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Comment by Pica_soO | Hacker News Reader

Deep, deep down everyone, who is not in it for the power alone, knows that there is a family he wants to go home too, and that the same goes for those on the other side. And even if the other side would take that from you- to take that, for forever- that is beyond insanity.

Humans will not use this weapons.

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> In 2015, three launch officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base, in Montana, were dismissed for using illegal drugs, including ecstasy, cocaine, and amphetamines. That same year, a launch officer at Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for heading a violent street gang, distributing drugs, sexually assaulting a girl under the age of sixteen, and using psilocybin, a powerful hallucinogen. As the job title implies, launch officers are entrusted with the keys for launching intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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.

I hope you're right, but I fear that nuclear weapons might someday be available to fanatics who make very different moral calculations.

Based on historical records of the Cold War I think I could argue that nuclear weapons were available to fanatics - fortunately they were kept at bay by sensible political leadership!

"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.

Yeah. Humans will not. That's why we have the Perimeter (15Э601). Dead hand retaliatory nuclear strike system. Not that I'm proud of it or anything, but this system exists.

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