11 ms·

Trump directs nuclear weapons testing to resume for first time in over 30 years

103 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

seydor 1y ago
nuclear bombs, moon landings wow it's like the 1960s again, but with old people
pixelpoet 1y ago
No matter where you live, the American presidency will find a way to make things more shit for you. With everything going on in the world, really what we needed is more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing, isn't it? Thanks Putin, thanks Trump, and all their enablers.
- ponector 1y ago
  Just a reminder: Obama and Merkel are real enablers for putin. Weak response to multiple russian invasions enabled all kind of dictators around the globe.
  - vkou 1y ago
    Bush pissing on the rules-based world order in the 00s was the real enabler for Russian ambitions. If the US (and the half of Europe that was bending over backwards to curry favor) can start imperial adventures abroad for the most asinine reasons, how could anyone fault Russia for going on them closer to home?
bovermyer 1y ago
What the actual #*!@... Well, anybody have any modern simulation models for fallout distribution after a nuclear war between the USA and Russia?
- InspGadget4343 1y ago
  https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ is a "fun" resource for checking how screwed you are if the enemy bombs your friendly neighborhood city
  - zimpenfish 1y ago
    Thankfully, being almost-central London, anything more than about 100kt means I'm immediately toasted.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    Can they not just shoot down the bomb before it actually lands?
- jimnotgym 1y ago
  I'll place a bet that the fallout from that conflict will extend to the zone known as 'everywhere'
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    Southern hemisphere might be ok.
  - tzs 1y ago
    It also works the other way. A nuclear war between two countries nowhere near the US and that doesn't draw in any other nuclear powers could still have pretty annoying effects in the US. Here's a paper [1] and an article [2] based on that paper that looked at what a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could do to the rest of the world. The scenario they look it is each firing 100 nukes the size of the bomb used at Hiroshima at the other, aimed at major population centers. Here's the abstract from the paper: > A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history. BTW, both India and Pakistan rely on the glaciers in the Himalayas for freshwater. The glaciers in effect act as a natural reservoir system. Something like 70% of Pakistan depends on that system, and a similar percent for northern India. Overall in Southeast Asia about 1.9 billion people depend on those glaciers. As global warming reduces those glaciers it is not a stretch to imagine disputes over allocation of the remaining water getting heated enough for war to break out. I've read that if we let it get to 3℃ above pre-industrial levels we lose about 75% of those glaciers. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117 [2] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-india-pakistan-nuclear-war-would-bring-global-famine/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-in...
- notahacker 1y ago
  This is Trump. He's not going to war with Russia but if he gets out of the wrong side of his bed and reads the wrong social media post he might have to get talked out of nuking Portland
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > He's not going to war with Russia ... but with China instead. The trouble with this guy is, you can't be sure if what he spouts from his mouth is him being actually serious, him just parroting whatever the last person to talk to him said (seems to be a common trope regarding anything Ukraine) or if he's just out of his mind and gone off script, off rails. And on top of that you got stuff like the sinking of the "Venezuelan drug boats" that would be seen as and dealt with as a declaration of war if the aggressor weren't the USA. All it takes for stuff to go Seriously Damn Wrong is one person on the other side taking his verbal diarrhoea seriously and literally and acting accordingly.
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      Confucius say, smaller man rattle saber more loudly.
      - netsharc 1y ago
        Ah, casual racism implying Confucius spoke English with stereotypical Chinese style and grammatical errors... 2.5 Millennia ago no one spoke English...
        fuzzfactor 1y ago
        Sorry to disappoint, but you are incorrect, my good bot.
jimnotgym 1y ago
This is confusing, the Russian and Chinese 'nuclear weapons tests' mentioned in the article didn't involve testing nuclear weapons, but Trump wants to test nuclear weapons in response? Did I read that right?
- SiempreViernes 1y ago
  That's certainly a plausible reading, but in truth it is very uncertain what he means. The leading guess I've seen is that he's "striking back" after Putin announced successful tests of new delivery platforms for nuclear weapons (which Russia developed because Bush abandoned the ABM treaty for the lols).
  - exasperaited 1y ago
    Don't try to find the magic truth in Trump's rants: he is an ignorant, dementia-addled old man whose self-perception as a leader is as a strongman in an imagined late 1970s/1980s era because he's always been stuck in that era. Pretending it's all a crazy-man act with hidden strategy a) requires that he isn't mentally declining (when he obviously is and his doctors think so and are trying to tell us) and b) would require that this ignorant man has good advisors where he very clearly does not.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      > and b) would require that this ignorant man has good advisors where he very clearly does not. Well... Project 2025. There are people behind Trump actually pulling the strings in a very dangerous direction!
