A Case For Unilateral US Nuclear Warhead Reductions 211
Lasrick writes "Interesting read of the geopolitics between the U.S. and Russia when it comes to reducing nuclear warheads. Pavel Podvig is a physicist trained at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology who works on the Russian nuclear arsenal, US-Russian relations, and nonproliferation. His take here is essential to understanding what is happening between Washington and Moscow on nuclear weapons cuts."
Reader auric_dude also sent in a link to a few other views on the issue.
It's a about money. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things. They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.
Some say the nuclear arms race was as much as way to drain money out of the USSR until it collapsed as much as anything else. We're done with that, and I'm sure both sides are sick of throwing money in to a pit. You really only need to blow the world up once, if you're going to do it at all.
I also hear that most nuclear material for peacetime power reactors comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads.
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Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.
Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.
They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.
Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.
Some say the nuclear arms race was as much as way to drain money out of the USSR until it collapsed as much as anything else.
Yeah, those people obviously don't work for the Brookings Institute, or the Sante Fe Institute, and so they have no understanding of the games theory basis that led to the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MA
Re:It's a about money. (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.
There's a little thing called "shelf life". Nukes have one, too.
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Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.
There's a little thing called "shelf life". Nukes have one, too.
...after which they decommission themselves by becoming non-operational through the decay of the fissile materials. Which is what these people want. I'm not seeing the problem here that would require actively decommissioning the things.
Re:It's a about money. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey"
Not really. A one-time cost to decommission, defrayed by salvage, versus a large recurring expense.
"Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East."
Cant say that I disagree on that. But nukes are extremely expensive toys and the maintanence cost is huge, and NOT mostly on personel. Just maintaining the nuclear arsenal accounts for around $18million a year currently and it's rising every year.
These are very delicate, precision machines, and each and every one of them is a minimum of 20 years old, many much older than that. As time goes on they require more maintanence, and it becomes more expensive.
I'm no naive hippy and I am ok with paying for deterrence. But it's clear we could cut our stock in half tomorrow with no reduction in deterrence. An arsenal that is capable of destroying the entire planet is in no way inferior to one that would be capable of destroying the planet a dozen times. It just costs less.
What the US administration has been trying to do, however, is get the Russians to make some concessions in return for us reducing our stock. This just wasnt a great approach to take. It probably actually spooked the Russians, who wonder why we are so concerned about their arsenal, hmmm? And they have other reasons to resist. They have indicated they are not interested in bilateral agreements that were reasonable back in the cold war days. It's a multipolar world, there are many nuclear nations, not just two and their respective pack members. The Russians want negotiations that include all the other nuclear powers as well. And the US administration would probably find that very reasonable if it werent for Israel...
At any rate we should cut stock for a number of reasons. It would soothe the Russian fears and might well lead to them reducing their own stock in response, but that's not the reason to do it, that's just some possible gravy.
"If we were sick of throwing money into a pit, we wouldn't have approved TARP, TARP2, and we would have had some campaign promises kept, like closing Gitmo, and getting us out of our two major wars, instead of getting us into two new ones as well. That'd save a bunch of money right there."
True that.
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I'm no naive hippy and I am ok with paying for deterrence. But it's clear we could cut our stock in half tomorrow with no reduction in deterrence. An arsenal that is capable of destroying the entire planet is in no way inferior to one that would be capable of destroying the planet a dozen times. It just costs less.
No such arsenal has ever existed that could do that once, much less a dozen times. Instead, I think that Russia's cited behavior (basically stonewalling to get Obama to unilaterally cut nukes) indicates that they think that they'll get a lot of mileage from further reductions in the US arsenal and similarly would lose a lot of capability from cutting their own arsenals.
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"No such arsenal has ever existed that could do that once, much less a dozen times."
