Trump won't order the the button to be pushed first but I suspect Putin will. As bad as it is that Trump is Putin's puppet Trump also has a fairly huge ego and he'll do something reckless in the future to prove he isn't Putin's lapdog and that will most likely be related to a military conflict with a 3rd party. Russian military has been boasting about using nukes in a tactical manner. Since they can't beat the US openly militarily in another country in the European sector they either back down or resort to "tactical" nukes to "even" the playing field.
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Politico: Bill Perry Is Terrified [of the threat of nuclear weapons]. Why Arent You?
- Thread starter ElTorro
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Trump won't order the the button to be pushed first but I suspect Putin will. As bad as it is that Trump is Putin's puppet Trump also has a fairly huge ego and he'll do something reckless in the future to prove he isn't Putin's lapdog and that will most likely be related to a military conflict with a 3rd party. Russian military has been boasting about using nukes in a tactical manner. Since they can't beat the US openly militarily in another country in the European sector they either back down or resort to "tactical" nukes to "even" the playing field.
Say a terrorist sneaks a nuclear weapon into the center of NYC and detonates it... what happens then? Does the US leadership go into panic mode and launch everything they have everywhere?
Can a single terrorist with a single bomb trigger armageddon? Does MAD only take place when you know who is destroying you?
Can a single terrorist with a single bomb trigger armageddon? Does MAD only take place when you know who is destroying you?
trump's presidency is what led me to watch the day after and threads for the first time. it also increased my awareness tremendously over just how scary things were in the 80s, partially because reagan was such a fucking awful human being.
the day after is pretty scary, covering a pretty wide array of the effects and aftermath of nuclear war. probably the most frightening thing is watching the nukes launch, with the army personnel doing in it in a fairly unconnected and robotic way (which was footage from another special that had aired on pbs years earlier). the reaction to the nukes launching and the few realizing there was just only enough time left before the retaliation or first strike hit was also pretty affecting, with john lithgow's character realizing the end was there. john lithgow saying 'that's an awful lot of bullseyes...' made me think about where i live and ... damn, yeah it's true. there's not really anywhere that's safe from the blast or fallout in an all-out war.
the film is also interesting in that i think it's pretty realistic in terms of how people would act leading up to the attack. there's a sense that things aren't going to escalate beyond a skirmish out in wherever (which is... well, that's what i think everyone has always thought, even now). however, i think that, despite killing off all the main characters, it ends in a somewhat optimistic way, with a 'maybe we'll recover?' ending, people still comforting each other and society starting again and maybe moving on.
threads, on the other hand, is bleak and hopeless and far more terrifying. the detached documentary feel of it, with a narrator and text being 'typed' on screen makes it feel like this is a series of events that has already happened - an alternate future. the attack happens in 1984, and by 1997, society has broken down, people are dying younger and younger, language and education has suffered, and there is no hope. humanity is fucked.
for better or for worse, i think these are the kinds of things that would make people care, or at least, become aware of the real danger of nuclear war. they need to see it in the context of modern life and 'that will never happen' when it happens.
the day after is pretty scary, covering a pretty wide array of the effects and aftermath of nuclear war. probably the most frightening thing is watching the nukes launch, with the army personnel doing in it in a fairly unconnected and robotic way (which was footage from another special that had aired on pbs years earlier). the reaction to the nukes launching and the few realizing there was just only enough time left before the retaliation or first strike hit was also pretty affecting, with john lithgow's character realizing the end was there. john lithgow saying 'that's an awful lot of bullseyes...' made me think about where i live and ... damn, yeah it's true. there's not really anywhere that's safe from the blast or fallout in an all-out war.
the film is also interesting in that i think it's pretty realistic in terms of how people would act leading up to the attack. there's a sense that things aren't going to escalate beyond a skirmish out in wherever (which is... well, that's what i think everyone has always thought, even now). however, i think that, despite killing off all the main characters, it ends in a somewhat optimistic way, with a 'maybe we'll recover?' ending, people still comforting each other and society starting again and maybe moving on.
threads, on the other hand, is bleak and hopeless and far more terrifying. the detached documentary feel of it, with a narrator and text being 'typed' on screen makes it feel like this is a series of events that has already happened - an alternate future. the attack happens in 1984, and by 1997, society has broken down, people are dying younger and younger, language and education has suffered, and there is no hope. humanity is fucked.
for better or for worse, i think these are the kinds of things that would make people care, or at least, become aware of the real danger of nuclear war. they need to see it in the context of modern life and 'that will never happen' when it happens.
that this attitude is universally held is why our species is heading towards destruction. You are part of the problem.
