Hacker News Reader

Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

If NATO got involved my guess is that the chance of an all out nuclear war would increase to near 100% because Russia can not win a conventional war with NATO which means nukes would need to be deployed to level the playing field.

Once one Nuke is fired it's likely they'll all be because the only real defence against a nation using nuclear weapons against you is to try to wipe them out before they wipe you out.

In this situation hundreds of millions would be likely die directly from the attack and a similar amount would probably die from starvation shortly after as the global economy collapses and crops fail on mass.

There's just no situation that this is something we'd even want to consider. As much as I'd love NATO to be able to intervene it's just not possible. The best we can do is put pressure on Russia and show other nations that this is not acceptable and not in their national interest because of the harsh economic consequences.

View on HN

> the only real defence against a nation using nuclear weapons against you is to try to wipe them out before they wipe you out

Thankfully, that has been thought of and, as much as possible, planned for.

How do you decrease the incentive for a preemptive strike? By building your nuclear arsenal so that it can survive one. There are 3 main things that help achieve this:

(1) Put your nukes somewhere where even a direct hit from an enemy nuke will not destroy them. That's why missile silos are underground.

(2) Hide your nukes. The enemy can't take out your nukes if they don't know where they are. Fixed-location nukes are bad at this. Mobility is good, but road and rail are not the best forms of mobility. Nukes in planes are better. Nukes in submarines are really good.

(3) Have lots of nukes. If the enemy can destroy 90% of your nukes with a preemptive strike but 10% of your nukes would still easily be enough to wipe them out, then a preemptive strike still doesn't achieve its goal. One way to increase nukes cheaply and effectively is with MIRVs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...), which means one missile has multiple nuclear warheads that can independently hit different targets.

Basically, all this was thought out pretty thoroughly during the Cold War. The well-known acronym MAD stands for Mutually-Assured Destruction, and the importance of the assured part has not been overlooked.

Source: needed a government credit in college, took a class that was all about nuclear deterrence theory.

Given the accepted MAD doctrine, which kept the "peace" throughout the cold war, you would think nuclear escalation would be unthinkable as a means to stave off a conventional defeat on foreign soil.

For a mad man who's going to lose anyway, what does he care if he takes the whole world with him?

He will lose in many respects, but even so, Moscow and St. Petersburg are not going to be radioactive craters. All evidence suggests he wants to be remembered as a Russian hero. I think he is intelligent enough to know that bringing nuclear destruction on Russia will not put him in that category. And it's not possible for him to act alone anyway. Worth noting that the two people in human history who have acted to stop a nuclear catastrophe were both Russian soldiers: Stanislav Petrov and Vasili Arkhipov.

It is completely mind numbingly crazy how much is at stake based on a single psychopaths whims, and possibly the courage of a few people selected by the same psychopath.

Absolutely. I think democratic governance and rule of law should be table stakes for participation in the "Western" economy and its international institutions. Countries that don't respect those values in their own societies won't respect them in international relations either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com