Hacker News Reader

Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com