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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

>What was it about the nuclear bomb that caused it to be the defining structure of the cold war?

The only difference is you can kill more humans for a given span of time. The end result is the same: Cities are leveled, people are killed. Is it more comforting to have been killed by a conventional bomb than a nuke? I certainly don't think so. So practically speaking, there is no difference.

>Do you believe MAD can exist without nuclear bombs?

Yes. I think you're all vastly underestimating just how much destructive power conventionals can deliver already. You will need more ordnance on standby, but you absolutely can suffer from MAD without nukes.

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Do you believe any country has enough conventional ordinance to end human life on the entire planet? You must know more about this than me, I've never heard of something like this.

Any of the major military superpowers have more than enough conventional boomsticks to end all human life. It might take slightly longer than if nukes were used, but that's hardly comforting.

(For confused readers: no, they don't. Not even the nuclear stockpiles would be enough to cause human extinction, even if they were turned deliberately to that end.)

I absolutely believe that if there was a project where every nuclear weapon was systematically used for the purpose of making humans extinct, it would be successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

>After one half-life of 5.27 years, only half of the cobalt-60 will have decayed, and the dose rate in the affected area would be 5 Sv/hour. At this dose rate, a person exposed to the radiation would receive a lethal dose in 1 hour.

>After 10 half-lives (about 53 years), the dose rate would have decayed to around 10 mSv/hour. At this point, a healthy person could spend up to 4 days exposed to the fallout with no immediate effects.

People can't stay in bunkers for 20 years at a time, just to emerge into a radiated hellscape.

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