7 ms·

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
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      Sure, but when the alternative to rationality is hope -- as in, disarm and hope that everyone else follows and doesn't lie despite having every incentive to take advantage -- rationality starts looking pretty good by comparison. I'm all for arms reduction that maintains strategic deterrence. Everyone knows that MAD is, well, mad -- but the real question is whether it is more or less mad than the alternatives, and the leading alternative is to trust a bunch of sovereign nations to act together against their best interest, and that's even more mad than MAD.
    - LorenPechtel 5y ago
      There's also the launch from Norway. Russia detected something rising off the coast of Norway. The performance looked like an older US SLBM. It was heading towards Russia and north--not towards anything important but a viable trajectory for an EMP decapitation attack. What it really showed is how poor their systems were. The bird was real. It really was an older US SLBM--repurposed as a scientific launcher. It was launched from an island off the coast of Norway--but the Russian systems weren't good enough to figure that out. They also weren't good enough to figure out it was really heading mostly north, basically following the coast. And their bureaucracy had lost the launch notification, probably related to the fact that it didn't have a time on it. The bird was prepped (a good reason to use a solid rocket, it can sit there on the pad for a long time) awaiting the conditions it was meant to study.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Yes they are. It’s not like brush accumulation. With technology open war became more and more destructive until it passed the threshold of there no longer being a point. Two modern nation states can easily entirely reduce each other to ash in a few hours, and not before the other side can do the same. Precision weapons also make nukes unnecessary in large ways. It’s not about tension, big wars are pointless suicide pacts. The big world wars were about nations feeling powerful with new technology and wanting to build on that power, that’s not the case anymore. No nuclear powers are going to think they’re better off after a war. There’s not tension building to explosion, war is obsolete between technologically advanced states. Proxy wars, civil wars, and border skirmishes are all that is left or will be until there is a major technological change that changes the cost/benefit of war.
  - anonymousDan 5y ago
    The weakness in your argument is you assume both sides are rational actors. All it needs is one dictatorial lunatic in charge who doesn't care about the people for MAD to ensue.
    - patagurbon 5y ago
      While I could see this happening in a smaller state, the big 5 states likely have pretty good institutions built around nuclear weapons. Accidents might happen, but I doubt a single lunatic in those places + India and Israel could do much actual button pressing. Now Pakistan perhaps less so, but apparently the US believes it's at least secure. North Korea definitely less so, but their capabilities are comparatively very limited
    - AlexAndScripts 5y ago
      And that's why NK is so worrying: Not because their technology is any good, but because it only has to work once, and they might actually try it.
      - wahern 5y ago
        North Korea built a nuclear weapon because they're acting rationally. Nuclear weapons provide them legitimacy and bargaining power, both domestically and internationally. It's the same reason Iran wants a nuclear deterrent, or anybody else for the matter, like the U.S., China, or Russia. When you have the bomb, other powers tend to tiptoe around you--see, e.g., how Pakistan sabotaged US interests in Afghanistan with no discernible repercussions. The real threat from North Korean nuclear weapons (other than empowering North Korea geopolitically) is in proliferation. And that's probably one (albeit minor) reason everybody tends to look away when they skirt the embargo.
- krisoft 5y ago
  I don’t really understand your forest fire analogy. One slightly paradoxical thing with nukes is that anti-ICBM systems makes us less safe by making the strategic landscape less stable. If a hypothetical world power trusts their “shield” then they are incentivised to strike their enemies nuclear forces in the hopes that they destroy enough enemy missiles that even if they launch them all they can be reliably soaked up by the “shield”. And it in turn incentivises the other party to strike first or risk loosing their nuclear arsenal. That sucks. On the other hand having a survivable second strike capability can act as a stabilizing force. Those countries who believe they have this know that their enemy knows that even if they sucker punch them they will suffer. That’s the “assured” part of the MAD doctrine. So it is not really the number of nukes which makes things more or less stable but other factors. If you are interested in these questions, and want to listen to much better analysis than what I have presented here I can warmly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    You mean like Reagan's "Peace Shield"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1C75RVHDMY&ab_channel=DonRinge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1C75RVHDMY&ab_channel=DonRi... https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-ca-1276-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-ca-1276-s... >‘STAR WARS’ BACKERS TO AIR TV AD >BY JAY SHARBUTT, NOV. 2, 1985 12 AM PT, TIMES STAFF WRITER >Last May, a scientists’ group took to TV in Washington to oppose the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” proposal for a space-based missile defense system. Now, a group supporting the Strategic Defense Initiative, as the concept is formally known, will make its case as did the scientists--with a TV commercial. >The two opposing sides are the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Coalition for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The former contends that a space-based missile defense system can’t be perfected, would militarize space and increase the possibility of nuclear war. The latter argues that such a system would work and prevent nuclear war. >Although light years apart in their beliefs, the two organizations have one thing in common: Their 30-second commercials each use the