World War Three, by Mistake
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
And, of course, there's making massive amounts of the environment radioactive.
I've never read that. It's easy enough to do, but the (planned) usage of these weapons (outside of hitting the enemy's heavily hardened targets on the ground) tends to rely on airbursts.
I don't remember either side relying on nuclear winter strategically. The logic of MAD is terrible enough to serve as a deterrent even without maximizing dust in the atmosphere. I remember the disarmament advocates warning of nuclear winter, and the warmongery types minimizing its liklihood.
As to how much any world power has actually strategized and mobilized resources toward such an end (deliberate global suicide that destroys both sides by design) is likely to never be fully revealed, since it's a slightly alarming idea.
Even so, some of the plans that have been revealed really are quite terrible. Bad enough, that the difference between deliberate and accidental nuclear winters could be considered an argument that splits hairs.
Seems that people disagree on how many detonations in what places would be necessary for a serious and long nuclear winter.
An all out nuclear world war (the reasons for which I could not begin to comprehend), then it's game over.
You have some strong signal about something, but it's usually hard to take anything as gospel. Instead, you take it as a datapoint and investigate further.
You can try treating every alarm as a false alarm (because, historically, nuclear wars have never been started), but still investigate what is happening. The alarm isn't useless, just not decisive.
It must be very interesting how this fact in included on strategies.
And you never want to launch all your missiles, because then you have no bargaining power. So any nuclear conflict is likely to involve several exchanges.
P(attack | alarm) >= P(attack)
Unless the alarm is literally random, or even anti-correlated with being attacked. The alarm is still useful.
Remember that the penalty for missing a true alarm is possibly even worse that reacting to a false alarm.
That depends on the scenario. The US for a few years advocated a "total" nuclear response to any use of nukes against western nations. The theory went that any limited nuclear exchange would inevitably escalate. So to win you want to fire everything in the first round. In such scenarios ignoring a true alarm, not triggering the planned world-ending response, may be the safer choice. One nuke in the US, and zero in the USSR, may be the better outcome than hundreds landing on each side. (See "The Sum of All Fears" for how that plays out.)
If you have an alarm, there is some probability that it's a false one. If the US were to respond to a false alarm by say, nuking Russia, they could expect a 100% chance that Russia would retaliate. The retaliation would be extremely severe if either the US or Russia gets nuked. You have to think that in addition to all ground-based silos (some of which would definitely survive a nuclear strike), there are stealth subs with nuclear capabilities going around. Even if the US or Russia "lost" a nuclear war, these subs would be there to exercise some kind of vengeance, and make sure that the other side is destroyed as well.
If some alarm goes off and there is some chance that nukes are going to hit the US, the safest course of action is probably to prepare to retaliate, but wait as long as possible to confirm that there is an incoming nuclear strike. This might even mean waiting to confirm that some US targets have been hit before retaliating. You also should be pretty god-damn sure you know who initiated that strike before you retaliate. China, for instance, has a limited number of ICBMs. They couldn't destroy the US even if they wanted to. Russia, on the other hand, could nuke the entire world multiple times.
Unless the attack successfully disables their response. I don't think it makes sense to rely on that, but it's definitely a point that has factored into various calculations around this issue over the years.
Unilateral nuclear disarmament is a solution that seems to be rarely discussed.
The real reason so many countries have or want to have nuclear weapons is not to ever use them or even so that they serve as a deterrent against a largely hypothetical enemy; it's as a badge of "greatness".
That's why rational arguments against nuclear weapons or which attempt to describe the utter craziness of it all, have so little impact.
I think P(attack | alarm) > P(attack) does not by itself imply that paying attention to alarms is the right thing to do.
> Remember that the penalty for missing a true alarm is possibly even worse that reacting to a false alarm.
The outcome of reacting to a false alarm is exactly the same as the outcome of reacting to a true alarm, and, arguably, the same as the outcome of not reacting or reacting only partially—it's all -∞ basically.
I personally think it is the eroding of national sovereignty via supranational oligarchical globalism falsely touted as utopic globalism that has created these situations in the first place via blow-back piled on blow-back over time.
Just because the British empire changed it's name to the "commonwealth" doesn't make it less of an empire. It is the meddling in the affairs of state of national governments that has created this instability, so don't try to sell me on globalism as a solution, because it's the problem.
Now, don't misunderstand me, we do need to encourage more internationally geared solutions, but only sovereign nation states can come to those agreements through diplomacy. If you erode national sovereignty like the west has been doing, it's no wonder the world is so destabalized. Of course, I have sneaking suspicion that destabalization is sorta the point, but I digress.
Nationalism:
Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation.
The belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals.
Aspirations for national independence in a country under foreign domination.
And how exactly does that make any sense in an international world. If every nation acted independently on their own goals then for example combating climate change has no hope whatsoever.
An individual nation doesn't care if some random other one might have to bear the brunt of climate change in the future, they want to look out for their population with cheap dirty fuels right now. However that's pretty damn short sighted.
Using arbitrary divisions of land carved up through seeming arbitrary medieval processes and systems that no longer exist to each come to a different conclusion on matters that effect the whole damn world doesn't make any sense anymore. The world needs more corporation and compromise than ever before.
I see this trite argument brought up far too often, that national borders are so medieval... and don't make sense anymore.
I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to curse here, and I say that because I want to convey how strongly I feel this line of thinking is foolish, naive, and a complete misunderstanding of the history of governmental structures throughout the modern history of the world and their impact on the progression of human rights and other advances.
