A Visit to the Nuclear Missile Next Door (sfgate.com) 126
78-year-old rancher Ed Butcher has, for 60 years, lived with a nuclear missile as his closest neighbor — an active U.S. government nuclear missile, buried just beneath his cow pasture.
"Do you think they'll ever shoot it up into the sky?" asks his wife Pam, during a visit from the Washington Post.
"I used to say, 'No way,' " Ed said. "Now it's more like, 'Please God, don't let us be here to see it.' " The missile was called a Minuteman III, and the launch site had been on their property since the Cold War, when the Air Force paid $150 for one acre of their land as it installed an arsenal of nuclear weapons across the rural West. About 400 of those missiles remain active and ready to launch at a few seconds notice in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. They are located on bison preserves and Indian reservations. They sit across from a national forest, behind a rodeo grandstand, down the road from a one-room schoolhouse, and on dozens of private farms like the one belonging to the Butchers, who have lived for 60 years with a nuclear missile as their closest neighbor.
It's buried behind a chain-link fence and beneath a 110-ton door of concrete and steel. It's 60 feet long. It weighs 79,432 pounds. It has an explosive power at least 20 times greater than the atomic bomb that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima. An Air Force team is stationed in an underground bunker a few miles away, ready to fire the missile at any moment if the order comes. It would tear out of the silo in about 3.4 seconds and climb above the ranch at 10,000 feet per second. It was designed to rise 70 miles above Earth, fly across the world in 25 minutes and detonate within a few hundred yards of its target. The ensuing fireball would vaporize every person and every structure within a half-mile. The blast would flatten buildings across a five-mile radius. Secondary fires and fatal doses of radiation would spread over dozens more miles, resulting in what U.S. military experts have referred to as "total nuclear annihilation."
"I bet it would fly right over our living room," Ed said. "I wonder if we'd even see it."
"We'd hear it. We'd feel it," Pam said. "The whole house would be shaking."
"And if we're shooting off missiles, you can bet some are headed back toward us," Ed said... "I guess we'd head for the storage room," Ed said.
"Make a few goodbye calls," Pam said. "Hold hands. Pray."
Ed got up to clear his plate. "Good thing it's all hypothetical. It's really only there for deterrence. It'll never actually explode."
"You're right," Pam said. "It won't happen. Almost definitely not."
"Do you think they'll ever shoot it up into the sky?" asks his wife Pam, during a visit from the Washington Post.
"I used to say, 'No way,' " Ed said. "Now it's more like, 'Please God, don't let us be here to see it.' " The missile was called a Minuteman III, and the launch site had been on their property since the Cold War, when the Air Force paid $150 for one acre of their land as it installed an arsenal of nuclear weapons across the rural West. About 400 of those missiles remain active and ready to launch at a few seconds notice in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. They are located on bison preserves and Indian reservations. They sit across from a national forest, behind a rodeo grandstand, down the road from a one-room schoolhouse, and on dozens of private farms like the one belonging to the Butchers, who have lived for 60 years with a nuclear missile as their closest neighbor.
It's buried behind a chain-link fence and beneath a 110-ton door of concrete and steel. It's 60 feet long. It weighs 79,432 pounds. It has an explosive power at least 20 times greater than the atomic bomb that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima. An Air Force team is stationed in an underground bunker a few miles away, ready to fire the missile at any moment if the order comes. It would tear out of the silo in about 3.4 seconds and climb above the ranch at 10,000 feet per second. It was designed to rise 70 miles above Earth, fly across the world in 25 minutes and detonate within a few hundred yards of its target. The ensuing fireball would vaporize every person and every structure within a half-mile. The blast would flatten buildings across a five-mile radius. Secondary fires and fatal doses of radiation would spread over dozens more miles, resulting in what U.S. military experts have referred to as "total nuclear annihilation."
"I bet it would fly right over our living room," Ed said. "I wonder if we'd even see it."
"We'd hear it. We'd feel it," Pam said. "The whole house would be shaking."
"And if we're shooting off missiles, you can bet some are headed back toward us," Ed said... "I guess we'd head for the storage room," Ed said.