Secondly, it won't necessarily be quick. A limited nuclear war may not evaporate you straight away. It might occur with 50-100 nukes in another part of the globe. The collapse in food production that follows would not be painless and instant.
TwEE-N-Toast
Banned
Go on...
Ayato Kanzaki
Member
What if, for example, Trump's declarations about NATO push a country like Ukraine to search urgently for other forms of deterrents, and Putin still invade because he think he'll be able to intercept the nuke before it reach a russian city, or that losing a city or two is a cost worth paying to restore the glory of USSR?
Willing ot bet that Ukraine wouldn't dare use it? You can't know how far a goverment is willing to go when facing an enemy who want nothing less than taking over.
Someone with Trump's temper would order a nuclear strike on every city occupied by Isis forces. He wouldn't give a damn about how many innocents would die, as long as he could justify it to his base and appear strong and decisive. And the new Isis that would emerge from the mess would be a hundred times stronger...
jakonovski
Member
Why would people who don't even vote care about an issue with as much history and context as nukes?
Mook1e
Member
It most likely wouldn't prompt nuclear annihilation on a global scale, but it would at least bring about life-altering changes in every modern world citizen's way of life orders of magnitude more intrusive and unpleasant than our recent societal changes following 9/11 and the rise of Islamic terror.
At worst, it would do the above + begin a policy of near-biblical Armageddon between "The west (Christianity and Judaism)" and "Islam (Or select Islamic majority countries and regions) which would start as tactical nuclear strikes in retaliation and progress to troop deployments which would look incredibly similar to the crusades.
That's my best guess.
michaelius
Banned
Thermonuclear war is non starter only because both sides have retaliation capability. Otherwise anyone could repeat Japanese scenario and just a simple possibility of that would be huge for international politics.
Also as Putin shows conventional war is not a deterrent in itself - otherwise they wouldn't occupy Crimea or Donetsk. Also the same case shows dangers of single sided getting rid of nukes. Ukraine did have plenty of them but they gave them away in return of safety guaranties from USA and Russia meaning they couldn't even crush the so called "separatists" with military due to fear of full scale Russian invasion.
Ukraine doesn't have nukes. And if Russia was to really invade Ukraine, I'm not sure Russians would like it. Putin does things in a covert manner. Ukraine may be weak but russians soliders would die.
Putin wants more power but he ain't crazy. The first to be hit in a nuclear war are the governments. Washington and Moscow would be wastelands.
I just hope Europe stays strong because the real danger to me is Russia being more and more busy meddling with a weak Europe, and it could end badly.
Classic states/leaders-as-rational-actor deterrence theory seems to presume that perfect information is available. We now know of many accidents and technical or human errors which brought us right to the brink of doomsday. This doesnt even address other holes in the theory (examples of decidely non-rational leaders through history, or if one side feels they have a temporary but real first-strike advantage).
Given a better US-Russia political climate, it is possible to envision concrete steps to reduce stockpiles further. Real progress was made from Reagan through the 90s and Obama put forth some visionary policies proposals which would have reduced the risk further (although his policies ultimately foundered on the rocks of recent Washington non-bipartasanship).
I highly recommed the 10-part class Perry and his colleagues put together for the layman - if anything you will walk away with a firm conviction that "nothing can be done" is bullshit.
https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+NuclearBrink+Fall2016/info
PowderedToast
Junior Member
they're right in a sense. there's no point living in constant, anxiety-inducing fear because anxiety is incapacitating. it's finding the balance between being aware of the danger but having healthy thought processes that make you capable to actually contribute to solutions, and that means not living with the thought that every second might be your last. nobody can live like that and be productive.
What's difficult to understand in that statement?
It's completely out of our hands. Why waste time worrying about it? If all out nuclear war ever does happen, worrying about it now isn't going to change it.
True. But again, what can we do to change it? The US will always have them as a deterrent to prevent others from using theirs. And we've diminished our stockpile for decades. It's a necessary evil in this world, unfortunately.
One specific example would be to support organizations and elected politicians who advocate taking our ground-based (ICBM) force off its current alert status and explicitly disowning "Launch on Warning." This alone would reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war without addressing stockpiles.
Silver Arrows
Banned
This is my opinion as well.
It is about reducing the risk, not putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle (the latter is impossible of course).
I lived in Germany most of the 1980s as a military brat and had nightmares following "The Day After." A Warsaw Pact invasion would have resulted in immediate nuclear war, at least locally, none of this Tom Clany's "Red Storm Rising" conventional war fantasy stuff.
One way to simplify Perry's argument is the hopeful (and debatable) assertion that a populace better-educated on the topic are less likely to elect people like Trump, who probably couldn't speak for more than 30 seconds about any specific issue relating to nuclear weapons.
