7 ms·

The Terrifying Possibility of Accidental Nuclear War

24 points by conse_lad 3y ago

dirtyid 3y ago
IMO, this isn't the cold war anymore. Accident nuclear hysteria is premised on incomplete survivable nuclear triad that pressures launch on warning. Many aren't aware, US nuclear posture has been launch on confirmation since Clinton. Meaning triad survivable enough that more prudent to verify nuclear explosion before assured retaliation than risk of accidental MAD. Which is just as well. We're entering era of global strike especially among US adversaries - CONUS will be increasingly vunerable to conventional strikes. Nuclear use matrix is going to start factoring in risk of 50 icbms likely targetting refineries or carries in port vs nuclear decapitation strike, i.e the entire Petrov saga where it's pretty obvious US wasn't going to start nuclear war with preemptive 5 missile strike. Basically what every US adversaries already calculates on the recieving end of US power projection using short/medium range ordnances that could all be nuclear tipped.
stareatgoats 3y ago
> Given the incalculable risks, one may wonder why nuclear arsenals still exist at all Because everybody is thinking that "if we don't arm ourselves, our adversaries will, and therefore gain the upper hand". That there are risks involved doesn't count, as long as they don't prove to be real (i.e. actually happen). If they prove to be real then we'll have a moratorium of a few years until the default reasoning takes over again. I'm sorry, but I don't think we are capable of breaking out of this "highway to hell".
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  I wrote a research paper on nuclear weapons back around 80. The amount of nuclear weapons the US and especially the Soviet Union built was absolutely nutter loony Cocoa Puffs insane. Part of that was a disturbing fact that they are the cheapest way to kill people as long as you don't mind killing hapless schmucks indiscriminately. And you want to make sure you get them all. Flip side is enormous amounts of resources needed to create arsenals the size the US and the Soviets had.
- Clubber 3y ago
  Also, keep in mind we haven't had a massive casualty war like WW1 or WW2 in nearly 80 years. I believe M.A.D. and nuclear deterrent has a lot to do with that.
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    I think also because the launch a nuclear weapons is not a simple task. There is no big button on the desk. Furthermore, it is highly questionable, if antagonistic nations even have the capability to use their nuclear weapons. There is a school of thought that the nuclear weapons of countries, like Russia have deteriorated so much, that even launch one would be a considerable, and noticeable effort. As for tactical nuclear weapons, I think we are still looking at a major hurdle to put that theater and launch.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      You only need 5% of the ICBMs and submarine launched ones to work to cause problems you couldn’t even imagine.
      - darkwraithcov 3y ago
        I read somewhere that even a single small nuclear exchange between countries across the planet from us would cause a Nuclear Winter, which would kill much of the flora and fauna on Earth.
        ajmurmann 3y ago
        How small is small? We've had hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests over the years
        darkwraithcov 3y ago
        100 warheads. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-war/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nu...
- PJDK 3y ago
  I think it's worth gaming out a world without nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war. It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation. Not only that, surely by this point both sides would be dusting off plans to start construction once again. That immediately opens up the likelihood of preemptive strikes to prevent your opponent actually achieving a new nuclear weapon.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    >>I think it's worth gaming out a world without nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war. I'm not so sure - someone else might equally argue that if Ukraine had nuclear weapons it wouldn't have been attacked in the first place, so maybe that's the path that it should have taken. And equally - "both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation." Maybe. Or maybe it's posturing. I think EU's support for Ukraine is huge and populations of many countries still support sending them weapons and supplies, but if they had to send their men and women to die in Ukraine the discussion would be different. Not saying they wouldn't, just that it's easy to say "oh if only Russia didn't have nuclear weapons we'd definitely go and fight them". It's theoretical.
    - mr_00ff00 3y ago
      I think you vastly overestimate how much old politicians care about sending other people to die.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation. Without nuclear weapons, Russia would likely not have invaded in the first place, because a NATO intervention would have been likely and would have ended in the annihilation of the Russian military in just a few weeks.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation. The only reason Russia is willing to engage in a direct conflict with Ukraine is their nuclear weapons make them feel secure that that won’t evolve into a direct conflict with NATO, which, without nuclear weapons, would be immediate ruin for Russia. Nuclear weapons enable direct aggression by nuclear powers against anyone except other nuclear powers.