- mrweasel 1y ago
  I'm confused about that as well. I don't see any reason for the US to not test the delivery mechanisms, i.e. the ICBM and missiles. The ICBMs are being replaced, so it would make sense to test those, but the Tomahawks and Trident missiles are tested frequently, the last Trident II being tested in September of this year.
nabla9 1y ago
The statement lacked any detail. It's just attention whoring. The US is conducting nuclear tests periodically just like other nuclear powers. Subcritical nuclear testing is allowed. The last one was in 2024 https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-completes-subcritical-experiment-pulse-facility-nevada https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-completes-subcriti... "NNSA successfully executed a subcritical experiment in the PULSE facility at the Nevada National Security Site. The experiment was executed in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory."
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mexicocitinluez 1y ago
  What statement is attention whoring? The statements made by the President himself? The article you linked says this: > This experiment performed as predicted; consistent with the self-imposed moratorium on nuclear explosive testing that the United States has held since 1992, it did not form a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction. And yet, in the BBC article, Trump is said to have said: > President Donald Trump has called on US military leaders to resume testing Pretty obvious he doesn't mean "resume 2024 testing". He also said this: > "With others doing testing, I think it's appropriate that we do also," Which would conflict with resuming the testing that was done in 2024 (if it ever stopped). > Trump's announcement did not include details of how the tests would occur Again, if it was what was happening in 2024, what new details would need to be added? He has been obsessed with using nuclear weapons since he took office 2016. He even proposed nuking a hurricane.
  - decremental 1y ago
    [dead]
  - nabla9 1y ago
    > The statements made by the President himself? Who is attention whore and bullshitter. For any other president statements equal policy, that's not so with Trump. The statement is so vague that it does not indicate out of ordinary nuclear testing. The statement was made in TruthSocial. There is no presidendtial action (proclamation, memorandum, or executive order.) He might be just talking shit.
anon721656321 1y ago
So much for nuclear non-proliferation... One of the best benefits of the current no live nuclear testing treaties / environment, was that the United States was one of a few countries that had done extensive live tests early on. The United States is able to sit on its arsenal and data, and with extensive research and simulation validate to a high degree of accuracy that "hey our bombs still work". Most countries do not have the data/technical expertise/resources to be able to validate with just simulation. But since no-one else is doing live tests, they do not do live tests either. How much do you want to bet that a subset of the Russian nuclear weapons simply do not work, and that they will only figure this out when they need to 'test' in response to American tests. My bet is that it is non-0.
- secondcoming 1y ago
  'non-proliferation' is about preventing currently non-nuclear countries from obtaining/developing nuclear weapons, it's not about nuclear tests.
- poszlem 1y ago
  Nuclear non-proliferation only really works when no one feels the need for nuclear weapons in the first place. As soon as countries start feeling threatened or distrust each other, the whole idea falls apart. It’s easy to agree on disarmament when everyone feels safe, but when fear enters the picture, every nation starts looking for its own button to press. Sadly, the world learned this lesson the hard way from Ukraine’s example: a country that gave up its nuclear arsenal for security guarantees, only to be invaded by the very power that signed them.
- xg15 1y ago
  That's not wrong, but what would countries that already own nuclear weapons keep from simply producing new ones?
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  Didn't Russia test a nuclear missile a few days ago?
  - 1y ago
hdhxjfkek 1y ago
this is cover for Russia, Trump+Putin want to scare the world into a Ukraine war settlement
- exasperaited 1y ago
  Russia will do what Russia was always going to do: performatively detonate a nuclear weapon over the northern North Sea.
daedlanth 1y ago
[dead]
Synaesthesia 1y ago
So let's see we've allowed all the arms control treaties to lapse, every single major power is investing more in armaments including nuclear delivery systems. There is a huge active conflict in Ukraine, right in Europe, the Middle East and many other places like Africa. Many more conflicts are brewing like in Latin America, China, India/Pakistan etc. There should be alarm bells going off. People aren't aware of just how massive and devastating this threat is. In the 1980s there were huge protests about jucelar weapons that actually resulted in detente and a relaxation of tensions. Right now tensions and conflicts are rising. Many people think the threat of nuclear weapons went away after the cold war. They never did. Where are the peace movements? There has to be popular pressure to institute arms control, make peace and ultimately dismantle these nuclear weapons.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Where are the peace movements? A lot of the "peace movements" of the past were financially and ideologically supported by the USSR and Russia [1]. There's nothing bad per se to say against pacifism, to the contrary - but the public image of pacifist movements these days has been heavily tarnished by both the obvious Russia-apologetism regarding the Ukraine war [2] and outright glorification of the horrors done by Hamas on Oct 7th. [1] https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/wie-russische-einflussnehmer-die-deutsche-friedensbewegung-unterwanderten-102.html https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/wie-russische-einflussne... [2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/zuviel-verstaendnis-fuer-putin-friedensbewegung-in-der-krise,UxEk6No https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/zuviel-verstaendnis-fue...
