Nukefix: Simulating your nuclear weapons program | Hacker News Reader

Nukefix: Simulating your nuclear weapons program

nukefix.org

139 pointsxk342 comments

If you want less Excel and more Wargames in your nuclear simulations, DEFCON is fun to spend a few hours in once in a while.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1520/DEFCON/

Given that the slogan of DEFCON is "Everybody Dies" and the slogan of Nukefix is "The Challenge Is To Develop a Safer World", I think they have somewhat different victory conditions... As a resident of one of the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons, I'd prefer that people gave the latter slogan more attention than the former!

Safer nukes are the most dangerous thing. It only works if everybody is MAD.

Unfortunately we enter into new era where MAD is no longer applicable to Russia. Their sarmat has 100% effective target couple woth superb AD while current ICBMs operations tested in America and UK are absymal with equivalent ineffective THAAD and Patriots. It is interesting to see how this asymetrical MAD will play out in coming years.

Russian air defense is abysmal; Ukraine is now regularly slipping dronified Cesenas through it. Rest assured that American Ohio class SSBNs and SSGNs will be able to ruin Russia if they try anything stupid.

Are you suggesting Russia might avoid destruction in a war between modern nuclear superpowers? That seems... difficult to believe.

> I think they have somewhat different victory conditions...

DEFCON theme is more that everyone has already lost, now they're only competing for who loses the least.

I prefer the rather inscrutable Bravo Romeo Delta

https://homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=143

https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2014/11/choreographing-armageddon...

fascinating! and playable on the internet archive in-browser https://archive.org/details/msdos_Bravo_Romeo_Delta_1993

I was pretty young when I last saw web pages look like this but it warms my heart to see one again (unmodified since October 2001!). I think I’m going to find a way to get this running on an old machine this week…

Truly. Immediately awash with nostalgia. Although I do feel its missing a spinning GIF, a visit counter and a visitors book :-)

Haha, yep. Under construction!

On the topic of nukes, the latest Hardcore History addendum is kind of terrifying. It's an interview with author Annie Jacobsen about her new book, "Nuclear War"

https://www.dancarlin.com/addendum/

Thanks for sharing this, I'm a long time HH and Common Sense listener but had no clue about this Addendum podcast

As a fellow Dan Carlin fan I’d also recommend this podcast (not by Dan Carlin): https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

I remember seeing her on Lex Fridmans podcast, too. It's pretty insane how close we are to a complete annihilation everyday; the US had a close call involving a "test" tape being inserted and alerting real agencies of an incoming attack.

Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

The website looks like it hasn’t been updated in decades, but did they add the bit about the epidemic recently or should we be worried that these folks just about predicted the present?

Looking at the wayback machine, it seems the Epidemic text is there as early as 2001. But you shouldn't be worried, as the prediction has been made earlier than that and it's just simple mathematics (Population*Time=Pathogen Evolution)

That doesn't take into account zoonotic crossovers like covid and the handful of avian flu cases in recent the

from 1995, i present La Grippe, by the Squirrel Nut Zippers...

Specifically this part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O8iOBW6JBM&t=31s

So either this random ska band was prophetic, or there was already a notion that this sort of thing could happen (and did in the mid 2000s iirc and nearly did again in 2013?)

The screenshots are very confusing to me... it appears to be a Windows (95?) application, with variable width fonts, graphs, mouse support [0], but then certain elements, like the menu [1], look like a class DOS apps, with fixed width fonts and ANSI line drawing characters. Some screens, like data tables [2], look like they're completely DOS-based, while others have a weird combination of DOS and Windows elements [3] [4] [5].

Quite strange! I suppose perhaps it started life as a DOS application and then moved to Windows, with old pages keeping the same fonts/layouts to save time. Makes for an odd look...

0: http://www.nukefix.org/pixx/stpage.gif

1: http://www.nukefix.org/pixx/stmenu.gif

2: http://www.nukefix.org/pixx/twork.gif

3: http://www.nukefix.org/pixx/preempt.gif

4: http://www.nukefix.org/pixx/ageone.gif

5: http://www.nukefix.org/pixx/mseefran3.gif

Looks a lot like a old pascal program.

That could be. The font is quite familiar

Screenshot 1 looks interesting. A mixture of a text- and graphical mode. Was that possible natively? Is what looks like text mode also graphical?

From the article:

> Nukefix runs on IBM compatible computers. It cannot be run on a Macintosh (sorry). In Windows 3.1 or earlier (but not in Windows95/98), after downloading, always exit to DOS before running Nukefix. The setup program will run either under DOS or Windows95/98/2000. Nukefix is designed to run under Windows95/98/2000 or DOS.

So yes, an old DOS/Windows program. The article also says:

> There is no charge for Nukefix, if you download it. If you wish to purchase the identical version on a floppy disk for $10 (shipping included), you may do so.

and

> With a 56k modem downloading, Nukefix, version 2.3, typically takes about four minutes, but may, depending upon Internet speeds, take longer (1,274 k bytes).

and finally:

> Updated: October 14, 2001

This software is really old. I suppose nuclear weapons haven’t changed much in 20-30 years. OTOH, it probably won’t run natively on recent platforms

Wow blocked by my work filter for "Compromised Sites" wonder how old that entry is.

Screenshots look like early Windows 95, so ordovician give or take a few MY.

There was also this site to simulate area affected : https://www.nukethis.com/

This looks pretty neat to play around with, too bad the download link appears dead.

You can send $10 for a floppy disk version!

http://www.nukefix.org/purchase.html

None of my computers have floppy drives. :blushing-emoji:

Funny story, I wound up finding a bunch of my old Mac-formatted Zip disks a few months ago, and trying to extract data off of them was a wild, tangled mess of external SCSI enclosures, `ddrescue`, and then quick archiving it up onto the NAS before the drive or disk started making the famous clicking noises. Blows my mind we lived like that.

I have a USB floppy drive. 20 years ago, I saved it from being thrown out at work, and now I still have it. Well, I assume it works, haven’t actually used it in long time

Might be worth a shot. The original developer still seems to be alive and doing stuff at https://fixdst.com/

> Only infrequently is there a download problem. But if you are unable to download from your present location, please send me an e-mail (with your e-mail address clearly indicated), and I will send you, as an e-mail attachment, the same Nukefix program that would normally be downloaded.

> It would be helpful if you could include a very short description of the difficulty you had. Thanks.

http://www.nukefix.org/help1.html

The FTP works but it won't allow anonymous logins.

what credentials work?

I've tried anon, no username/pass, etc

I'm flat out unable to connect right now but I wanted to try username anonymous, password my email address - that was the standard back in the day

#> telnet www.nukefix.org 21

  Trying 64.71.34.33...
  Connected to www.nukefix.org.
  Escape character is '^]'.
  220 Welcome.

USER anonymous

  331 Please specify the password.

PASS anonymous

  530 This FTP server does not accept anonymous logins.

oof.

According to ftp://retronn.de/archiv/old_cds/pcwelt_08_2000/pcw_mat/inhalt/PCW99.PDF page 2, this software was included on a 1999 German CD-ROM "Ausgabe 2/99" (I think that's the CD-ROM that came with the February 1999 issue of the German PC-WELT magazine), at the path "\sharewar\sw\intsich\nukefix.exe". Unfortunately I can't find an ISO of that specific CD-ROM anywhere online, but maybe someone out there has it.

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