Poll: Would it be right to fight back in a Nuclear War senerio?

[fulano]

You don't purpose nukes the same way you do ICBMs, and you only need roughly 50 nuclear detonations (much, much less than the current quantity of existing stockpiles) to royally fuck up the entire planet and plunge it into a nuclear winter.

And where did you get this number exactly? www.embracethechildren.org? www.earthliberationfront.org mayhaps? Oh, wait, you're just fusing bits and pieces of what you've heard somewhere together, and adding numbers you made up to make it sound like reality.

The us has reported 1054 tests
ussr: 715
france: 210
uk: 45
china: 45
india 6
pakistan 6
noko: 2ish

There were about 140 or so nuclear tests in 1961 alone.

The true underground tests, which result in negligible fallout, didn't get in vogue until a little later, so a lot of those early tests in the 40s - 60s were aboveground and ground-level tests. Ground level tests generate the most fallout , but nuclear powers like america and russia have no interest in really blasting the bajeezus out of eachother and irradiating the countryside, as the nuclear strikes are really designed to destroy the will of the other side and make occupation possible.

But of course, for the most part no one who posts on threads like this seems to know any actual details about:

-How nuclear (sorry, nucular) weapons work
-How they are used
-their capabilities
-their history
-what fallout is
-where fallout comes from

and as a result you get a bunch of goons who listen to long discredited propaganda-- like nuclear winter-- and the result is that a lot of myths and misinformation get propogated.

I have no patience for myths or misinformation.

It's all in the payload, my friend, pay-load. Do you seriously believe that the world can withstand modern day nukes like it is nothing? Again, what were the payloads of those bombs. Also, care to give the locations and date of the detonation? If you nuke the shit out of an urban area you are more likely to get more smoke than if you nuke a test site.

I'm not a goon, so don't try to be a smartass with me. I am a physics student and am about to finish my thesis and apply for a masters degree shortly so back off and stop being patronizing like you just have all the info and i possibly cannot. You don't even know me.

You can feel free to say whatever you want but don't go guns blazing with your numbers if you don't know what they stand for.

50 nukes the size of the one used in Hiroshima would cast the equivalent 50 megatons of black smoke into the air. As the smoke is lifted high all the way into the stratosphere the winds would transport it around the world and there you have it, and that's not even accounting for nuclear fallout.

So what? Am I lying in an effort to one-up you? Is my intention to spread disinformation? The calculations have already been made, and if you don't like it then too bad.

140 small nuclear explosions in select test sites(specifically chosen to reduce fallout) just ain't the same as 50 Fatmans in cities in the span of days.

Give me a break.

Any nation that gets nuked will nuke back if they have the capability. Of course it's the right thing to do! There's not much else to do when millions of your countrymens' lives are on the line. There's nothing wrong with force being met with equal force when it comes to warfare and international politics. Conventional warfare is not much of an option when your opponent can simply press a button and make everything you have disappear, but rather it only becomes an option after the nuclear exchange and the crucial targets are eliminated.

The WORLD is more important. Sorry, but pagmatism is a *****. The question of this topic is whether it would be the right thing to do or not. And it ain't. I rather lose than win and live in a nuclear wasteland.

 

[furnatic]

If nukes are launched at America, then we've already failed in the primary mission of nuclear deterrence. Therefore, regardless of whether or not it's wrong, the secondary mission must be carried out. A swift, devastating, retaliatory strike. I'm a Missile Technician, so I work with Trident II missiles and if need be, take part in the launch. It's something I hope to the gods I never have to do, but if ordered, I will do it.

Isn't the Trident II designed to be fired from an Ohio class submarine?

Yes

Wow... Not many people can claim to work with nuclear missiles for a living. I hope you never have take part in a real launch (although I'm sure they drill you to death). Although firing a missile from the safety of a submarine a few hundred meters below the waves is the way to go. There is almost no fear of retaliation in a sub.

Drawback is there would be no point to going home after the launch. Pretty much everything I know would be gone.

 

[Fallswhale]

..umm couldn't we just shoot the nukes down, we have that kind of technology just google "the star wars program" it's an anti missle defense system being built with satellites it's awesome.