"Make a few goodbye calls," Pam said. "Hold hands. Pray."
Ed got up to clear his plate. "Good thing it's all hypothetical. It's really only there for deterrence. It'll never actually explode."
"You're right," Pam said. "It won't happen. Almost definitely not."
Deterrence is not a long-term strategy. (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't have to trust the enemy for this to make sense. It makes sense no matter what they do. So it's terrifying that it doesn't even seem to be on the agenda anywhere in the world.
Re:Deterrence is not a long-term strategy. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only long-term solution is total disarmament coupled with mutual allowances for anti-missile capability to build trust. Once you allow that, an adversary couldn't build enough weapons to overcome it in secret
I kind of definitely want to support this, I just have doubts. Given that the designs already exist and they have implemented them, how would you ensure that a country like Russia wouldn't build a nuclear force in secret?
Although Ukraine probably couldn't have practically maintained a nuclear arsenal, the fact Russia invaded them is pretty clear evidence of the risk of being the first country to give up weapons. Russia promised them security guarantees and to maintain their original borders. Look where that's got them.
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Technically the second, although South Africa only had experimental weapons.
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It's pretty difficult to build a nuclear arsenal in secret. Every metre of land and sea being covered by satellite imagery (visible and infra-red spectrums), as well as regular monitoring for tell-tale emissions of radioactive materials.
The real problem is how do you stop them if they try? If they have an effective missile shield then it's going to be difficult to take out any facilities they are using. Short of a full on conventional war, there aren't many options.
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It's pretty difficult to build a nuclear arsenal in secret. Every metre of land and sea being covered by satellite imagery (visible and infra-red spectrums), as well as regular monitoring for tell-tale emissions of radioactive materials.
I'm assuming state level resources, so hollowing out a mountain, probably one that's already been mined for minerals, and building your bombs inside that is not unreasonable. If you had an advanced industrial society capable of building it's own centrifuges, explosives and so on, I don't see how you would detect the building of a uranium bomb, especially if there are doubts about even detecting HE Ur at ports [nrdc.org].
Difficult to build an arsenal in secret? Yes, very. Achievable? probably.
The real problem is how do you stop them if they try? If they have an effective missile shield then it's going to be difficult to take out any facilities they are using. Short of a full on conventional war, there aren't many options.
This is the Iran (and form
Re:Deterrence is not a long-term strategy. (Score:4, Informative)
Russia promised them security guarantees
In exchange for NATO staying in place.
Look where that's got them.
That's a lie. Russia promised security guarantees in return for Ukraine handing over all nuclear weapons on their territory. There was no mention of NATO staying in place in the treaty. Furthermore, the story about "NATO promised not to expand" at all is a lie. Gorbachev was never promised such a thing because he never brought it up because he wasn't planning to invade anyone so it didn't matter to him.
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The fascinating thing is that you can actually read the Budapest Memorandum. There are copies of the full text. Anyone can easily verify that it's not about NATO, so why lie about it?
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What is really annoying about the assertion that "Russia is belligerent because of NATO expansion" is that it completely begs the question that if NATO didn't expand, that Putin would have happily stayed put, not interfered in the political affairs of past Russian possessions, and we'd all be able to happily live in peace.
Bottom line is, all those new members of NATO are there, purely because they don't want to fall into Russia's "sphere of influence".
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Furthermore, the story about "NATO promised not to expand" at all is a lie.
A lie is a strong word. A more generous interpretation would be that it's a misunderstanding of events, and of who said what, and what that actually meant in geopolitical terms - as codified in legal treaty.
It is the case that NATO, as an organisation, never committed to not expanding, though "when Russian Supreme Soviet deputies came to Brussels to see NATO and meet with NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner in July 1991, Woerner told the Russians that “We should not allow [] the isolation of the US
Re:Deterrence is not a long-term strategy. (Score:5, Informative)
In exchange for NATO staying in place.
