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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

After reading the book, its pretty clear why most world leaders abandoned the idea of thermonuclear war as anything but a culpable strategy.

Nuclear weapons with a twenty (or more) mile radius of fallout have the immediate ability to bridge the class divide. Whereas traditional munitions disproportionately interact with the poor (soldiers and combatants) a nuclear detonation could thrust an opulent family into fallout bunker squalor in mere minutes, and pin them there for half a decade. the prospect of survival contingent not on your wealth as in a traditional war, but on your interpersonal and improvisational survival skill was certainly looked upon with scorn.

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Pretty much and especially if you live in a city - really no survival is possible.

However, some in rural areas would survive - the odds would not be good but some would so humanity would survive the "eye of the needle" this would cause. Just not most people individually.

This isn't necessarily the case anymore. At least not universally.

Big bombs and mirvs weren't necessarily for more damage, but primarily to ensure smaller, high priority targets got destroyed. (Because accuracy of ballistic profiles and fusing abilities meant pretty bad accuracy in the downrange direction, which is an incredibly interesting and far-reaching topic itself).

Point being, more accurate weapons means (for the US, at least) about 2/3s fewer, smaller bombs are needed to take out the same target list. (The math works out to be approx 4th-root required power needed proportional to radius CEP reduction.)

And fewer, smaller, more accurate warhead targeting plus upgraded variable fusing means a target near a city doesn't automatically doom the city itself.

At least for whoever's getting nuked by the US.

There's obviously still debate on if the cities themselves would be targets, but the treaty numbers are designed to make the opportunity-cost of bombing a city relatively high, meaning not enough warheads to hit other high-value military targets.

Counterpoint: Who really knows what Russia and China are actually doing?

I have absolutely no doubt human race would survive. We are distributed enough and there is plenty of still developing areas. Now modern civilization very much less so.

We'd survive the first few months after nukes start to fly, after that I'm not so sure. The vast majority of humans live in areas where the climate and environment makes survival without a lot of cultural knowledge very hard. Add to that fallout, possible climate effects from the nukes, I can easily see a non-zero probability of total extinction within a couple of years.

Living in Seattle, I've thought about the odds of surviving a nuclear attack here. I figured surviving the blast is very possible. But after that, things look pretty grim. Long term survival in the city itself is improbable, and due to terrain there are only 3 ways out of the city. Consider that all the survivors would be clogging those routes to get to a farm, it looks like succeeding would also be improbable.

Your only hope would be to leave before the attack.

Seattle is just 20 miles from NBK as the crow flies. It's reasonable to assume the entire region will be carpet-bombed until completely sterile.

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

"It is the home base for the Navy’s fleet throughout West Puget Sound, provides base operating services, support for both surface ships and fleet ballistic missile and other nuclear submarines as one of the U.S. Navy's four nuclear shipyards, one of two strategic nuclear weapons facilities, and the only West Coast dry dock capable of handling a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and the Navy's largest fuel depot. Naval Base Kitsap is the third-largest Navy base in the U.S."

The entire Western WA metro area would be completely 100% screwed. You ain't getting over the cascades in a car. You can barely get over it on a regular US holiday. Going north? Yeah good luck fighting with the 10+ million Canadians trying to come south after their own inland routes are taken over by chaos. You could maybe go South and then inland up the Columbia, but then you'd have to pass through the radioactive wasteland that would be the bombed out Hanford reservation

I'm thinking of current subsistence farmers, specially in Africa and South America. Nuclear war has some impact, but I don't think all areas in world are heavily affected. I doubt absolutely all of these will be hit to extinction level. Developed countries on other hand surely massive starvation to boot.

I don’t believe there are any Southern Hemisphere nuclear powers currently. Would northern hemisphere powers deliberately target folks in the Southern Hemisphere? If not, I expect most of them would survive.

I imagine there would be plenty fish in the ocean still. Some would survive.

Pretty close approximation for cities, although it depends on the city geography & wind, the yield & number of denotations, etc.

The most common first impression does seem to be that "of course it's not survivable, why even think about it?".

