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That works until it doesn’t. Nukes still allow for proxy wars and that’s what we’ve been having, it’s not like the conflicts will go away when you can’t use pro

That works until it doesn’t. Nukes still allow for proxy wars and that’s what we’ve been having, it’s not like the conflicts will go away when you can’t use proxies because they now have nukes of their own. Trading a lower frequency of war for a more devastating consequence has worked thus far, but when people start to act like such consequences are an impossibility they’ll push risk right up to the edge - and someday someone will eventually go over it. Ironically triggering the thing that was supposed to be impossible.

somenameforme 2y ago
I completely agree. It's one of many reasons I think becoming a multiplanetary species is important. There's also the unspoken issue. There is approximately a 100% chance that most of every major superpower has classified biological weapons programs, and those could easily end up even worse than nukes. And in the scenario of a 'conventional' WW3, they would likely be unleashed. Basically, we're screwed if the world doesn't trend towards peace. And even times of peace will always be liminal, because people are people. So I think we should (1) aiming for positive relations, (2) aiming to minimize the scope and scale of the wars that do inevitably happen, and (3) aim to get setup on other planets. Perhaps the first planet to nuke/virus itself to death can work as a more visible reminder of the dangers for the others. We always learn best by putting our fingers in the fire (and it's no surprise that games of nuclear chicken are arising only once Hiroshima/Nagasaki fall out of living memory), but this is pretty darn close to it at least.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Perhaps the first planet to nuke/virus itself to death can work as a more visible reminder of the dangers for the others There is no multi-planetary scenario in which a nuclear war on Earth doesn’t also target the country’s off-world settlements.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    I don't really agree with that at all. You need not only nukes on Mars but multiple advanced and adversarial colonies with nukes for MAD to be a thing. And C&C with a 40 minute round trip latency is not happening. Kind of problematic when the most probable way we get into nuclear war is a country convincing itself it can successfully execute a decapitation strike. Then you'd also need to know a lot like how nukes would even work on Mars. Dramatically lower atmospheric pressure, amongst other things, will mean nukes will function dramatically differently and be substantially less dangerous. You're looking at dramatically reduced shock/blast waves, less of a threat of fallout (since environmental exposure is already lethal), and so on. It's another great argument for expansion - each colony will have to deal with different situations, which makes various threats - less threatening. For another example, a directed gamma ray burst could be catastrophic on Earth, and is one hypothesis for the Great Ordovician Extinction, but on Mars it would almost entirely harmless.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      There's no such thing as an unarmed spaceship. The capacity to gently land 150 tons on the surface of Mars, is also the capacity to make 150 tons land at, at least, Martian escape velocity — equivalent to an explosion of 411 tons of TNT. Doesn't matter if it's RFGs instead of nukes, the people are just as dead. And any belligerents during a nuclear war on Earth will have grounds to presume second-strike capability exists on any affiliated off-planet colony, so will be motivated to attack those colonies as part of the nuclear war on Earth. > For another example, a directed gamma ray burst could be catastrophic on Earth, and is one hypothesis for the Great Ordovician Extinction, but on Mars it would almost entirely harmless. Are you sure? I thought even exceptionally focussed GRBs were about 0.1°, and that angle corresponds to maximal Earth-Mars separation at just 0.025 light years, at which point I'd be more worried about the gravitational pull of the GRB star removing both Earth and Mars from Sol orbit.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        The biggest threat of things like gamma ray bursts, supervolcanos, asteroid impacts, etc are not the immediate effects. Those effects are dangerous but in a very localized area. The bigger threat is the indirect consequences. For gamma ray bursts, they would deplete the ozone allowing lethal levels of UV through. But on top of this chemical reactions in the atmosphere would produce nitrogen dioxide which itself is poisonous but far more dangerous is that it's basically smog - it would block out the sun driving a massive cooling and potentially impairing photosynthesis resulting in a cycle of death on up the food chain, starting at plants. On Mars its effect would be largely inconsequential.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  Im more of the opinion that even with world wide nuclear fallout, dangerous viruses, runaway climate change and just about anything else I can think of it’ll still be safer to have colonies on Earth than on Mars. The Marian low density atmosphere alone is enough to kill people. It’s much closer to a vacuum than it is to Earths atmospheric density at which point you might as well build the colony on the moon. It is much easier to build a long term viable bunker without rocketing the construction materials. If we are to take the extraordinarily optimistic goal of $100kg at face value the price of building anything substantial on Mars is prohibitive. To have a truly independent colony it would require a substantial number of factories.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Mars has vast mineral resources. That's the reason the surface of Mars is red, iron oxide - rust! So the point of a colony is to enable infrastructure to, over time, develop on Mars. For instance another big winner is the Sabatier reaction. CO2 + H2 => methane + water. Starship fuel is, uncoincidentally, methane. Getting people on Mars will be inspiring and humanity's greatest achievement to date. That it also serves as a 'backup' for humanity, is something that provides a motivation get it done ASAP in times like those that we live in, but is in many ways also largely incidental.
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      I know these things about Mars and am still unconvinced. A fully independent manufacturing pipeline is completely nuts especially at the quality and quantity levels that we are used to. Many materials are not viable except as biproducts of other processes subsidized by the scale of Earth manufacturing. There is no magic wand that we can wave so that if we want it enough we can have it. If humans are indeed capable of such feats then they are capable of the much easier feat of Earth or Moon colonies. Might as well develop an independent manufacturing pipeline on Earth just practice because you wouldn't want to find out the hard way that a critical step doesn't work and it was all for naught. And if the alternative is to stockpile large quantities of chips or rare earth materials then how long are they expected to last, 100s of years?

