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Comment by nexuist | Hacker News Reader

It depends on where exactly the ship is when the reactor is damaged, but in general water is actually pretty good at containing radiation so my guess is that some wildlife will die or get cancer but it won't have long term effects like Fukushima did because the ship will sink and kill the core before it melts down, if it even melts down in the first place.

Regardless, it won't really matter, since sinking a US aircraft carrier probably means nuclear war.

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> since sinking a US aircraft carrier probably means nuclear war.

USSR/Russian strategy against air carrier groups are nuclear torpedoes (launched from subs) and swarming nuclear cruise missles diving underwater some last mile before impact (launched from ships/subs/coast/heavy bombers).

Also don’t need to hit precisely - miss by couple hundred meters will do too.

Right, if we've got nukes in the water, who cares about what the on-board reactor is going to do. Whatever happens is certainly not going to be pretty.

The reactor has a larger fission product and transuranic inventory. It is the more dangerous one over an intermediate timescale after the short lived induced radiation goes away.

> sinking a US aircraft carrier probably means nuclear war

Remind me again what the geopolitical consequences were of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing

Sinking a US aircraft carrier (especially if by proxy rather than uniformed military) probably means some strong statements and some court cases.

Blowing a hole in the side of a destroyer in harbor is hardly comparable to sinking an aircraft carrier.

Did you forget the part where we went to war for 20 years and tore the entire region to shreds? Do Iraq, Afghanistan, or Sudan remotely resemble functional sovereign states after US intervention? What about the thousands of drone strikes and hundreds of thousands dead?

I would not describe our intervention in the Middle East as "some strong statements and some court cases."

That wasn't in response to the USS Cole bombing. Don't conflate that with 9/11.

9/11 was not an isolated incident and was the culmination of nearly a decade of damaged ME relations. If you'll remember, Desert Storm had been 10 years before, and Al Qaeda had bombed the WTC 8 years before. It was 9/11 that forced the US's hand, but it was not only 9/11 that justified their choice.

> since sinking a US aircraft carrier probably means nuclear war.

Nice to know the US mentality hasn't budged an inch in 75 years. Please don't nuke the rest of us because you lost a dick waiving contest.

Have you forgotten why a US military was necessary just 75 years ago to save the UK from destruction?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion

Terrible choice of battle, One that the UK won handily of its own ingenuity and cunning as stated in the wikipedia.

My point was not about US involvement in a specific battle but that of Nazi Germany's clear intent to invade the UK, likely only eventually abated by US involvement.

Check your timeline. The US wasn’t even in the war then. Though American help was instrumental later in the war, the UK actually saved itself from invasion (with help from fellow Commonwealth nations). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain

My point was not about US involvement in a specific battle but that of Nazi Germany's clear intent to invade the UK, likely only eventually abated by US involvement.

Like you said, the UK saved itself (for now), but "American help was instrumental later."

After the Battle of Britain ended, and Operation Barbarossa started, it was impossible for Germany to invade the UK. That was 6 months before the US entered the war.

I get the point you're making, but American military involvement had almost nothing to do with the UK repelling German invasion specifically.

Not specifically. Imagine the war without US involvement. No more Western and Eastern front. Germany still wouldn't have captured Moscow but they would have secured large swaths of eastern territory and thus economic might. They would've had stable control over most of Europe and been further bolstered economically and militarily to eventually take the UK.

>No more Western and Eastern front. Germany still wouldn't have captured Moscow but they would have secured large swaths of eastern territory

I don't understand, in your made-up hypothetical, is there an Eastern Front or not? Or, are you mis-using "Eastern Front" to refer to the war with Japan perhaps?

As soon as Germany lost the Battle of Britain and then failed to immediately take Russia, their fate was sealed. The war was lost, period.

The next question was - would Russia overrun all of Europe (including Western Europe)? Without US involvement, that may have actually happened. Thankfully, it did not.

An Nimitz class aircraft carrier has around 6,000 crew members on board. Sinking an aircraft carrier would be an attack worse than 9/11 and elicit a similar response. Maybe some crew members would escape or get rescued, but a bomb large enough to blow up an aircraft carrier is also going to be large enough to kill everyone on or below the deck.

The space race was a dick waving contest and nobody was intentionally killed for that. Bombing naval vessels is not a dick waving contest.

> and elicit a similar response

You mean your going to invade a totally unrelated country and fight another 20 year unwinnable war?

Sign me up, that'll do wonders for my options scheme.

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