There are a little over 5,000 warheads in the US stockpile (as of 2010 wikipedia quoting reuters.) That's enough to hit every small city in the world, and most of them twice. Each is many, many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The initial blast fatalities alone from a full scale launch would decimate any nation on earth, it would make things like hurricanes look like hangnails.
The rur
Re:It's a about money. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the early 1980's the BBC made a drama called "Threads" which had occasional narration interrupting the story to explain the science behind the effects of nuclear war. Anyone who thinks nuclear war is winnable, or that we've never had enough nukes to destroy the world should watch it... the entire thing.
There are no lone-wolf heroes or other typical US movie industry bullcrap, just cold, stark, depressing realism. You can watch it for free on YouTube....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MCbTvoNrAg [youtube.com]
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And only a small fraction of those weapons would need to be detonated to invoke a nuclear winter
It's like you're providing the stereotype that I was complaining about all along. Again, what is the point of greatly exaggeratin
Re:It's a about money. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are according to a quick ask google a total of 2851 Cities with Population of 150,000 + on earth. That appears to be accurate to me if you have a better source feel free to present it. Assuming that is correct, 2149 could be allocated two, which is easily "most" of 2851. 161 of those would be in the US btw.
Of course the definition of city is somewhat arbitrary and this is a ballpark figure but I think it makes the point. There are huge urban areas that are counted as several cities but can still be taken out with one of the larger warheads. There are more spread out areas where you might have to use 2 or 3 smaller warheads. But in essence it's clearly more than enough weaponry to firebomb every densely populated area on earth simultaneously. Actually using a significant fraction of it would cause a disaster that affects not just the targets but comes back and kills us too.
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The blast radius of a modern nuke is more than large enough to take out multiple small cities or a large metropolitan area of a major cities and the outlaying (small cities) area.
The blast radius is limited by the curvature of the earth. For most median altitude bursts, this works out to a 13 mile radius for moderate to heavy damage.
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The blast radius of the 100 MT "Tsar Bomba" could maybe have taken out several small cities, but there was never a practical way to deliver that beast. It was just a pissing match. Most of our modern warheads are well under 1 MT. More like 300 to 500 kT. The days of the 20 MT "city buster" are over. At 1 MT, the 5 psi ("everybody dies")* radius is under 3 miles for a surface burst, and the 2 psi radius (most people survive the initial blast) is under 5 miles. What you would really be concerned about is fall
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18 million sounds like peanuts. whats that, 20 patriot missiles?
Re:It's a about money. (Score:4, Interesting)
18 million sounds like peanuts. whats that, 20 patriot missiles?
6-9 Patriot missiles. Unit cost on a Patriot is 2-3 million, depending on ordinance load. Or 2 M1 Abrams main battle tanks. Or for the cost of a single F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, you could fund the entire program for over a decade.
According to the GAO, the Pentagon spends more than that per year issuing visitor badges.
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"Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey"
Not really. A one-time cost to decommission, defrayed by salvage, versus a large recurring expense.
There's no salvage value; there's just nuclear material which can't be stored safely very close to similar nuclear material. It's not like the plutonium can be used in anything other than weapons or RTGs, and we only build RTGs for the space program. Given the critical mass for the Pu isotope used in most weapons, taking apart one weapon will fuel most of the RTG-using projects Nasa has planned out for the next 30 years. It's only the Russians who thought using RTGs for civil usage was a good idea (e.g.
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Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.
Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.
And dealing with the decay that you let build up because you were too lazy to maintain them is more costly still. No, 'let them sit' is a stupid fucking idea. Far more cost effective and safe to reprocess them into reactor fuel.
They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.
Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.
You should probably try becoming part of this century before telling us about nuclear stockpiles. We don't have nukes sitting in holes in the desert anymore, which is why we don't need as many. We just launch them from subs that no one knows where they are so they can't be taken
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instead of getting us into two new ones as well.
Three.
A certain three-letter club in Germany appears not amused at all, and their politicians who actually seem to represent them talk of US actions resembling those of a cold war.