somenameforme 2y ago

I completely agree. It's one of many reasons I think becoming a multiplanetary species is important. There's also the unspoken issue. There is approximately a 100% chance that most of every major superpower has classified biological weapons programs, and those could easily end up even worse than nukes. And in the scenario of a 'conventional' WW3, they would likely be unleashed. Basically, we're screwed if the world doesn't trend towards peace. And even times of peace will always be liminal, because people are people. So I think we should (1) aiming for positive relations, (2) aiming to minimize the scope and scale of the wars that do inevitably happen, and (3) aim to get setup on other planets. Perhaps the first planet to nuke/virus itself to death can work as a more visible reminder of the dangers for the others. We always learn best by putting our fingers in the fire (and it's no surprise that games of nuclear chicken are arising only once Hiroshima/Nagasaki fall out of living memory), but this is pretty darn close to it at least.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Perhaps the first planet to nuke/virus itself to death can work as a more visible reminder of the dangers for the others There is no multi-planetary scenario in which a nuclear war on Earth doesn’t also target the country’s off-world settlements.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I don't really agree with that at all. You need not only nukes on Mars but multiple advanced and adversarial colonies with nukes for MAD to be a thing. And C&C with a 40 minute round trip latency is not happening. Kind of problematic when the most probable way we get into nuclear war is a country convincing itself it can successfully execute a decapitation strike. Then you'd also need to know a lot like how nukes would even work on Mars. Dramatically lower atmospheric pressure, amongst other things, will mean nukes will function dramatically differently and be substantially less dangerous. You're looking at dramatically reduced shock/blast waves, less of a threat of fallout (since environmental exposure is already lethal), and so on. It's another great argument for expansion - each colony will have to deal with different situations, which makes various threats - less threatening. For another example, a directed gamma ray burst could be catastrophic on Earth, and is one hypothesis for the Great Ordovician Extinction, but on Mars it would almost entirely harmless.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    There's no such thing as an unarmed spaceship. The capacity to gently land 150 tons on the surface of Mars, is also the capacity to make 150 tons land at, at least, Martian escape velocity — equivalent to an explosion of 411 tons of TNT. Doesn't matter if it's RFGs instead of nukes, the people are just as dead. And any belligerents during a nuclear war on Earth will have grounds to presume second-strike capability exists on any affiliated off-planet colony, so will be motivated to attack those colonies as part of the nuclear war on Earth. > For another example, a directed gamma ray burst could be catastrophic on Earth, and is one hypothesis for the Great Ordovician Extinction, but on Mars it would almost entirely harmless. Are you sure? I thought even exceptionally focussed GRBs were about 0.1°, and that angle corresponds to maximal Earth-Mars separation at just 0.025 light years, at which point I'd be more worried about the gravitational pull of the GRB star removing both Earth and Mars from Sol orbit.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      The biggest threat of things like gamma ray bursts, supervolcanos, asteroid impacts, etc are not the immediate effects. Those effects are dangerous but in a very localized area. The bigger threat is the indirect consequences. For gamma ray bursts, they would deplete the ozone allowing lethal levels of UV through. But on top of this chemical reactions in the atmosphere would produce nitrogen dioxide which itself is poisonous but far more dangerous is that it's basically smog - it would block out the sun driving a massive cooling and potentially impairing photosynthesis resulting in a cycle of death on up the food chain, starting at plants. On Mars its effect would be largely inconsequential.
cjbgkagh 2y ago
Im more of the opinion that even with world wide nuclear fallout, dangerous viruses, runaway climate change and just about anything else I can think of it’ll still be safer to have colonies on Earth than on Mars. The Marian low density atmosphere alone is enough to kill people. It’s much closer to a vacuum than it is to Earths atmospheric density at which point you might as well build the colony on the moon. It is much easier to build a long term viable bunker without rocketing the construction materials. If we are to take the extraordinarily optimistic goal of $100kg at face value the price of building anything substantial on Mars is prohibitive. To have a truly independent colony it would require a substantial number of factories.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Mars has vast mineral resources. That's the reason the surface of Mars is red, iron oxide - rust! So the point of a colony is to enable infrastructure to, over time, develop on Mars. For instance another big winner is the Sabatier reaction. CO2 + H2 => methane + water. Starship fuel is, uncoincidentally, methane. Getting people on Mars will be inspiring and humanity's greatest achievement to date. That it also serves as a 'backup' for humanity, is something that provides a motivation get it done ASAP in times like those that we live in, but is in many ways also largely incidental.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I know these things about Mars and am still unconvinced. A fully independent manufacturing pipeline is completely nuts especially at the quality and quantity levels that we are used to. Many materials are not viable except as biproducts of other processes subsidized by the scale of Earth manufacturing. There is no magic wand that we can wave so that if we want it enough we can have it. If humans are indeed capable of such feats then they are capable of the much easier feat of Earth or Moon colonies. Might as well develop an independent manufacturing pipeline on Earth just practice because you wouldn't want to find out the hard way that a critical step doesn't work and it was all for naught. And if the alternative is to stockpile large quantities of chips or rare earth materials then how long are they expected to last, 100s of years?