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Perhaps you might want to read Command and Control, a book about the terrifying history of near misses in terms of nuclear weapons. It may well be true that nuc

by gxqoz 5y ago

Perhaps you might want to read Command and Control, a book about the terrifying history of near misses in terms of nuclear weapons. It may well be true that nuclear weapons have reduced hot wars. But it can be equally true that had a few small things gone a different way, the world could have been subjected to an even more horrible nuclear war. And this is still very much the situation. https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788 https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

DennisP 5y ago
Also worth reading: Daniel Ellsberg's book The Doomsday Machine. Ellsberg's job was nuclear strategy, and most of the classified documents he snuck out of his office were related to that. He published the Pentagon Papers first because he felt that if he started with the nuclear papers, nobody would even care about the Vietnam stuff. He gave the nuclear papers to his brother, who hid them in a garbage bag on the edge of the town dump. Then a storm washed away that whole corner of the dump. They spent a year trying to find them and finally gave up. Ellsberg wrote that his wife considered that a miracle from God, because he got a pass on the Vietnam leak but would have certainly spent the rest of his life in prison for the rest. Until recently he didn't talk about this stuff because he couldn't substantiate it, but now, enough has been declassified that he could back up his claims, which are horrific. US nuclear strategy in the '50s and '60s included the destruction of every city over 25K people in Russia and China in response to surprisingly minor conventional provocation, and acceptance of the death by radiation of everyone in Europe. An especially startling point was that the authority to launch nukes was not just at the top. Theater commanders could do it on their own. According to Ellsberg that is still the case today.

by gxqoz 5y ago

DennisP 5y ago

Also worth reading: Daniel Ellsberg's book The Doomsday Machine. Ellsberg's job was nuclear strategy, and most of the classified documents he snuck out of his office were related to that. He published the Pentagon Papers first because he felt that if he started with the nuclear papers, nobody would even care about the Vietnam stuff. He gave the nuclear papers to his brother, who hid them in a garbage bag on the edge of the town dump. Then a storm washed away that whole corner of the dump. They spent a year trying to find them and finally gave up. Ellsberg wrote that his wife considered that a miracle from God, because he got a pass on the Vietnam leak but would have certainly spent the rest of his life in prison for the rest. Until recently he didn't talk about this stuff because he couldn't substantiate it, but now, enough has been declassified that he could back up his claims, which are horrific. US nuclear strategy in the '50s and '60s included the destruction of every city over 25K people in Russia and China in response to surprisingly minor conventional provocation, and acceptance of the death by radiation of everyone in Europe. An especially startling point was that the authority to launch nukes was not just at the top. Theater commanders could do it on their own. According to Ellsberg that is still the case today.