Some relevant sections:
2. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
4. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
Which sadly comes with a nice, big loophole since Russia is on the security council. Technically, Russia was still required by the agreement to seek a security council resolution to protect Ukraine when they attacked it, but they could have simply vetoed it as well.
5. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm, in the case of Ukraine, their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a State in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon State.
6. Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America will consult in the event a situation arises that raises a question concerning these commitments.
So, obviously Russia is violating all of this with wild abandon. If they care at all, they're justifying it with their ridiculous assertion that this is a defensive action. If you actually look at the public agreement though, there's nothing in there about NATO not expanding.
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By imposing economic sanctions on Belarus in 2006, which it SPECIFICALLY agreed NOT TO DO in 3rd point of Budapest Memorandum, US voided the entire thing.
That's not how multi-party agreements work. Why would the US imposing sanctions on Belarus affect the obligations of the US and other signatories, including Russia to Ukraine? For that matter, the translations of the memorandum linked from that Wikipedia article don't seem to actually contain any text referencing Belarus. Is that some sort of addendum? A different Budapest Memorandum altogether? I really would like to clear that up.
Regardless, no party to the treaty would have their obligations to Ukraine
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Which still has no bearing on the commitments made in the agreement by any of the parties to the security of Ukraine. More to the point, it also has no bearing on the expansion of NATO.
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Definitely interesting. I would have believed that you'd be able to produce a pure Uranium bomb (like Fat Man) from mined and then centrifuge separated isotopes without triggering this. I'm just wondering if the mere existence of a lump of Uranium big enough for a bomb would cause visible neutrino emissions without a reactor, but I don't believe it. My guess is that you can produce a nuclear bomb without needing a reactor even though it won't be as easy or as effective as if you had one.
Reality vs Ideal (Score:5, Interesting)
That may be an idealistic naive logic path. That assumes the other party will not attack you nor allies, is LOGICAL, plays by the rules, and cares more for the people they govern than themselves. With Ukraine as a recent example - is that logical? is that playing by the rules? is that caring more for civilians than those in power?
Would China have already invaded Taiwan without a nuclear threat against them?
As uncomfortable as it has been, nuclear deterrence has worked pretty well historically. The major powers have not had direct military conflicts, no formal allies under signed nuclear umbrella have been in major direct military conflict. Korea may be the exception, but it was limited to an isolated peninsula that could not go any further. Anti-missile systems are good for smaller, rouge countries (North Korea, middle east, etc) that would not have large number of missiles. But anti-missile systems actually encourage major powers to increase the number of warheads (both actual and fake).
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The enemy has to build a much larger and more advanced arsenal just to have a shot at accomplishing anything with it vs. the anti-missile capability, meaning you would see them building it up and be able to counter their offensive buildup with a defensive one.
Are you high? You put your sides effort all into defense and they put their sides effort all into offense, who wins? They will always be a threat to you and you will never be a threat to them. MAD makes much more sense.
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Or are you proposing genocidal madmen care whether or not we annihilate c
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To get a substantial nuclear arsenal, a country first needs to build a small one. But if they built a small one against a backdrop of the entire world having resigned them, and having built anti-missile capability instead, it would have the op
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The unfortunate thing is other countries desire nuclear weapons. 20 years ago when Iran, Iraq, and NK labeled terrorist countries, one of them (that had no nuclear capability) was invaded while the others were not. If Ukraine still retained nuclear missiles they probably wouldn't have been invaded.
Gwynne Dyer had a good opinion piece on this recently. I sometimes agree and sometimes vehemently disagree with him, but I always enjoy his take. https://gwynnedyer.com/2022/uk... [gwynnedyer.com]
I'd rather have relative peace (Score:2)
Ever notice we havent had a major world war since the nuke was invented? If you know your history at all you should know how rare it is on this planet for us to go this long without a war happening between major powers that kills hundreds of thousands of people (or an equivalent ratio of global population going back in time). Nuclear powers don't fight with each other and that's all down to nukes.
