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> War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more It didn't happen yet, but there are no is reasons for nuclear war to be avoided indefinitely.

by hkpack 2y ago

ryandrake 2y ago
All it takes is one madman to get near the button and gain enough power that his button-press is honored. It almost seems inevitable given a long enough time frame.
- apantel 2y ago
  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  - notfish 2y ago
    I’d just prefer the survival rate not drop to zero for everyone at the same time.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Don’t worry. If there is anything history (and the geological record) has shown us, the planet and other humans have tried very very very hard to kill all humans in the past. And failed. Not that they didn’t make one hell of a dent sometimes, mind you. We’d more likely end up with an extra mutation or two, similar to the Moties [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye] and some solid species level PTSD from the whole mess. Why do you think the doomsday prepper genes haven’t been bred out yet? I’m guessing because sometimes, they were the only ones left standing!
      - immibis 2y ago
        Actually, the geological record shows that mass extinctions are possible, happen somewhat regularly, and are sometimes caused by a single species altering the environment on a massive scale. For example when photosynthesizers converted 20% of the atmosphere into extremely toxic oxygen gas.
        lazide 2y ago
        Eh, a bit overstated. None of them killed EVERYTHING, near as we can tell. Not even the oxygen catastrophe you're mentioning. To do that would likely require liquifying the mantle entirely, or some similar scale event. The last big one was approximately 66 million years ago due to perhaps the Chicxulub impact, and it wiped out most of the dinosaurs - but modern birds are descended from them, and the crocodiles and alligators survived (well, VERY similar looking ancestors) /just fine. None of them could build space stations, nuclear reactors, bunkers, etc. That we know of at least. None of them could grow hydroponic food, or communicate at near light speed to the other side of the planet, or even know what any of that means. The entire span of time something vaguely resembling human has been around is also 1/10th of that time, but there have been MANY smaller events with large scale extinctions. I'm not saying it would be a good time, but there is no way every single human is getting wiped out by anything except a nearby Gamma Ray burst/Supernova, surprise planetary collision, or something of similar destructive scale. Things way beyond even our wildest dreams of destructive power. Even if we launched every nuke every country has ever produced, while civilization as we know it would be done for, humanity would definitely persist. Even if the next war would be fought with clubs instead of nukes. And even if all the oxygen in the atmosphere turned to cyanide - guess what, we do (technically) know how to deal with that, there are populations of people who are currently protected from that, and while most of humanity would die while we scrambled to adapt, humanity itself would not perish. At least not just from that.
        immibis 2y ago
        Species become extinct all the time. Humans don't have to exterminate all life, to exterminate humans.
        lazide 2y ago
        I never said they did. I said good luck exterminating humans. Hell, not that long ago the most technologically advanced society of the time (Nazi Germany) with a massive and state of the art army tried to exterminate a subset of humans (Jews, Homosexuals, Roma) using massive force, the latest technology, and with a near single minded focus. And while they did kill a lot of people and perpetrate terrible crimes, they also failed rather completely at the task. Even in areas where they were literally burning everything to the ground. What makes you think they would have been more successful if they’d also been trying to kill themselves at the same time? Hence impeding their abilities? And humans are, near as we can tell, the most lethal animals on the planet overall. Humans survive implausibly terrible situations on the regular, and are currently living in every major ecological niche in the environment except perhaps the very deepest parts of the ocean. Though if we count military submersibles and oil rig diving bells, they too are ‘occupied’. Would lots of people die, and would it be terrible if an environmental catastrophe occurred? You bet. But killing all humans is even less plausible than killing all ticks, or all roaches. Humans, the most lethal species on the planet, keeps trying and failing to do so. Short of melting the mantle underneath us anyway. We do have some folks living in a space station. Probably not enough though.
  - mikhailfranco 2y ago
