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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

WW3 will not happen. Countries are not stupid to destroy the Earth.

Local wars here and there happened and will happen in the future. There's nothing special about Ukraine or Taiwan in that regard.

World will move from US-centric model to multi-polar model. One pole is China, one pole is Russia, one pole is EU, one pole is US, one pole is Iran. Confused about India but probably it'll be a separate pole as well. Probably there will be African pole and South-American pole. Economy, Internet, Science will be divided among those poles. Some poles will cooperate, some poles will not. Countries will join some pole or dive into anarchy. That's the script for next 50-100 years, then another country will rise as a world hegemon. I expect it to be China, but I might be wrong.

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“WW3 will not happen. Countries are not stupid to destroy the Earth.”

That’s pretty optimistic. I wish I was less pessimistic. I think it’s just a matter of time.

I think that the world is now more unipolar than ever before. Russia is repeatedly proving that it worth nearly nothing both in military and political sense, the Chinese military power is also very much overestimated. EU is nearly defenseless on their own too.

Only the US has the military power to win any existential war (small wars of course can still be “lost”, as the adversary can become the prize not worth taking).

I don't agree to your judgement about Russia. Chinese army might lack some real fight experience, but they got numbers and they got budgets. EU increases their military budgets as well, so things will change in the future.

US has powerful army but that costs a lot. Once US economy will stagnate, and at this point that's pretty obvious, military budgets will be cut. US run from Afghanistan not because they achieved something but because they can't afford it anymore. It'll happen with other places.

Nuclear weapons. That's all it comes down to. If Russia didn't have them then (rightly or wrongly) Putin would have been bombed months ago. An existential war would involve large scale use of nuclear weapons, and the US cannot win that. Neither can Russia or China, mind you.

Nuclear weapons are deterrents, they have a very limited military use. Their only useful targets are cities (and sometimes other nuclear weapons), and they leave no prize. They can be used to end the war, but not to win the war.

I must make the assumption that you’re young. China today has set its path to carry out an action in 5-10 years when it’s ready. You never engage when you’re not prepared. You build up, plan, prepare, then act. That takes time. Remember, revenge is best served cold. China has stepped down today, but I can reassure you, in 5-10 years it will act militarily to avenge its current embarrasment. Just like Russia prepared for the last 8.

Russia won the war in the first 72 hours, now its grinding Ukraine and its supporters, they’re too stubborn to back away. Russia has also only committed 10% of their resources, the rest are on standby in case NATO intervenes.

> I must make the assumption that you’re young.

I am 39.

> "Russia won the war in the first 72 hours".

In which universe?

Russia is absolutely humiliated, their tanks are rusting in Ukrainian fields by hundreds, there are no new human reserves, morale on the front is all-time low, and Ukrainians are now bombing Crimean targets without any retaliation.

Which is a good thing, of course.

Sorry to burst your bubble but so far Ukrainian army did 0 wins and only suffers losses. They don't bomb Crimean targets, they do sabotages (or terroristic acts, depending on your side) which sometimes work. I will not carry on this conversation because this is US website and US fight for Ukraine, so it's pretty pointless, but you can't deny the big picture. I'll agree that Russia is not winning when Russia would lose any big city it captured. Like this mystical attack on Herson which is promised for months but not happening.

> Russia won the war in the first 72 hours. Russia has also only committed 10% of their resources, the rest are on standby in case NATO intervenes.

Imagine the mental gymnastics you have to do to believe this.

Some sources:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-14/russia-tu...

> There are indications the Kremlin is running out of troops for its war with Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62496905

> the nation has been "forced into a greater reliance on old Soviet-era equipment, such as personnel carriers offering limited protection, and tanks last produced in 1973." > Kremlin is increasingly using "older, less-precise missiles for strikes, killing and injuring innocent people." > "These outdated tactics are a sign of Russia's desperation amid its equipment shortages and tactical deficiencies,"

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-running-out-steam-growing-de...

I wouldn’t call those links reliable sources, more like “imaginative projection”. Remember when NATO bombed little Serbia for 79 days and engaged in a media blitz with mindboggling projection of Serbian army loses, only to discover after Kumanovo agreement that only 13 (in words, thirteen) armoured vehicles were actually hit. Generals openly stated afterwards they were lucky not to commit ground forces based on these projections since the opponents strength was not diminished. Serbia only surrendered when NATO started hitting power stations, water facilities, food factories and realised the NATO lunacy wasn’t going to stop on its own, sending Serbia to the stone age.

> Russia won the war in the first 72 hours,

This is a hilariously bad take considering they attempted to take Kyiv in the first 72 hours and now they're grinding for minimal gains in the south while losing most of their modern equipment and taking heavy losses.

There’s 0 chance a South American pole forms so long as the US is around.

> Countries are not stupid to destroy the Earth.

Except for the climate change.

First assumption is faulty. That a nuclear war would "destroy the earth". It would not destroy the planet nor render it significantly uninhabitable. Which leads you to poor conclusions.

It does have significant consequences, will render some limited land area as radio active for a limited period of time (weeks to months). Survivors of the infrastructure destruction, chaos, and troop invasions will need to be careful of their sources of food and water for a while.

But it is very much a survivable event for most of the population if basic preparations are in place.

Yes. Let's just remember that 49% of the population dying is most of the population surviving.

> It would not destroy the planet nor render it significantly uninhabitable.

And you are 100 percent sure that your assumption is correct? For if it is not, the potential cost of error for your hypothesis (total destruction) are infinitely higher than that of OP's (no nuclear war even though we could survive it). And that is independent of which assumption is more likely to be true. I wonder which conclusions are poor then.

What about nuclear winter?

I've read a lot of the source material for nuclear winter. My conclusions are that it's very unrealistic. The assumptions it depends on are extremely slanted and have not been observed anywhere I can find. It's pretty baseless.

There is a lot of ignorance and emotion clouding reality and reason in this space.

Additionally, the idea that we could kill everyone on earth or kill everyone x times over is based on the idea that we are rounding up people and putting them in perfect concentric circles based on optimum detonation height and having everyone in the kill circle.

I mean, yeah, we could do that with the gun ammunition and kill everyone too, but it's ultimately a meaningless number.

Nukes are very very expensive to build and maintain. They are very destructive. But there is a lot of emotional arguments tied up in this that makes rational discussion about what actually happens almost impossible.

Radiation is either hot and thus has a very short half life or is long and also not particularly dangerous. The only element that straddles this line is cobalt. Hot enough to be dangerous, long lived enough to seriously impede life returning. To date it isn't known if anyone really has cobalt bombs, Russia might if anyone does.

But that's the closest thing I've ever seen that's a potential long term mass area denial weapon.

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