Just take the conflict in Ukraine. Literally the only reason this thing hasnt escaladed into a major regional wa
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Yes until someone does something stupid and uses it. Do you really think Fat Boy in North Korea, for example, wouldn't use them if he feels insulted on Twitter? At some point, a mentally unstable person will become the leader of a heavily nuclear-armed state. It's just a matter of statistical probability. A lot of national leaders believe that God is on their side, and because they have consistently gotten away with crime and abusing other people, think they can survive a nuclear war too.
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At some point, a mentally unstable person will become the leader of a heavily nuclear-armed state.
Man, are you going to be surprised at what happened since you went into that coma in 1962....
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Do you really think Fat Boy in North Korea, for example, wouldn't use them if he feels insulted on Twitter?
And us getting rid of our nukes would only put as at the mercy of such people.
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The world war prior to WW1 was the Napoleonic wars a century earlier, and by the early 1900s there were plenty of statesmen and philosophers who decided the world had achieved some kind of perpetual balance. Likewise, at the turn of this century, the incredible nincompoop Francis Fukuyama had declared the "end of history," where everything from then on was going to just be an
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The world war prior to WW1 was the Napoleonic wars a century earlier, and by the early 1900s there were plenty of statesmen and philosophers who decided the world had achieved some kind of perpetual balance. Likewise, at the turn of this century, the incredible nincompoop Francis Fukuyama had declared the "end of history," where everything from then on was going to just be an asymptotic growth toward greater prosperity, peace, and freedom, because the Magic Formula had been found due to the resolution of the Cold War.
You're glossing over a lot of major wars that killed a lot of people. Major powers with large militaries used to fight each other far more frequently then you're making out. Just because the only major war you've ever heard of before the World Wars was the Napoleonic doesnt mean they didnt happen.
But weapons built will get used. This is an inevitable fact unless you actively do something about it.
No it's not, how the hell is that inevitable? We've literally built and then decommissioned hundreds of nukes in this country.
The threat of MAD is not self-defense.
No it is which is exactly why it has kept the peace between major powers for a completel
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I said world war, not just any conflict between sizable militaries. There is no evidence that all-encompassing, far-ranging, colossally destructive wars have been discouraged by nuclear weapons, because they were never common in the first place.
Moreover, we have fought sizable militaries since the advent of nuclear weapons: Mao's hordes in Korea; large, multi-national Communist forces in Vietnam;
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Just take the conflict in Ukraine. Literally the only reason this thing hasnt escaladed into a major regional war that kills hundreds of thousands is because Russia and NATO countries have nukes.
The deterrent is real, but even WW2 took a good 8 months to really get going, when Germany then progressed to Norway. That period is known as the phoney war, purely because they were technically at war, but Poland had already been carved up by Germany and the USSR, and no one was about to jump in to try to undo it at that stage (or in the case of Poland, at any stage).
We're starting month 3 with the Ukraine conflict, and for the time being, it appears that with the exception of Ukraine, Russia, nor the west
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Yes and Russia attacked Ukraine exactly because it wasn't yet part of NATO and therefore had no nuclear backing. Had Ukraine already been part of NATO Russia never would have done this.
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I would be more concerned with cohorts whose only understanding comes from videogames and TV shows: People inclined to believe there's a meaningful narrative structure to chaos, because all they know about it are the stories created to fill the vacuum of meaning. Anything y
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It's rare to be impressed by bureaucrats, but the fact that you think that kind of mundane civic complaint is in the ballpark of governments willfully burning children alive to pad the q
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That's assuming people only want to avoid nuclear war, and you are 100% correct on your solution.
The other reason countries have nuclear weapons is to avoid being invaded, and your solution doesn't work there.
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ok, you wrote a lot, but you ignored my point.
People have nuclear weapons to prevent other countries from invading with conventional weapons. If they get rid of those weapons, then they will be invaded.
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There's no basis whatsoever for the claim that lacking nuclear weapons encourages being invaded, and no evidence that being nuclear statistically discourages armed conflict more than simply being a military power.
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Fact: if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, they wouldn't have been invaded.
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> Fact: if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, they wouldn't have been invaded.
You misspelled speculation.
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We've seen how countries respond to those with nuclear weapons. There is plenty of evidence supporting the fact that nuclear deterrence is real.