powerful emotional appeal of a child facing a nuclear holocaust. [...] >Its commercial, which had a local TV test run in Washington on Oct. 12, opens with a child’s stick-figure crayon drawing of a family and a house, with a large sun shining above. >A little girl is heard saying that she had “asked my Daddy what this ‘Star Wars’ stuff is all about. He said that right now we can’t protect ourselves from nuclear weapons and that’s why the President wants to build a peace shield. >“It would stop missiles in outer space so they couldn’t hit our house. Then nobody could win a war . . . and if nobody could win a war, there’s no reason to start one.” >As she speaks, a dome is drawn over the house and family. Incoming missiles strike the shield and are destroyed. The dome turns into a rainbow. Frowning faces become smiles, and the girl concludes with: “My daddy’s smart. Support the peace shield.” [...] >He says the coalition’s ad has three aims--the first a contention that a defense-in-space system is feasible right now. Another is to drum up public support for congressional backing of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or the “peace shield” as he calls it. >The group also wants to air its ad, he says, “to offset the anti-SDI propaganda, such as has come from the Union of Concerned Scientists with their 30-second thing, which says what SDI is about is blowing up little children.” >He referred to the union’s TV effort last May. That $10,000 commercial showed a little boy watching the night sky, singing a snatch of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Suddenly, a star explodes like a nuclear blast and an announcer says: “Heavens are for wonder, not for wars. Stop ‘Star Wars.’ ” [...]
baq 5y ago
do you know how many of them are unaccounted for? i don't except that this number is greater than 0. i hope the cia and the kgb know.
- sho 5y ago
  > do you know how many of them are unaccounted for? Nuclear weapons have incredibly tight tolerances to be or remain viable, those tolerances degrade over time, so they require frequent maintenance in order to stay usable. Many have been "lost" over the last 70 years, sure, but few if any of them would actually still function without state-level expertise in maintaining them - the kind of capability which could just make new ones anyway. Sure, they could still be used as fodder for "dirty bombs" but so could a lot of things and it's much less of a concern.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    How confident are you about that? I don’t know much about fusion, plutonium implosion was hard back then but I don’t know if becomes easier with modern electronics or not, and I though gun-type uranium is straightforward once you have the enriched uranium?
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    They wouldn't make decent dirty bombs. The stuff in the bomb is only going to hurt you if you inhale it--and it's heavy enough that it's going to be very hard to inhale. Dirty bombs basically just make a mess, they are not a realistic threat.
vagrantJin 5y ago
> Nuclear weapons are the reason I can raise my children in a relative peace. You can raise your children in relative peace because the social contract still holds. The fact that a neighbour you don't like hasn't walked into your house and shot everyone to death, has nothing to do with your goverment/military stockpiling nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons need to be dismantled or stored in neutral territory in case we encounter belligerent aliens.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Social contract didn't magically materialize in the West in 1950s. People have warred since forever, and still do, regardless of the ways they run their societies. But nuclear weapons are the reason major military powers don't go all-in against each other today. Let's also not forget that social contract survives because of a legal system and people enforcing it with power overwhelming any individual trying to violate it. On an international stage, there's no such top-down enforcement (all nations are sovereign) - there's only mutual policing, and nuclear weapons are the overwhelming power.
  - vagrantJin 5y ago
    > Let's also not forget that social contract survives because of a legal system and people enforcing it with power overwhelming any individual trying to violate it My god, what an arrogant statement. Your faith in overwhelming force is misguided. The social contract holds because an individual makes a choice to choose peace. That is all the law can do - give us options of consequence. The law can't stop anyone from slaughtering their neighbours or running a bus through a full schoolyard. Thats why despite the US being one of the best armed and equipped police states - school shootings, which are unheard of in most countries - have continued to exist and continue to be perpetrated by teenagers. Overwhelming force is not the answer. Individual responsibility is.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > The social contract holds because an individual makes a choice to choose peace. No, that's not all. The crucial missing ingredient here is the individual being able to assume others will make a peaceful choice too. The law offers incentives and disincentives that very strongly promote making peaceful choices - and it's because of that everyone gets to hold the belief that almost everyone else will be mostly peaceful. (By "everyone" I of course mean "strangers" - laws and governments are not needed when communities are small and everyone personally knows everyone else. It's the scaling up that made formal governance necessary.) > That is all the law can do - give us options of consequence. Yes. The "consequence" part comes from the law being backed by a system of enforcement that wields overwhelming force. > The law can't stop anyone from slaughtering their neighbours or running a bus through a full schoolyard. It can't stop anyone who's bent on it, but it is an effective deterrent, and this is why, in fact, it does significantly reduce occurrence of such events in the population. > Overwhelming force is not the answer. Individual responsibility is. Individual responsibility is a measure of how good you are at following incentive structures in your environment for longer-term benefit. It neither creates nor maintains those incentive structures.
xornox 5y ago
Let’s see how safe children will be when Isis or Taleban gets nuclear weapons…

