Nuclear Arms Cuts, Supported By 56% of Americans, Would Make the World Safer 615
Lasrick writes "Kingston Reif of the Nukes of Hazard blog writes about nuclear arms reductions are back in the news, thanks to President Obama's State of the Union address and now also a Gallup poll that shows 56% of Americans support U.S.-Russian reductions. From the Article: 'A recent report by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that senior Obama administration officials believe the United States can reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic warheads to between 1,000 and 1,100 without harming national security. Those numbers would put the total below levels called for by New START...' Congressional Republicans of course are against those cuts; Reif lays out why the cuts would make the U.S. and the world safer."
Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?
More mineshafts (Score:5, Funny)
Need to mind the mineshaft gap!
Get rid of some (Score:5, Funny)
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For the conservatives we would have used them as intended and made the U.S. much safer by demonstrating that they can be used...
Exactly. And in the interests of the economy, we shouldn't build any more nuclear weapons until we've used the ones we've got.
Re:Get rid of some (Score:4, Funny)
I'm all for that, as long as we have plenty of cameras rolling.
Someone call up Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich and James Cameron - they're about to save a couple million in CGI effects. And get Shatner ready to narrate a sequel to Trinity and Beyond.
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Make it a global pay per view, and use the proceeds to pay off the deficit... Finally North Korea gets a constructive use.
Re:Get rid of some (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get rid of some (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no way we can morally demand countries like North Korea and Iran not develop nuclear weapons unless we do all in our power to eliminate all nuclear weapons.
Spare us the bullshit. NK and Iran are totalitarian pits. The US, for all its faults, is a representative democracy with the strongest free-speech protections on the planet (the one area, IMHO, in which the USA is far, far ahead of every other country on earth).
Re:Get rid of some (Score:4)
Dude, did you get here in a Delorian with a Flux capacitor???
Re:Get rid of some (Score:5, Interesting)
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Leave your mom out of this.
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Yes, I was kidding. I'll be good.
SDI's? (Score:2)
I'm just wondering if we (and they) have so many because they'd want to be sure to punch through any kind of SDI/Star Wars missile defense system?
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that you are basically correct.
In-fact, one of the big points about the current anti-missile systems is that they do not have enough capacity to prevent strategic nuclear strikes from Russia or China. The goal is to make sure that they could always nuke us if they needed too. Which is a rather screwed up design feature; but it's understandable that we don't want to undermine their nuclear deterrence.
Re:SDI's? (Score:5, Insightful)
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With Russia embracing democracy, more or less
I'm going with "less"
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Insightful)
China has no more ambition or motive to attack the US than Russia does. Sure they are a superpower, and therefore dangerous, but if that is enough to keep MAD, then there is no "just yet" about the situation, they will always (for the foreseeable future) be a superpower, so by your logical we must always have MAD.
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China isn't a super power. They're at best 2nd world
I'm not sure you understand the definition of the phrase super power.
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China has stealth aircraft and bombers, a more prolific nuclear program than the United States, several centers with very reliable high speed internet that is better than most Americans (Beijing and Shanghai in particular), and spends the second most money on military in the world, albeit badly dwarfed by the United States (albeit most work is 1/3 to 1/4 the cost). If they aren't a super power, then Russia isn't, either.
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Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, at their current rate of expenditure their military should catch up with our current levels in only what, about 50-100 years. And I'm sure that has nothing to do with their being surrounded by a number of hostile and/or unstable countries within easy striking distance. Or as a deterrent against the one currently unopposed superpower that's apparently feeling it's oats and picking fights anywhere there's money to be made.
Frankly, I suspect the day China presents a credible military threat to the US will be the day our government has already crumbled from within.
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Hardly, governments don't have the same relationship to money as people. Our debt is denominated in dollars, so if China tried to call in our debt we could just print that many fresh dollars and call it good. Of course that would devalue the dollar a bit, but better than foreclosing on the country.
Not to say that economic warfare isn't viable, it's just a far more nuanced game than you're suggesting.