  - tclancy 1y ago
    This is some fine astroturfing. They don’t exist anymore because they were commie-funded and also they exist and are cheering for Hamas to kill Israelis. Yes, peace movements are famous for that.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      > They don’t exist anymore because they were commie-funded I don't claim they don't exist any more, I claim they lost political relevance. > and also they exist and are cheering for Hamas to kill Israelis AI and HRW have a serious anti-Israel bias [1]. [1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-amnesty-international-suspended-its-israel-branch https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-amnesty-international-suspended...
adriand 1y ago
I really recommend watching A House Of Dynamite, the new movie by Kathryn Bigelow, which provides a highly realistic view of just how insane the entire nuclear system is. All of us live in a constant state of enormous danger: we are just 20 minutes away from apocalypse at all times. Even if you believe that nuclear deterrence is what prevents great power conflict, there is no avoiding the fact that it would take just one mistake or one technical failure or one mentally ill submarine commander to end civilization. We have to fix this, not make it worse!
- Juliate 1y ago
  Not one: several mistakes, or several failures, or several people in a submarine. Those systems all have multiple stages that require several validation steps to work, we do that for way less sensitive processes. Nonetheless, yes, we're still on the brink of something gloomy. The movie is quite good, and would massively gain from spinoffs showing what happens in realtime in other countries too.
  - jacknews 1y ago
    What about a mentally-ill president?
    - Juliate 1y ago
      Ah, good point. Sorry.
      - adriand 1y ago
        Also: how confident are we in the safeguards that, say, North Korea or Pakistan have in place? And how confident are we in the systems that tell us, and our adversaries, that an attack is taking place? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov : “His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that would have likely resulted in a large-scale nuclear war.”
bookofjoe 1y ago
https://archive.ph/icmoF https://archive.ph/icmoF
AsmaraHolding 1y ago
One of the greatest stories from the first Trump presidency is him suggesting a "tenfold" increase in the United States nuclear arsenal, and Rex Tillerson subsequently calling him a "fucking moron".
sparsely 1y ago
This is likely a pretty big win for China/Russia if he follows through with it - USA has advanced nuclear weapon simulation capabilities which almost certainly outstrip theirs, so has a reduced need to conduct non sub-critical tests.
- mamonster 1y ago
  It's also pretty bad since the USA inarguably benefits from non-proliferation much more than either China or Russia. The whole point of nuclear is that it bypasses conventional capabilities, and USA has the best conventional capabilities, so it loses the most in terms of relative power.
- ironyman 1y ago
  It doesn't really matter how advanced your supercomputing infrastructure is .... the simulation is as good as the input and data from actual tests. The big question is whether China is confident enough with the data they have from 47 tests. Any non-subcritical testing is a gift to China as they are severely lagging behind US on number of tests conducted and therefore amount of data collected about warhead design. Resumption of tests would add fresh data to verify new warhead designs over the decades since the last test. US would have a lesser need for new data given the amount of testing done during the cold war. If US does conduct a nuclear test I bet a whole slew of test from China would come very shortly after that. Work has already been noticed in recent years in the test tunnel. https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/satellite-photos-show-chinas-new-nuclear-test-site-in-xinjiang/ https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/satellite-...
darqis 1y ago
This madman needs to be stopped
- leobg 1y ago
  Asking to take down a fence when you have no idea why it was put up is not smart. Neither is asking someone to “stop” Trump (and making not even a token effort to exclude violent or criminal ways of achieving that goal) based on a headline you skimmed for < 5 seconds.
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    To be fair, I can think of about a million good reasons to stop Trump. I'm sure just about anyone can. It's not just this headline or other headlines. It's, like, a lot of stuff.
cyberpsychosis 1y ago
Nuclear weapon testing and development is very much needed. Nuclear weapon technologies have been stymied for decades. Humanity is under a possible threat from some sort of Non Human Intelligence whose drones and craft constitute most UAP sightings. All of this is kept secret for decades, and nuclear weapons are by far Humanity's most effective defense as we study these beings and craft.
- nehal3m 1y ago
  Your nickname is apt.
- IAmGraydon 1y ago
  Get help.
theturtle 1y ago
[dead]
hengheng 1y ago
To me the real question is what kind of trust has eroded that Americans stopped electing smart people into office.