    John Maynard Keynes, Fight Club and Zero Hedge, in that order. Your comment made me notice that the motto was recently removed from the ZH Wikipedia page, so I just restored it - thanks.
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  Yeah… but if it hasn’t happened by now (after 70+ years), that tells you something.
  - more_corn 2y ago
    70 years is not a useful timeframe for analysis of human warfare. Historically speaking a 70 year peace could be considered brief. Recall that empires have lasted thousands of years, city states have warred on and off for centuries, warlords have emerged with a cadence measured in centuries and great conquests on a cadence of thousands of years. 70 years is a blip. Compare that to the 6 known close calls where all-out nuclear war was narrowly averted and we’re not looking great. (What is that about once a decade?) I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll see a nuclear war in my lifetime. And if it gets out of hand billions of people will die. I’m not sure the invention of nuclear weapons was a net positive for the world.
    - hkpack 2y ago
      > I’m not sure the invention of nuclear weapons was a net positive for the world. It was never an option that nuclear weapons wouldn't be invented. The only question was who will invent and use it first.
  - mathgeek 2y ago
    All it tells me (just personally) is that the threat of being nuked (and especially being nuked in retaliation) is an effective deterrent since 1945. Not perfect of course, but it’s prevented larger conflicts than we have seen.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    It has happened. Twice. Russia-China in 1969, and Pakistan-India in 1999. Arguably one should count the Cuban missile crisis too.
    - xanderlewis 2y ago
      No, it hasn’t. We’re talking about nuclear weapons being used. The fact that we’ve had conflicts that didn’t go nuclear is even more to my point.
- blub 2y ago
  Many if not all the close calls in the past were misunderstandings or tensions spiraling out of control. The madman with nukes is a trope. This is also why online commenters thinking that the Ukraine war will not go nuclear are misguided.
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    The weaker version of madman scenario is a head of state believing they can use nukes in a limited scope to achieve its political goals. Imagine this scenario: the war in Ukraine goes for some more time, Russia starts to have economic problems and is desperate to settle it (without having to compromise), force Ukraine to surrender and demand sanctions to be lifted. So he uses a couple of small tactical nukes along the frontline to cripple Ukrainian forces. Civilian deaths are in tens of thousands. Ukraine can't respond, but apparently some threat has been declared from US to prevent this scenario - NATO / US launches conventional strikes on Russian military installations within Ukraine. Russia is not able to respond symmetrically, so it drops a tactical nuke on a military base within NATO territory (in Eastern Europe, far from major population center) as a kind of last warning to step back. There are multiple ways how this can go from then on, but there are scenarios ending in a major or all-out nuclear exchange. Without the need for misunderstanding and madmans.
    - dragontamer 2y ago
      Note that the smallest tactical nuke, the Davy Crockett, is One-Million times smaller than the largest nuke ever tested (The Tzar Bomba). USA Policy is that all nukes are nukes. The idea being that we've never wargamed a scenario where small nukes were used that didn't turn into the treadmill of larger and larger nukes anyway. (Well, they used a 50 ton nuke. We should respond with a 500ton nuke, then they respond with a 10,000 ton nuke. Then we respond with a 100kTon nuke. Then they respond with a 1Mton nuke....) So the minute a 'Small Nuke' is used, we should just respond with the biggest nuke. No point dilly dallying, if we are all going to die we might as well get it over with faster and in a way that is to our advantage. -------- The issue is that Russia or China may not see it that way. They might see the small nukes as a different thing that doesn't deserve the response of the larger nuke. It's not that the world is composed of madmen. It's that the world is composed of people with different points of view. As such, Russia stockpiles tactical (aka: small) nukes. USA stockpiles strategic (aka: large) nukes. ------ Also note: we stopped making larger nukes for political reasons. There seemed to be no end to the size of 'Large' nukes. The H-Bomb seemed to scale as large as we ever wanted. A collection of 10x 10 MTon nukes would deal more damage than a single 100MTon nuke anyway. But there's nothing stopping us from making 10x 100Mton nukes.
- Log_out_ 2y ago
  Is there a type of geo engineering that can soften the effects of a nuclear exchange?