Bad news is that the closest we have got to the "star wars program" being successful is a maybe 30% patriot anti missle system and the often pointed out plane with a giant fricken laser attached to it. Almost as good a waste of money as the T.A.R.P. program. Then again it's not like I have any ideas where to spend it.

 

[Sparcrypt]

Would I fire back? Yes. Would it be right? No.

Because it's much smarter to leave the people who would fire such things in the first place alive and well for the rest of the world to have to deal with.

Take them down so at least noone else has to.

 

[OuroborosChoked]

This is actually a really interesting question, though it might be better phrased as: Is nuclear retaliation moral?

I've never actually thought about this, and I thank you for bringing it up. I guess I've always just assumed that mutually assured destruction is deterrent enough to prevent nuclear war from ever happening... so I never thought about the, "Well, what if it did, though?" scenario.

My first instinct is to say that it's not moral to retaliate with nuclear weapons and force a pyrrhic victory. If both sides are obliterated, neither side suffers the consequences of nuclear war: neither side will be able to bear the responsibility.

It's kinda like two guys dueling with machine guns in a crowded mall. It's pretty much a guarantee that they'll kill each other... but how many others will they injure or kill with them?

My answer... if you're going to fight, keep it between yourselves. Nuclear weapons can't do that. War, in and of itself, is immoral... but nuclear weapons are beyond immoral.

 

[ElephantGuts]

I must say I think I'd retaliate. If a full-scale nuclear attack was launched, the world is already fucked over pretty bad. Whoever does something like that needs to be stood up to, they don't get to win just because they cared less about the well-being of the planet. It's worth it to make the world that much worse if it means stopping them.

 

[NJ]

Say, North Korea goes apeshit and nukes the living bujesus out of say the US coastal cities and their lovable but not so lovable for NK brother South Korea - Logical step would be to see the US government go John Wayne-meets-John McClane and yell out an action hero one-line;

"NUKE THE BASTARDS! WE'LL GIVE 'EM A NUCLEAR WINTER TO 'MEMBER! *insane cackle*" and force Asia to cope with a nuclear winter, should they use something bigger than e.g. tactical nukes. All of this ending with American and UN country newspapers opening with "JACKPOT! *photo of nuke* ... Watch 'em glow in the dark ".

Hmm, sounds a bit like Dr. Strangelove. Correction, nuke them back and let a very patriotic man horseback ride the nuke while laughing.

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

Well, if a nuclear missile was shot at my country, first thing I would do is shoot it down. Next, I would take a missile cock and shove it up the other country's ass!

If you chose "I'd let them win, victory comes at too high a price" then your probably French!

I apologize to any French citizens who are reading this, I hear that the French are really clean and love their country more then the Americans do!

 

[thiosk]

It's all in the payload, my friend, pay-load. Do you seriously believe that the world can withstand modern day nukes like it is nothing? Again, what were the payloads of those bombs. Also, care to give the locations and date of the detonation? If you nuke the shit out of an urban area you are more likely to get more smoke than if you nuke a test site.

I'm not a goon, so don't try to be a smartass with me. I am a physics student and am about to finish my thesis and apply for a masters degree shortly so back off and stop being patronizing like you just have all the info and i possibly cannot. You don't even know me. Give me a break.

You are being a goon, spreading made-up numbers and pseudoscientific nonsense like the spectre of nuclear winter. And, you are acting like your pre-BS in physics means you are an authority on nuclear munitions. I'm completing my phD so no, im not impressed by your highschool diploma, or your fancy ability to separate the sylables of words to bully a point.

Do check up on what the pay-loads of those weapons were.

--The largest detonations in history were dropped in the 1960s. Nine-teen-six-tees.

You see, it has to do with tactics. In the 40s, we just were not that good at building weapons. So they got bigger and better. But the delivery method is an airplane. Airplanes can be shot down, and can't always penetrate defenses. So you need to maximize the destructive potential of all the bombers with the hope of eliminating targets from many kilometers away.

