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I wouldn’t even say the verdict is out. Considering we’ve already had some relatively close calls, I think we can say with statistical certainty that we will de
by danenania 4y ago
I wouldn’t even say the verdict is out. Considering we’ve already had some relatively close calls, I think we can say with statistical certainty that we will destroy civilization on a long enough time scale if we keep the nukes around.
If the odds of nuclear war are 1% in a century, we won’t last much more than 10,000 years, and might last a lot fewer.
- Qem 4y agoA presidential term is 4 years. Assuming it holds over 10000 years, that would mean roughly 2500 presidents. In a group of 2500 people, what are the odds of one of them being batshit crazy? That would be a lower bound to overall probability of nuclear annihilation.
- danenania 4y agoIt's even worse, as it's not only presidents/leaders that can trigger a war. If you look at the close calls Wikipedia page linked upthread, one of the worst was a Soviet sub that lost radio contact during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2 out of 3 (!) of the officers on the sub approved a nuclear strike on the US fleet. The fate of human civilization relied on the choice of a single mid-level naval officer. Considering the other two officers approved the strike, the final officer being the kind of person who would also approve the strike was probably in the 50/50 realm at best. So basically we won a coinflip on that day for the fate of humanity, and that's far from the only close call we've had.