending them), but I find it hard to believe that the apparent progress enabled by them is sustainable in the long term. And by "progress" here I mean, (a) large countries can no longer engage in total war, and (b) smaller countries are getting their asses kicked in proxy wars (e.g., Korea, Vietnam, Iraq). Have we really left total war behind? Is it really, finally, to awful to contemplate? That would honestly be a huge step forward for humanity. It seems too good to trust. This isn't the terminal phase of history; 2,000 years from now this may be a blip.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    The problem with MAD is it requires perfect decision making or perfect luck with no graceful failure if things go wrong. From the Cuban Missile Crisis portion of Fog of War "Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us. I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today." https://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html https://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html

refurb 5y ago

Agreed. We should make murder illegal while we're at it.

nabla9 5y ago

Not any more mad than any other war. Wars are end of the world for everyone who dies. The idea that nuclear war are mad but lets keep normal wars seems really insane to me.

hackflip 5y ago

You first

CyanBird 5y ago
"OK" Said South Africa...
- sangnoir 5y ago
  ...at the tail-end of the apartheid government's reign, just before handing over power to a majority government and possibly fearing retribution.
  - aerostable_slug 5y ago
    The fear wasn't retribution against the former government. The fear was what the ANC and its leadership (or whatever might follow, because nobody knew what was going to happen) might do with full access to the nuclear/chemical/bio programs RSA engaged in. Tribal dynamics are still a very real thing there, and it's not inconceivable that a leader might decide to slime those jerks across the way that have been rivals since well before colonists showed up.
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      The were very real concerns within the apartheid government about a racial civil war: not everyone in the government was convinced that ending apartheid was a great idea. You also have to remember why the apartheid government developed the nuclear/bio/chemical programs in the first place, and who they considered to be their enemies - looking at the range of the respective payload delivery platforms (or lack thereof) should give you a hint. > Tribal dynamics are still a very real thing there[...] ...and the apartheid intelligence apparatus fanned those flames of division to the bitter end, by supporting, and providing training for the IFP militia[1] to put the ANC on the back foot. > [...] it's not inconceivable that a leader might decide to slime those jerks across the way that have been rivals since well before colonists showed up. The apartheid government didn't consider black people to be citizens of South Africa, instead, they were regarded as citizens of balkanized Bantustans which were supposedly sovereign enclaves, divided by tribe, and forcibly moved (by the apartheid government). I have great difficulty believing the same apartheid government was motivated to denuclearize in order to avoid inter-tribal strife. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Marion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Marion