- dgroshev 3y ago
  It's not just that, but also nuclear use would get more probable with less warheads before it gets impossible because there are none. Imagine there are only three nuclear warheads in the world, is the chance of their use higher or lower than when there are thousands between adversaries? Actually, you don't need to imagine.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  well, all theories and calculations are fine. But we have a concrete example nowadays. Ukraine gave up their nukes after ussr fell apart, with a territorial independence guarantees from russia... we all see how that ended for side that gave up nukes.
carimura 3y ago
Prisoner's Dilemma. Effectively the start of the war in Alas, Babylon. Great book about the communities that remain after nuclear war.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  If nuclear annihiliation does happen, then it will indeed be the ultimate prisoner's dilemma. In that case, it would have been better if humanity had never developed any physics or math. Even though physics and math has helped us solve some problems, it's not worth nuclear annihilation in my opinion.
taylodl 3y ago
Cold War Kid here. This is cute. Y'all now just figuring out the nuclear apocalypse is only ever minutes away? I grew up with this shit being shoved in my face every single day. I was the generation where they stopped doing atomic bomb drills at school because we had thermonuclear warheads and there was no point - and they told us that! Then they wonder why Gen X is so apathetic. Between Nixon and The Bomb how else did they expect us to turn out? It's a natural self-defense reaction.
- pgrote 3y ago
  >because we had thermonuclear warheads and there was no point - and they told us that! Agreed. No duck and cover. The transition was from "hey do these things to survive" to "hope you are in the blast radius".
- trimbo 3y ago
  And there was a bunch of primetime TV content about the nuclear apocalypse when a large part of Gen X was at an impressionable age. "Threads" (UK), "The Day After" (US) are two big ones. Two lesser known ones that had a profound impact on me were "Special Bulletin" and an episode of the new Twilight Zone called "A Little Piece and Quiet"[1] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1UX7z8YBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1UX7z8YBM .. this run of the new TZ had many episodes about nuclear destruction
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    If you missed those (or had parents who wouldn't let you watch it), those only aired once or twice. But the made-for-rental movies you could get to watch over the weekend, there must have been a dozen of those. I still remember the one where the space station astronauts that crashland after, and the cannibals "rescue" them within minutes of touchdown.
    - daltont 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure that is DEFCON-4 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087130 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087130)
qwerty456127 3y ago
I tend to believe an accidental nuclear war having no political reason (just because some quirk happened or because some terrorists either stole a nuke or faked a nuclear attack of another nation to cause a retaliatory strike) is more likely to happen than intentional use of a nuclear weapon by any country.
- perihelions 3y ago
  The analogy that leaps to my mind is when militaries accidentally shot down airliners because they got confused and thought they were under attack. This has happened literally dozens of times [0], well into the modern era. If even superpowers can't help but murder hundreds of civilians due to glorified UX errors, what's stopping them from making the same mistakes with nuclear weapons? It's practically the same thing, on a different scale. The analogy is a broad one: a stressed human operator thinks they are under attack; they have a tiny amount of unreliable information, and a short time window to make decisions; they have an opportunity to counter-attack, but a false negative means the opportunity is irreversibly lost (because the adversary's aircraft attacked their aircraft on the ground / because the adversary's ICBM destroyed their ICBM on the ground). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    But how many of those resulted in some all-out war? Any accident that looks anomalous, a single ICBM or SLBM, isn't likely to provoke an actual war with reasonable actors. The other side's just likely to then use the threat of war to extract truly painful concessions. The "reasonable" thing still leaves out Russia, I suppose. But I have serious doubts they could even manage a nuclear strike at this point. How many missiles would make it out of the silos, how many bombs would detonate? The outskirts of Las Vegas have suffered worse than they could manage.
    - perihelions 3y ago
      - "single ICBM or SLBM" The threat I'm talking about is human error in command & control that causes the legitimate launch of a large number of ICBM's at once.
