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Comment by chadlavi | Hacker News Reader

The worst year to be alive _so far_

Yep. Personally, I think the steady proliferation of nuclear weapons is going to snap at some point with some nut using them.

God help us all.

Humans are stupid. We think that because we survived the Cold War, that it won't happen. ...but if you read the history - it very nearly did happen a couple of times. ...it's only a matter of time.

OTOH nuclear weapons decay and we're rapidly losing the tacit knowledge required to make new ones (at least here in the US). If the Test Ban stays in place and is enforced, it may only be a few more decades until we as a species would have to do another Manhattan Project to rebuild them. This takes about 4 years of concerted effort within military and industry, and the only shortcut is the tacit knowledge that nuclear weapons designers can pass on. Maybe WW3 will actually be an "aw hell no" response to some country trying to develop nukes after they're we've lost them.

I'm not sure if you've been reading up on the latest news - but both Russia and the US have been developing and deploying hypersonic nuclear armed missiles. ...capable of circumventing any ABM platforms and delivering precision low-yield nuclear weapons without early warning detection anywhere in the world.

They're totally removing the need for ballistic missiles. These are armageddon weapons because they can be launched without detection, delivered across the world in tens of minutes, and target enemy nuclear silos before they can even launch.

It reminds me of the Hunt For Red October. They're made to start a war.

We have the ability to model nuclear explosions and desings in supercomputer simulations. I don't think it would be difficult to re-engineer nuclear warheads, even if all the original engineers are dead.

This paper runs contrary to your opinion. Simulation is not sufficient. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2782506

Here are counterarguments for counterbalancing your pessimistic view, do what you want with it: humans are not stupid, and god doesn't exist.

"How Are Things? Better. Better Than Tomorrow, Of Course—Worse Than Yesterday" - Credit to Eugene Volokh who posted this old saying from Soviet Europe this morning.

A CEO said last November '2020 Is Going To Be Better. It Has To Be'.

I'm pretty sure everything that's happened is his fault.

I imagine there will come a time when the earth is just on the cusp of no longer being able to sustain the massive population that it has grown to or human life at all. Since the earths human population will be so high even a 5th of people dying off will be drastically more deaths than any worldwide catastrophe of the past. Maybe within another 1000 years.

Human lives are worth less and less as time goes on and the population increases, so by the time this happens the loss of life might not be anymore troubling than say the amount of people killed in car crashes in a year.

Current projections of Earth's population have a peak population of about 11B (only 40% higher than today) towards the end of the century and then declining. It's always hard to know what's going to happen in the future, but currently it's pretty unlikely that we'll ever see a worldwide population all that much higher than what we already have.

Curious - did the projection say what’s the cause of the decline after the peak?

I'm just speculating, but probably declining birth rates as economies develop.

Maybe within 100 years. Hopefully not within 10.

+1 for your growth mindset. We can always achieve new levels of awfulness.

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