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Nuclear annihilation on any sort of global scale is further off than ever in the past 60-70 years or so. The doomsday clock is mostly worrying about climate cha

Nuclear annihilation on any sort of global scale is further off than ever in the past 60-70 years or so. The doomsday clock is mostly worrying about climate change, conventional war and Facebook boomers spreading and believing fake news. I don't mean that things are fine, just that Nuclear annihilation is less of a concern than some make it out to be.

adamc 2mo ago
No. The past year has substantially nudged things in the other direction.
- NoImmatureAdHom 2mo ago
  I'd say it's tough to say. On the one hand, one of the major nuclear powers is embroiled in a war in Europe. Which is extremely bad news and clearly makes the probability of nuclear war increase. On the other hand, we're getting better and better at targeting, which means much smaller warheads can get the job done. We have little use for 50MT behemoths any more (excepting doomsday weapons).
  - kjs3 2mo ago
    Er...the 50MT device was a cold war dick measuring stunt, not the demonstration of a practical strategic weapon. But, yeah, we (the US) don't even build 1MT devices any more, because 1) we have to fit them into submarines and bombers where size and weight (and economic) requirements limit yield, and 2) we figured out pretty quick that due to diminishing returns on destructive footprint, bigger bombs were pretty much a waste of effort (and produced other side effects like more fallout). Among other gotchas, you're constrained by the cube-root law; ten times more yield is not anywhere close to 10 times more destruction on the ground. So, since we saw first-hand what devices of ballpark 20KT yield did to an urban environment, numerically most of the operational US nuclear weapons are around 100KT (margin of error and all that)[1]. So, yeah, better targeting, smaller warheads, yada yada. Still one-shot/one-kill for an entire city and the surrounding area. I mean, McNamara could handwave with statements like "optimistically, only millions dead" (paraphrased), but I don't think that kind of thinking has aged well. That said, things are not worse because the Big Three have Big Bombs (or don't). It's because the strategic landscape has changed. One of the big 3 is lead by a guy who thinks nuclear weapons are just like big hand grenades or something and that negotiation is a zero-sum game. Another bit three leader is maybe just holding on to power by his teeth (or not...who knows) and came of age in the 'nuclear war is winnable' era. And there are more players at the table. Israel has nukes. North Korea. France and the UK. And India and Pakistan. South Africa had them before, and could again. And Iran will get them at some point, sooner or later. And we're apparently going to give the Saudis all the required tooling and expertise required, though there's apparently a firm pinky-swear no weapons will come of it. So we aren't looking at a 'simple' US/USSR cold war, with some Chinese spice in the mix. We have regional power, some of them not known for long-term stability, some with extremely volatile regional situations, with the ability to knock over the apple cart. So what is the escalation/deescalation path if, say, KYI has a real bender one night and decides that NK nukes Seoul? Or Tokyo? Or what if they just pull a June 1950 and march all the way to Pusan conventionally? Do we nuke Pyongyang? All their nuclear facilities (the ones we know about)? Or glass over the whole place? And what then does China do, us having set off a nuke in their literal back yard on top of their Little Buddy? Under such circumstances, I do not expect the current administration to take a measured step back and say "we need to think this through...". Uncertainty. That's why a lot of us (who lived in the Cold War) think things look a little shakier than usual. [1] To head off the inevitable "well ackshually...": Yes, the big players still have big bombs. I haven't been involved in this area in a while so things have probably changed a bit, but we still have some of the big boys in the 300KT+ range sitting on Minutemans for old times sake. I assume the Russians still have a bunch of their 1/2 to 1MT devices in silos. And the Chinese were pretty proud of their absurdly large 4MT+ devices, supposedly still in service.
  - King-Aaron 2mo ago
    If Annie Jacobsens research is at all accurate, she mentions that since the 60s they've run simulations constantly to project how a nuclear conflict would escalate, and in that time there's never been a simulation that resulted in an outcome other than complete and total global nuclear exchange. Even from a small scale tactical deployment, simulations always show it escalating to a full cataclysm. I personally don't have the here-nor-there to say otherwise, but it does seem likely that the type of device doesn't really change the outcome.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 2mo ago