And thats why in 1961, the russians dropped the tsar bomba from a high altitude bomber. The bomb was designed to be 100 megatons, but was pared down to 50 because actually setting off the 100 megatons was considered crazy, even by soviet standards. This weapon broke windows in finland, nearly 1000 kilometers away. The US serviced weapons more along the lines of 15 megatons, and properly detonated air blasts of those weapons spread fallout for about 250 miles. Check out the bikini atoll tests.

Anyhoo, with the advent of ICBMs that could strike with an accuracy 500 meters, it no longer makes sense to lob the big bombs. Not that they can lob the big big bombs at the tip of a missile. Modern MIRV style ICBMs generally contain several sub megaton bombs for taking out things like enemy missile silos and things like that. The united states military currently uses the minuteman icbms, which carry about 1\2 megaton warheads.

I'm sure we CAN fire bigger missiles, but those are generally dinosaurs are are no longer militarily relavent.

Theres also about a gajillion pages one could write on WHERE you set off the missile. Airblasts at the proper altitude maximize damage and minimize fallout. Below that altitude they kick up more dust, lower the effective blast radius, and increase fallout. Using weapons at ground level would only be for attempting to destroy hardened targets like underground bunkers.

Don't spread misinformation, the general public is dumb enough.

This is actually a really interesting question, though it might be better phrased as: Is nuclear retaliation moral?

Jesus would tell us to turn the other cheek.
I'm going to turn it to shield my eyes from the flash of light! *insane cackle*

 

[DerpyDerpyDerp]

I'd launch them. They are the ones at fault for launching/threatening to launch the assault in the first place.

 

[Zosephine]

The WORLD is more important. Sorry, but pragmatism is a *****. The question of this topic is whether it would be the right thing to do or not. And it ain't. I rather lose than win and live in a nuclear wasteland.

qft. I do not want vindictiveness to spell the end of humanity.

 

[fulano]

It's all in the payload, my friend, pay-load. Do you seriously believe that the world can withstand modern day nukes like it is nothing? Again, what were the payloads of those bombs. Also, care to give the locations and date of the detonation? If you nuke the shit out of an urban area you are more likely to get more smoke than if you nuke a test site.

I'm not a goon, so don't try to be a smartass with me. I am a physics student and am about to finish my thesis and apply for a masters degree shortly so back off and stop being patronizing like you just have all the info and i possibly cannot. You don't even know me. Give me a break.

You are being a goon, spreading made-up numbers and pseudoscientific nonsense like the spectre of nuclear winter. And, you are acting like your pre-BS in physics means you are an authority on nuclear munitions. I'm completing my phD so no, im not impressed by your highschool diploma, or your fancy ability to separate the sylables of words to bully a point.

Do check up on what the pay-loads of those weapons were.

--The largest detonations in history were dropped in the 1960s. Nine-teen-six-tees.

You see, it has to do with tactics. In the 40s, we just were not that good at building weapons. So they got bigger and better. But the delivery method is an airplane. Airplanes can be shot down, and can't always penetrate defenses. So you need to maximize the destructive potential of all the bombers with the hope of eliminating targets from many kilometers away.

And thats why in 1961, the russians dropped the tsar bomba from a high altitude bomber. The bomb was designed to be 100 megatons, but was pared down to 50 because actually setting off the 100 megatons was considered crazy, even by soviet standards. This weapon broke windows in finland, nearly 1000 kilometers away. The US serviced weapons more along the lines of 15 megatons, and properly detonated air blasts of those weapons spread fallout for about 250 miles. Check out the bikini atoll tests.

Anyhoo, with the advent of ICBMs that could strike with an accuracy 500 meters, it no longer makes sense to lob the big bombs. Not that they can lob the big big bombs at the tip of a missile. Modern MIRV style ICBMs generally contain several sub megaton bombs for taking out things like enemy missile silos and things like that. The united states military currently uses the minuteman icbms, which carry about 1\2 megaton warheads.

I'm sure we CAN fire bigger missiles, but those are generally dinosaurs are are no longer militarily relavent.

Theres also about a gajillion pages one could write on WHERE you set off the missile. Airblasts at the proper altitude maximize damage and minimize fallout. Below that altitude they kick up more dust, lower the effective blast radius, and increase fallout. Using weapons at ground level would only be for attempting to destroy hardened targets like underground bunkers.

