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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

This reads to me like pure fiction. Maybe not far-fetched, but very little substantive info. Does anyone have a link to anything more in depth about either the strategy likely to be involved, the anticipated consequences, or the post-nuclear war world and how any surviving governments or local powers might act in the months and years after the fact?

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Honestly, this movie is the most realistic fictional depiction. It's time range is before, during and after:

Threads (1984) via https://youtu.be/5Srqyd8B9gE

And if you want to know how the world would like after the movie Threads, read the following book:

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

> Threads (1984) via https://youtu.be/5Srqyd8B9gE

Video unavailable (in Australia at least)

"A hypothetical scenario" is a fiction.

Which then leads to the question, why is the wartime equivalent of anime fan-fiction appearing on HN?

The first section on this page applies to most "Why is X on HN?" questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, this section of "In comments", among others, applies to your comment: "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."

OP here. The reason I believe it is more interesting than fan-fiction is that it answers the question of "how could nuclear weapons be used in this conflict?". Since the day it started there have been various escalations [1][2][3] of threats of the use of nuclear weapons, but never an explanation of how we could get from where we are now to a point where they were actually used. My imagination failed me when I tried to think of any plausible scenario. This hypothetical scenario fills that gap for me and demonstrates how there need not necessarily even be any intent on either side to use these weapons.

It's true that in order to also fill that gap in your mind it must be plausible to you too. I don't know if it helps to know this comes from an organisation of experts whose job it is to think about this kind of thing all the time. In any case, I think this kind of speculation is necessary in order for the news we have seen about nuclear threats to have any meaning. Otherwise, it's a bit like hearing that Russia would like to crash the moon into Europe. Ok perhaps, but how could that be done? This article attempts to give an answer.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60547473

[2] https://news.sky.com/story/russian-diplomat-if-nato-threaten...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/opinion/ukraine-putin-nuc...

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