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Actually, that was never a "prime Soviet ambition," except in the minds of the McCarthy-era US propaganda machine. Communist doctrine held by the Soviet leadership was focused on dealing with all the internal difficulties of managing their own economy. Yes, they hoped that workers in other countries would see their shining example and start their own revolutions (and they did provide friendly support for that). America, however, was the country exporting weapons and training dictators' death squads to bruta
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>The one where the democratically elected Afghani government
Since when are coup d'etats "democratically-elected"? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saur_Revolution)
You are an idiot. The coup took place after the former prime minister of Afghanistan (Daoud Khan) moved to increase ties with the West, and to distance itself from the USSR. It was the commie stooges that overthrew the government that called for help from Moscow, not some democratically-elected nonsense. And did so after their disastrous policies
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I'm just wondering if we (and they) have so many because they'd want to be sure to punch through any kind of SDI/Star Wars missile defense system?
You can always launch a lot of cheap(-ish) decoys mixed in between the real warheads.
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I'm not sure of the numbers, but I suspect a nuclear warhead is a small fraction of the cost of an ICBM.
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You'd be wrong.
The nuclear material is HIGHLY refined. More effort was put into refining the material than the entire cost of the rest of the missile. That isn't even including mining and other processing it takes to get useful material.
The hardest part of making a fission weapon is refining your source material into something that will actually go critical in a way that uses up at least a few percent of the material in the bomb.
Keep in mind that when a bomb detonates, the 'radiation' damage you suffer is
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Which are extremely easy to detect.
Are they radiological or not? Can be detected from a distance and easy to distinguish from something without enough material to pose a large scale threat.
In reality however ...
ICBMs are not what you should be concerned about.
Its the nuclear subs sitting 20 miles off the coast of ... well, everywhere, that are fully capable of launching a hundred nuclear tipped cruise missles at a moments notice ...
We've been backing off ICBMs for over 30 years. Believe it or not, that is
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You don't need 1000's of nuclear warheads to punch through one.. 1000's of conventional warheads and a dozen nuclear warheads would work just fine.
Actually, you don't even need that. As each ICBM reaches space, it could pop out a few dozen mylar balloon decoys. The balloons will cool rapidly in space, so you put a small IR LED with a button-cell battery in each one to give it the same heat signature as a real warhead. Of course the balloons will disintegrate as soon as they hit the atmosphere, but by then it is too late.
Re:SDI's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you don't even need that. As each ICBM reaches space, it could pop out a few dozen mylar balloon decoys. The balloons will cool rapidly in space,
And because of their tiny mass will almost immediately slow to zero velocity. If your DEW radars cannot differentiate between something moving at a considerable percent of the speed of sound and a balloon floating around with the wind, you need a better DEW line. "Hey, look, Bob, those incoming missles that were targeting Memphis are now going at only 120 knots and are aimed at the North Pole!"
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Don't forget he mentioned they were in space, so it will take a lot longer for them to slow down than you think. The timing is tight enough that it could cause some issues.
Re:SDI's? (Score:5, Interesting)
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if one missile suddenly turns into 99 missiles slowing down very quickly and 1 that keeps the same trajectory, you can be pretty confident you know which one is real and which is chaff.
An obvious solution is to add a small thruster to decelerate the real warhead as well.
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Which means you get wiped out while your missles are in space waiting for the re-entry time and your enemies missles didn't and are not detonating in your back yard.
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means you get wiped out while your missles are in space waiting for the re-entry time ...
At an altitude of 100km, you reach the Karman Line [wikipedia.org], which is generally considered the threshold of space. The air density at that altitude is 1/(2.2 million) the surface density. At ICBM trajectory has an apogee of 1,200 km [wikipedia.org]. Since the density decreases exponentially [wikipedia.org], it will be far, far less at that altitude. So I don't think either the balloons or the warhead would slow down enough to matter.
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is dead on correct. Balloons on trajectory traveling just around mach 25 won't hit atmo with sufficient density to slow them down until about 5 minutes before the real warheads impact. There is no way to effectively respond in that time window. This is a completely effective strategy.
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I'm with the Protoss on this one.
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you can be pretty confident you know which one is real and which is chaff.