I would love to see IDS log stats from the US.
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Re:It's a about money. (Score:5, Interesting)
"committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid"
That is some calloused, thinly veiled racism you felt you had to add there at the end, huh?
It's a cultural, not racial, reference which was actively relevant until 1970, and is still popularized in NHK broadcast dramas of the Shugunate Era in present-day Japan. It carries the appropriate connotation of "killing oneself over a point of honor". If you read the news reports, the U.S. Navy offered assistance in the early hours of the Fukushima incident, and were rebuffed "as a point of honor".
Would you have preferred I referred to the Hindu practice of Sati? That's also a cultural reference, and while it would be a stretch, one could argue that keeping their nuclear program shut down would be the equivalent of a woman throwing herself/being thrown on the funeral pyre of her husband out of grief.
I think a Bushido-style loss of face is a more apt metaphor for a cause of action in this case, however.
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It's a jobs program dumbass! We keep hundreds of scientists employed studying the decay and effectiveness of the warheads. A few of those scientists keep our Courts and Laywers in business along with all of the investigators and juries when they steal secrets for China. [cnn.com] Not to mention all of the investigative reporters that would be out of work if they didn't have something to write about. We put thousands of people to work in the military making sure that they're safe and handled properly. Not to menti
"Deployed" (Score:5, Informative)
TFA consistently refers to a reduction in "deployed" warheads. For those who don't understand the nuance, there are still many more warheads not currently deployed. We call those "stockpiled" arms. A reduction in deployed warheads is pointless unless we talk about a global (no pun intended) reduction in arms. Why, you ask? Because we have stealth bombers and fighters with global reach. Those stockpiled weapons could be locked and loaded on our jets in short order if we wanted. Suddenly, they are now "deployed" warheads.
The truth remains, until nuclear weapons stockpiles are reduced below MAD levels, reduction in arms is just for show. We'll always have enough in storage to kill each other a few times over, but that's not really what matters. What matters is that we are constantly trying to establish a dialog with people who don't like us rather than take a beligerant stance. That, more than anything else will result in reduced nuclear tensions.
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A reduction in deployed warheads is pointless
It is not pointless. A deployed warhead is more likely to be stolen by Al Queda, more likely to be involved in an accident, more likely to be launched by a rouge commander, and more likely to be used in a first strike. The first strike capability is particularly destabilizing, because our "enemies" then need to keep their own nukes on hair trigger alert, or build enough of them to ride out a first strike and still retaliate.
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It is not pointless. A deployed warhead is more likely to be stolen by Al Queda,
al-Qaeda is more likely to steal a warhead attached to a plane sitting on a flight line or in a ready hangar or deployed in a nuclear sub 150 ft underwater than sitting in some warehouse? Really?
Re:"Deployed" (Score:5, Funny)
I have a hunch that the stockpiled nukes are not sitting in crates next to the $100 hammers.
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"constantly trying to establish a dialog with people who don't like us"
Who is it that you think does not like you? I work with the Russians every day and know for sure that they have no animosity towards Americans although they do get seriously annoyed with the fact that most Americans seem to believe that they won WWII which is contrary to history. Most of it is more like sympathy as they see that America now has a level of propaganda that they had 30 years ago and that American people actually believe w
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It's doubtful that Russia and the United States will discuss a reduction in deployed arms with such naivete that it can be bypassed by keeping the inactive warheads in fire-ready condition. A certain level of "stockpiled" warheads is necessary to support the level of "deployed" warheads due to testing, maintenance, and verification. A reduction in deployed warheads will eventually lead to a reduction in stockpiled arms once we built up the political will to dismantle the suckers.
You're also incorrect when y
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If the stockpiled weapons are that useless, why don't we just get rid of them?
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From my understanding they are a "hedge" (that stockpile is actually called that) against unknown situation that can arise in the future. It would take weeks to deploy and use these weapons, but that is a far cry from having to build them from scratch, but it is also a far cry from simply pushing a button and let fly.
