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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

"Nobody is going to drop a nuke back on them."

That's not what military experts are saying. If the nuclear fallout reached NATO countries NATO policy would require a "proportional" response, which again, military experts suggest would be a small scale nuclear strike on a Russian facility of proportional impact. The big question then is what would happen next - either both sides cool down and see where this is going, or Russia starts attacking targets within NATO at which point we're at full WW3 level. The "nobody is going to drop a nuke back" is either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.

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Keep in mind article 5 says "react as it deems necessary".

> will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary

https://www.nato.int/cps/ie/natohq/topics_110496.htm

If Poland triggers Article 5, just because fallout came to its borders, other members are free to send them iodine tablets and lead tents, rather than starting WW3.

It's not a start nuclear Armageddon article.

Again, the point is - at that point we're guessing. If Poland gets radioactive fallout on its terittory we don't know how exactly NATO would choose to react.

>>It's not a start nuclear Armageddon article.

I didn't say it was - but Russia "dropping a nuke" brings us closer to the possibility of nuclear war, not futher away from it. And according to people who are actually working with/for NATO, military generals in eastern european countries, it is not completely unlikely that NATO would decide that a strike into Russia(nuclear or not) wouldn't be off the cards if Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine brought fallout into NATO countries - and if such a strike was conducted, we don't know how that ends.

Sure, we don't know but we can guess.

While Poland can trigger Article 5, and current US admin will most likely tell them to shove it, maybe deploy some forces there. US weakening ties with EU is going to make nuclear war less likely.

Even if the next US president was very gung ho about it, the fact that Trump got elected again means the US isn't a stable partner. You don't want to enter a ten years war where every 4 years your ally might just decide to leave you hanging.

>Sure, we don't know but we can guess.

you really wanna weigh your odds of nuclear devastation on a guess?

>US weakening ties with EU is going to make nuclear war less likely.

other non-EU countries are already producing Nukes as preparation. I'm unsure about that.

> you really wanna weigh your odds of nuclear devastation on a guess?

No. But my point is you are oversimplifying it. Article 5 isn't a go to war button.

If Poland was to consider it an attack, that's not important. The question is would other members consider it an attack. To that the answer would more likely to be no.

I don't know of an adjacent country going to war because wind blew the fallout/chems its way.

> other non-EU countries are already producing Nukes as preparation. I'm unsure about that.

It could be US divestment leads to lower chance of WW3 in 5-20 years, but greater chance of WW3 in 20+ years.

>>I don't know of an adjacent country going to war because wind blew the fallout/chems its way.

You remind me of a semi-famous study that the American army did at one point. They wanted to estimate the risk of accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon, and concluded that the risk is zero because it never happened so far.

> They wanted to estimate the risk of accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon, and concluded that the risk is zero because it never happened so far.

Given it didn't happen so far, I'd say they were right on the money.

While mishandling and accidents did happen, the number of failsafes guarantees you have to purposefully activate it. Most nuclear weapons nowadays just don't have a way to reach criticality outside of nano-second controlled timing array.

> military experts suggest would be a small scale nuclear strike on a Russian facility of proportional impact

You could attack those facilities with conventional weapons too. What would be the point of using nukes to achieve the same purpose? All it would do is to make it more likely they'd escalate back.

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