I'm no rocket scientist, but it was my understanding that the decoys are deployed from the same bus as the MIRV warheads at the apogee of the flight. This serves to maximize the amount of time that both decoys and warheads spend above 120 nautical miles for maximum confusion of a target attempting to play the warhead shell game. Of course, if the weapon is of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment [wikipedia.org] type (now banned by treaty) the MIRVs and decoys could separate from the missile on separate orbital trajectories u
Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Says who? And will countries like NK or Iran follow suit or not? And does that result play into the discussions at all?
Opinions do not equate to facts, yet some people like reporting as if they do.
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear warheads are pretty much only good to make other people not want to attack you because they fear getting nuked. You basically only need enough nukes to kill some of the big cities in a country and that should stop any non crazy person from launching against you.
One of the better quotes in this regard is that a nuclear arms race is like 2 generals standing waist deep in gasoline, the first with 3 matches, the second with 5.
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Sort of wrong. Think a little deeper next time. If you have a sufficiently advanced "Star Wars" system they become a practical offensive tactic.
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That's a pretty big "if", and probably will be so for a long time.
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Yes, we also can detect that before it enters the port.
A cruise missile launched from a nuclear sub 20 miles of the coast on the other hand is going to be considerably harder to stop, especially if the country isn't already on alert.
ICBMs take too long to reach their destination. They havent' been the preferred delivery method for 30 years.
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Sort of wrong.
Really? Haven't deterrence and MAD figured into most of the foriegn policy calculations of all nuclear powers for the last 50 years?
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, for example, Japan sits underneath the American nuclear umbrella. They easily have the capability to build their own, but do not, because they trust that America will protect them. Other countries are in a similar situation. Once the American stockpile shrinks too much, the Japanese will start to get worried and want to build their own.
If it were only between Russia and the US, then our stockpiles would have shrunk already, because neither side is afraid of the other, neither side wants to attack and both know it. It's not worth the expense of having a large arsenal. But it's not; there are many actors in the world, and imagining it's just between the US and Russia is dream thinking.
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Eventually you may be right, however there are only a few countries that have any serious hope of defending against even a single ICBM, much less dozens or hundreds. So as long as we have even a few nukes they're not likely to provoke us on that level. You only need thousands of nukes if you're in a standoff against someone with a serious missile defense program. Now if we were actually *using* the nukes it would be different, you don't want to run out of ammo in the middle of a war, but thankfully the w
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Can you name anyone besides Russia who might offer a credible threat?
You mean China?
You're failing to understand. Think of all the countries in China's region who are threatened by that giant. There are a lot.
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Can you name anyone besides Russia who might offer a credible threat?
China, the EU, Japan, some combination of middle east countries, India, Brazil, etc. Basically anyone with a big enough economy. Note that I didn't consider current military capability or ideological outlook since that can change rather fast. Both the US and the USSR went from no nukes to thousands of nukes inside of two decades.
Re:Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does having 2000 versus 1000 nuclear weapons in any way improve our safety vis-a-vis NK or Iran? It's not like they're proposing getting rid of the nuclear deterrent entirely, or even cutting it down to a small arsenal. That's still 1000 operational warheads!
The only reason to have so many in the first place was an arms race with the USSR envisioning a counterforce scenario, where they try to nuke our nukes, and vice versa, before the other side can launch theirs. In that case it's helpful to have more than the other side. But it's not like NK is in any position to take out 1000 launch sites, such that we would need 2000 to be safe.
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you are thinking war with Russia is impossible now? 1,000 is not enough against them.
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The idea is that it's a mutual reduction, so we'll still be balanced with Russia's forces. Just at a lower number on each side.
Re:Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
make the number too small and the odds of "winning" (elite survive) become attractive despite downsides.
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Why?
1000 warheads is enough to kill every living thing in Russia. In fact it's enough to indirectly kill every living thing on the planet (or close enough)
Why does it matter if both sides have the same amount? Both sides can detect one anothers launches and launch before getting hit so I ask again... why?