The American Revolution was and is a unique revolution throughout the ages, one which established a unique government based on natural rights. I in no way agree that such a structure, with rule of law based on those principles, is in any way, shape, or form, "short-sighted" or "nonsensical". As a matter of fact, if you were an American politician, the statement you have just made would qualify you for removal from office and imprisonment and/or a fine, under 5 U.S. Code § 7311.
I see though, you may be from Spain. I really do get tired of being lectured on the dangers of nationalism by members of "constitutional" monarchies... really an anecdotal point but I find it's true often enough to make a point of it. Such governments have classically been opposed to nationalism for completely different reasons, ones I find more truthful even today than the proclaimed "we need to solve global issues" cliches. Such reasons usually being that if they allowed sovereignty of nation-states it undermines their global power positions!
"The world needs more corporation"
What an appropos freudian slip, for if we were to remove the nation-state from the world stage, more (mega-supranational-)corporation is exactly what we would get.
Now, one point of agreement. Yes, I am not disputing that the world needs more cooperation on international issues, but to then turn around and use those issues to advocate overthrowing the idea of sovereignty is a logically fallacious reasoning, is callous and naive, and I can only imagine such touting comes from the ivory tower of intellectuals, academics and other insulated peoples who haven't experienced the stark reality of this world when the sovereignty of nation states is violated.
In short, those who call for an end of nationalism fail to understand the proper and right role of sovereignty in the apllication of the rule of law, and in the ability for the people to affect their government.
So tell me, what would you propose to replace the nation-state with once you toppled it down?
While it's hard to know, given the degree of secrecy on the topic, once ran across a reference to how what are now Russia's nuke systems could automatically be triggered; if this is still true, in my opinion, this is would be the most likely source of global thermonuclear war.
"Only way to win is not to play."
And what makes people think that in the event of global thermonuclear war that Mars will escape unscathed? Absolute ridiculous nonsense. The solution here is not to run away, it's to confront the problem directly.
I never understood how anyone could think that "Earth is so messed up, with so many problems, it's just easier to colonize Mars." Earth is PERFECT for human beings to live on. Let's make it work.
I suppose that's down to one's own interpretation. Some food for thought: the !Kung tribe in Botswana credit the kill of an animal, not to the hunter, but to the arrow maker.
Similarly there are places in the United States where everyone is armed, and yet very little violence happens. Maybe if everyone had all the nuclear weapons they could want, no wars could ever happen again which would be a good thing.
Highlight: These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime.
I looked up the journal and it seems to be reputable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Journal_of_Preventive...), but I don't read medical studies often so I can't really tell.
In 2001, violent crime rates were about 60% below national and state rates. Property crime rates were from 46-56% below national and state rates. From 1999 to 2011, Kennesaw crime statistics reported that both property and violent crimes had decreased, though from 2003 to 2008 the trend in both violent and property crime rates slightly increased.[21] The increase in crime rate overall is attributed to the population growth rate of 37.41%. The population growth rate is much higher than the state average rate of 18.34% and is much higher than the national average rate of 9.71%.[22]
Please see The Weapon by Frederic Brown. [0]
[0] https://writenowisgood.wordpress.com/the-weapon-questions/
I think you're referring to "every other industrialized country," except without the guns.
The Royal Navy’s decision to save money by using Windows for Submarines, a version of Windows XP, as the operating system for its ballistic-missile subs seems especially shortsighted.
Indeed!
Anyway, defence stuff takes ages to develop, test and go through "trials", so it's quite common the customer gets stuff seven or eight years after development started.
In particular, the Astute sub development programme was started in 1997, the first one was laid down in 2001, and was with the RN in 2010, although there were four years of programme delay (as there nearly always is with defence programmes).
An air-gapped hardened Windows XP with all the optional services turned off is pretty robust.
It is shocking to think that my home computer is probably running a newer version of Windows than the U.K.’s military submarines
It is shocking to think that a military submarine is running any version of Windows.
This removes the temptation to launch on warning in a crisis. The US lacks that.
That said, excess capacity has a plausible value if your threat model includes the potential of a surprise counterforce strike where you may not be able to identify the aggressor before the strike lands. In that case, excess capacity is essential to ensure that appropriate response caapcity survives any such strike.
The fact that you have enough that, if it was all launched in an optimum distribution of targets to ensure maximum global distribution of damage it would kill the world multiple times over is irrelevant when you are planning for a threat model in which a substantial fraction of the capacity would be destroyed prior to launch.
We've detonated close to 2500 nukes in testing; unless the US and Russia unleash their 20-30K arsenal all at once (the other powers are negligible at these amounts) there isn't going a massive global environmental effect.
Infact even a fairly large depletion of the global nuclear arsenal is likely to produce little to no environmental global lasting effects.
So unless your life is dependant on the real estate market in London, Berlin, Moscow, DC or NYC I think you just might want to live through a nuclear war unless you really are eager to die.
Suppose country A estimates it can destroy 90% of country B's weapons before launch in a first strike, and can spend $100B to get to 99%. It'd be highly motivated to do so. But if country B doubles its number of weapons, it would be beyond country A's resources to get to an acceptable level of destruction.
That's one of many dynamics that causes arms races to go far beyond one weapon per target.
Humans will not use this weapons.
"Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!"
That isn't from Dr Strangelove but an actual quote from General Power - head of SAC at the time of the Cuban crisis.
Are you sure? The point of the article is that even if humans won't willingly start a nuclear war, they are so used to the idea of nuclear weapons just sitting there, that they stopped fearing them and become careless. This may one day lead them to accidentally give, or to allow their automated systems to give, the launch command.
it would seem like the latter considering how close the two seem to be