Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

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>One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor

Russians used nukes for mining. Its not magic. You can manage fall-out, risk, etc. Its not "crazy."

>"Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, and many observers[71] described him as blaming it on Jane Fonda"

A 70+ year old man being a difficult curmudgeon? Say, it ain't so!

> Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

SDI made sense. We still have SDI. Now we call its "Strategic Missile Defense" and its our biggest counter against rogue nation nuke launches and other attacks. It also has Putin scared as he can't match it and is demanding we don't continue to build new sites in Eastern Europe out of desperation.

>The only thing missing from Dr Strangelove is having the uncontrollable hand.

I really wish more people understood the world from the lessons of history instead of caricutures from Hollywood movies.

> SDI made sense.

SDI could be said to plausibly make some kind of sense only in the context of the proposed broad national shield being propaganda to serve as (1) a tool to get the USSR to accelerate its spending in a way that would hasten its collapse, and (2) domestic political cover for more limited shields that would protect key military command and control sites.

If Teller's exuberant promotion of SDI was knowing participation in those propaganda efforts, then it was extremely dishonest but perhaps defensible as not completely nonsensical; on its face, however, it was nonsense.

> We still have SDI. Now we call its "Strategic Missile Defense" and its our biggest counter against rogue nation nuke launches and other attacks.

No, our biggest counter against rogue nation nuke launches is, and remains, a combination of assured destruction of any attacker and active steps to prevent undeterrable actors from gaining the capacity to make such attacks in the first place.

Strategic missile defense of any kind remains, and will for the forseeable future, an extremely limited tool, and far less than SDI was sold as by proponents like Teller.

> It also has Putin scared as he can't match it and is demanding we don't continue to build new sites in Eastern Europe out of desperation.

There's a whole lot I could say about this, but I'll let this suffice: you can't say in one post defend MAD with "With madmen like Putin running nukes, MAD makes sense", and then defend Strategic Missile Defense with the argument that it undermines mad and makes Putin scared and more aggressive.

If you buy the idea that MAD is rational, how can you also support SDI? Do you want a nuclear first strike to be a viable option?

The US actually used more nukes for mining then the russians. WAY more.

the russians had the more accidents, though. but the US also had it share of radioactive underground rivers as a result. there is a list on wikipedia

This article (which presumably includes mining related activities for both countries):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion

puts the score at US: 28, USSR: 237.

Combining the 25 intensification and 22 storage explosions here presumably gets you past the US total of peaceful nuclear explosions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati...

Are there more articles that you would suggest?

> SDI made sense. We still have SDI. Now we call its "Strategic Missile Defense" and its our biggest counter against rogue nation nuke launches and other attacks. It also has Putin scared as he can't match it and is demanding we don't continue to build new sites in Eastern Europe out of desperation.

You just basically said that SDI is destabilizing because it will take away MAD. I fail to see how supporting that is rational or sane.

> SDI made sense. We still have SDI. Now we call its "Strategic Missile Defense" and its our biggest counter against rogue nation nuke launches and other attacks. It also has Putin scared as he can't match it and is demanding we don't continue to build new sites in Eastern Europe out of desperation.

That sounds suspiciously like and end-run around MAD, which until close to 100% complete and accurate, seems like it serves to reduce the effectiveness of MAD as a method to prevent nuclear war.

All parties are developing SDI. Its the next arms race. If we stop, we lose MAD. If they stop, they lose MAD. We're a bit ahead, which isn't saying much considering its trivial to launch enough dummy warheads to outstrip our abilities and fool our interceptors. Whoever is doing better with interceptors loses out to the guy who is doing better with work-arounds. Not cut and dried, but having one deployed does save you from rogue nation launches and other scenarios that have nothing to do with MAD.

My hope is that this all gets too expensive and we all get rid of nukes entirely.

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