However, a quick look at any map of effects shows that the zone of survivable effects extends far beyond the reach of lethal effects, to the extent that 90%+ of the total affected zone is quite survivable for those who manage to avoid the initial thermal radiation and flying debris from the shock wave. Of course there are many who wouldn't want to live in the aftermath, but that is a different question.

> Of course there are many who wouldn't want to live in the aftermath, but that is a different question.

A pretty important one, I think. Paramount to, "Would you like to live in hell?" And especially having children - you'd need to be extremely stupid or sadist to have a child in such a world, especially knowing the high chances of them being born malformed etc.

Birth defects are not the problem here. Even cities which were bombed in wwii didn’t have extreme levels of birth defects. The numbers I have seen estimate an increase from the current 6% to something like 6.1% after nuclear war. The completely breakdown of power generation and supply chains would be a much bigger threat.

Supply chain and food production/preservation would be the biggest issue. Not having antibiotics would have a huge impact. I find it interesting that survivalist literature goes into so much detail on so many topics never seems to cover medical stuff. What do you do for birth control after the apocalypse? How can you make an antibiotic? How can you make an anesthetic? I’ve seen YouTube videos for making chloroform but never details how to use it.

> I find it interesting that survivalist literature goes into so much detail on so many topics never seems to cover medical stuff. What do you do for birth control after the apocalypse? How can you make an antibiotic? How can you make an anesthetic?

I mean, you don't? One dude, a family, or even a small community cannot hope replicate all the stuff that comes from modern supply chains. Surviving a civilization-ending catastrophe would basically mean navigating the glide path down to a poor subsistence lifestyle that lacks a huge amount of technology we take for granted. People got by without that stuff for pretty much all of human history.

The best survivalist could probably do is compile traditional/herbal remedies that are at least somewhat effective, but there would still be huge gaps.

birth control: abstinence, keeping an unplanned baby, infanticide, or some herbal abortifacient.

antibiotics: hope you can fight off that infection or we'll have to amputate

anesthetic: alcohol or a stick in the mouth

Reflecting on this makes me really appreciate living in the 21st century.

Antibiotics, anesthetics, birth control?

Lucky if you stashed or found some leftovers. We'd be back to some available herbal remedies.

And birth control? You'll want the opposite if you want your clan to survive. Without antibiotics & other modern medicine, or even soaps (anyone in your group know how to make that?), you'll be back to having a dozen children and being lucky if one or two survive to adulthood.

> especially if you live in a city

yes, for multiple reasons:

- cities are clear targets for nuking

- even if partially nuked, a city would be unsustainable once its roads and pathways are destroyed. Cities live by concentrating massive amounts of food and resources from outside cities, once the chain is broken a city falls.

>> the prospect of survival contingent not on your wealth as in a traditional war, but on your interpersonal and improvisational survival skill was certainly looked upon with scorn.

Why wouldn't wealth come into play?

The wealthy have more resources to prepare for any kind of contingency to include nuclear war:

https://www.cnet.com/features/inside-the-survival-condo-nucl...

Granted, the reaction time needed to get into a protective bunker is greatly reduced in a thermonuclear first strike, but the poor don't even have a survival bunker to escape to.

It would be dependent on the reasons one is wealthy. I.e. if one is good at leading and organizing others, that is a great survival skill.

On the other hand the replacement of existing hierarchies with meritocracy seems to be one of the appealing things of post-apocalyptic scenarios for average people.

It is an interesting question how various countries would turn out after a big civilization reset like a nuclear war. Seems like it would likely go the feudal route with the cruelest warlords rising to the top in various locales (pretty much like narco-lord ruled Mexico). How would the United States turn out? Would the Ohio valley turn into its own kingdom? Texas its own? All of Northeast probably. I wish there was historical fiction along these lines.

> I wish there was historical fiction along these lines.