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
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Sure, but when the alternative to rationality is hope -- as in, disarm and hope that everyone else follows and doesn't lie despite having every incentive to take advantage -- rationality starts looking pretty good by comparison. I'm all for arms reduction that maintains strategic deterrence. Everyone knows that MAD is, well, mad -- but the real question is whether it is more or less mad than the alternatives, and the leading alternative is to trust a bunch of sovereign nations to act together against their best interest, and that's even more mad than MAD.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    There's also the launch from Norway. Russia detected something rising off the coast of Norway. The performance looked like an older US SLBM. It was heading towards Russia and north--not towards anything important but a viable trajectory for an EMP decapitation attack. What it really showed is how poor their systems were. The bird was real. It really was an older US SLBM--repurposed as a scientific launcher. It was launched from an island off the coast of Norway--but the Russian systems weren't good enough to figure that out. They also weren't good enough to figure out it was really heading mostly north, basically following the coast. And their bureaucracy had lost the launch notification, probably related to the fact that it didn't have a time on it. The bird was prepped (a good reason to use a solid rocket, it can sit there on the pad for a long time) awaiting the conditions it was meant to study.
colechristensen 5y ago
Yes they are. It’s not like brush accumulation. With technology open war became more and more destructive until it passed the threshold of there no longer being a point. Two modern nation states can easily entirely reduce each other to ash in a few hours, and not before the other side can do the same. Precision weapons also make nukes unnecessary in large ways. It’s not about tension, big wars are pointless suicide pacts. The big world wars were about nations feeling powerful with new technology and wanting to build on that power, that’s not the case anymore. No nuclear powers are going to think they’re better off after a war. There’s not tension building to explosion, war is obsolete between technologically advanced states. Proxy wars, civil wars, and border skirmishes are all that is left or will be until there is a major technological change that changes the cost/benefit of war.
- anonymousDan 5y ago
  The weakness in your argument is you assume both sides are rational actors. All it needs is one dictatorial lunatic in charge who doesn't care about the people for MAD to ensue.
  - patagurbon 5y ago
    While I could see this happening in a smaller state, the big 5 states likely have pretty good institutions built around nuclear weapons. Accidents might happen, but I doubt a single lunatic in those places + India and Israel could do much actual button pressing. Now Pakistan perhaps less so, but apparently the US believes it's at least secure. North Korea definitely less so, but their capabilities are comparatively very limited
  - AlexAndScripts 5y ago
    And that's why NK is so worrying: Not because their technology is any good, but because it only has to work once, and they might actually try it.
    - wahern 5y ago
      North Korea built a nuclear weapon because they're acting rationally. Nuclear weapons provide them legitimacy and bargaining power, both domestically and internationally. It's the same reason Iran wants a nuclear deterrent, or anybody else for the matter, like the U.S., China, or Russia. When you have the bomb, other powers tend to tiptoe around you--see, e.g., how Pakistan sabotaged US interests in Afghanistan with no discernible repercussions. The real threat from North Korean nuclear weapons (other than empowering North Korea geopolitically) is in proliferation. And that's probably one (albeit minor) reason everybody tends to look away when they skirt the embargo.
krisoft 5y ago