Re:Safer? (Score:4, Informative)
that is absolutely a false statement, the USA does not possess enough warheads to kill every human on the planet, let alone every living thing. a thousand weapons could not even kill 80% of the people in a large country like Russia or China or India; too many cities, not enough bombs.
you watch too much Hollywood and have an exaggerated notion of what nuclear weapons can do
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Not everyone, but the simulations of a full nuclear war with all nukes on both sides launched will lead to a nasty nuclear winter that'll last years with mass death of animal life, very poor crops and outright starvation. The effect is barely noticeable with a few warheads but with thousands and thousands of warheads whirling dust into the atmosphere out planet would temporarily become a very inhospitable place to live.
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if air burst there is no fallout. long term problem solved.
if ground burst, one megaton of yield will make about 90,000 curies of strontium 90, or about 100,000 curies of long lived stuff. Chernobyl released about 220,000 curies of strontium 90....note things grow there and animals live. so a thousand weapons can mess up a large country, but not kill everyone, too many square miles and too few bombs
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Sorry, I should have said 33,500 kilotons is large enough to destroy/kill everything in a 55-60 mile diameter "instantly". A larger number of people would die further out than that due to radiation poisoning, etc
Incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to recheck that. The average nuclear warhead in the US arsenal is approximated to be 33,500 kilotons (slightly larger than the well known B41). For comparison, the nukes used in/on Japan were 15 and 21 kilotons. 33,500 kilotons is large enough to destroy/kill everything in a 55-60 mile diameter. It would take about 1000 of these to DIRECTLY kill everything in the United States. Factor in the indirect damage (nuclear poisoning, fallout, etc etc), and you could kill everyone in the United States with far far fewer. India (for example only), has 1/3rd the area of the United States. It would take probably 100 33.5 megaton nuclear bombs to kill everyone in an area equal to the size of India, and it would likely kill a couple hundred million of people not in that area.
That's completely false, most modern missile-based nukes are in the hundreds of kilotons, like 100-500 kt. 33.5 megatons is larger than the largest bomb we've ever had in service, the B53 at 9 megatons.
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The other thing not mentioned, a lot of the older ones were called tactical nukes. Something like the Davy Crocket which was launched from a ground artillery piece from a couple of miles away and was small yield. Meant for a Russian tank column. The A-4 and I think F-111 could both carry small nuclear bombs which we no longer have. We don't use those anymore and things like that probably accounted for half of what we used to have.
Ahh,, "Atomic Annie", honestly i would love to be the guy that got to test fire that.. even if it meant dying of cancer at an early age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M65_Atomic_Cannon [wikipedia.org]
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Fewer nuclear weapons but still enough to obliterate civilization can't possibly make the world less safe. What it will do is reduce the cost of maintaining a nuclear arsenal, reduce the number of potential accidents, and reduce the number of weapons which could fall into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist group.
Will NK or Iran "follow suit"? No. Iran has no nukes so can hardly reduce their arsenal. NK has a few dozen at best. Neither is in a position to reduce their arsenal to a mere 1,100 weapons.
The
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Our reduction in nuclear weapons does not put us in more danger regardless of what NK and Iran do. We can still destroy human civilization if we needed to. Sure we'd be safer if Iran and NK reversed course on nuclear weapons, but we can't directly control that. All we can directly control is our own stockpiles.
The less nuclear weapons out there, the easier it is to control them (e.g. less chance of accidents, theft, etc). The stockpiles in the USSR are a huge danger, because they are more likely to fall
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US/Russia? but no China? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are talks between us and Russia while China is rapidly increasing their nuclear stockpile?
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By the time you launch the first 100 nuclear bombs the world will go down the toilet, so why does it matter? really?
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On the other hand, if you downgrade to only a 100 warheads, then it's quite possible a small group of conventional strikes could remove your entire arsenal, and there goes MAD...
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Not if they are submarine based.
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It's rather difficult to do that when many of your warheads are in submarines hiding at the bottom of the ocean.
Re:US/Russia? but no China? (Score:5, Informative)
Because the US and Russia possess two orders of magnitude more nuclear weapons than China possesses. Even after reduction each will individually hold more than four times what China currently holds.
