Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Against NK in particular the details of the retaliation are unimportant, considering China would probably not back them up for doing something so crazy, and NATO could easily crush them conventionally. I'm not advocating using nukes against a one-off NK attack at all, nor am I advocating revenge. I guess I was speaking more generally than just the hypothetical NK first strike scenario.

Although I agree with you regarding your scenario, I think it's inaccurate to assume that the decision to retaliate would only be made after the nukes have landed and the "rubble" cleared. The debates and decisions would be made in the minutes after the launch. Considering there would be no way to know whether the attack was perhaps the start of some more-international conflict (e.g. an unlikely NK-Russia or NK-China joint first strike), and considering such an attack would likely coincide with a land invasion of SK, a retaliatory strike might be necessary. Hopefully if this situation ever plays out in real life the US will opt to use low-yield, low-fallout nukes targeting military facilities with minimal civilian casualties.

My point was mainly that mutually assured destruction might not really work the way it is supposed to. I am sure a lot of smart people have spent a lot of time thinking about it but I am not convinced that it really works, at least not in all scenarios. If one side breaks out, screw it, we launch the nukes, the other side might suddenly not have good reasons to retaliate. They might of course still do it just because that is what the plan says or to prove to potential future attackers that they really mean it, but besides that there may actually not be any good reasons to retaliate, at least in some scenarios. But that will admittedly depend heavily on the actual scenario and I just provided one that seems rather unlikely or at least incomplete, only launching the nukes and nothing else.

It’s worth pointing out that the extensive submarine fleet the US has could give it a bit more leeway in choosing their second strike than any other nation. Having said that, Americans went to two wars based on a conventional attack on New York. I’m pretty sure that they’d be baying for nuclear fire if they were actually nuked themselves, and they might not be satisfied with anything less than “parking lot” effects. At the very least, I think Pyongyang would be thoroughly nuked. The intersection of a few dozen Mach stems would do the trick, although the fallout wouldn’t be trivial for anyone downwind, like China or RoK.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com