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Comment by emptyfile | Hacker News Reader

Yes.

Ukraine is in Europe. Nuking Ukraine means the wind will likely carry the fallout radiation into Russia, Belarus and Poland at the least.

I doesn't matter if its 1 nuke or a 100 nukes, irradiating NATO citizens is THE red line.

If Russia can nuke Europe without fear of reprisal, then NATO is defunct and a new nuclear arms race will probably start in Europe, with unforeseeable consequences.

So I would say yes, if Russia nukes a European capital with a multi-million pop, then nuclear war with Russia is the only course of action.

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But... that's stupid. Why would you kill everybody in NATO just because some of them are irradiated by an attack on someone else? It only makes sense to commit to nuclear warfare if they're actively doing the same, and even then it's mostly just out of spite because you're about to be gone.

Letting Russia nuke europe and get away with it does have unforseeable consequences, but the consequences of all out nuclear war is 100% certain and maximally bad. You literally cannot do worse than this.

You could instead, for instance, deploy the troops and just do a straight up invasion with the intent to destroy Russia entirely. Which maybe they do a nuclear response to. But maybe they don't. Because it's still the worst possible option and perhaps they'd like to instead just kill putin, accept a russia fragmentation into tiny vassal states.

I'd also ask then, because you're saying "irradiating NATO citizens is the red line", whether you support killing everyone if there's a russian caused meltdown at the Zaporyzhzhia plant (sp).

>> Why would Kyiv getting nuked spark all out nuclear war. Would you, as the head of NATO, press the 'Everyone Dies' button if kyiv got nuked?

> Yes.

> Ukraine is in Europe. Nuking Ukraine means the wind will likely carry the fallout radiation into Russia, Belarus and Poland at the least.

> I doesn't matter if its 1 nuke or a 100 nukes, irradiating NATO citizens is THE red line.

You're insane, and I'm glad you're nowhere near the button. An all out nuclear war will carry far, far more than "radiation" to Europe. And by "more" I mean actual warheads. It's like getting into a suicidal gun battle over a papercut.

MAD means you need to maintain an absolutely credible threat of an apocalyptic reprisal, but I think it's arguable that no one should ever actually carry out that threat (though that's information that absolutely must be kept secret). Do you really want to turn a holocaust into an extinction?

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