darkwraithcov 3y ago
Complete and utter world annihilation from nukes has almost happened a number of times. Nuclear proliferation was one of humanity’s most disgusting and unconscionable mistakes. If you aren’t familiar, look up Tsar Bomba on youtube and witness how terrifyingly destructive a 50 megaton warhead is. Then look up the abject cruelty that is the Neutron Bomb. Education on nuclear war and fallout is of the utmost importance, to get people around the world in the mindset of disarmament.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > If you aren’t familiar, look up Tsar Bomba on youtube and witness how terrifyingly destructive a 50 megaton warhead is Tsar Bomba was a one-off experiment – and one designed for some level of psychological intimidation that you appear to have fallen for. No nuclear-armed country today maintains 50-megaton warheads for actual use against an adversary. Instead, planning involves use of a larger number of smaller warheads, and that is already enough to be worried about.
  - darkwraithcov 3y ago
    Do they maintain weapons that would cause the same level of destruction when used in tandem? I am not familiar with modern arsenals. I guess I was just ruminating on what is possible, not what is practical that was my mistake.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    That is a dead on take. You dont have to kill everyone in nuclear strikes. Destroy every single powerplant, radio station and port in a single strike and watch them going back to dark ages in matter of minutes. No electricity and no communications means mass chaos. every city becomes a unsustainable trap with no supplies. It would be terrifying to be in a middle of that. A nation that would tear itself apart for self preservation while all supplies are somewhere far out, 'in a place where food comes from'.
- dgroshev 3y ago
  Tsar Bomba was a one off and has no relation to weapons of today. Look up what's on top of Tridents, it's mostly W-76 of various kinds, all below 100kt, which is about twice more powerful than Fat Man when you consider that effects scale very sublinearly vs yield. There is practically no fallout from air bursts. Nuclear warhead is a late WW2 strategic bombing raid in a 100kg package, delivered in a fraction of a second, and with no protection against it.
rightbyte 3y ago
When I read these kind of headlines nowadays on HN I fear they are on the front page because they already in the air coming for us ...
- r0b1n 3y ago
  If they are coming, it will take about 30mins. Far too quick for a headline to make the rounds. What you might notice (depending on if your country thinks it useful) will be siren signals and radio/TV broadcasts. But I guess it is even too short a time for those, and you cannot do more than "move into the cellar" anyways.
odyssey7 3y ago
There was a (rumored) integer overflow bug in the game Civilization which would cause an AI that was configured for pacifism to start launching nukes. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nuclear-gandhi https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nuclear-gandhi
- CapitalistCartr 3y ago
  Gandhi. He was set for maximum pacifism. But the range was 0-255, and rolled around.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    As the link odyssey7 cited (and which you obviously didn't read) states, there is no proof that any such bug ever existed, with Sid Meier himself denying it. odyssey7 was correct to described it as "rumored".
  - acheron 3y ago
    This is not a true story. There was always a bit of a meme about Gandhi because "haha Gandhi and nukes" but he was no more likely to use them than any other AI. The "integer overflow bug" story was invented by apparently a random person decades later who stuck it in a wiki, and then via citogenesis it spread everywhere.
taffronaut 3y ago
Stanislav Petrov, a little-known Russian whose decision averted a potential nuclear war [1]. [1] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-10/news-briefs/man-saved-world-dies-77 https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-10/news-briefs/man-save...
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Haha. If I were Stanislav, I'd also find an excuse to not be the one pressing the button. Not saying this is the case or Stanislav didn't actually believed in his excuse though.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Last I checked, he was living a quiet retirement. People should be taking him gifts. EDIT: Oh, he has died. I hope people were taking him gifts.
finnegan1 3y ago
For an excellent account of this topic, check out the book Command and Control, by Eric Schlosser.
dsalzman 3y ago
Great explainer by Kurzgesagt - How A Nuclear War Will Start - Minute by Minute https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wmP3MBjsx20 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wmP3MBjsx20
cassianoleal 3y ago
Obligatory reference: Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner https://www.ellsberg.net/doomsday/ https://www.ellsberg.net/doomsday/
dr-smooth 3y ago
Sam Harris recently had an excellent podcast episode with Carl Robichaud (of the Longview Nuclear Risk Policy Fund) on this topic: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/330-the-doomsday-machine https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/330...

