4 ms·

Anyone else in awe at all the infrastructure, systems, etc that were setup especially due to the Cold War? Things like Operation Looking Glass, keeping a staffe

Anyone else in awe at all the infrastructure, systems, etc that were setup especially due to the Cold War? Things like Operation Looking Glass, keeping a staffed plane in the air, 24/7/365 for nearly 30 years, all these kind of hardening projects, it's crazy to me how much work and how many decades it spanned. And that's just the stuff we now can openly read about. I can't imagine all the systems and redundancies in place right now... but probably a lot more digital with analog backup only.

fmajid 2y ago
See also: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-town-that-kept-its-nuclear-bunker-a-secret-for-three-decades-180984107/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-town-that-kept-it...
worstspotgain 2y ago
The thing that really drops my jaw is the handwaving conjecture that the doomsday risk level has decreased a lot since then.
- flyinghamster 2y ago
  2022, nay, 2014 should have been a wake-up call that World War III was underway.
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  It's not handwaving conjecture, it is cold calculation. Russia has a nuclear triad the same as the US. 1. Russia's submarine forces have been gutted since the Cold War. Poor training and maintenance has led to a slew of launch failures in recent years and analysis of their deployment tempo seems to indicate only a minimum number of submarines are deployed at any given time. 2. The long range strategic bomber forces of the Russian Aerospace Force are so outdated and vulnerable to western air defense systems that they rarely if ever enter the airspace of Ukraine, with the Tu-160 supersonic bomber lobbing cruise missiles from well outside Ukraine's air defense zone, the Tu-95 doing the same, and the Tu-22 only targeting areas not protected by Patriot missiles. 3. Aging systems, poor maintenance, and a lack of adequate funding has severely hampered Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces. They lack the precision to ensure a favorable outcome in the event of a nuclear war because they were designed for scenarios where dozens if not hundreds of warhead were used on individual area targets in an age where there were tens of thousands of warheads available for use. All of Russia's "superhypersonic killer nuclear-powered unstoppable death machine weapons test" rhetoric is an attempt to fool the US into believing that they have something up their sleeve because they know that the US knows that each of the three spokes of their triad have been degraded so much. Russia also knows they can't afford to rebuild their forces, so wonderweapons it is. They can't even build enough radios to equip all of their ground forces in Ukraine with communications gear and their megaweapons programs are hollow vanity projects. Do not mistake any of this for hubris. Russia can still launch nuclear weapons and any such usage would be disastrous. The doomsday scenarios at the height of the Cold War where 40,000 Soviet warheads could be mustered for deployment by a variety of difficult to stop systems to be met with a response of 20,000 US warheads thus irradiating the entire northern hemisphere and dooming humanity to extinction is all but impossible. So unless the definition of "doomsday" has changed from "the extinction of all of humanity" to "a really shitty time where hundreds of thousands die in an instant" the doomsday risk level has indeed decreased.
  - worstspotgain 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - kilolima 2y ago
      This does not belong on HN.
      - worstspotgain 2y ago
        Pretty sure an anonymized WW3 scenario belongs in a Cold War thread. If someone doesn't want to match the wildcard in people's minds for a person that would not credibly pull the trigger in this hypothetical, they can run for governor instead of president.
        worstspotgain 2y ago
        Wow, that GGP message was the first time I got brigaded on HN. Must have hit a nerve.
emmelaich 2y ago
My fave is SAGE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environm... Truly astonishing amount of money for defense against airplane. Obsoleted soon after by the advent of ICBMs.

fmajid 2y ago

See also: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-town-that-kept-its-nuclear-bunker-a-secret-for-three-decades-180984107/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-town-that-kept-it...

worstspotgain 2y ago

The thing that really drops my jaw is the handwaving conjecture that the doomsday risk level has decreased a lot since then.

flyinghamster 2y ago
2022, nay, 2014 should have been a wake-up call that World War III was underway.
snakeyjake 2y ago
It's not handwaving conjecture, it is cold calculation. Russia has a nuclear triad the same as the US. 1. Russia's submarine forces have been gutted since the Cold War. Poor training and maintenance has led to a slew of launch failures in recent years and analysis of their deployment tempo seems to indicate only a minimum number of submarines are deployed at any given time. 2. The long range strategic bomber forces of the Russian Aerospace Force are so outdated and vulnerable to western air defense systems that they rarely if ever enter the airspace of Ukraine, with the Tu-160 supersonic bomber lobbing cruise missiles from well outside Ukraine's air defense zone, the Tu-95 doing the same, and the Tu-22 only targeting areas not protected by Patriot missiles. 3. Aging systems, poor maintenance, and a lack of adequate funding has severely hampered Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces. They lack the precision to ensure a favorable outcome in the event of a nuclear war because they were designed for scenarios where dozens if not hundreds of warhead were used on individual area targets in an age where there were tens of thousands of warheads available for use. All of Russia's "superhypersonic killer nuclear-powered unstoppable death machine weapons test" rhetoric is an attempt to fool the US into believing that they have something up their sleeve because they know that the US knows that each of the three spokes of their triad have been degraded so much. Russia also knows they can't afford to rebuild their forces, so wonderweapons it is. They can't even build enough radios to equip all of their ground forces in Ukraine with communications gear and their megaweapons programs are hollow vanity projects. Do not mistake any of this for hubris. Russia can still launch nuclear weapons and any such usage would be disastrous. The doomsday scenarios at the height of the Cold War where 40,000 Soviet warheads could be mustered for deployment by a variety of difficult to stop systems to be met with a response of 20,000 US warheads thus irradiating the entire northern hemisphere and dooming humanity to extinction is all but impossible. So unless the definition of "doomsday" has changed from "the extinction of all of humanity" to "a really shitty time where hundreds of thousands die in an instant" the doomsday risk level has indeed decreased.
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - kilolima 2y ago
    This does not belong on HN.
    - worstspotgain 2y ago
      Pretty sure an anonymized WW3 scenario belongs in a Cold War thread. If someone doesn't want to match the wildcard in people's minds for a person that would not credibly pull the trigger in this hypothetical, they can run for governor instead of president.
      - worstspotgain 2y ago
        Wow, that GGP message was the first time I got brigaded on HN. Must have hit a nerve.

emmelaich 2y ago

My fave is SAGE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environm... Truly astonishing amount of money for defense against airplane. Obsoleted soon after by the advent of ICBMs.