> War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more It didn't happen yet, but there are no is reasons for nuclear war to be avoided indefinitely.

by hkpack 2y ago

> War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more It didn't happen yet, but there are no is reasons for nuclear war to be avoided indefinitely.

ryandrake 2y ago

All it takes is one madman to get near the button and gain enough power that his button-press is honored. It almost seems inevitable given a long enough time frame.

apantel 2y ago
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
- notfish 2y ago
  I’d just prefer the survival rate not drop to zero for everyone at the same time.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Don’t worry. If there is anything history (and the geological record) has shown us, the planet and other humans have tried very very very hard to kill all humans in the past. And failed. Not that they didn’t make one hell of a dent sometimes, mind you. We’d more likely end up with an extra mutation or two, similar to the Moties [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye] and some solid species level PTSD from the whole mess. Why do you think the doomsday prepper genes haven’t been bred out yet? I’m guessing because sometimes, they were the only ones left standing!
    - immibis 2y ago
      Actually, the geological record shows that mass extinctions are possible, happen somewhat regularly, and are sometimes caused by a single species altering the environment on a massive scale. For example when photosynthesizers converted 20% of the atmosphere into extremely toxic oxygen gas.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Eh, a bit overstated. None of them killed EVERYTHING, near as we can tell. Not even the oxygen catastrophe you're mentioning. To do that would likely require liquifying the mantle entirely, or some similar scale event. The last big one was approximately 66 million years ago due to perhaps the Chicxulub impact, and it wiped out most of the dinosaurs - but modern birds are descended from them, and the crocodiles and alligators survived (well, VERY similar looking ancestors) /just fine. None of them could build space stations, nuclear reactors, bunkers, etc. That we know of at least. None of them could grow hydroponic food, or communicate at near light speed to the other side of the planet, or even know what any of that means. The entire span of time something vaguely resembling human has been around is also 1/10th of that time, but there have been MANY smaller events with large scale extinctions. I'm not saying it would be a good time, but there is no way every single human is getting wiped out by anything except a nearby Gamma Ray burst/Supernova, surprise planetary collision, or something of similar destructive scale. Things way beyond even our wildest dreams of destructive power. Even if we launched every nuke every country has ever produced, while civilization as we know it would be done for, humanity would definitely persist. Even if the next war would be fought with clubs instead of nukes. And even if all the oxygen in the atmosphere turned to cyanide - guess what, we do (technically) know how to deal with that, there are populations of people who are currently protected from that, and while most of humanity would die while we scrambled to adapt, humanity itself would not perish. At least not just from that.
        immibis 2y ago
        Species become extinct all the time. Humans don't have to exterminate all life, to exterminate humans.
        lazide 2y ago
        I never said they did. I said good luck exterminating humans. Hell, not that long ago the most technologically advanced society of the time (Nazi Germany) with a massive and state of the art army tried to exterminate a subset of humans (Jews, Homosexuals, Roma) using massive force, the latest technology, and with a near single minded focus. And while they did kill a lot of people and perpetrate terrible crimes, they also failed rather completely at the task. Even in areas where they were literally burning everything to the ground. What makes you think they would have been more successful if they’d also been trying to kill themselves at the same time? Hence impeding their abilities? And humans are, near as we can tell, the most lethal animals on the planet overall. Humans survive implausibly terrible situations on the regular, and are currently living in every major ecological niche in the environment except perhaps the very deepest parts of the ocean. Though if we count military submersibles and oil rig diving bells, they too are ‘occupied’. Would lots of people die, and would it be terrible if an environmental catastrophe occurred? You bet. But killing all humans is even less plausible than killing all ticks, or all roaches. Humans, the most lethal species on the planet, keeps trying and failing to do so. Short of melting the mantle underneath us anyway. We do have some folks living in a space station. Probably not enough though.