24 points by conse_lad 3y ago

IMO, this isn't the cold war anymore. Accident nuclear hysteria is premised on incomplete survivable nuclear triad that pressures launch on warning. Many aren't aware, US nuclear posture has been launch on confirmation since Clinton. Meaning triad survivable enough that more prudent to verify nuclear explosion before assured retaliation than risk of accidental MAD. Which is just as well. We're entering era of global strike especially among US adversaries - CONUS will be increasingly vunerable to conventional strikes. Nuclear use matrix is going to start factoring in risk of 50 icbms likely targetting refineries or carries in port vs nuclear decapitation strike, i.e the entire Petrov saga where it's pretty obvious US wasn't going to start nuclear war with preemptive 5 missile strike. Basically what every US adversaries already calculates on the recieving end of US power projection using short/medium range ordnances that could all be nuclear tipped.

stareatgoats 3y ago

> Given the incalculable risks, one may wonder why nuclear arsenals still exist at all Because everybody is thinking that "if we don't arm ourselves, our adversaries will, and therefore gain the upper hand". That there are risks involved doesn't count, as long as they don't prove to be real (i.e. actually happen). If they prove to be real then we'll have a moratorium of a few years until the default reasoning takes over again. I'm sorry, but I don't think we are capable of breaking out of this "highway to hell".

Gibbon1 3y ago
I wrote a research paper on nuclear weapons back around 80. The amount of nuclear weapons the US and especially the Soviet Union built was absolutely nutter loony Cocoa Puffs insane. Part of that was a disturbing fact that they are the cheapest way to kill people as long as you don't mind killing hapless schmucks indiscriminately. And you want to make sure you get them all. Flip side is enormous amounts of resources needed to create arsenals the size the US and the Soviets had.
Clubber 3y ago
Also, keep in mind we haven't had a massive casualty war like WW1 or WW2 in nearly 80 years. I believe M.A.D. and nuclear deterrent has a lot to do with that.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  I think also because the launch a nuclear weapons is not a simple task. There is no big button on the desk. Furthermore, it is highly questionable, if antagonistic nations even have the capability to use their nuclear weapons. There is a school of thought that the nuclear weapons of countries, like Russia have deteriorated so much, that even launch one would be a considerable, and noticeable effort. As for tactical nuclear weapons, I think we are still looking at a major hurdle to put that theater and launch.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    You only need 5% of the ICBMs and submarine launched ones to work to cause problems you couldn’t even imagine.
    - darkwraithcov 3y ago
      I read somewhere that even a single small nuclear exchange between countries across the planet from us would cause a Nuclear Winter, which would kill much of the flora and fauna on Earth.
      - ajmurmann 3y ago
        How small is small? We've had hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests over the years
        darkwraithcov 3y ago
        100 warheads. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-war/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nu...
PJDK 3y ago
I think it's worth gaming out a world without nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war. It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation. Not only that, surely by this point both sides would be dusting off plans to start construction once again. That immediately opens up the likelihood of preemptive strikes to prevent your opponent actually achieving a new nuclear weapon.
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>I think it's worth gaming out a world without nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war. I'm not so sure - someone else might equally argue that if Ukraine had nuclear weapons it wouldn't have been attacked in the first place, so maybe that's the path that it should have taken. And equally - "both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation." Maybe. Or maybe it's posturing. I think EU's support for Ukraine is huge and populations of many countries still support sending them weapons and supplies, but if they had to send their men and women to die in Ukraine the discussion would be different. Not saying they wouldn't, just that it's easy to say "oh if only Russia didn't have nuclear weapons we'd definitely go and fight them". It's theoretical.
  - mr_00ff00 3y ago
    I think you vastly overestimate how much old politicians care about sending other people to die.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation. Without nuclear weapons, Russia would likely not have invaded in the first place, because a NATO intervention would have been likely and would have ended in the annihilation of the Russian military in just a few weeks.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > It seems pretty undeniable that both Russia and NATO would be more willing to countenance a direct confrontation. The only reason Russia is willing to engage in a direct conflict with Ukraine is their nuclear weapons make them feel secure that that won’t evolve into a direct conflict with NATO, which, without nuclear weapons, would be immediate ruin for Russia. Nuclear weapons enable direct aggression by nuclear powers against anyone except other nuclear powers.
dgroshev 3y ago
It's not just that, but also nuclear use would get more probable with less warheads before it gets impossible because there are none. Imagine there are only three nuclear warheads in the world, is the chance of their use higher or lower than when there are thousands between adversaries? Actually, you don't need to imagine.
me_me_me 3y ago
well, all theories and calculations are fine. But we have a concrete example nowadays. Ukraine gave up their nukes after ussr fell apart, with a territorial independence guarantees from russia... we all see how that ended for side that gave up nukes.