Ah, but there is. I highly recommend S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emberverse_series

Well worth the read. One Second After: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After is another great choice.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a famous sci-fi that directly mimics feudalism and the church after nuclear war-- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

Just finished reading One {second,year} after. It was entertaining but a lot of the story revolves around military inspired heroics and battles. You can tell the author is into military fiction.

Ah, thank you so much for linking "One Second After." I had seen someone recommend this book on HN previously but had lost track of the comment and the title of the book.

Not strictly nuclear war but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer is a great read about if a comet nucleus hits the earth, immediate aftermath/ survival and ends with society just beginning to reform.

Ironically, in that book a nuclear power station is a plot device and the key to humanity's survival.

A lot probably depends on the amount of infrastructure left standing. In most of history kingdoms/empires would grow to roughly a week's travel time from the capital, since that's an area that can be effectively governed. Anything larger than that needs a strong local government, which eventually causes a separatist movement.

If a nuclear war destroys a large portion of highways and communication equipment, you probably end up with Houston being ruled by one group, Dallas by another and San Antonio forming a government with Austin.

I think in any scenario where "nuclear war destroys a large portion of highways and communication equipment" then Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin will all be smoking craters.

Here's the 1990 FEMA assessment of nuclear targets in Texas: https://www.webpal.org/SAFE/state/TX/tx_nuclear.htm

Assuming that's accurate, my guess is that Odessa/Midland and Laredo would be Texas's major population centers.

I can recommend A Canticle for Leibowitz - it covers your last point:

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

I wouldn't call it "historical fiction" since that takes "what really happened" as its starting point. On DDG, a query of "post apocalyptic fiction" finds over 1,000 books.

I don't think all of them (e.g. The Hunger Games) are what you're after, but some of them surely are.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1840.Best_Post_Apocalypt...

Post apocalyptic meritocracy doesn't poll very well last i checked

Worse, it doesn't even seem realistic. Far more likely you'll have anarchy and those with the resources to do so will create social hierarchies.

It would be a meritocracy of sorts, but what talents would you be optimizing for?

My guess would be: Willingness to use violence, cunning, manipulation, organization.

Doesn't sound all that different from the status quo.

Exactly

You'd just get rule by sociopaths - as usual.

No genuine meritocracy anywhere.

Yes, watch or read The Road.

No thank you, once is enough.

Indeed.

In that sort of survival situation, meritocracy would mean survival of the fittest. But not necessarily the person with the most/best survival skills. You will have different groups lead by what they perceive is the "best" person.

Your local groups will probably consist of:

Religious groups

Groups centered around politicians

Scouting groups

Survivalists

Law enforcement groups

Military groups

Gangs

Each of those groups will be vying for control of limited resources with varying degrees of violence.

For the average person, all they will see is a rapid decrease of the average lifespan. The leaders who make it to the top will do everything in their power to keep themselves and those who they favor at the top.

I think a good example of this is North Korea, Afghanistan or any of the other Middle East countries where the government collapsed and there was not a single clear leader.

Group's can succeed because they are communal. The survivalist idea of an isolated compound does not work. Because the larger group of people who can work together will out man you. The best survival strategy is to make friends with your neighbors. And to be in a town and city with less territory to control. Ethnic communities can do this kind of thing really well.

I was thinking about the sort of people who tend to create small communities out in Montana, not the modern preper movement. But a quick search shows me that the prepers have several forums and communities and the advice I saw was that you should form a close group of diverse talents and that there is safety in numbers, just be choosy of who you count in your number.

You're going to be in a new one. Generally, I expect it won't be very pleasant / the 'law' a bit less predictable.

Meritocracy is economically efficient but often congeals into an ideological dogma justifying a plutocracy of the talented, even though talent is - to a very great extent - an undeserved function of genes and environment outwith one's control.

Personal hot take on meritocracy: I think that "talent" is a tricky thing. Meritocracy (which I might define as "how much you get/are paid/are given access to is based on your talent and/or contribution to society") based on talent sounds maybe sort-of fair if "talent" is either innate or purely self-driven.