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Because China owns the US government and economy.
Let's follow this here. (Score:2, Insightful)
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If 1000 to 1100 warheads is sufficient for the most paranoid people on the planet who are fully informed about the situation,
I assume you are referring to the Obama administration officials who came up with the 1000-1100 number here. What makes you think they are the most paranoid people on the planet? I'd say they were probably leaning mostly towards the world being all unicorns and glitter except for small pockets of Nickelodeon slime that haven't gotten the message yet.
No replacement policy. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difficult part about getting defense people to commit to decreasing the stockpile is that we have no idea when, if ever, we will be able to start producing new warheads. That turns it from being a discussion about how many we strategically need, towards a discussion about how certain were are that the stockpile we have will still be functional when we need it, and "can't we keep them all just in case". It would suck to destroy an entire line of warheads because they seem least valuable today, only to find out later that the ones we kept had an aging problem we couldn't detect before which didn't effect the destroyed line.
Oops (Score:2)
I missed the distinction that these are deployed weapons were are talking about. My comment doesn't apply to those, but to the other ~4000 stockpiled ones.
Of course we don't need 1,000 nuclear warheads. (Score:2)
We're already slowly but surely working on anti-matter weaponry and high-energy weaponized lasers. We'll be able to obliterate and/or lase the surface of the planet likely before anyone else.
Instead of killing the world five times (Score:2)
Re:Instead of killing the world five times (Score:4, Interesting)
where do you get the absurd idea that nuclear weapons could even kill all the population once? Hollywood?
No (Score:2)
However this should be US/Russia/China reduction of nukes, possibly expanding to ask other nations with smaller arsenals to start limiting wasteful spending, on what is essentially a pointless standoff weapon with very ugly costs to the human race on the whole for any accidental discharge.
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Even now, they just launched a new solid missile, the DF-41, that is
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition, they are NOT a democratic gov. or even a capitalist economy. The fact is, that the economy is split into 2 with those companies that export being capitalists, while those that are tied to the gov, esp. the PLA, being a pure command situation.
With China's earthquake loads was discovered about them. That 3000 miles of underground railway was a shocker. And the fact that they had an underground hidden nuke operation by the reservoir was also a shock. That alone should be a sign that it is very possible for China to have a reactor down there, being cooled by the reservoir and would NEVER be seen by space.
Now, as to MAD, let me explain how this works. Basically, both sides have to have systems that are either 100% first strike, with limited retailiation, OR nearly 100% defense, with limited first strike. Most importantly, neither side can have a true missile defense system. Now, W killed that and the neo-cons are pushing for us to put up a BMD system. However, it should be obvious to all, that we have gone nowhere with it. As such, we are still playing by the MAD logic that America and USSR had. Now, along comes China who does not tell what they have. However, we are finding out all the time that they are far more advanced than they let on to. In particular, they DO appear to have loads more BMD than is acknowledged. For starters, they took out a sat that was quite high (500 miles+). But it continues to get better. For starters, they have multiple ground based lasers designed to shoot into space. They have already taken out multiples of our sats. In addition, their space station is a military base. It is NOT a civilian program. They have stated that no civilians or non-chinese will be on-board. All in all, it is obvious that China is working against MAD, and is looking for a number of leg ups. That implies first strike and their entertaining the idea of winning a nuke war. And I am not wild about ANY military officer thinking that. EVER. That is why the worst thing that could happen is to cut down warheads.
Republicans of course are against those cuts (Score:2)
Why of course?
Why at all?
Project Orion rebooted (Score:5, Interesting)
Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?
If we ever want to travel to Alpha Centauri we do. How about putting those nukes toward the construction of an interstellar pulsed nuclear space drive? [wikipedia.org]
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Love the dream, but honestly we'd probably want purpose-made nukes for something like that, and we're not even close to ready with the supporting technology for what would still be a centuries-long flight (heck, we don't yet even have any hard data on what sorts of radiation and other problems we might encounter beyond the heliopause). The Orion project itself was conceived at least in part as a disarmament tool.