What evidence is there that nuclear weapons don't act as a deterrence? Has any country with nuclear weapons been invaded?
You are not living in an evidence based world.
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Deterrence has failed (Score:2)
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I don't think the USA is innocent, but the point needs to be made that unfortunately Russia's core territory, that is where most ethnic Russians live, is practically indefensible, so Russia's security has always been to expand itself at the expense of its neighbours independence. The USSR with the warsaw pact hit the zenith of land area, in order to more or less be in control of all attack corridors, but in the process, you can see how many individual nations needed to be subjugated and oppressed in order t
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The only long-term solution is total disarmament
How is that a long term solution? How would you persuade Putin and Kim Jong-Il to disarm? What about China? And Israel who won't even admit to being armed. And France. They've been invaded and occupied twice in living memory (just) and their policy is basically "whatever it takes to prevent this again".
And then there's Japan. Nope, they're not nuclear armed (I believe them), but they're at a holding point which puts them a few months away from being nuclear
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You persuade dictators to give up nuclear weapons by taking away their effectiveness as either a deterrent or an active weapon. Defensive anti-missile capability coupled with conventional offensive strength and global diplomatic solidarity does that. If they insist on taking on th
Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
It's always better to visit a missile than for a missile to come visit you.
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia...
Actually that joke isn't funny right now.
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In Soviet Russia, funny jokes YOU!
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Well, nowadays you don't even have to be in Soviet Russia.
" A few seconds notice"? (Score:3)
No. Not a few seconds notice. There are so many fail safes and cross checks in place that the time from the decision to launch those things to the actual launch is quite a lot more minutes than people have been taught by movies, not seconds.
Re:" A few seconds notice"? (Score:5, Informative)
Having visited a decommissioned site in South Dakota, you are correct when you say minutes. Less than 10 minutes from decision to launch to the launch itself. At the visitor's center there is graphic showing who gets notified in what order and how much time elapses between each step.
This article [wagingpeace.org] gives a good overview of what it takes to launch a nuclear missile from the U.S. There are protocols in place to prevent an errant launch, but in the end, if a president orders a launch no one can stop them from doing so. PBS had a discussion about this [pbs.org] when the con artist was threatening North Korea. Some are thinking the process might need updating with more built-in safe guards.
Meanwhile, this broadcast [npr.org] goes over how the nuclear program came into being in the U.S. and how the process evolved from the military having sole control to the president being the only one able to launch.
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Some are thinking the process might need updating with more built-in safe guards
Not actually possible. The military is in control of the weapons, and ultimately their oath to protect the Constitution over-rides whatever safeguards you attempt to impose; they will still believe themselves required to use their own judgement.
For example, the safeguard of having a launch code built into the missile, and only the President and a few other people having access to the codes, was built into the technology; but the actual codes programmed into the missiles is all-zeros, and none of the steps r
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OTOH, people below him might order the strike anyway.
Cite your source on this because only if the president is incapacitated can someone below him order a strike.
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OTOH, people below him might order the strike anyway.
Cite your source on this because only if the president is incapacitated can someone below him order a strike.
Only if the president is incapacitated is it intended for someone below him to order a strike.The mechanism to implement this is the launch codes that only the president (and a few others) knows. If everybody knows the codes, that mechanism isn't functional.
Of course, in practice people are more likely to not launch when ordered instead of launch without orders.
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It all depends on what the Pentagon is responding to. If it's a "launch on warning", they are the ones that woke up the prez and informed him that we are under attack, by whom and what the recommended countermeasures should be. The president can amend them, but most of that stuff has been gamed out. A very rapid response is possible. But a significant number of people have already reviewed the warning, judged it to be accurate and in need of action. Not much room for one crazy person pushing the button here
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Having visited a decommissioned site in South Dakota, you are correct when you say minutes. Less than 10 minutes from decision to launch to the launch itself. At the visitor's center there is graphic showing who gets notified in what order and how much time elapses between each step.