If instead "talent" is (primarily) about the quality and extent of your training/schooling (and there's a lot of research to suggest that in most domains, it is) than even a very effective meritocracy is going to (IMO) perpetuate wealth and class disparities (5-year-olds don't decide to go to a great preschool and pay for it themselves, their parents do).

If I were a wizard trying to make a society with lots of upwards mobility I'd make it a lot harder to transmit generational wealth/privilege and try a lot harder to make sure everyone has the same resources/opportunities. I'm sure that would come with a ton of its own problems (even outside of just pissing people off), but it does seem worth at least acknowledging that any kind of merit-based assessment of people is going to be super biased towards those with wealth and privilege.

It seems very unlikely to me that an apocalypse scenario would lead to a _more_ merit-based society - rather that it would wipe out a lot of social protections & aids that _do_ exist (both from the government and civil society at large) for those currently at the bottom of the economic ladder. Whether we'd go feudal or just kinda-worse-than-we-are-now I certainly have no idea.

The work that coined the term meritocracy was actually describing a dystopia - for the very reasons you mention around education:

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

>even though talent is - to a very great extent - an undeserved function of genes and environment outwith one's control

Worse - merit/talent/reward is determined by what the monied classes find useful, not what is actually useful to society.

That only bothers people who want to make life "fair" at the expense of what is practical.

There is a reason we let people keep the wealth they build. It's not because it's "fair." It's because taking it away, and having the brutes or demagogues decide how to distribute it, makes the society a hellhole.

"Demagogues decide how to distribute it, makes the society a hellhole"

Fortunately corporate management and promotions are so different frin politics, no way would a demagogue or someine incompetent be in position of power and decide how to distribute wealth

You should try visiting the Scandinavian hellholes to see how bad this can get.

They're so backward they don't even have hundreds of thousands of health insurance bankruptcies every year.

>>...There is a reason we let people keep the wealth they build.

>You should try visiting the Scandinavian hellholes...

It is misleading to group all of the Scandinavian countries together in terms of wealth inequality.

Here are the latest available wealth inequality numbers for the Scandinavian countries:

Denmark 0.838

Finland 0.742

Iceland 0.694

Norway 0.798

Sweden 0.867

As a comparison the US is 0.852

The entire range for the world (where there are stats) is 0.498 - 0.902

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

Wouldn't work in the Americas, which have a far lower average level of human capital. You can't redistribute what has not been produced. There are lots of examples of this in history.

By the way, the US health system crisis is caused by regulatory capture. There is no way to regulate the regulators to prevent this. At least, not in a failed democracy such as the US.

Probably the only way to regulate the regulators in a society as complex as the US and most other countries (contra Scandinavia) is with strict constitutional principles. That's the only way I know. Once you put "people" in charge, corruption and other dysfunctions eventually reign.

Are there any “not failed” democracies in your estimation? If so, what are they doing right that the US is doing wrong? Or is the whole Democratic experiment a failure?

(not the person you are replying to...)

One might look at Switzerland. A big difference between there and the U.S. seems to be that the people can petition for a vote on adding or removing any law or amendment they don't like, at any of their three levels of government. Contrast that to the U.S., where this ability doesn't exist in most places, including the federal government which was designed to be responsive to the states and not the people.

The Swiss also have a tradition of local power where possible, to the point that most of their social programs such as health care are handled by cantons (states) that average a third of a million people each. While in the U.S. we have literally a thousand times that many people arguing over health care at the federal level.

Here's a bunch of info on the Swiss political system: https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli...

Until you factor in there that merit in immoral behaviors such as pillaging, looting and bullying will also be a big factor.

Yes, but what hierarchy would replace what we have now?

Do you want RoadWarrior/MadMax? Because that's how you get RoadWarrior/MadMax.

right, the merit in "Post apocalyptic meritocracy" would be the most equipped, most armed, most violent, and the most followed.

Looking back at ancient cultures, how many millenia would it take for Grecian democratic ideals to re-evolve from a hoard of gun toting MAGAs? Let alone Descartes level introspection?

Gun toting MAGAs by and large survive on a supply chain of McDonalds Hamberders and insulin.

