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Comment by _Understated_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced that nuclear weapons will be fired en-mass in anger as it means total annihilation for everyone whether involved directly or not.

Imagine China fired all her nukes at the US and the US retaliated while the Chinese ones were in the air... there would be nothing left of either country within a couple of hours (or however long it takes to reach across the globe).

Anything left would be uninhabitable forever.

I dunno... nukes are messy.

E-warfare is "clean" and costs practically nothing to do.

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1: MAD doesn't really work anymore because of the advent of hypersonic cruise missiles and the likes of russia's Burevestnik/Skyfall. There's probably not going to be a 1980s scenario of two sides launching all out against each other and having a few minutes to contemplate the end.

2: Tactical (not strategic) nuclear weapons are very likely to be used on the battlefield in the next major conflict involving the superpowers. The most plausible pathway to a nuclear armageddon is if the number and yield of these tactical weapons keeps escalating until one side finally has enough and launches a strategic strike.

>MAD doesn't really work anymore because of the advent of hypersonic cruise missiles and the likes of russia's Burevestnik/Skyfall.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Even if DC gets nuked before it can react, I'm pretty sure there are dead man switch-type systems in place and stuff like submarines equipped with nukes away from home so that even if they whole country was glassed there would be some retaliation. These scenarios probably don't reflect the whole arsenal, so the retaliation wouldn't hit every square inch of the enemy's land, but I would still think that threat is enough to make you not want to start anything.

Let me see if I got this: Tactics is using the Queen to take out the opponent's pieces, while strategy is throwing the whole chess board to the floor in a tantrum?

Check.

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