moogly 1y ago
Really working hard towards that Nobel peace prize.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
perihelions 1y ago
This follows in the wake of some fast-moving developments in the nuclear-war field. If you haven't been following it: on the one hand, the US leadership is championing a trillion-dollar space-based missile defense for, quote, "forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland"—i.e. upending "Mutually Assured Destruction"[0,1]. In response (not an immediate response—this has been going back-and-forth since the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002), Russia just days ago test-flew a *nuclear-powered* subsonic cruise missile for 14,000 kilometers[2,3]. That machine's intended for delivering nuclear weapons to the US, in a way that putatively sidesteps the current ideas for missile defenses. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/missile-defense-star-wars-golden-dome-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/m... ("Golden Dome missile defense system could cost over $1 trillion") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s... ("Golden Dome (missile defense system)") [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-tested-new-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile-top-general-says-2025-10-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-tested-new-nuclea... ("Russia tested new nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile") [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik ("9M730 Burevestnik")
- morkalork 1y ago
  They're not the only countries ramping up either.. https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-triples-nuclear-arsenal-2020-pentagon-report/story?id=116895821 https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-triples-nuclear-a...
JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago
America is going rogue. We have to thank that this guy doesn't understand software otherwise he'd have banned internet services offered to other countries or used it as barganing tool. America is made up of the millions of hard working men and women , but the excessive patriotism is concentrating too much power in the hands of the executives. Reaching leves such as Saudi and UAE without all the free things that their citizens get because of the oil
paulolc 1y ago
A House of Dynamite [2]. Everyone is looking to have more dynamite than the other next room, while living inside the house. All of this happening while the world gets more and more divisive. It's insanity. Are 12,000 nukes safer than zero? [1]. [1] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/annie-jacobsen/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/annie-jacobsen/ [2] https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537 https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537
- sillyfluke 1y ago
  Since the Trump admin and the director had an exchange of views through the media recently regarding the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of the announcement was partially motivated by reality show Trump's TV instincts.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  I don't think zero is practical. It's more like are 12,000 safer than 30.
paulj5 1y ago
AI and technological advancement ahould be the focus rather then nuclear positioning. It is surprising to hear how badly the nuclear assets are managed though, so maybe its some kond of inprovement. They used the password 0000 for the launch coes for like 30 years until the 90's or later, can you imagine. that is a completely horrendous level of security for weapons that will cause the end of the human species on the entire planet. As AI becomes the super focus, hopefully nuclear weapons will less and less of a choice.
- tempodox 1y ago
  No, the “AI” will just be used to trigger the launch. No more passwords, though. Instead, nuclear hallucinations.
  - paulj5 1y ago
    theres no going back now .. its constant war at the AI level , yeah, and it makes a lot of mistakes
keernan 1y ago
Just yesterday: President Vladimir Putin says Russia has conducted a successful test of a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone, declaring that the new weapon can’t be intercepted https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/putin-russias-nuclear-armed-underwater-drone-tested-successfully-126976507 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/putin-russias...
tim333 1y ago
I wonder if he got confused between Russia testing a nuclear powered missile and people detonating nuclear warheads. Both could be called nuclear testing. It wouldn't surprise me if there was that sort of mix up.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  As I understand it, Trump understands "the nuclear" better than anyone. Where is that famous quote...
  - oskarkk 1y ago
    Yeah, his uncle with very good genes explained it to him many, many years ago. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/
baerrie 1y ago
The only testing we need to do is on nuclear adjacent software, some was recently hacked through a sharepoint vulnerability.
mikewarot 1y ago
All I ask is that if Chicago does get nuked, as threatened in the movie "House of Dynamite" that I be given sufficient time to get everyone outside in front of our house so that we can all go together and not be stuck watching each other die from radiation or starve over the subsequent months. We collectively played Russian roulette electing Trump in 2016. Doing it a second time last November was astonishingly stupid. I don't see how our luck can possibly hold.
esalman 1y ago
First Trump presidency gave us COVID. We're going to see another historic event this term. I think the airline disasters we saw first few months were pretty big. A nuclear disaster is very near the top of things that could still go wrong.