For anyone interested in US nuclear weapons tech and history, and military systems in general, Command and Control [amazon.com] is a fantastic book that gets deep into the technical details of a launch as well as the history of nuclear weapons in the United States. Cannot recommend highly enough.
Another great book is The Titan II Handbook [titan2handbook.com], written by Chuck Penson who runs the Titan II museum in Arizona. Extremely detailed with lots of pictures and schematics. Very cool for both nuclear and 60s tech nerds.
Article Summary... (Score:5, Funny)
So, you've lived next to a missile silo for 60 years?
"yep"
Do you think they'll ever shoot it off?
"maybe"
What do you think it will be like if that happens?
"bad"
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I don't recall any indications that Farmer Hoggett had a nuclear silo on his property.
You forgot the interesting picture of his horses (Score:2)
Just a single picture of him and his beloved horses.
Did the reporter forget his camera or something when htey visited the site?
Submarines (Score:4, Informative)
All the military-oriented people I know say the land missiles aren't really what matters, it's the missiles on the submarines that protect against a first strike. The theory goes, you can get us, but the subs will take revenge.
Re:Submarines (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot.. (Score:2)
Cold War Relics (Score:2)
You should have grown up around Nike installations [themilitarystandard.com], there were many of them and most thought they were just early warning radar installations instead of missile and aircraft defense batteries. They also weren't told that there were nuclear warheads on most of the missiles that would have been used to go after incoming ICBMs and bomber fleets.
History (Score:3)
"I used to say, 'No way,' " Ed said. "Now it's more like, 'Please God, don't let us be here to see it.' "
A little more than just four years ago we had a new president with no military or civilian oversight experience asking military planners why he couldn't use the nukes if he wanted to.
Re:History (Score:4, Interesting)
Answer is he could use nukes if he wanted too.
that same orange clown (yes I'll agree he's buffoon) also asked the NATO nation leaders why they were lining Russia's pockets with fossil fuel business while slacking on their NATO expenditures and defense.
Trump was at least right about that, libtards making fun of him at the time should get a kick in the nuts.
You're dressing that up to sound smarter than it was. Trump from what I could tell was mad that the US paid more than the other NATO members, and was angling pretty squarely for US NATO withdrawl. He didn't think NATO mattered, frankly. Trump also staunchly withheld congressionally approved military aid for Ukraine, to the point it was partially the rationale for his first impeachment. The only theories as to why he would do that are some mix of him trying to blackmail Ukraine into manufacturing evidence that would hurt Joe Biden in an election, or him cozying up to Mr. Putin for... reasons (ego, they have dirt on him, whatever, pick a reason).
I'm honestly surprised the Trump administration opposed the Nordstream pipelines at all. My suspicion is they didn't on ideological grounds... it's not a secret that the alternative to Nordstream was massive imports from the US gulf states, all of which happen to be Republican. My guess is Trump gave zero shits about potential European dependence on Russia, but was being told that killing Nordstream would buy him a lot of goodwill with his base in those gulf areas.
Nothing About The Actual Silo (Score:2)
This story fails to include a picture of the silo, nor does it identify it. This would appear to be silo E-07 located E-07 5.6 mi NxNE of Hilger MT at 47 20 04 N 109 21 40 W [google.com].
Are people really this scared? (Score:2)
Nobody wins in a nuclear war, everyone loses. EVERYONE. And by 'everyone' I mean THE ENTIRE PLANET. Only a madman would use them. Putins' own people won't allow it. They can sabre-rattle all they want about this-and-that nuclear missile they have but it's all just terror tactics, propaganda intended to scare people into doing what Putin wants. Don't fall fo
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Lets theory craft some possible scenarios :
- the US gives Ukraine an almost unlimited supply of offensive UAVs and Pantsir/Tor prove utterly incapable of dealing with it, ringing in an entire new stage of asymmetric warfare which pushes Russian ground forces to complete collapse. Russia tries to bomb civilian targets in Ukraine conventionally to force them into submission even moreso than now, but they simply refuse out of obstinacy. What happens?
- Russia takes Ukraine in the coming week and they feel they
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I meant to say "coming weeks". Ukraine folding in a week is somewhat too unlikely at this point. A blitz this was not.