It's a point not brought up very often, but they'll crash and burn in around a week once that supply chain is interrupted.

I find your take comically misguided and naive.

There are, first of all, some basic things that need to be established: what is merit? how do you rank people based on their merit? can this ranking be objective and absolute? are the people with most "merit" also the most moral or capable to lead? are differences in merit meaningful in any way? why would the most "meritorious" end up on top after the apocalypse?

Aside from this, I'm pretty sure that life after a nuclear holocaust will be much worse for the average survivor than their life before the event. At best people would revert to some pre-modern self-governing communes (which are not necessarily a bad thing, it's just that they would lack a lot of things in terms of healthcare, nutrition etc.). At worst we would get Mad Max or Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" or smth along those lines.

> the prospect of survival contingent not on your wealth as in a traditional war

This hadn't occurred to me. And it makes perfect sense. See: all the rich techbros buying up land in New Zealand [1], or the Bush family buying up aquifer land in Paraguay[2]: get away from the blast zones!

Did you read this from a book? I'd be interested in it.

[1] Crazy prepper site but a good article: https://tacticalgunsurvival.com/why-rich-preppers-buy-land-i...

[2] https://5minforecast.com/2015/04/24/why-did-george-bush-buy-...

Worry more about accidental or forced use. Worry less about intentional use.

What i was trying to get at I think was the supreme irony of the apex of the cold war...that a nation so bent on the destruction of class through marxist leninism forged in turn the perfect sword to obliterate it, and that its capitalist enemy at the time seemed to have no choice but to pursue an utterly nihilist brinksmanship it knew it was forbidden to pursue in any spirit other than rote patriotism.

the history of the bay of pigs comes to mind. Fidel Castro, in my opinion, may have been the only communist to have the outright conviction to use nuclear arms, save Leonid Brezhnevs legendary temper and the Brezhnev doctrines closed fisted threat to glass the soviet states who fell out of line.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis Castro was certainly ready to use them and certainly ready to suffer the consequences.

Clip from Fog of War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUfBc4qQMg

He's unironically admired by some western leaders!

https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/world/justin-trudeau-castro-e...

I'd really like to know why you're getting downvoted. This is a fascinating observation.

Universal conscription, 'total war' efforts, etc, have crossed class divides for the better part of a couple of centuries and are still in wide use so that theory doesn't seem to have quite the explanatory power you're suggesting.

Sounds like an answer seeking a question.

Given that assassination of leadership has been an increasingly common tactic since WW2, I don’t think the argument holds much weight.

Snipers in the Civil War were a major factor, as their primary targets were officers. Militaries have long understood the value of decapitation of the enemy's leadership.

The French conquered England in the battle of Hastings when they managed to kill the king.

There were so many assassination attempts against Hitler that he spent the last couple years of the war in a bunker, and the war ended the day he died.

True. But in Vietnam, Afghanistan (both Soviet and US conflict), and other environments, targeted assassination of civilian targets became a much bigger thing.

If you are unprepared and don't make use of your resources before war comes to your doorstep, conventional war also bridges class divides just fine.

>pin them there for half a decade

Try 3 weeks (details in the submitted book).

> Try 3 weeks

Unless you starting lobbing salted nukes at each other.

Why so complicated? Just target nuclear power and reprocessing plants.

Has any nation built a salted nuke?

I see that you skipped the topic of Nuclear Warfare and went straight to Class Warfare.

I surmise that you have a political point of view you wish to propagate.

The (proper) strategic idea was as a deterrent, not _wanting_ to use them in an offensive manner. The strategy was in making an attack on "us" carry the high probability of annihilation of the attacker, thereby discouraging it -- it wasn't about "hey, let's nuke that country, then we'll gain an advantage".

That came later iirc - initially they were thinking of using them prior to running infantry in.

I think there are old public test videos where they actually did this kind of thing.

I also recall a group of scientists trying to elevate the understanding of the e-risk (pugwash conference?).

Basically people were becoming too comfortable with the idea of nuclear war because they knew how to “duck and cover” and had a little bomb shelter in the yard.