I suspect that as nuclear postures step down some future treaties will require that the warheads and delivery systems be unmated, but possibly stored together. After that treaties will requir
Mr President, we cannot afford a Mine Shaft Gap! (Score:2, Funny)
After all, just because the USSR no longer exists doesn't mean they still don't present a deadly threat to the existence of the Free World. Our troops in the Free Republic of Germany need to be properly armed and prepared to bravely defend us from the Red Armies of International Communism. Without constant vigilance, the Khmer Rouge could even gain the upper hand and threaten the Republic of Vietnam and the rest of SEATO.
Needless to say, anyone who opposes these plans is an agent working under the direction
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Russia was an empire long before the tzar and his family got shot. The national character is not going to change much just because of a minor bit of regime change. If Putin weren't effectively president for life, optimism about the new Russia might be a little more warranted.
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jeez, time to lay off the Red Bull.
Comment from a well known pacifist (Score:4, Insightful)
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce."
-- Winston S. Churchill
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If we're quoting deceased leaders of the free world that existed in a very different geo-political climate, why not bring Teddy Roosevelt into the discussion?
Because Teddy didn't know about nukes, Winnie did. As for "a very different geo-political climate", it's not clear how that makes nukes any less destructive.
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Teddy would have loved aircraft carrier task forces. Move them around the globe, like chess pieces, threatening without saying a word.
Uncharacteristically Stupid (Score:2)
Every one ever built detonated all at once is not remotely capable of destroying the planet or wiping out all human life. Just NO OK? You're 10 orders of magnitude short of th
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And yet, we wet ourselves over the idea that Iran might build one. Oh noes! A Muslim bomb! In case anyone has been paying attention, they already have one. Over in Pakistan.
What possession of "the bomb" does is give its owners a place at the big people's negotiating table. And that's a club we want to control the membership of very carefully. Even if it means killing tens of thousands of people with conventional weapons. Perhaps more than would be killed with a nuke.
Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Ayatollah Khomeini: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let Iran burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world"
There is a difference between rational countries having the bomb and countries run by Islamic fanatics having the bomb.
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I love the notion that every single country is exactly the same, and the racist notion that you seem to have that all Muslims are the same. Pakistan and Iran are not the same country despite both being Muslim. Iran was run by a psycho who kept on talking about the elimination of countries. Now, that's not to say that Pakistan didn't proliferate nuclear technology or talk shit, but Iran was much more provocative than Pakistan, and you shouldn't just bundle them together because they're Muslim.
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Being the loser in war has often resulted in old men dying. More often then not, of starvation.
Nukes changed the cost/benefit ratio of war. Strategic bombing changed it, nukes made it clear there was no way to (make a profit/advance your cause) via total war. Even the pointy hairs in charge can see that.
So I put down my sword... (Score:4, Funny)
and you put down your rock and we try to kill each other like civilized people?
It's not my fault being the biggest and strongest. I don't even exercise.
Yeah that's really great and all... (Score:2)
Until you realize that Russia is violating the treaty on medium range nuclear missiles. [washingtontimes.com] Treaties are only good as long as both sides agree to follow the rules.
Article is not very good (Score:5, Interesting)
No plan to get rid of nuclear weapons can be complete without taking China (and others) into consideration. We are at the point that it's not just a standoff between Russia and the US, who both have been reducing their nuclear weapons. Other countries have been actively increasing them, and unless they join in the movement, Russia and the US leave themselves completely vulnerable if they don't maintain at least some nuclear weapons.
I'm in favor of getting rid of nukes, but you can't assume it's just a game between Russia and the US, as this article does.