- mikhailfranco 2y ago
  John Maynard Keynes, Fight Club and Zero Hedge, in that order. Your comment made me notice that the motto was recently removed from the ZH Wikipedia page, so I just restored it - thanks.
xanderlewis 2y ago
Yeah… but if it hasn’t happened by now (after 70+ years), that tells you something.
- more_corn 2y ago
  70 years is not a useful timeframe for analysis of human warfare. Historically speaking a 70 year peace could be considered brief. Recall that empires have lasted thousands of years, city states have warred on and off for centuries, warlords have emerged with a cadence measured in centuries and great conquests on a cadence of thousands of years. 70 years is a blip. Compare that to the 6 known close calls where all-out nuclear war was narrowly averted and we’re not looking great. (What is that about once a decade?) I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll see a nuclear war in my lifetime. And if it gets out of hand billions of people will die. I’m not sure the invention of nuclear weapons was a net positive for the world.
  - hkpack 2y ago
    > I’m not sure the invention of nuclear weapons was a net positive for the world. It was never an option that nuclear weapons wouldn't be invented. The only question was who will invent and use it first.
- mathgeek 2y ago
  All it tells me (just personally) is that the threat of being nuked (and especially being nuked in retaliation) is an effective deterrent since 1945. Not perfect of course, but it’s prevented larger conflicts than we have seen.
- adastra22 2y ago
  It has happened. Twice. Russia-China in 1969, and Pakistan-India in 1999. Arguably one should count the Cuban missile crisis too.
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    No, it hasn’t. We’re talking about nuclear weapons being used. The fact that we’ve had conflicts that didn’t go nuclear is even more to my point.
blub 2y ago
Many if not all the close calls in the past were misunderstandings or tensions spiraling out of control. The madman with nukes is a trope. This is also why online commenters thinking that the Ukraine war will not go nuclear are misguided.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  The weaker version of madman scenario is a head of state believing they can use nukes in a limited scope to achieve its political goals. Imagine this scenario: the war in Ukraine goes for some more time, Russia starts to have economic problems and is desperate to settle it (without having to compromise), force Ukraine to surrender and demand sanctions to be lifted. So he uses a couple of small tactical nukes along the frontline to cripple Ukrainian forces. Civilian deaths are in tens of thousands. Ukraine can't respond, but apparently some threat has been declared from US to prevent this scenario - NATO / US launches conventional strikes on Russian military installations within Ukraine. Russia is not able to respond symmetrically, so it drops a tactical nuke on a military base within NATO territory (in Eastern Europe, far from major population center) as a kind of last warning to step back. There are multiple ways how this can go from then on, but there are scenarios ending in a major or all-out nuclear exchange. Without the need for misunderstanding and madmans.
  - dragontamer 2y ago
    Note that the smallest tactical nuke, the Davy Crockett, is One-Million times smaller than the largest nuke ever tested (The Tzar Bomba). USA Policy is that all nukes are nukes. The idea being that we've never wargamed a scenario where small nukes were used that didn't turn into the treadmill of larger and larger nukes anyway. (Well, they used a 50 ton nuke. We should respond with a 500ton nuke, then they respond with a 10,000 ton nuke. Then we respond with a 100kTon nuke. Then they respond with a 1Mton nuke....) So the minute a 'Small Nuke' is used, we should just respond with the biggest nuke. No point dilly dallying, if we are all going to die we might as well get it over with faster and in a way that is to our advantage. -------- The issue is that Russia or China may not see it that way. They might see the small nukes as a different thing that doesn't deserve the response of the larger nuke. It's not that the world is composed of madmen. It's that the world is composed of people with different points of view. As such, Russia stockpiles tactical (aka: small) nukes. USA stockpiles strategic (aka: large) nukes. ------ Also note: we stopped making larger nukes for political reasons. There seemed to be no end to the size of 'Large' nukes. The H-Bomb seemed to scale as large as we ever wanted. A collection of 10x 10 MTon nukes would deal more damage than a single 100MTon nuke anyway. But there's nothing stopping us from making 10x 100Mton nukes.
Log_out_ 2y ago
Is there a type of geo engineering that can soften the effects of a nuclear exchange?