      If "complete and total global nuclear exchange" means "we shoot off all the nukes we've got", then how bad that is depends on how many nukes there are - not whether we shoot all of them or not. "Complete and total global nuclear exchange" is not so bad when there are 50 100Kt nukes, and is really, really bad when there are 10,000 10Mt nukes. And we've drastically reduced both the number of nuclear weapons and their average yield since the cold war (https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/ https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/). Which is great news! I'm no expert, but from a little reading it seems all-out nuclear war would be not just survivable for the species, but not even that bad for most of humanity comparing to disasters of yore. South America, Oceania, much of Asia, and Africa would be ~fine.
      - King-Aaron 2mo ago
        To be honest, even one major mass casualty event in a city from an exchange would be enough to tip the economy and cripple supply chains etc, and a limited/full exchange doesn't necessarily need to incinerate the whole world in order to completely collapse it
        NoImmatureAdHom 2mo ago
        Eh I think we're more resilient than that. It'd be shocking, yes, but in the end I don't think it would be that much of a disruption from the point of view of the species.
openasocket 2mo ago
With the expiration of New Start earlier this year, there are no nuclear arms control agreements in effect between the US and Russia, which hasn’t been the case since the 1960s. Russia, China, and the US are all actively modernizing and developing new nuclear capabilities. China has been greatly expanding their nuclear arsenal, building hundreds of new silos. North Korea has an expansive set of tactical and strategic nuclear systems and are in strategic cooperation with Russia. Russia is 4 years into a destabilizing land war, have developed several new weapons systems, and are now in a nuclear weapon sharing agreement with Belarus. And I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of other things. We are in a period of strategic instability and an arms race that is unlike anything we have seen in the last 50 years. You can quibble with the specifics all you want, but I don’t think anyone can argue that we are at a lesser risk of nuclear war that we were, say, 20 or 30 years ago
- sorokod 2mo ago
  In addition, usage of tactical nuclear weapons comes up again and again from Russian sources, driven by the situation in the Ukraine war.
  - Terr_ 2mo ago
    Plus the current US President has purged most of of the military leaders who might resist any unwise or unlawful orders regarding nuclear weaponry. (Or just in-general, for that matter.) Potential orders he mused-about during his first term. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/military-officials-ousted-retired-trump-hegseth https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/military-officials-ousted-r... https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/10/17/mattis-feared-trump-would-order-a-surprise-nuclear-strike-book-claims/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/10...
    - mindslight 2mo ago
      Yeah, the US regime has basically been speed running the impotent dictator's playbook. Start from a place of weakness and incompetence, and cause a bunch of senseless destruction to distract from it. Using tactical nuclear weapons would be right in line with that, especially after having started this quagmire in Iran with no way to win.
LastTrain 2mo ago
[flagged]
chipotle_coyote 2mo ago
This is actually still a reasonable concern to have. Coincidentally, just yesterday I came across a reference to the book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, speculating on how a global thermonuclear war could start in modern times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario The scenario she presents is fictional, but it’s all based on current nuclear arsenals and response protocols. While what I’ve read of it certainly makes it seem like a worst-case scenario in a “nearly everything that can go wrong does” sense, it’s disturbing how relatively few things going wrong it actually takes—in a span of under two hours—to reach “civilizational collapse” level outcomes.
pibaker 2mo ago
But now with nukes in major countries arsenals, any of the three new risks you mentioned could have escalated to civilization ending nuclear wars. It's still a miracle that it hasn't happened, but I wouldn't be so optimistic. Imagine climate change causing a drought in South Asia leading to conflicts between India, China and Pakistan that escalates into a nuclear war. Imagine if the regular wars in Ukraine and the Middle East ends up with Russia or Israel using a nuke. Imagine if Facebook boomers vote someone batshit crazy into office and drops a nuke on a long time hostile state just for TV ratings…

adamc 2mo ago

No. The past year has substantially nudged things in the other direction.