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Wrong. Estimates for China range from "several hundred" to about 1,500. But regardless of what the exact (and unknowable) figure is, the primary concern with reductions is there comes a point where a smaller adversary - ie, China, India, Pakistan, Israel can leapfrog over you. This point is typically estimated at around 600-1000 warheads. Nuclear weapons area lot cheaper to build and maintain than carrier battle groups and large armies. When one of those smaller countries sees that it can, at low co
Is this irony or naivete? (Score:2)
I find it amusing that - with an apparent straight face - Mr Krepon makes comments like "In his first term, Mr. Clinton midwifed the denuclearization of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, thereby strengthening the Nonproliferation Treaty and jump-starting the implementation of two Strategic Arms Reduction treaties negotiated by his predecessor, George H.W. Bush."
No trace of acknowledgment there of why this was possible?
For those born in the 21st century or for the dis-ingenues of the arms-control religion: th
A Russian wanting the US to disarm? (Score:2)
You don't say.
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How many have been tested in the last handful of decades? A lot more than sixteen. Give everyone nukes I say, make it so that interference in the affairs of other nations will always come at too high a price. Then people can sort things out for themselves, and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences as they deserve. The age of gunboat diplomacy is at an end.
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Nuclear non-proliferation is implicit endorsement of war and all the horrors that accompany it. Nuclear weapons have saved more lives than any other technology invented by man since they have been created. World Wars would still be happening every 1-2 decades were it not for them.
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Sounds like the 'guns make people safe' argument which totally misses the fact that US hospitals are full of people with gun shot wounds.
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Except that hospital are not full of nuclear weapons victims. There must be something different, then.
Re:wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I think like 16 or something would destroy the entire world's weather for decades so yeah, completely pointless.
No way. Just how big do you think these warheads are? In total megatons, America's nuclear arsenal peaked in the 1960s, and has been declining for half a century as accuracy as dramatically improved. You don't need a lot of yield if you can put it through a particular window in the Kremlin. Most ICBMs and SLBMs have warheads of only a few hundred kilotons. Cruise missile warheads are around 10-20KT. That is a Nagasaki, not a Castle Bravo.
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How do you figure? Energy-wise a single hurricane can easily dissipate hundreds of thousands of times as much energy as our largest nukes. If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer, but a single large volcano eruption is going to be many times worse than a handful of nukes, and even then the consequences are typically very localized (from a global perspective). The real damage from nukes (aside from the radioactive craters) is fallout -
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If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer
Different simulations give different results. Want to try an experiment?
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If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Recent_modeling [wikipedia.org]
A nuclear war between the United States and Russia today could produce nuclear winter, with temperatures plunging below freezing in the summer in major agricultural regions, threatening the food supply for most of the planet. The climatic effects of the smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than previously thought. New climate model simulations, which are said to have the capability of including the entire atmosphere and oceans, show that the smoke would be lofted by solar heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years.
Sounds like we better get cracking on those mine shafts.
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Yes, because we've established Wikipedia as authoritative and never biased.
These models show the opposite of what happens in nature. A single volcano can release more energy than all of the nukes on the planet combined ... yet there isn't any indication of 'years' of uninhabitable Earth due to said volcanos. Said volcanos actually blast dust into the air ... rather than a detonation of a nuke in air ... which directs most of its force down
You have no idea how much energy it takes to damage this planet. T
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It's not about the energy released. The nuclear winter is not a direct cause of the nuclear explosion or energy released by a nuclear weapon, it is caused by the cities that burn in huge firestorms for some time afterwards. Volcanic ash isn't like the soot you get from our highly flammable cities (all laced with hydrocarbons, plastics, you name it). The nature of the soot from burning cities has a far greater effect than the ash from a single volcano, blocking far more light and absorbing far more infrared
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If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer
Great! Now we have a way to fight Global Warming!!! Let's get busy!!!
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Energy-wise a single hurricane can easily dissipate hundreds of thousands of times as much energy as our largest nukes.
I have yet to see a hurricane sterilize and vitrify an area a few kilometers across.
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I have yet to see a hurricane sterilize and vitrify an area a few kilometers across.