I don’t really understand your forest fire analogy. One slightly paradoxical thing with nukes is that anti-ICBM systems makes us less safe by making the strategic landscape less stable. If a hypothetical world power trusts their “shield” then they are incentivised to strike their enemies nuclear forces in the hopes that they destroy enough enemy missiles that even if they launch them all they can be reliably soaked up by the “shield”. And it in turn incentivises the other party to strike first or risk loosing their nuclear arsenal. That sucks. On the other hand having a survivable second strike capability can act as a stabilizing force. Those countries who believe they have this know that their enemy knows that even if they sucker punch them they will suffer. That’s the “assured” part of the MAD doctrine. So it is not really the number of nukes which makes things more or less stable but other factors. If you are interested in these questions, and want to listen to much better analysis than what I have presented here I can warmly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  You mean like Reagan's "Peace Shield"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1C75RVHDMY&ab_channel=DonRinge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1C75RVHDMY&ab_channel=DonRi... https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-ca-1276-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-ca-1276-s... >‘STAR WARS’ BACKERS TO AIR TV AD >BY JAY SHARBUTT, NOV. 2, 1985 12 AM PT, TIMES STAFF WRITER >Last May, a scientists’ group took to TV in Washington to oppose the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” proposal for a space-based missile defense system. Now, a group supporting the Strategic Defense Initiative, as the concept is formally known, will make its case as did the scientists--with a TV commercial. >The two opposing sides are the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Coalition for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The former contends that a space-based missile defense system can’t be perfected, would militarize space and increase the possibility of nuclear war. The latter argues that such a system would work and prevent nuclear war. >Although light years apart in their beliefs, the two organizations have one thing in common: Their 30-second commercials each use the powerful emotional appeal of a child facing a nuclear holocaust. [...] >Its commercial, which had a local TV test run in Washington on Oct. 12, opens with a child’s stick-figure crayon drawing of a family and a house, with a large sun shining above. >A little girl is heard saying that she had “asked my Daddy what this ‘Star Wars’ stuff is all about. He said that right now we can’t protect ourselves from nuclear weapons and that’s why the President wants to build a peace shield. >“It would stop missiles in outer space so they couldn’t hit our house. Then nobody could win a war . . . and if nobody could win a war, there’s no reason to start one.” >As she speaks, a dome is drawn over the house and family. Incoming missiles strike the shield and are destroyed. The dome turns into a rainbow. Frowning faces become smiles, and the girl concludes with: “My daddy’s smart. Support the peace shield.” [...] >He says the coalition’s ad has three aims--the first a contention that a defense-in-space system is feasible right now. Another is to drum up public support for congressional backing of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or the “peace shield” as he calls it. >The group also wants to air its ad, he says, “to offset the anti-SDI propaganda, such as has come from the Union of Concerned Scientists with their 30-second thing, which says what SDI is about is blowing up little children.” >He referred to the union’s TV effort last May. That $10,000 commercial showed a little boy watching the night sky, singing a snatch of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Suddenly, a star explodes like a nuclear blast and an announcer says: “Heavens are for wonder, not for wars. Stop ‘Star Wars.’ ” [...]