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And that's what's scary. If you want proof that not a single person would ever consider ending humanity, look at our current problem with the environment.
A huge percentage of people, every day, take dozens of decisions without a single afterthought about the consequences of their actions.
If you want further proof that the human race as a whole is not yet advanced enough, just look at this website [darwinawards.com], where tales of idiots dying of their own stupidity are not uncommon.
So yes, be afra
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How do they know whether it would still launch? (Score:3)
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Nuclear weapons themselves actually need a lot of maintenance; not so much for the fissile material, but the chemical explosives have a relatively short shelf
When the wind blows (Score:2)
> Ed got up to clear his plate. "Good thing it's all hypothetical. It's really only there for deterrence. It'll never actually explode."
> "You're right," Pam said. "It won't happen. Almost definitely not."
When reading these sentences, I saw Jim and Hilda Bloggs, the elderly couple from “when the wind blows” telling this before my inner eye.
I hate to think about these things again after nearly 40 years, I feel as if I have to throw up.
Re:This is something I've been wondering (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I understand modern nukes are so powerful that even if they land in the ocean we're all basically fucked. The environmental impact would be an extinction event.
We are down to a bit over 10k missiles in existence from a peak of 70k. The United States ones are likely smaller too (due to better targeting needing less power). True nuclear winter may have been inevitable before; I think it's not that clear at all now.
This is the whole MAD thing we all know and love, but I guess my point is, is there any point to working on missile tech now? I think Israel does this, where the threat isn't "we're gonna nuke your cities if you invade" but "we're going to end the human race if you invade".
Lots of missile tech development has been attempting to find loopholes in MAD. Things like a) we send missiles faster and then yours don't get a chance to launch. b) we send a small nuke and then you would be unreasonable to respond with total annihilation c) we shoot lots of your missiles before they explode and then we can afford to first strike. There's a considerable worry here that the MAD doctrine could easily fail if someone gets too much advantage. One side falling behind might make that worse. E.g. if your opponents are able to destroy all your missiles, better fire them now before they start firing on you.
Israel almost certainly lacks the number of weapons needed to end humanity, except perhaps locally in the country or countries that attacked them.
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The US only has large warheads. Only Russia has large numbers of small nuclear warheads. Nobody else believes in "winning" a nuclear exchange.
The US has deployed extensive missile defense, but almost no armchair generals are aware of it. All of the newer-generation US ground and ship deployed SAMs can strike objects in LEO, and have been tested against targets traveling at higher speeds than ICBMs. Additionally, all the beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles can intercept high speed targets at above 70k ft
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The US only has large warheads. Only Russia has large numbers of small nuclear warheads.
I'm not sure what you're saying. The most modern of the Russian ICBMs is the RT-2PM2 [wikipedia.org] ("Topol-M"), which carries a 700 kiloton to 1 megaton warhead. The only operational US ICBM is the Minuteman-III [wikipedia.org], with a W78 warhead, 350 kilotons. So if you're saying that the Russians don't have warheads as large as the American warheads, no, the opposite.
If on the other hand, you are trying to claim that the Russians are the only ones who have small warheads, also no; the W80" nuclear warhead has a yield of 1-150 kT.
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Nope. The most modern land based ICBM they had before this is the RS-24 Yars. Which is basically a MIRVed Topol.
It can carry up to half a dozen 150 kiloton warheads.
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Nope. The most modern land based ICBM they had before this is the RS-24 Yars.
The Yars is just a variant of the Topol-M. Topol-M . [csis.org]
Good article here: https://military-history.fando... [fandom.com] , although this one claims the warhead is 800 kT, somewhat higher than the yield quoted in other sources.
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Which is basically a MIRVed Topol. It can carry up to half a dozen 150 kiloton warheads.
exactly.
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there's a lot of talk about ICBMs and missile tech, but does it really matter?.
Sure it matters, to all the unethical people who got filthy rich selling this crap to the public. You don't think the military-industrial complex really cares do you? No wonder things went to hell, given the insatiable greed of our economic masters, welcome to thier plutocracy.