Thank you. The reason why bringing up how much energy a storm can dissipate is not just meaningless but also a stupid asshole move is that the energy is dissipated in all directions, over the entire course and duration of the weather event. The energy dissipated by an atomic bomb is produced in a very short period of time and concentrated in a relatively small area. That's why it's a bomb, and not a field.
I can't believe it would only take 16 of them... (Score:2)
I think like 16 or something would destroy the entire world's weather for decades so yeah, completely pointless.
I can't believe it would only take 16 of them... ...to trigger a nuclear winter and totally reverse global warming.
What are we waiting for?
(Also, other posters have pointed out: we've set off more than 16 of them already).
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Well it'd take more than 16 - a recent simulation showed an exchange of 50 warheads in a regional conflict would likely cause a "nuclear autumn", reducing the growing season in the United States by up to 60 days. Certainly survivable, but with a lot of suckiness for the rest of the world who had nothing to do with the conflict.
The crucial difference between the atmospheric nuclear tests and an actual nuclear war that you and the other posters have missed is that no one tested nuclear weapons on actual live
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No. Not maybe, but no.
Either Mt. Pinatubo or Mt. St. Helens were far larger than that in terms of energy and vastly more effective at coupling the debris into the upper atmosphere. Add to that the large amounts of sulfur compounds they emitted.
So, where was the massive weather disruption or global cooling (or warming for that matter)?
It didn't happen. It hasn't happened then or even with Krakatoa or other massive eruptions of less than Yellowstone or Mt. Toba scale.
16 nukes are an eyeblink compared to the s
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Now we debunk even nuclear war. 'It's all a conspiracy of misinformation to scare you -- like climate change.'
Obvious troll is obvious: (Score:3)
What planet are you on?
Someone posted a wildly inaccurate claim just as wrong as saying hurricane Katrina would destroy the whole earth.
And where in hell did you get the idea that anyone is saying that nuclear war is anything but devastating?
Do you mean that saying that Katrina wouldn't destroy the whole earth means advocating for repeated hits by it since it's just "misinformation"?
In the words of Monty Python: "That's a very silly line. Sit down."
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In 1816 summer never showed up, at least partially caused by the eruption of Mount Tamboura, perhaps amplified by a solar minimum and it being the tail end of the little ice age. Frost and snow at the beginning of June in New England and New York, ice on the rivers in Pennsylvania and swings in temperatures from the 90's to below freezing. Farming was devastated with prices rising extremely, oats went from 12 cents to 92 cents a bushel ($1.51 to $12.45 in to-days money). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Wi [wikipedia.org]
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I'm quite familiar with Tamboura and the year without a summer. It was not only the volcano, but probably a solar minimum as well and perhaps some other things we don't know about as record keeping and observation were more limited in that time.
The reduction of energy arriving from the sun due to the minimum is an effect that DOES deal with large energy flows on the scale of nature.
The OP was saying that 16 nukes set off would have global devastating consequences for decades. Pretty dubious. Completely dubi
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Mt. St. Helens did not affect weather because the blast was horizontal, if you remember the news there was a hole in the side of the volcano and later the whole north side colapsed. Also there was less sulphur dioxide expelled (1.5 million tons [usgs.gov]) versus 25 million tons of Pinatubo. (see below)
Now, Pinatubo did have a global effect. PBS writes [pbs.org]: In 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines produced ten times as much ash as Mount St. Helens and released more than 25 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratos
Forgive me, but: (Score:2)
You're missing some pretty obvious things.
What gives you the idea that pointing out something is orders of magnitude off from reality hardly means saying it's what you think should happen?
Superpower nuclear war isn't horrible enough for your argument to work without massive inflation of the effects?