103 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

nuclear bombs, moon landings wow it's like the 1960s again, but with old people

No matter where you live, the American presidency will find a way to make things more shit for you. With everything going on in the world, really what we needed is more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing, isn't it? Thanks Putin, thanks Trump, and all their enablers.

ponector 1y ago
Just a reminder: Obama and Merkel are real enablers for putin. Weak response to multiple russian invasions enabled all kind of dictators around the globe.
- vkou 1y ago
  Bush pissing on the rules-based world order in the 00s was the real enabler for Russian ambitions. If the US (and the half of Europe that was bending over backwards to curry favor) can start imperial adventures abroad for the most asinine reasons, how could anyone fault Russia for going on them closer to home?

bovermyer 1y ago

What the actual #*!@... Well, anybody have any modern simulation models for fallout distribution after a nuclear war between the USA and Russia?

InspGadget4343 1y ago
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ is a "fun" resource for checking how screwed you are if the enemy bombs your friendly neighborhood city
- zimpenfish 1y ago
  Thankfully, being almost-central London, anything more than about 100kt means I'm immediately toasted.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  Can they not just shoot down the bomb before it actually lands?
jimnotgym 1y ago
I'll place a bet that the fallout from that conflict will extend to the zone known as 'everywhere'
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Southern hemisphere might be ok.
- tzs 1y ago
  It also works the other way. A nuclear war between two countries nowhere near the US and that doesn't draw in any other nuclear powers could still have pretty annoying effects in the US. Here's a paper [1] and an article [2] based on that paper that looked at what a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could do to the rest of the world. The scenario they look it is each firing 100 nukes the size of the bomb used at Hiroshima at the other, aimed at major population centers. Here's the abstract from the paper: > A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history. BTW, both India and Pakistan rely on the glaciers in the Himalayas for freshwater. The glaciers in effect act as a natural reservoir system. Something like 70% of Pakistan depends on that system, and a similar percent for northern India. Overall in Southeast Asia about 1.9 billion people depend on those glaciers. As global warming reduces those glaciers it is not a stretch to imagine disputes over allocation of the remaining water getting heated enough for war to break out. I've read that if we let it get to 3℃ above pre-industrial levels we lose about 75% of those glaciers. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117 [2] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-india-pakistan-nuclear-war-would-bring-global-famine/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-in...
notahacker 1y ago
This is Trump. He's not going to war with Russia but if he gets out of the wrong side of his bed and reads the wrong social media post he might have to get talked out of nuking Portland
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > He's not going to war with Russia ... but with China instead. The trouble with this guy is, you can't be sure if what he spouts from his mouth is him being actually serious, him just parroting whatever the last person to talk to him said (seems to be a common trope regarding anything Ukraine) or if he's just out of his mind and gone off script, off rails. And on top of that you got stuff like the sinking of the "Venezuelan drug boats" that would be seen as and dealt with as a declaration of war if the aggressor weren't the USA. All it takes for stuff to go Seriously Damn Wrong is one person on the other side taking his verbal diarrhoea seriously and literally and acting accordingly.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    Confucius say, smaller man rattle saber more loudly.
    - netsharc 1y ago
      Ah, casual racism implying Confucius spoke English with stereotypical Chinese style and grammatical errors... 2.5 Millennia ago no one spoke English...
      - fuzzfactor 1y ago
        Sorry to disappoint, but you are incorrect, my good bot.

jimnotgym 1y ago

This is confusing, the Russian and Chinese 'nuclear weapons tests' mentioned in the article didn't involve testing nuclear weapons, but Trump wants to test nuclear weapons in response? Did I read that right?

SiempreViernes 1y ago
That's certainly a plausible reading, but in truth it is very uncertain what he means. The leading guess I've seen is that he's "striking back" after Putin announced successful tests of new delivery platforms for nuclear weapons (which Russia developed because Bush abandoned the ABM treaty for the lols).
- exasperaited 1y ago
  Don't try to find the magic truth in Trump's rants: he is an ignorant, dementia-addled old man whose self-perception as a leader is as a strongman in an imagined late 1970s/1980s era because he's always been stuck in that era. Pretending it's all a crazy-man act with hidden strategy a) requires that he isn't mentally declining (when he obviously is and his doctors think so and are trying to tell us) and b) would require that this ignorant man has good advisors where he very clearly does not.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > and b) would require that this ignorant man has good advisors where he very clearly does not. Well... Project 2025. There are people behind Trump actually pulling the strings in a very dangerous direction!
mrweasel 1y ago
I'm confused about that as well. I don't see any reason for the US to not test the delivery mechanisms, i.e. the ICBM and missiles. The ICBMs are being replaced, so it would make sense to test those, but the Tomahawks and Trident missiles are tested frequently, the last Trident II being tested in September of this year.