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Yeah, you orcs would love it if we didn't defend ourselves. But wanting the west to be easily-conquered is not actually the same thing as "ethics."
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From what I understand modern nukes are so powerful that even if they land in the ocean we're all basically fucked.
You understand very wrong. It may sound scary for something from your perspective (you're only a 1.8m tall man at best, tiny little insignificant thing on this planet). Nuclear bombs are actually piss weak in terms of inflicting damage when they hit the ground, that and a large component of their damage is actually thermal.
So we'd be fucked if all our nuclear bombs were the size of the Tsar bomb (they aren't, there's only a few bombs that size), and we carefully detonated them all over populated land at an
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So we'd be fucked if all our nuclear bombs were the size of the Tsar bomb (they aren't, there's only a few bombs that size)
Unless somebody is keeping very quiet about it, there are currently bombs that big.
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Most of the nukes in the arsenal aren't powerful enough to that level. You would need a cobalt-salted gigaton class nuke for the thing you are talking about. Like maybe 10 to 20 GT and cobalt-salted. Such a nuke is possible, but I don't know if they built one. And nobody has tested one, that's for sure as hell.
Re: This is something I've been wondering (Score:5, Funny)
Cobalt-IV-Initialized-PKS-Padded-Salted
that would be more secure...
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The environmental impact would be an extinction event.
Today it seems more than likely that this would actually put a stop to an extinction event, due to removing a large number of people currently causing the extinction event. Yes, humans are probably worse than nukes, unless you have really, *really* lot of nukes. The problem with the "lot of nukes" part is that only a fraction of all the stockpiled nukes can be used immediately, and once those are used, mankind's ability to actually use the rest becomes very questionable.
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It's been pretty well established that a nuclear detonation above a city would render it uninhabitable for hundreds of years [travelcaffeine.com]</sarcasm>.
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Did you ask any of the current inhabitants of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
Oh, it was a joke?
Guess I need coffee.
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Did you ask any of the current inhabitants of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
Yeah. Although the cultural and historical impacts are significant, the occurrence of radiation related effects have dropped to the statistical background level for the population of Japan in general. For some time, the survivors of the blast were shunned due to the possibility of genetic effects, this isn't a concern for more recent arrivals, i.e. the current inhabitants.
Modern nukes are a hell of a lot nastier (Score:2)
Re:This is something I've been wondering (Score:5, Informative)
But even if it exists, the worst versions of the Samson option speak about bombing Germany and Russia for the holocaust and pogroms.
...why would they do that? If 21st century's Israel collectively blows a fuse, it will bomb specifically 21st century Germany and Russia for things that happened more than 80 years ago? Why? That makes even less sense than bombing everyone currently alive.
despite the fact that the white man has killed and raped much more than the Jewish man ever will
Considering the fact that Jews are almost (*) a subset of Semites, and Semites are a subset of white people, that statement feels like a rather meaningless tautology. Of course the superset can't do less than its subset, that would require negative action on part of the complement of the subset to the superset, and you can't kill a negative number of people.
((*) With the possible exception of Beta Israel)
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Jewish people are not white?
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Jewish people are not white?
American Jews were not white folks until after WW2. In many countries, they still aren't.
When did Jews become white? [jewishcurrents.org]
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I'm Israeli, and I'm assuming you're talking about a very harsh version of the Samson option. First of all, nobody knows if this thing even exists and is not just another blood libel.
Wikipedia has a pretty good, although long, article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But your main point is correct: even if the number is on the high side of the range of estimates, if Israel used its nuclear weapons, no, it would not end the human race.
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It's my understanding that
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I can easily see the more war hawk-ish Muslims spinning that fact into a true blood libel by claiming that Israel is utterly committed to Muslim extinction, pointing to the existing Israeli nukes as "proof" of that intent.
Looking at past history where multiple parties were very intent on Jewish extinction, I don't really see what that changes.
If Isreal is smart they'll stay all in on MAD (Score:2)
We saw in Ukraine what happens when a country gives up it's nukes.
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