carimura 3y ago

Prisoner's Dilemma. Effectively the start of the war in Alas, Babylon. Great book about the communities that remain after nuclear war.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
If nuclear annihiliation does happen, then it will indeed be the ultimate prisoner's dilemma. In that case, it would have been better if humanity had never developed any physics or math. Even though physics and math has helped us solve some problems, it's not worth nuclear annihilation in my opinion.

taylodl 3y ago

Cold War Kid here. This is cute. Y'all now just figuring out the nuclear apocalypse is only ever minutes away? I grew up with this shit being shoved in my face every single day. I was the generation where they stopped doing atomic bomb drills at school because we had thermonuclear warheads and there was no point - and they told us that! Then they wonder why Gen X is so apathetic. Between Nixon and The Bomb how else did they expect us to turn out? It's a natural self-defense reaction.

pgrote 3y ago
>because we had thermonuclear warheads and there was no point - and they told us that! Agreed. No duck and cover. The transition was from "hey do these things to survive" to "hope you are in the blast radius".
trimbo 3y ago
And there was a bunch of primetime TV content about the nuclear apocalypse when a large part of Gen X was at an impressionable age. "Threads" (UK), "The Day After" (US) are two big ones. Two lesser known ones that had a profound impact on me were "Special Bulletin" and an episode of the new Twilight Zone called "A Little Piece and Quiet"[1] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1UX7z8YBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1UX7z8YBM .. this run of the new TZ had many episodes about nuclear destruction
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  If you missed those (or had parents who wouldn't let you watch it), those only aired once or twice. But the made-for-rental movies you could get to watch over the weekend, there must have been a dozen of those. I still remember the one where the space station astronauts that crashland after, and the cannibals "rescue" them within minutes of touchdown.
  - daltont 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure that is DEFCON-4 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087130 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087130)

qwerty456127 3y ago

I tend to believe an accidental nuclear war having no political reason (just because some quirk happened or because some terrorists either stole a nuke or faked a nuclear attack of another nation to cause a retaliatory strike) is more likely to happen than intentional use of a nuclear weapon by any country.

perihelions 3y ago
The analogy that leaps to my mind is when militaries accidentally shot down airliners because they got confused and thought they were under attack. This has happened literally dozens of times [0], well into the modern era. If even superpowers can't help but murder hundreds of civilians due to glorified UX errors, what's stopping them from making the same mistakes with nuclear weapons? It's practically the same thing, on a different scale. The analogy is a broad one: a stressed human operator thinks they are under attack; they have a tiny amount of unreliable information, and a short time window to make decisions; they have an opportunity to counter-attack, but a false negative means the opportunity is irreversibly lost (because the adversary's aircraft attacked their aircraft on the ground / because the adversary's ICBM destroyed their ICBM on the ground). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  But how many of those resulted in some all-out war? Any accident that looks anomalous, a single ICBM or SLBM, isn't likely to provoke an actual war with reasonable actors. The other side's just likely to then use the threat of war to extract truly painful concessions. The "reasonable" thing still leaves out Russia, I suppose. But I have serious doubts they could even manage a nuclear strike at this point. How many missiles would make it out of the silos, how many bombs would detonate? The outskirts of Las Vegas have suffered worse than they could manage.
  - perihelions 3y ago
    - "single ICBM or SLBM" The threat I'm talking about is human error in command & control that causes the legitimate launch of a large number of ICBM's at once.