nabla9 1y ago

The statement lacked any detail. It's just attention whoring. The US is conducting nuclear tests periodically just like other nuclear powers. Subcritical nuclear testing is allowed. The last one was in 2024 https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-completes-subcritical-experiment-pulse-facility-nevada https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-completes-subcriti... "NNSA successfully executed a subcritical experiment in the PULSE facility at the Nevada National Security Site. The experiment was executed in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory."

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mexicocitinluez 1y ago
What statement is attention whoring? The statements made by the President himself? The article you linked says this: > This experiment performed as predicted; consistent with the self-imposed moratorium on nuclear explosive testing that the United States has held since 1992, it did not form a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction. And yet, in the BBC article, Trump is said to have said: > President Donald Trump has called on US military leaders to resume testing Pretty obvious he doesn't mean "resume 2024 testing". He also said this: > "With others doing testing, I think it's appropriate that we do also," Which would conflict with resuming the testing that was done in 2024 (if it ever stopped). > Trump's announcement did not include details of how the tests would occur Again, if it was what was happening in 2024, what new details would need to be added? He has been obsessed with using nuclear weapons since he took office 2016. He even proposed nuking a hurricane.
- decremental 1y ago
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- nabla9 1y ago
  > The statements made by the President himself? Who is attention whore and bullshitter. For any other president statements equal policy, that's not so with Trump. The statement is so vague that it does not indicate out of ordinary nuclear testing. The statement was made in TruthSocial. There is no presidendtial action (proclamation, memorandum, or executive order.) He might be just talking shit.

anon721656321 1y ago

So much for nuclear non-proliferation... One of the best benefits of the current no live nuclear testing treaties / environment, was that the United States was one of a few countries that had done extensive live tests early on. The United States is able to sit on its arsenal and data, and with extensive research and simulation validate to a high degree of accuracy that "hey our bombs still work". Most countries do not have the data/technical expertise/resources to be able to validate with just simulation. But since no-one else is doing live tests, they do not do live tests either. How much do you want to bet that a subset of the Russian nuclear weapons simply do not work, and that they will only figure this out when they need to 'test' in response to American tests. My bet is that it is non-0.

secondcoming 1y ago
'non-proliferation' is about preventing currently non-nuclear countries from obtaining/developing nuclear weapons, it's not about nuclear tests.
poszlem 1y ago
Nuclear non-proliferation only really works when no one feels the need for nuclear weapons in the first place. As soon as countries start feeling threatened or distrust each other, the whole idea falls apart. It’s easy to agree on disarmament when everyone feels safe, but when fear enters the picture, every nation starts looking for its own button to press. Sadly, the world learned this lesson the hard way from Ukraine’s example: a country that gave up its nuclear arsenal for security guarantees, only to be invaded by the very power that signed them.
xg15 1y ago
That's not wrong, but what would countries that already own nuclear weapons keep from simply producing new ones?
koakuma-chan 1y ago
Didn't Russia test a nuclear missile a few days ago?
- 1y ago

hdhxjfkek 1y ago

this is cover for Russia, Trump+Putin want to scare the world into a Ukraine war settlement

exasperaited 1y ago
Russia will do what Russia was always going to do: performatively detonate a nuclear weapon over the northern North Sea.

daedlanth 1y ago

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Synaesthesia 1y ago

So let's see we've allowed all the arms control treaties to lapse, every single major power is investing more in armaments including nuclear delivery systems. There is a huge active conflict in Ukraine, right in Europe, the Middle East and many other places like Africa. Many more conflicts are brewing like in Latin America, China, India/Pakistan etc. There should be alarm bells going off. People aren't aware of just how massive and devastating this threat is. In the 1980s there were huge protests about jucelar weapons that actually resulted in detente and a relaxation of tensions. Right now tensions and conflicts are rising. Many people think the threat of nuclear weapons went away after the cold war. They never did. Where are the peace movements? There has to be popular pressure to institute arms control, make peace and ultimately dismantle these nuclear weapons.