NoImmatureAdHom 2mo ago
I'd say it's tough to say. On the one hand, one of the major nuclear powers is embroiled in a war in Europe. Which is extremely bad news and clearly makes the probability of nuclear war increase. On the other hand, we're getting better and better at targeting, which means much smaller warheads can get the job done. We have little use for 50MT behemoths any more (excepting doomsday weapons).
- kjs3 2mo ago
  Er...the 50MT device was a cold war dick measuring stunt, not the demonstration of a practical strategic weapon. But, yeah, we (the US) don't even build 1MT devices any more, because 1) we have to fit them into submarines and bombers where size and weight (and economic) requirements limit yield, and 2) we figured out pretty quick that due to diminishing returns on destructive footprint, bigger bombs were pretty much a waste of effort (and produced other side effects like more fallout). Among other gotchas, you're constrained by the cube-root law; ten times more yield is not anywhere close to 10 times more destruction on the ground. So, since we saw first-hand what devices of ballpark 20KT yield did to an urban environment, numerically most of the operational US nuclear weapons are around 100KT (margin of error and all that)[1]. So, yeah, better targeting, smaller warheads, yada yada. Still one-shot/one-kill for an entire city and the surrounding area. I mean, McNamara could handwave with statements like "optimistically, only millions dead" (paraphrased), but I don't think that kind of thinking has aged well. That said, things are not worse because the Big Three have Big Bombs (or don't). It's because the strategic landscape has changed. One of the big 3 is lead by a guy who thinks nuclear weapons are just like big hand grenades or something and that negotiation is a zero-sum game. Another bit three leader is maybe just holding on to power by his teeth (or not...who knows) and came of age in the 'nuclear war is winnable' era. And there are more players at the table. Israel has nukes. North Korea. France and the UK. And India and Pakistan. South Africa had them before, and could again. And Iran will get them at some point, sooner or later. And we're apparently going to give the Saudis all the required tooling and expertise required, though there's apparently a firm pinky-swear no weapons will come of it. So we aren't looking at a 'simple' US/USSR cold war, with some Chinese spice in the mix. We have regional power, some of them not known for long-term stability, some with extremely volatile regional situations, with the ability to knock over the apple cart. So what is the escalation/deescalation path if, say, KYI has a real bender one night and decides that NK nukes Seoul? Or Tokyo? Or what if they just pull a June 1950 and march all the way to Pusan conventionally? Do we nuke Pyongyang? All their nuclear facilities (the ones we know about)? Or glass over the whole place? And what then does China do, us having set off a nuke in their literal back yard on top of their Little Buddy? Under such circumstances, I do not expect the current administration to take a measured step back and say "we need to think this through...". Uncertainty. That's why a lot of us (who lived in the Cold War) think things look a little shakier than usual. [1] To head off the inevitable "well ackshually...": Yes, the big players still have big bombs. I haven't been involved in this area in a while so things have probably changed a bit, but we still have some of the big boys in the 300KT+ range sitting on Minutemans for old times sake. I assume the Russians still have a bunch of their 1/2 to 1MT devices in silos. And the Chinese were pretty proud of their absurdly large 4MT+ devices, supposedly still in service.
- King-Aaron 2mo ago
  If Annie Jacobsens research is at all accurate, she mentions that since the 60s they've run simulations constantly to project how a nuclear conflict would escalate, and in that time there's never been a simulation that resulted in an outcome other than complete and total global nuclear exchange. Even from a small scale tactical deployment, simulations always show it escalating to a full cataclysm. I personally don't have the here-nor-there to say otherwise, but it does seem likely that the type of device doesn't really change the outcome.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 2mo ago
    If "complete and total global nuclear exchange" means "we shoot off all the nukes we've got", then how bad that is depends on how many nukes there are - not whether we shoot all of them or not. "Complete and total global nuclear exchange" is not so bad when there are 50 100Kt nukes, and is really, really bad when there are 10,000 10Mt nukes. And we've drastically reduced both the number of nuclear weapons and their average yield since the cold war (https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/ https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/). Which is great news! I'm no expert, but from a little reading it seems all-out nuclear war would be not just survivable for the species, but not even that bad for most of humanity comparing to disasters of yore. South America, Oceania, much of Asia, and Africa would be ~fine.
    - King-Aaron 2mo ago
      To be honest, even one major mass casualty event in a city from an exchange would be enough to tip the economy and cripple supply chains etc, and a limited/full exchange doesn't necessarily need to incinerate the whole world in order to completely collapse it
      - NoImmatureAdHom 2mo ago
        Eh I think we're more resilient than that. It'd be shocking, yes, but in the end I don't think it would be that much of a disruption from the point of view of the species.