Some observers have noted that the fact that this topic flared up during the current election (vs. the past four or five) is that people don't really believe in the "safety" afforded by deterrence theory and that the cracks in our confidence arise from our discomfort with Trump's character. So if our belief in deterrence stability was lip service to begin with, why not turn to real efforts at risk mitigation?
michaelius
Banned
But there already was great US-Russia political climate in the 90s. Some people even belived that history is over and there won't be any conflict in the future. It even lasted for 20 years when tensions were minimal.
And here we are in the middle of second cold war where nuclear capable Russian bombers are testing capability of Nato radar systems and speed of response all the time.
And that's precisely Putin is non-rational politic (or maybe he is ruthlessly rational and we just don't have perspective to see it).
Also I'm not American so I fully believe nothing can be done on my part is correct considering we at best have some Warsaw pact era chemical munition in our country.
A bit hyperbole, that kind of depressive attitude isn't helping at all. Lots of people are working on climate change, and adaptation to changes are what humans do best.
Look at my thread and check what you can do.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1319159&highlight=trumped
I don't think this ever stopped, although there has been an augmentation in recent times.
Remember Putin got one of his planes shot down by a NATO member and did shit.
I don't think he is crazy. He wants more power for him and Russia yes, he will take what he can if it keeps him popular, that's why Europe has to stay strong.
As bizarre and scary as it sounds, if Putin and Trump are going to be all buddy-buddy and ignore the UN together then I could see a future where, if enough larger scale terrorist attacks happen under their rule, we get to the point where they start OK'ing each other using surgical nuclear strikes on areas with lots of insurgents/terrorists. As long as they don't strike near the other major nuclear powers I doubt anyone would or could do anything.
They are a dangerous enough combo that they could normalize the use of nuclear weapons. This is an extreme scenario of course but I wouldn't put it past either of them.
They are a dangerous enough combo that they could normalize the use of nuclear weapons. This is an extreme scenario of course but I wouldn't put it past either of them.
lemmykoopa
Junior Member
I think people who say yeah I can see Trump using nukes are kinda underestimating the whole process of firing nukes and all protocol that precedes it. It's not as simple as Trump sitting in his couch with his ipad on his lap and pressing the fire button after highlighting an area on Google maps...
Short of physically restraining the president there are no formal checks to his/her ability to order a strike - the system is designed for the quickest possible response (see Michael Hayden's recent comments) - not deliberation. I am not saying Trump is more likely to do so, only addressing the impression that the President is constrained. There are plenty of open source accounts and sample timeliness of the process online.
That's an interesting alternative scenario but that won't happen. You don't need nukes against an inferior opponent. Even if our leaders were so inhumane to use such methods you are correct that the other nuclear powers won't do anything to help the victims but they will be motivated to do something because nuclear fallout will screw up the global climate and this casual usage of nukes will encourage an arms race and a change in military alliances.
Already Torn
Banned
Do you ever look to see if a car is about to hit you before you cross the street, or do you take no precautions to protect yourself and charge forward blindly?
That is a horrible analogy.
Yeah, it's possible to donate to organizations that lobby to reduce nuclear munitions, but there will always be dictators and authoritarian governments that are trying to get theirs. So in reality there will likely always be a need for major world powers to have some.
brochiller
Member
BUT IT COULD HAPPEN!
Maybe we need to start doing this again to make people realize how serious this issue is.
Already Torn
Banned
Getting hit by a car is something much more realistic than getting hit by a meteor though. Nukes are far more likely to hit you than a meteor.
Trump literally asked why he could't use nukes against ISIS
Where would they strike? Syria?
I don't think Putin would be ok with nuking Syria... China would not be ok with it either. Many countries would be against it.
Russia as a really powerful army but they are not as strong as people think. If it wasn't for their nuclear arsenal, we would not care. But the world can still hurt their economy.
They don't need nukes to blast terrorists to bits. You underestimate the US conventionnal power.
And no, some nukes going off would not affect the climate. Fallout would be a problem though for the closest populations.
More Fun To Compute
Member
It's funny how people think that there is less that can be done about nuclear war than natural disasters because action on climate change is seen as something that is a great project for our generation. But nuclear weapons are much easier to stop since they can only be used by people and they can be disarmed. It's a sort of voluntary learned helplessness on the issue just because it's so traumatic to think about the subject.
Surgical strikes on an insurgency. I like it.
GTP_Daverytimes
Member
I was talking to a coworker and I forgot how but the topic of Russia came up and he told me how the US can kick Russia's ass. I told him Russias conventional power is strong enough to fight off anyone and besides they have nuclear weapons, he countered and said that we (the US) had nuclear weapons too and we can "fuck up their country".