Only 56 percent? (Score:3)
That's not really an overwhelming majority, is it? So what, take action anyway and to hell with the concerns of the other 38-44 percent who don't agree that it's a great idea? That could arguably be cited as an example of a tyrannical majority.
(I personally think 1,000 warheads is plenty enough to deter rogue states or factions that happen to get a few nukes and an urge to blackmail with 'em, but there's principle here.)
Reinstate Civil Defense (Score:2)
There are lots of reasons to have a shelter besides a nuclear attack. If you make yourself less vulnerable while reducing your offense you make yourself a less likely target.
Hmmm (Score:2)
What would make the world safer is a little less fear and paranoia. Holding people without trials, ordering assassinations of citizens...this does nothing for the citizen's ideal of safety within the homeland, to speak nothing of without.
A weapon is a weapon is a weapon...it's the mind behind it that you need to be wary of, not the weapon itself. Even if we eliminated every WMD in existence, a new one could be cooked up over a long weekend by a skilled chemist or physicist. Feel me? Understand me? No, you m
I don't fear the man who wants 1000 nukes (Score:2)
I fear the man who wants 1.
Relevance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a shit what 56% of the general populace think? They aren't qualified to have a meaningful opinion.
Did I miss the high school class on thermonuclear tactics? Pretty sure I would have gone to that.
So when can Iran threaten the U.S. over NPT? (Score:5, Interesting)
We've surrounded [current.com] Iran with dozens of military bases, crashed [bostonglobe.com] their economy and currency with sanctions, illegally threatened [salon.com] them with military force, and committed multiple acts of war [nytimes.com] on a country over the....nuclear weapons program both the CIA [thedailybell.com] and Israelis [pbs.org] admit they don't have.
So when does Iran get to threaten the United States for being in "material breach" of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires disarmament [wikipedia.org] for countries already in possession of nuclear weapons?
safer? (Score:3, Interesting)
The world would also have been safer if the USSR had won the cold war and we'd all be living under a communist dictatorship. Safety isn't all that matters.
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Or rather you can deter violence by not pissing everyone off and becoming friends with them.
The US is its own worst enemy in that respect.
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I'm sure all your friends in Equestria [wikipedia.org] agree with you.
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Or rather you can deter violence by not pissing everyone off and becoming friends with them.
Yes, this is the "all unicorns and glitter except a few spots of Nickelodeon slime that haven't gotten the message yet" philosophy. Except it's ignoring the slime spots altogether and hoping for the best.
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Switzerland is a model of how to build a sane foreign policy and a sane military (although they should abolish the draft and have a 100% volunteer army) .
As odd as it may sound, no one wakes up one morning and says "Hey, I feel like being a terrorist!" things like invasions and occupations create terrorists. Supporting right-wing dictators (like the US did throughout the cold war and even beyond) creates terrorists. Drone strikes on civilian
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Once everyone is solidly connected to a world wide electric grid and each country depends on the excess capacity of another country on the other side of the planet, what are you gonna do, attack the other countries and eliminate part of your won power supply.
No, you'll just turn off the supply to the country on the other side of the planet that is depending on your excess capacity. Then nuke them, if necessary.
Oil dependence is already enough of a hot button issue, do you really imagine any country would put itself into a position of dependence on someone else's excess capacity of electricity that can be turned off at a moment's notice? It's relatively easy to stockpile oil (we have a national reserve), but stockpiling electricity when you are dependent for
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>another country on the other side of the planet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses [wikipedia.org]
>attack the other countries and eliminate part of your won power supply.
Space will do that for us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 [wikipedia.org]
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I'm fairly confident you could drop 900 missiles on the US and not get most of my friends. I admit, I'm currently in an urban area so I'd get toasted, but America isn't (insert whatever country your from that clearly is THE SHIT compared to us) so don't assume we're as retarded and all live in 3 cities. America is broken into the 3 parts. West coast, East of the Mississippi, and 'no mans land' in the middle. While they could wipe out the east and west coasts and a few of the larger central cities with t
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What happens?
Nothing happens, as is clear since we're having this discussion.
Did you have point?