openasocket 2mo ago

With the expiration of New Start earlier this year, there are no nuclear arms control agreements in effect between the US and Russia, which hasn’t been the case since the 1960s. Russia, China, and the US are all actively modernizing and developing new nuclear capabilities. China has been greatly expanding their nuclear arsenal, building hundreds of new silos. North Korea has an expansive set of tactical and strategic nuclear systems and are in strategic cooperation with Russia. Russia is 4 years into a destabilizing land war, have developed several new weapons systems, and are now in a nuclear weapon sharing agreement with Belarus. And I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of other things. We are in a period of strategic instability and an arms race that is unlike anything we have seen in the last 50 years. You can quibble with the specifics all you want, but I don’t think anyone can argue that we are at a lesser risk of nuclear war that we were, say, 20 or 30 years ago

sorokod 2mo ago
In addition, usage of tactical nuclear weapons comes up again and again from Russian sources, driven by the situation in the Ukraine war.
- Terr_ 2mo ago
  Plus the current US President has purged most of of the military leaders who might resist any unwise or unlawful orders regarding nuclear weaponry. (Or just in-general, for that matter.) Potential orders he mused-about during his first term. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/military-officials-ousted-retired-trump-hegseth https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/military-officials-ousted-r... https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/10/17/mattis-feared-trump-would-order-a-surprise-nuclear-strike-book-claims/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/10...
  - mindslight 2mo ago
    Yeah, the US regime has basically been speed running the impotent dictator's playbook. Start from a place of weakness and incompetence, and cause a bunch of senseless destruction to distract from it. Using tactical nuclear weapons would be right in line with that, especially after having started this quagmire in Iran with no way to win.

LastTrain 2mo ago

[flagged]

chipotle_coyote 2mo ago

This is actually still a reasonable concern to have. Coincidentally, just yesterday I came across a reference to the book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, speculating on how a global thermonuclear war could start in modern times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario The scenario she presents is fictional, but it’s all based on current nuclear arsenals and response protocols. While what I’ve read of it certainly makes it seem like a worst-case scenario in a “nearly everything that can go wrong does” sense, it’s disturbing how relatively few things going wrong it actually takes—in a span of under two hours—to reach “civilizational collapse” level outcomes.

pibaker 2mo ago

But now with nukes in major countries arsenals, any of the three new risks you mentioned could have escalated to civilization ending nuclear wars. It's still a miracle that it hasn't happened, but I wouldn't be so optimistic. Imagine climate change causing a drought in South Asia leading to conflicts between India, China and Pakistan that escalates into a nuclear war. Imagine if the regular wars in Ukraine and the Middle East ends up with Russia or Israel using a nuke. Imagine if Facebook boomers vote someone batshit crazy into office and drops a nuke on a long time hostile state just for TV ratings…