I'd have thought that the hundreds of millions killed initially, the devastation through starvation through food distribution collapse, the ongoing radiological deaths and disease, etc, would be plenty. Those are
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Mount Tambora doesn't care about your refutations. Even if it is extremely hot, it is a cold blooded natural phenomenon that doesn't care about what you say, and just did what you said is impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer [wikipedia.org]
There are, at all time, 20 or more volcanos erupting, nobody care. Yet that single volcano in iceland that was merely -smocking- not even erupting, was a major disruption to the entire northern hemisphere, 3 years ago.
I do not think 16 bombs would be enough. But
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I'm well aware that volcanoes don't have consciousness. *sheesh*
And you had the world in a major cooling period (the little ice age) that was probably due to a solar minimum and other things that we may not know about as global record keeping and observation wasn't very good.
Amount of heat from the sun IS an energy flow that is big on nature's scale. As you point out, it took an already major downturn before hand.
And, look at what the OP was saying. Decades of devastation. Not a couple years of agricultural
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Better make that 32 to be safe. Wait, because of decay and possible failure, let's make it an even 1000.
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Hey, I resent that. My state is a shining example of decency, respect for all regardless of skin color and/or sexual orientation, and clean politics that both expresses the will of the people and leads us towards improving who we are as human beings.
Nuke Nevada instead. They're at least used to it. /frank
Phoenix, Az (and only 44 C at the moment; a relatviely cool day)
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That's disgusting. It should be Texas.
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Then we best start producing a whole lot more quick, because we don't have nearly enough as is unless we can gather everyone together into great big living bulls-eyes. We could probably wipe out all the major military, industrial, and urban areas on the planet (assuming all missiles flew true, and all defense systems were complete failures), and maybe have enough left over to do some damage to farmland as well, but everything else would be basically fine. The survivors of the initial holocaust might suffer
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General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbxeolK27b4 [youtube.com]
Re:No problem here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, lets see... this talked about 1500 "strategic" nukes. Say Russia dropped 1,000 on the USA, or on average 20 per state. I'm guessing that's most major cities, most industrial complexes, most centralized food processing, rail and air transportation, highway hubs, etc. Yeah, a lot of people would survive the initial attack, but unless you can live off of what's right around you, you won't survive the aftermath, even if you don't have radiation sickness.
The other way to think of it is that recovering from catastrophes like hurricanes, earthquakes, etc is really tough, even when the rest of the country pitches in to help. What happens when there is no "rest of the country"?
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What's sad is, there are Dominionists in this country who think it's their job to bring about precisely that, because of "Biblical prophecy." Their own twisted fantasies of Biblical prophecy, that is. They eagerly label Obama the Antichrist, in hopes of moving the timetable right along, among other bizarre notions. The continuous meddling in Israel is easily attributable to their policies too.
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It's real enough, and yes, the idea is definitely built by fearmongers. You got that part precisely correct. As with many religious movements, the salesmen seldom believe any of what they're selling. That doesn't mean the buyers don't believe it. They do. They're fearful little worms who start out with peculiar notions to begin with. Dominionism is carefully designed to appeal to them, much like Scientology is carefully designed to appeal to a different set of people. All religions are built on false
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I think your username is well chosen. Once again I'm struck by the sort of parallelism that arises between a username that person's post.
There is no meaningful support for that in the US, and it isn't compatible with the Constitution. It isn't going to happen. You're worrying about the wrong thing.
Re:No problem here. (Score:4, Interesting)
And to make things worse the planet would be about one order of magnitude above its carrying capacity if it were not for a steady supply of artificial fertilizer, made from natural gas or other fossil fuels. Even if you can live off the land around you now you may be unable to do so after a major nuclear exchange when fertilizer becomes unavailable and agricultural yields drop.
What about hunting then? Well, we are about two orders of magnitude above the Earth's carrying capacity for us as hunter-gatherers. The what little edible wildlife is left today would run out quickly if there were no conservation laws.