darkwraithcov 3y ago

Complete and utter world annihilation from nukes has almost happened a number of times. Nuclear proliferation was one of humanity’s most disgusting and unconscionable mistakes. If you aren’t familiar, look up Tsar Bomba on youtube and witness how terrifyingly destructive a 50 megaton warhead is. Then look up the abject cruelty that is the Neutron Bomb. Education on nuclear war and fallout is of the utmost importance, to get people around the world in the mindset of disarmament.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> If you aren’t familiar, look up Tsar Bomba on youtube and witness how terrifyingly destructive a 50 megaton warhead is Tsar Bomba was a one-off experiment – and one designed for some level of psychological intimidation that you appear to have fallen for. No nuclear-armed country today maintains 50-megaton warheads for actual use against an adversary. Instead, planning involves use of a larger number of smaller warheads, and that is already enough to be worried about.
- darkwraithcov 3y ago
  Do they maintain weapons that would cause the same level of destruction when used in tandem? I am not familiar with modern arsenals. I guess I was just ruminating on what is possible, not what is practical that was my mistake.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  That is a dead on take. You dont have to kill everyone in nuclear strikes. Destroy every single powerplant, radio station and port in a single strike and watch them going back to dark ages in matter of minutes. No electricity and no communications means mass chaos. every city becomes a unsustainable trap with no supplies. It would be terrifying to be in a middle of that. A nation that would tear itself apart for self preservation while all supplies are somewhere far out, 'in a place where food comes from'.
dgroshev 3y ago
Tsar Bomba was a one off and has no relation to weapons of today. Look up what's on top of Tridents, it's mostly W-76 of various kinds, all below 100kt, which is about twice more powerful than Fat Man when you consider that effects scale very sublinearly vs yield. There is practically no fallout from air bursts. Nuclear warhead is a late WW2 strategic bombing raid in a 100kg package, delivered in a fraction of a second, and with no protection against it.

rightbyte 3y ago

When I read these kind of headlines nowadays on HN I fear they are on the front page because they already in the air coming for us ...

r0b1n 3y ago
If they are coming, it will take about 30mins. Far too quick for a headline to make the rounds. What you might notice (depending on if your country thinks it useful) will be siren signals and radio/TV broadcasts. But I guess it is even too short a time for those, and you cannot do more than "move into the cellar" anyways.

odyssey7 3y ago

There was a (rumored) integer overflow bug in the game Civilization which would cause an AI that was configured for pacifism to start launching nukes. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nuclear-gandhi https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nuclear-gandhi

CapitalistCartr 3y ago
Gandhi. He was set for maximum pacifism. But the range was 0-255, and rolled around.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  As the link odyssey7 cited (and which you obviously didn't read) states, there is no proof that any such bug ever existed, with Sid Meier himself denying it. odyssey7 was correct to described it as "rumored".
- acheron 3y ago
  This is not a true story. There was always a bit of a meme about Gandhi because "haha Gandhi and nukes" but he was no more likely to use them than any other AI. The "integer overflow bug" story was invented by apparently a random person decades later who stuck it in a wiki, and then via citogenesis it spread everywhere.

taffronaut 3y ago

Stanislav Petrov, a little-known Russian whose decision averted a potential nuclear war [1]. [1] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-10/news-briefs/man-saved-world-dies-77 https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-10/news-briefs/man-save...

Aerbil313 3y ago
Haha. If I were Stanislav, I'd also find an excuse to not be the one pressing the button. Not saying this is the case or Stanislav didn't actually believed in his excuse though.
euroderf 3y ago
Last I checked, he was living a quiet retirement. People should be taking him gifts. EDIT: Oh, he has died. I hope people were taking him gifts.

finnegan1 3y ago

For an excellent account of this topic, check out the book Command and Control, by Eric Schlosser.

dsalzman 3y ago

Great explainer by Kurzgesagt - How A Nuclear War Will Start - Minute by Minute https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wmP3MBjsx20 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wmP3MBjsx20

cassianoleal 3y ago

Obligatory reference: Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner https://www.ellsberg.net/doomsday/ https://www.ellsberg.net/doomsday/

dr-smooth 3y ago

Sam Harris recently had an excellent podcast episode with Carl Robichaud (of the Longview Nuclear Risk Policy Fund) on this topic: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/330-the-doomsday-machine https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/330...