See this: https://youtu.be/IKqXu-5jw60

Dr. Strangelove is also worth watching for a satirical take from that time.

>> The (proper) strategic idea was as a deterrent, not _wanting_ to use them in an offensive manner. The strategy was in making an attack on "us" carry the high probability of annihilation for the attacker, thereby discouraging it -- it wasn't about "hey, let's nuke that country, then we'll gain an advantage".

> That came later iirc - initially they were thinking of using them prior to running infantry in.

I think you have to differentiate strategic and battlefield usages. IIRC, some people considered using them strategically when the opponent couldn't retaliate in kind. However, the Soviets had them within five years and the Chinese had them by 1965, I think.

I think tactical battlefield uses were on the table for much longer, because NATO felt like it could not win a conventional war in Europe, but that may have taken the form a nuking a corn field on your border (maybe even in your territory) that the invading army is passing through. It sounds like Russia may still have similar plans ("escalate to de-escalate" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon).

It's impossible to know what would have happened if they hadn't, but if Julius and Ethel Rosenberg helping the Soviets achieve nuclear parity prevented the US from "using them when the opponent couldn't retaliate in kind" then they should be thought of like Snowdens or Assanges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg#Sov...

> It's impossible to know what would have happened if they hadn't, but if Julius and Ethel Rosenberg helping the Soviets achieve nuclear parity prevented the US from "using them when the opponent couldn't retaliate in kind" then they should be thought of like Snowdens or Assanges.

Eh, no. The Rosenbergs were consciously acting as spies for a foreign power, which is treasonous conduct no matter how you look at it.

Putting them next to Snowden makes Snowden look bad. At least publicly, he made every effort to avoid doing anything like what they did.

Also, IIRC, MacArthur was relieved of command in Korea because he wanted to nuke the Chinese, and that was decades before they even had an atomic weapon to retaliate with. That means you can't point to nuclear parity as the only reason the US didn't use them after the end of WWII.

The degree to which our ethics should be consequentialist, or they should evaluate intent is worth discussing, but as consequences become more significant intent becomes more insignificant. I don't care if someone 'looks bad', or breaks any law if they prevent nuclear war.

Stanislav Petrov disobeyed orders in the face of "30 layers of verification" telling him to report 5 incoming nuclear missiles.

> I don't care if someone 'looks bad', or breaks any law if they prevent nuclear war.

The idea that the Rosenbergs prevented a nuclear war is wild speculation on top of wild speculation.

However, comparing Snowden to the Rosenbergs is exactly the kind of thing that people do to smear Snowden.

Eh, they sent the USSR a couple of drawings of circles, and Ethel Rosenberg apparently did some typing. They were, loosely, spies for a foreign power, but their impact was absolutely negligible and their execution was essentially a lynching.

> Eh, they sent the USSR a couple of drawings of circles, and Ethel Rosenberg apparently did some typing.

And all Snowden did was copy some files to some flash drives. Describing significant acts in a mundane way doesn't make them less significant, it just omits all the important facts.

> They were, loosely, spies for a foreign power, but their impact was absolutely negligible

This doesn't sound like "loosely":

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

> In 1942 Semyonov persuaded Vasily Zarubin to transfer Julius Rosenberg and his contacts from the CPUSA-Jacob Golos channel to the direct control of the Rezidentura, with himself as the assigned case officer. The actual transfer occurred on Labor Day weekend, 7 September 1942, at a meeting in Central Park. Bernard Schuster brought Rosenberg to the meeting. Rosenberg was then subjected to a thorough vetting and recruitment process to include training in tradecraft and a probationary period. Alexander Feklisov was assigned to assist in managing Rosenberg. Once the formal recruitment of Rosenberg was completed Semyonov used Rosenberg to conduct formal recruitments of two of Rosenberg's friends from City College of New York, Joel Barr and William Perl.

Impact is also irrelevant. If someone robs a bank, but does it incompetently and only makes off with $50, they're still guilty of robbery.