That said, even if the population would drop by 99% there would still be 70 million humans on the planet and humans would still be the most numerous mammal species except for the ones that live off of our economy such as rats and other rodents. Even if the population would drop by 99.99% we would still not qualify as a threatened species, not even nearly. In short: there are a lot of humans and killing us all won't be easy by any means.
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And to make things worse the planet would be about one order of magnitude above its carrying capacity if it were not for a steady supply of artificial fertilizer, made from natural gas or other fossil fuels
This is a lie. You can produce GREATER yields using proper farming practices. Not "USDA Organic", but cyclical systems involving planting guilds. Today that requires human labor for harvesting, but in the not-too-far future robots will do a better job of identifying ripe food (using lasers, IR cameras etc) and picking it.
Running over the soil with machines to destroy crumb structure and create hardpan, then spraying synthetics which destroy soil diversity by killing beneficial bacteria and nematodes is simp
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it's not a bullshit idea... it's what enabled population growth in the west.
green revolution was fucked up but that's long, long after industrial fertilizers deleted famine from the west.
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it's not a bullshit idea... it's what enabled population growth in the west.
No, it really isn't. It doesn't increase yields over planting guilds. You're engaging in the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy.
green revolution was fucked up but that's long, long after industrial fertilizers deleted famine from the west.
They did no such thing.
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According to studies done at Chernobyl. After a couple of years, new births rapidly stop being part of the cancer riddle group. It doesn't even take decades, just a few years.
Look at factual information from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not nearly as horrible as its made out to be. Yes, people got cancer ... but it wasn't enough that they moved away. The cities were rebuilt where they once stood. Hell, Hiroshima doubled in size within just a few years! As long as you didn't stand on the glowing spot in the
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This. A regular 2000lb bomb leaves about a 30' crater. A nuke is going to leave one 1.5-2 orders of magnitude bigger. So, let's say 3000'. If you are more than a couple miles away in a well built building, and not standing next to the window, you are probably going to live through the initial blast. Fires will probably kill more, but that is dependent on the city you live in. If you live in Nagasaki or Hiroshima with a lot of wood and rice paper buildings, you are probably out of luck.
Even cancer deaths and birth defects are over-feared. Check the stats on Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Sure, you can find some spectacular cases, but statistically the increases were a lot less than was feared and not even close to enough to lead to extinction.
Ok, let's go for it Dr. Teller.
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LeMay should be along soon.
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Yeah, I have trouble following the argument of "Russia doesn't want to reduce their arsenal, so the USA should reduce its arsenal, at which point Russia will suddenly feel an overpowering need for arms reductions". Seems like it would be more likely to go the other way... Putin would be able to say "see comrades (whups, slip of the tongue), the West really is weak, we can just sit tight and modernize".
Not that I'm opposed to reducing nukes, I think it would be great if we could get it down to a few subs ca
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He could say that ... he wouldn't be the first russian leader to think that way. Its worked out great so far, hasn't it.
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The same things have been happening throughout history. People tend to forget quickly. Things you mention for other countries have happened in the US multiple times in the last century. The actors change, but the stories remain the same. Or ....
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana
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You have no idea what it was like in the Soviet Union. It's easy to look up but you are too lazy.
Re:My Argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Russians will never give up nukes. It's their only defense against China.
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Russians will never give up nukes.
They already gave up a significant fraction. See START.
It's their only defense against China.
Is your imagination so limited?
You imply China is attacking. How so?
You don't need more than 10 nukes to annihilate China, so why keep >100?
In short, lots of false assumptions.
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Your ignorance surrounding the analog between pinpoint-precision MIRV/MARV'd solid-fueled stellar-guided advanced ICBM's and orbital rockets is pretty impressive
First off, screw you for the needless insult. Second off did you even read the links you posted? They directly contradict your assertions:
"The Second Artillery continues to modernize its nuclear forces by enhancing its silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and adding more survivable mobile delivery systems. In recent years, the road-mobile, solid-propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinentalrange ballistic missiles have entered service. The CSS-10 Mod 2, wit