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Comment by dexwiz | Hacker News Reader

This tech will be the end of MAD and the start of WW3. The only thing holding back current super powers from direct confrontation are ICBMs and MAD. Once they can be reliably shot down via lasers, then full scale war is much more likely. I understand the current tech is for much slower, much lower rockets and cruise missiles. But the tech will evolve and get better. Israel is the current test bed for high tech defense, so expect further improvements over the next decade. We have seen a century of relative peace, enjoy it while it lasts.

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MAD was a dumb idea in the first place. Everybody has known, since the first world war, that a major power confrontation is very likely to end your nation, even if you win. The French were so demographically destroyed they literally could not raise an army to fight in the second world war. The British were so broke their empire collapsed. The Russian empire, the Austrian empire, the Ottoman empires all collapsed into splinters.

Rational people would not want to be on either side of such a conflict. Except, international relations is fraught with pathological incentives, so peer conflicts happen nonetheless, and less than twenty years after the first world war ended, everybody was gearing up for a second.

The cold war didn't go hot because we were lucky, not because MAD changed the basic dynamics of total war.

> he French were so demographically destroyed they literally could not raise an army to fight in the second world war.

This isn't true at all. The French army at the start of WWII was over 5 million men, one of the largest in the world. It suffered from bad luck and being led by morons, but it certainly existed.

Per your other point, WWII made the US and the USSR global superpowers for half a century, and the US especially sacrificed far less than anyone else to get it. War is sadly not always a losing proposition, even total war.

I don't know about the demographic claim but definitely the French could not imagine _fighting_ another war and so their preparations were poor. They built the Maginot Line as a way of avoiding having to fight again. And I believe the political culture in the country and army all rotated around the idea that they never wanted to fight Germany again. This also extended to the Treat of Versailles were they tried to cripple Germany's ability to raise an army again. I don't know about the demographic claim, but he is sort of right that WW1 wrecked Frances fighting spirit.

I was exaggerating, but the demographic slump that happened as a result of WW1 was a problem for french military planners, which is why a large portion of their army were reservists or badly trained.

Per your other point, you're shifting the terrain of the discussion. WW1 was almost a pure losers war, and yet, most of the same states engaged in WW2. That's the crazy decision. WW2, on the other hand, had relative winners (although I think the US would have done well regardless, and the USSR got to be a global superpower (which it was already) at an appalling cost).

Another thing that bothers me about the whole 'MAD prevented the cold war from going hot' is that none of the generals at the time thought like that. People didn't really start thinking about nuclear weapons as anything other than just big bombs until well into the cold war. That's why MacArthur advocated their use in China.

Oh, I actually totally disagree with the original commenter's statement "The cold war didn't go hot because we were lucky, not because MAD changed the basic dynamics of total war." Erm. No. MAD definitely did change the basic dynamics.

The difference being that with nuclear mutually assured destruction, the actual leaders are assured of their own personal destruction.

They aren't, that's why they have shelters and contingency plans for themselves and their families.

If life were fair, they shouldn't be allowed to survive a nuclear war that they start, but life is rarely fair.

The universe is a collection of chemical and physical reactions. Fairness is a value judgement that is sometimes passed from inside our heads over the rest of the universe.

Are they? Who has the best bunkers? Who has dedicated aircraft you can live in permanently?

>Who has dedicated aircraft you can live in permanently?

permanently? Probably impossible with current technology. Your best bet is still an underground bunker. If it has to be moving you'll need something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer_(TV_series)#Premis...

I am assuming landing and refueling is allowed, you can choose a non nuked place for that.

Rational people aren’t the ones who start wars. People who grab and claw for power and climbed their way into leadership start wars. I wish the world was lead by rational people, but I don’t think it is.

>This tech will be the end of MAD and the start of WW3.

AFAIK shooting down warheads will always be harder than launching them. Unless your system is really reliable, it can be bypassed by simply launching more missiles.

No system, even THAAD is 100% reliable. And nothing ever has been tested in the battlefield. Statistical significance of extreme levels is needed to eliminate MAD. Also, we shouldn’t be too reliant on MAD theory to avoid developing defense tech. If we don’t, it’s a guaranteed SAD (Self-assured destruction :-) ).

I very much doubt this is effective against ICBMs. It'll be a ground-based system. ICBMs are just too far away, too much air in between. It's not a question of technology. It simply cannot be done from the ground.

You’d probably be trying to catch those in space. Predictable trajectory and no atmosphere.

Shooting down a rocket going Mach 3 is different from an ICBM going Mach 25.

ICBM research seems to be further along in the US, Russia and India than in Israel. Israel has a fairly accurate, but expensive, missile defense system already.

> The only thing holding back current super powers from direct confrontation are ICBMs and MAD.

"Trade interests"

It's got nothing to do with MAD. Lasers can't affect MIRV re-entry vehicles in the first place. They're already designed to glow white hot during re-entry, a bit of laser energy on top of that is negligible.

As long as EMPs are viable MAD is still in effect.

An emp would knock out electrical grids.... sure...

But that isn't annihilation...

Say russia installed this in major cities (rural is acceptable loss), then manufactured super sonic nukes that could deliver a strike in under 5 mins... or even a minute... they could strike many of our nuke sites (not all because of subs) but our major military operation bases, then we strike back from subs, but these take them all out, there's some fallout from atmospheric explosions which may be as bad, but maybe they hoist huge fans to blow it south to the Ukraine or another enemy state...

I don't think EMP's really would deter this sort of outcome... MAD is becoming less and less a thing, super-sonic weapons are the real clencher, because with those it's simply whoever strikes first - if they strike hard enough can disable just about any enemy... so the trick will be not getting to the point of first strike... which...I don't think we can really prevent, not w/ water wars/climate resources diminishing, etc....

The worst war ever will come, we thought globalization could keep people sane but threats to supply chains, and resources, and the existence of the earth itself turn people into desperate people. Desperate people don't always do what's considered 'sane'.

What we'd deem an evil dictator might try and nuke 80% of the population to save the climate, and it probably would succeed but most sane people would say the cost is too great for that ...and they'd be right too.... I mean Thanos had good intentions but horrible means towards them...

A madman who gets elected or inherits the button to the nations military arsenal could decide to burn it all down like Nero...

Even with somewhat assured first strike outcomes I still don't see a rational reason for a nuclear power to go ahead with it. What are they going to do afterwards, conquer territory? It's not going to work because nuclear strikes won't magically disappear the (now really angry) population. So what would be the point? And now you lose all the fruits of trade and punish your own people.

Re: an insane leader ordering a strike just for fun, I have faith I guess in the staff who would be actually pushing the buttons. It has happened before.

> Say russia installed this in major cities (rural is acceptable loss)

You mean like the Russian's existing system is designed? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s...

>there's some fallout from atmospheric explosions which may be as bad, but maybe they hoist huge fans to blow it south to the Ukraine or another enemy state...

This was in fact precisely Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s idea in 1991 to stop the Baltics from seceding

Nerd Alert: Thanos's motivations in the comics were definitely not "good". However, in the softened MCU version his motivations while hilariously dumb, could be considered "good".

To elaborate, some sources put the death rate in an industrialized nation at 90% at 1 year after initial strike.

We would simply starve.

It is delayed annihilation, and would be returned in kind.

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