I told him that we ain't kicking anyone's ass because of MAD, he looked at me with a blank expression so I proceeded to explain what it was. The real kicker however came when I told him that Russia alone had enough nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity, to which he counted with "no weapon is capable of that", i was horrified. I asked him if he had ever seen a nuclear explosion and he answerd "No". I spent a few seconds with my mouth slightly open and my brows raised, I proceeded to show him videos of nuclear explosion, both in space, above ground, under ground and underwater.
After that experience a few weeks ago I proceeded to ask a couple of more people (7 so far) if they have ever seen a nuclear explosion, 4 out of the 7 has never seen a nuclear explosion, 6 of them didn't know what MAD is. Anyways the whole point of this is to show just how absolutely ignorant the average person in America is when it comes to nuclear weapons and the dangers of it, it's neither taught in schools nor is there an intelligent discussion of it anywhere in today's society. Even among the educated their seems to be profound ignorance of the true consequences of nuclear weapons, it's evident in this board. One can only hope we all don't blunder into a nuclear engagement with anyone, but especially with the Russian Federation.
I told him that we ain't kicking anyone's ass because of MAD, he looked at me with a blank expression so I proceeded to explain what it was. The real kicker however came when I told him that Russia alone had enough nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity, to which he counted with "no weapon is capable of that", i was horrified. I asked him if he had ever seen a nuclear explosion and he answerd "No". I spent a few seconds with my mouth slightly open and my brows raised, I proceeded to show him videos of nuclear explosion, both in space, above ground, under ground and underwater.
After that experience a few weeks ago I proceeded to ask a couple of more people (7 so far) if they have ever seen a nuclear explosion, 4 out of the 7 has never seen a nuclear explosion, 6 of them didn't know what MAD is. Anyways the whole point of this is to show just how absolutely ignorant the average person in America is when it comes to nuclear weapons and the dangers of it, it's neither taught in schools nor is there an intelligent discussion of it anywhere in today's society. Even among the educated their seems to be profound ignorance of the true consequences of nuclear weapons, it's evident in this board. One can only hope we all don't blunder into a nuclear engagement with anyone, but especially with the Russian Federation.
Before some of you guys conclude that everyone doesn't give a damn...
I think most people find nuclear weapons scary, me included.
But we have other problems on our mind. Every day life.
I can die taking the car tomorrow so I have to watch out for accidents. I can get a disease, how many people you know have cancer?
Nuclear weapons is only one thing among many who can threaten our civilization. This is nothing new. The new thing is now we can predict some bad things that can happen, but humanity always faced dangers. Back then it was the black plague or food shortages.
Nuclear weapons are indeed a menace to our civilization, but many civilizations before ours fell to the sword or natural disasters.
I think most people find nuclear weapons scary, me included.
But we have other problems on our mind. Every day life.
I can die taking the car tomorrow so I have to watch out for accidents. I can get a disease, how many people you know have cancer?
Nuclear weapons is only one thing among many who can threaten our civilization. This is nothing new. The new thing is now we can predict some bad things that can happen, but humanity always faced dangers. Back then it was the black plague or food shortages.
Nuclear weapons are indeed a menace to our civilization, but many civilizations before ours fell to the sword or natural disasters.
Nose Master
Member
Nuclear armaments have gotten to the point where it'd be guaranteed assured mutual destruction. Anyone choosing to launch would be effectively ending the world, including their own life. Trumps ego wouldn't stand for that.
There's nothing to be done to prevent it, either. There are millions of ways you could die that are out of your hands, this is just one more. Implying it's healthy to have a phobia of death is absurd.
There's nothing to be done to prevent it, either. There are millions of ways you could die that are out of your hands, this is just one more. Implying it's healthy to have a phobia of death is absurd.
I would never assume that anyone here wasn't troubled or even haunted by the thought (however remotely possible) of nuclear war. Perry's point is that there are specific, achievable steps within our power which could significantly reduce the risk but that implementing them will require a better-educated public.
GTP_Daverytimes
Member
Russia is as strong conventionally as people think, and they have shown to be capable of projecting power even if it is in a limited capacity. Apart from a clearly superior United States no one else comes close to the operational capability of the Russians. I thought their military adventure in Syria should have proven that point, they were certainly able to turn the tide of that war strictly with conventional power and we cared a lot.
Regardless of how those conclusions were made, the fact remains that should Russia detonate all 7,000+ nuclear weapons it has across hundreds of the world's largest cities, billions would die in the initial explosions and most of those who remain would die from Radiation. Would everyone die, maybe not, but the significant portion of humanity would be gone.
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