They were a young couple with infant children and they were both electrocuted to death, in Ethel's case, for typing out her husband's letters.

There's no collection of acronyms and russian names you can add to that that makes it any less of a crime. Prison would have been extreme. The electric chair was pure barbarism.

> They were a young couple with infant children and they were both electrocuted to death,

The appropriateness of the punishment is an entirely separate issue.

> in Ethel's case, for typing out her husband's letters.

You're describing things in a misleadingly mundane way again.

The relevant question there is "did she know what was participating in?" If Julius robbed a bank and Ethel knew about the plan, willingly drove the getaway car, and went to jail for it; then it's misleading to say she went to jail for "driving her husband around." She went to jail for being an accomplice to a crime.

> You're describing things in a misleadingly mundane way again.

I take your point, but why don't we turn this framing on its head? 'Two soviet spies sentenced to the death penalty for espionage', is less mundane, but it's also correspondingly far less close to what objectively happened. It's worth keeping in mind here that legal language, especially around penal methods, has justification and euphemism baked in. Legal language is a way of framing mundane and often dimly connected events so they make sense from the perspective of basic legal categories: defendants, guilt, etc.

The actual concrete facts- they knew and stole nothing of value, they died in excruciating agony, especially Ethel, who was repeatedly electrocuted until she caught on fire, and they left two children orphans, are all raw facts, no framing needed. The legal dimension, the manners in which we understand culpability, crime, and punishment is all a structure that is used to describe, rationalize, and interpret right and wrong in our society. The actual penal system, the incarceration or execution of criminals, is the concrete, real body of criminal law. You can argue about the merits of really-existing-criminal-justice all you like, but you can't exclude it from the discussion.

How do you know what they stole? Dont assume the premise.

Even a small detail can advance science. What about the husbands work in radar tech?

They were clearly spies.

> The actual concrete facts- they knew and stole nothing of value

Even if true, I don't think that matters.

Also, I'm not really interested in arguing about their punishment, capital punishment is a tangent from a tangent, but that seems like that's all you want to talk about.

or at sea! Nuclear mines, torpedos, etc. A lot easier to take out that SSBN or carrier I guess.

Something unforgettable here:

Nuclear test in China, with supporting attacks by infantry and cavalry, all in grand heroic style.

3 1/2 minutes: https://youtu.be/CzRX06Xqu80

or the quick version: https://youtu.be/CzRX06Xqu80?t=81

Looks like a similar idea to the Desert Rock tests [1]. Though I don't think any of the Desert Rock soldiers galloped onto an atomic battlefield on horseback while wearing a gas mask and wielding a sword like one of the guys in your video did.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXX-1MIMr2E

> Though I don't think any of the Desert Rock soldiers galloped onto an atomic battlefield on horseback while wearing a gas mask and wielding a sword like one of the guys in your video did.

I should note the horses are wearing gas masks too.

Interesting, thanks.

Well it was at first. Even after Japan, the US Airforce considered nuking Korea, but were eventually convinced not to by the Marines and Army who argued that deploying nuclear weapons risked a similar move by the Soviets on the battlefield where soldiers were centralized. Remember that the nukes back then were much, much smaller.

Also, a bit of a nitpick, but we do use nuclear weapons. We have for the past 70+ years. We haven't deployed them since Japan, but their role as a deterrent is a form of use.

> we do use nuclear weapons [in] their role as a deterrent

Yeah, I first heard this idea as the main point of Daniel Ellsberg's (also known for his first book, 'The Pentagon Papers' on Vietnam strategy) recent book 'The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner' [0] which documents the USA's 'use' of nuclear weapons, based on his work at RAND. It was a really interesting read, would recommend.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Books

> it wasn't about "hey, let's nuke that country, then we'll gain an advantage".

Initially LeMay wanted to strike the Soviets first with nukes while the US had the monopoly on that technology, because his reasoning was that when the Soviets would have it, they would not hesitate one second to strike the US with it.

I can see his point, in the context of the time. Glad that nobody followed his recommendations, though!

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