baq 5y ago

do you know how many of them are unaccounted for? i don't except that this number is greater than 0. i hope the cia and the kgb know.

sho 5y ago
> do you know how many of them are unaccounted for? Nuclear weapons have incredibly tight tolerances to be or remain viable, those tolerances degrade over time, so they require frequent maintenance in order to stay usable. Many have been "lost" over the last 70 years, sure, but few if any of them would actually still function without state-level expertise in maintaining them - the kind of capability which could just make new ones anyway. Sure, they could still be used as fodder for "dirty bombs" but so could a lot of things and it's much less of a concern.
- ben_w 5y ago
  How confident are you about that? I don’t know much about fusion, plutonium implosion was hard back then but I don’t know if becomes easier with modern electronics or not, and I though gun-type uranium is straightforward once you have the enriched uranium?
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  They wouldn't make decent dirty bombs. The stuff in the bomb is only going to hurt you if you inhale it--and it's heavy enough that it's going to be very hard to inhale. Dirty bombs basically just make a mess, they are not a realistic threat.

vagrantJin 5y ago

> Nuclear weapons are the reason I can raise my children in a relative peace. You can raise your children in relative peace because the social contract still holds. The fact that a neighbour you don't like hasn't walked into your house and shot everyone to death, has nothing to do with your goverment/military stockpiling nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons need to be dismantled or stored in neutral territory in case we encounter belligerent aliens.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Social contract didn't magically materialize in the West in 1950s. People have warred since forever, and still do, regardless of the ways they run their societies. But nuclear weapons are the reason major military powers don't go all-in against each other today. Let's also not forget that social contract survives because of a legal system and people enforcing it with power overwhelming any individual trying to violate it. On an international stage, there's no such top-down enforcement (all nations are sovereign) - there's only mutual policing, and nuclear weapons are the overwhelming power.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  > Let's also not forget that social contract survives because of a legal system and people enforcing it with power overwhelming any individual trying to violate it My god, what an arrogant statement. Your faith in overwhelming force is misguided. The social contract holds because an individual makes a choice to choose peace. That is all the law can do - give us options of consequence. The law can't stop anyone from slaughtering their neighbours or running a bus through a full schoolyard. Thats why despite the US being one of the best armed and equipped police states - school shootings, which are unheard of in most countries - have continued to exist and continue to be perpetrated by teenagers. Overwhelming force is not the answer. Individual responsibility is.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > The social contract holds because an individual makes a choice to choose peace. No, that's not all. The crucial missing ingredient here is the individual being able to assume others will make a peaceful choice too. The law offers incentives and disincentives that very strongly promote making peaceful choices - and it's because of that everyone gets to hold the belief that almost everyone else will be mostly peaceful. (By "everyone" I of course mean "strangers" - laws and governments are not needed when communities are small and everyone personally knows everyone else. It's the scaling up that made formal governance necessary.) > That is all the law can do - give us options of consequence. Yes. The "consequence" part comes from the law being backed by a system of enforcement that wields overwhelming force. > The law can't stop anyone from slaughtering their neighbours or running a bus through a full schoolyard. It can't stop anyone who's bent on it, but it is an effective deterrent, and this is why, in fact, it does significantly reduce occurrence of such events in the population. > Overwhelming force is not the answer. Individual responsibility is. Individual responsibility is a measure of how good you are at following incentive structures in your environment for longer-term benefit. It neither creates nor maintains those incentive structures.

xornox 5y ago

Let’s see how safe children will be when Isis or Taleban gets nuclear weapons…