Don't spread misinformation, the general public is dumb enough.

This is actually a really interesting question, though it might be better phrased as: Is nuclear retaliation moral?

Jesus would tell us to turn the other cheek.
I'm going to turn it to shield my eyes from the flash of light! *insane cackle*

Good for your PhD, and too bad that my silly highschool diploma or my ability to separate syllabes does not impress you in the slightest enough to bully you into submission. By the way, in what exactly are you getting your PhD, then? Because now you've made me curious, is it physics perhaps? Because if you do then this is gonna get really interesting.

You mistake the fact that I consider myself cultured anough to hold my own in a conversation for arrogance, and too bad for me because that's not the case and now you are making assumptions that clearly will lead us nowhere. I should add that I was merely pointing to you rather correctly that you don't know shit about me. And besides, whether you are Einstein and I'm Joe hobo in comparison matters little because we are not hitting each other with hard science, but that can quickly change if you are up to it.

If I'm a goon then there are lots of goons with me in the scientific community, and as far as I've checked there must be quite a lot on your side too, those being the proponents of the "nuclear autumn."

What you just wrote, sadly, doesn't even come close to disproving anything of what I stated and comes off as a straw man argument about tactics and not consequences.

Yes, I'm aware of the Tsar Bomba and the enrgy discharges, thank you very much, and I'm also aware of the fact that we don't need to lob huge payload bombs and can use low yield ICBMs, etc. And so what?

What exactly are you trying to say outwardly, then? Is it that the numerous detonations of nuclear weapons over the surface of the earth albeit of a low yield are bad but not nearly as bad as if we use big ones, or if we use the appropriate heigh parameters. Is that what you mean? Because you're not alone in that. For an approximation just look up the proponents of the "nuclear autumn" which I'm sure you are aware of.

It matters little if said missiles are loaded with a small payload and you give guarantee after guarantee that the newer missiles are just so much better. If you are gonna launch a shitload of them, and in urban areas, no less, you are gonna get a hot mess of smoke. Just how many kilotons is enough when two countries are at war? how do you keep that in check?

So, is nuclear winter a hoax? Check the damn link.

There we go, an article as close as july 6 of 2007 for you to digest: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

Because until you do better, I'm siding with the guys that wrote that article I just linked at.

Again, if your head is not beyond having an argument against my highschool diploma, then let's do this thing. If you wanna call me a goon then prove me one.

PD: Don't mistake my overall snide tone for me not being happy for you PhD because that's not the case, but still, I'm damn annoyed at you.

 

[KaiusCormere]

I would launch. The undeserved death of millions of my countrymen demands it. The end of the world is better than a world governed by the tyranny of those murderers that fired first.

 

[Brett Alex]

If he was dumb enough to launch FIRST, then no. That is an impossibility.

Is he dumb as well as evil now? Its entirely possible that things have got so tense that another country has launched because they reckon you're about to, so they try to pre-empt you. It was one of the major issues of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

[thiosk]

It took me a bit to dig through that longwinded computational climate paper. Not my discipline.

What you just wrote, sadly, doesn't even come close to disproving anything of what I stated and comes off as a straw man argument about tactics and not consequences.

Actually, the article does a nice job stating my very point. From the article:

Roughly 150 Tg would be
emitted by the use of the entire current global nuclear
arsenal, with 5000 Mt explosive power, about 95% of
which is in the arsenals of the United States and Russia
(Table 2), and 50 Tg would be emitted by the use of 1/3 of
the current nuclear arsenal.

Table 2. Approximate Number of Nuclear Weapons in the Arsenals of Different Countriesa
Country Number of Weapons
Russia 10,000
United States 10,000
France 350
China 200
Britain 200
Israel 75-200
India 40-50
Pakistan <50
North Korea <15

We use a modern climate model to reexamine the climate response to a range of nuclear wars,
producing 50 and 150 Tg of smoke, using moderate and large portions of the current
global arsenal, and find that there would be significant climatic responses to all the
scenarios. ... The response to the 150 Tg scenario can still be characterized as ??nuclear
winter, but both produce global catastrophic consequences.