mschuster91 1y ago
> Where are the peace movements? A lot of the "peace movements" of the past were financially and ideologically supported by the USSR and Russia [1]. There's nothing bad per se to say against pacifism, to the contrary - but the public image of pacifist movements these days has been heavily tarnished by both the obvious Russia-apologetism regarding the Ukraine war [2] and outright glorification of the horrors done by Hamas on Oct 7th. [1] https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/wie-russische-einflussnehmer-die-deutsche-friedensbewegung-unterwanderten-102.html https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/wie-russische-einflussne... [2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/zuviel-verstaendnis-fuer-putin-friedensbewegung-in-der-krise,UxEk6No https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/zuviel-verstaendnis-fue...
- tclancy 1y ago
  This is some fine astroturfing. They don’t exist anymore because they were commie-funded and also they exist and are cheering for Hamas to kill Israelis. Yes, peace movements are famous for that.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > They don’t exist anymore because they were commie-funded I don't claim they don't exist any more, I claim they lost political relevance. > and also they exist and are cheering for Hamas to kill Israelis AI and HRW have a serious anti-Israel bias [1]. [1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-amnesty-international-suspended-its-israel-branch https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-amnesty-international-suspended...

adriand 1y ago

I really recommend watching A House Of Dynamite, the new movie by Kathryn Bigelow, which provides a highly realistic view of just how insane the entire nuclear system is. All of us live in a constant state of enormous danger: we are just 20 minutes away from apocalypse at all times. Even if you believe that nuclear deterrence is what prevents great power conflict, there is no avoiding the fact that it would take just one mistake or one technical failure or one mentally ill submarine commander to end civilization. We have to fix this, not make it worse!

Juliate 1y ago
Not one: several mistakes, or several failures, or several people in a submarine. Those systems all have multiple stages that require several validation steps to work, we do that for way less sensitive processes. Nonetheless, yes, we're still on the brink of something gloomy. The movie is quite good, and would massively gain from spinoffs showing what happens in realtime in other countries too.
- jacknews 1y ago
  What about a mentally-ill president?
  - Juliate 1y ago
    Ah, good point. Sorry.
    - adriand 1y ago
      Also: how confident are we in the safeguards that, say, North Korea or Pakistan have in place? And how confident are we in the systems that tell us, and our adversaries, that an attack is taking place? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov : “His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that would have likely resulted in a large-scale nuclear war.”

bookofjoe 1y ago

https://archive.ph/icmoF https://archive.ph/icmoF

AsmaraHolding 1y ago

One of the greatest stories from the first Trump presidency is him suggesting a "tenfold" increase in the United States nuclear arsenal, and Rex Tillerson subsequently calling him a "fucking moron".

sparsely 1y ago

This is likely a pretty big win for China/Russia if he follows through with it - USA has advanced nuclear weapon simulation capabilities which almost certainly outstrip theirs, so has a reduced need to conduct non sub-critical tests.

mamonster 1y ago
It's also pretty bad since the USA inarguably benefits from non-proliferation much more than either China or Russia. The whole point of nuclear is that it bypasses conventional capabilities, and USA has the best conventional capabilities, so it loses the most in terms of relative power.
ironyman 1y ago
It doesn't really matter how advanced your supercomputing infrastructure is .... the simulation is as good as the input and data from actual tests. The big question is whether China is confident enough with the data they have from 47 tests. Any non-subcritical testing is a gift to China as they are severely lagging behind US on number of tests conducted and therefore amount of data collected about warhead design. Resumption of tests would add fresh data to verify new warhead designs over the decades since the last test. US would have a lesser need for new data given the amount of testing done during the cold war. If US does conduct a nuclear test I bet a whole slew of test from China would come very shortly after that. Work has already been noticed in recent years in the test tunnel. https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/satellite-photos-show-chinas-new-nuclear-test-site-in-xinjiang/ https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/satellite-...

darqis 1y ago

This madman needs to be stopped

leobg 1y ago
Asking to take down a fence when you have no idea why it was put up is not smart. Neither is asking someone to “stop” Trump (and making not even a token effort to exclude violent or criminal ways of achieving that goal) based on a headline you skimmed for < 5 seconds.
- array_key_first 1y ago
  To be fair, I can think of about a million good reasons to stop Trump. I'm sure just about anyone can. It's not just this headline or other headlines. It's, like, a lot of stuff.

cyberpsychosis 1y ago

Nuclear weapon testing and development is very much needed. Nuclear weapon technologies have been stymied for decades. Humanity is under a possible threat from some sort of Non Human Intelligence whose drones and craft constitute most UAP sightings. All of this is kept secret for decades, and nuclear weapons are by far Humanity's most effective defense as we study these beings and craft.

nehal3m 1y ago
Your nickname is apt.
IAmGraydon 1y ago
Get help.

theturtle 1y ago

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hengheng 1y ago

To me the real question is what kind of trust has eroded that Americans stopped electing smart people into office.

moogly 1y ago

Really working hard towards that Nobel peace prize.

