Poll: The Nuclear bomb and The hydrogen bomb

[Brett Alex]

First World War: 2 vast opposing armies each acting as the others deterrent (specifically Britain, France and Russia opposing Germany and Austro-Hungary)

Today: Opposing nuclear arsenals each acting as a deterrent to others

I can't be the only one who noticed that parallel surely?

I don't really know if thats an accurate bow to draw though; in WWI, each side was convinced of their own superiority and strategy (Schliefen Plan etc.)

Those armies were in fact, not deterrents at all. If anything, the large armies were a reason to fight. France, for example, had been itching for an excuse to snatch back Alsace-Lorraine since the Franco-Prussian conflict barely 30 years earlier.

In fact, Prussia's (specifically Bismarck's) unification of Germany and complex treaty and alliance system had bled the steam-release, regular conflict out of European society; the break before WWI had given the chance for every nation and it's wife to arm themselves up the wazoo, and they were all keen as mustard to test their new ways to kill people out in real battle.

Modern superpowers realise that a nuke, if it is theres, ours, or some other dudes, has just the same ability to fuck shit up, royally.

 

[BonsaiK]

I doubt dirty bombs will ever be used by terror cells, I don't see why they would go to the hassle. Getting hold of radioactive material is either expensive, a pain in the ass, or both. Storing it until it's time to use it is a real *****. Terrorists probably couldn't be bothered, a conventional bomb that just sends bits of shrapnel everywhere has essentially the same net "terror" effect and is a hell of a lot easier to smuggle to wherever you want to detonate it.

Of course sharpnel doesn't have the same net effect. Thing with radiation is that it lasts and the clean up will leave a humongous impact on the people not to mention the psychological impact it has compared to your average bomb, not everyone can make the distinction between a dirty bomb and a proper nuke. Say you detonate a regular bomb in a vital business center of a country. It's impact will only last a short while. The damage is quickly repared and a relatively small area is affected (unless you make a plane topple a huge skyscraper). Say you detonate a dirty bomb in the same business center and you've pretty much shut it down for a good while.

I doubt that for the really high echelon terrorist groups getting and storing relatively light radioactive material is that difficult. Again, you won't see a Chernobyle-like disaster, but terrorists don't need that anyway. It's taken seriously to boot. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb#Possibility_of_terrorist_groups_using_dirty_bombs]

The key word is "terror". All that's needed to create terror is for some shit to blow up and kill a few people. Now you can do that with an IED that costs $50, or you can piss about with trying to buy radioactive stuff on the black market. The reason why 9/11 was so damn successful is that people got so obsessed about dirty bombs and all this other theoretical nonsense that they missed the incredibly low-budget attack happening right under their noses.

Yeah, the dirty bomb leaves a residue and the effect lasts longer. That's not really important from the point of view of the people blowing shit up. They just want to blow some shit up, go to heaven and have sex with virgins. Adding the nuclear element is just a bunch of fucking about that gets in the way of the action. It's possible, but it's not convenient, and for a bunch of guys in caves making pistols with their bare hands, convenience is everything.

 

[guntotingtomcat]

There is no logical reason for anyone to ever use a nuclear weapon ever.
We don't bomb civilians any more.

'But what if a terrorist gets one?'

What of it? Would we bomb his home country? Killing millions of innocents and risking global annihilation, probably not even killing the guy who bombed us.

Seriously, I don't think anyone hates the west enough to nuke it, and even if they did, there is no moral justification for killing innocents by way of revenge.

 

[Grand_Arcana]

Not really sure on that one, I mean if you really want to kill millions of people there are much cheaper ways of doing it, so even if no one had nukes there's still the other 2 of the unholy triumvirate of WMDs to make everybody very dead, nukes are just the most impressive.

But anyways...I suppose if we could get through the cold war without turning the planet to ash we can probably manage it now. Mind you it will be intersting to see how things go in the future when more countries develope Nukes. Some I'm sure will just have them as an insurance policy against invasion but what happens when smaller countries with nukes start dicking around? Do we just go back to war by proxy as in the cold war or will we just say fuck it, not much we can do, they've got nukes? Call their bluff? Limited conventional engagement but never being able to deal a killer blow because they might decide to spoilsport? I imagine after seeing what happened to Saddam Hussein that's what most leaders of that ilk would do. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now.

Simply move to cyber war. What good is a nuke if none of your planes, ships, submarines, and launching pads can fire them? The Army as we know it is soon to be obsolete, if it isn't already. Hell, I'd even wager that nukes will be obsolete as deterrents in a couple years.

*facepalm*

Do you have any idea how much CARE is taken to build ONE American warship? They hire one crew for one part, another crew for another part and so on. This way one engineer can't have supreme knowledge over the entire project and cuts down on espionage. Hell the engineers even state that they have no idea what is under those tarps they place on "top secret machines" and they are instructed to install a machine without lifting the tarp to see what's under it (a documentary actually covered this). An American warship is basically a moving symbol of government paranoia that all of their engineers are spies. Not only are the builds of the ship kept secret, but the system itself is closed off from the internet. Even then the government uses obscure languages, etc to ensure no one can use it against them. This system is used in attack dogs for the government so the enemy cant issue a command to control the dog.

The notion that anyone can walk into a warship or hack it to launch or disable nukes is just Hollywood magic, something that only happens in movies with bad plots so they can have an excuse to add more explosions.

Well, you've thoroughly kicked my ass. . .

 

[verindae]

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Whilst it's fair and accurate to point out that the Triple Entente / Triple Alliance situation was a good deal more complicated than the supposed stalemate of 2 opposing forces, I was trying to convey a sense, admittedly by a somewhat inaccurate historical generalisation, that the M.A.D theory people have about nuclear weapons does not preclude their use.

If there's a better analogy to draw please point it out because I can't think of one for the life of me