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perihelions 1y ago

This follows in the wake of some fast-moving developments in the nuclear-war field. If you haven't been following it: on the one hand, the US leadership is championing a trillion-dollar space-based missile defense for, quote, "forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland"—i.e. upending "Mutually Assured Destruction"[0,1]. In response (not an immediate response—this has been going back-and-forth since the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002), Russia just days ago test-flew a *nuclear-powered* subsonic cruise missile for 14,000 kilometers[2,3]. That machine's intended for delivering nuclear weapons to the US, in a way that putatively sidesteps the current ideas for missile defenses. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/missile-defense-star-wars-golden-dome-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/m... ("Golden Dome missile defense system could cost over $1 trillion") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s... ("Golden Dome (missile defense system)") [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-tested-new-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile-top-general-says-2025-10-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-tested-new-nuclea... ("Russia tested new nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile") [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik ("9M730 Burevestnik")

morkalork 1y ago
They're not the only countries ramping up either.. https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-triples-nuclear-arsenal-2020-pentagon-report/story?id=116895821 https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-triples-nuclear-a...

JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago

America is going rogue. We have to thank that this guy doesn't understand software otherwise he'd have banned internet services offered to other countries or used it as barganing tool. America is made up of the millions of hard working men and women , but the excessive patriotism is concentrating too much power in the hands of the executives. Reaching leves such as Saudi and UAE without all the free things that their citizens get because of the oil

paulolc 1y ago

A House of Dynamite [2]. Everyone is looking to have more dynamite than the other next room, while living inside the house. All of this happening while the world gets more and more divisive. It's insanity. Are 12,000 nukes safer than zero? [1]. [1] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/annie-jacobsen/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/annie-jacobsen/ [2] https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537 https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537

sillyfluke 1y ago
Since the Trump admin and the director had an exchange of views through the media recently regarding the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of the announcement was partially motivated by reality show Trump's TV instincts.
cosmicgadget 1y ago
I don't think zero is practical. It's more like are 12,000 safer than 30.

paulj5 1y ago

AI and technological advancement ahould be the focus rather then nuclear positioning. It is surprising to hear how badly the nuclear assets are managed though, so maybe its some kond of inprovement. They used the password 0000 for the launch coes for like 30 years until the 90's or later, can you imagine. that is a completely horrendous level of security for weapons that will cause the end of the human species on the entire planet. As AI becomes the super focus, hopefully nuclear weapons will less and less of a choice.

tempodox 1y ago
No, the “AI” will just be used to trigger the launch. No more passwords, though. Instead, nuclear hallucinations.
- paulj5 1y ago
  theres no going back now .. its constant war at the AI level , yeah, and it makes a lot of mistakes

keernan 1y ago

Just yesterday: President Vladimir Putin says Russia has conducted a successful test of a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone, declaring that the new weapon can’t be intercepted https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/putin-russias-nuclear-armed-underwater-drone-tested-successfully-126976507 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/putin-russias...

tim333 1y ago

I wonder if he got confused between Russia testing a nuclear powered missile and people detonating nuclear warheads. Both could be called nuclear testing. It wouldn't surprise me if there was that sort of mix up.

cosmicgadget 1y ago
As I understand it, Trump understands "the nuclear" better than anyone. Where is that famous quote...
- oskarkk 1y ago
  Yeah, his uncle with very good genes explained it to him many, many years ago. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/

baerrie 1y ago

The only testing we need to do is on nuclear adjacent software, some was recently hacked through a sharepoint vulnerability.

mikewarot 1y ago

All I ask is that if Chicago does get nuked, as threatened in the movie "House of Dynamite" that I be given sufficient time to get everyone outside in front of our house so that we can all go together and not be stuck watching each other die from radiation or starve over the subsequent months. We collectively played Russian roulette electing Trump in 2016. Doing it a second time last November was astonishingly stupid. I don't see how our luck can possibly hold.

esalman 1y ago

First Trump presidency gave us COVID. We're going to see another historic event this term. I think the airline disasters we saw first few months were pretty big. A nuclear disaster is very near the top of things that could still go wrong.