And you said,

You don't purpose nukes the same way you do ICBMs, and you only need roughly 50 nuclear detonations (much, much less than the current quantity of existing stockpiles) to royally fuck up the entire planet and plunge it into a nuclear winter.

And I got pissed off, because the very paper you linked says it would take more than 20,000 nuclear weapons detonated in anger to trigger a true or near-true nuclear winter, with the caveat that serious global-scale problems could result from 1\3 that number.

And yes, I got rather irritated with you, because 50 is not 1\3 of 20,000, even considering internets hyperbole.

What exactly are you trying to say outwardly, then? Is it that the numerous detonations of nuclear weapons over the surface of the earth albeit of a low yield are bad but not nearly as bad as if we use big ones, or if we use the appropriate heigh parameters. Is that what you mean? Because you're not alone in that. For an approximation just look up the proponents of the "nuclear autumn" which I'm sure you are aware of.

No, I'm just saying that fallout concerns are generally massivly overexagerated, and that 50 nuclear weapon detonations will not cause nuclear winter. I already addressed the pay-load issue in the previous post, by stating that current bomb payloads are much smaller than their 1961 counterparts.

Finally, the reason I get so irritated by exagerations, hyperbole, and misinformation with respect to nuclear energy and weapons is that such statements simply help to solidify public opinion against anything nuclear. The general public couldn't even handle the original name for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because it had "nuclear" in the name. "I AIN'T GON BE GETTIN UP IN NO NUKE MACHINE, DOCTOR MAN!"

PD: Don't mistake my overall snide tone for me not being happy for you PhD because that's not the case, but still, I'm damn annoyed at you.

I was snide and annoyed as well, just as I got snide and annoyed by a similar thread last night, also on the topic of nuclear arms. I try my best to correct incorrect details, as that is where the devil is, and then I ticked you off, and your response only ticked me off further.

I always appreciate getting linked a peer-reviewed journal article, though, and thats the first time i've seen THAT on this board.

So, if you will agree with me that irrational fears of nuclear everything are irrational, and that it would take far, far more than 50 service warheads exploding to initiate global consequences, I will agree with you that nuclear weapons are not safe for use in playgrounds (as my posts sometimes insinuate) and there are dire consequences to their use... because they are nukes after all.

And I hope to earn the phD in chemistry before 2010 is out.

 

[Brett Alex]

I would launch. The undeserved death of millions of my countrymen demands it. The end of the world is better than a world governed by the tyranny of those murderers that fired first.

If the US had launched first to pre-empt a Russian launch in the Cuban Missile Crisis, would that count as tyranny?

 

[KaiusCormere]

if the US launched first and I was a russian you bet your ass i'd have launched, and felt just the same.

I think that if we launched first, our leaders have condemned us to death, and honestly if the other side didn't fire back that we should probably execute the people who launched pre-emptively and authorized it just on principle, apologized to the whole world and poured all our efforts to helping the Russian people.

you don't launch first! it's completely not ok - it's signing your people's death warrant.

 

[fulano]

It took me a bit to dig through that longwinded computational climate paper. Not my discipline.

What you just wrote, sadly, doesn't even come close to disproving anything of what I stated and comes off as a straw man argument about tactics and not consequences.

Actually, the article does a nice job stating my very point. From the article:

Roughly 150 Tg would be
emitted by the use of the entire current global nuclear
arsenal, with 5000 Mt explosive power, about 95% of
which is in the arsenals of the United States and Russia
(Table 2), and 50 Tg would be emitted by the use of 1/3 of
the current nuclear arsenal.

Table 2. Approximate Number of Nuclear Weapons in the Arsenals of Different Countriesa
Country Number of Weapons
Russia 10,000
United States 10,000
France 350
China 200
Britain 200
Israel 75-200
India 40-50
Pakistan <50
North Korea <15

We use a modern climate model to reexamine the climate response to a range of nuclear wars,
producing 50 and 150 Tg of smoke, using moderate and large portions of the current
global arsenal, and find that there would be significant climatic responses to all the
scenarios. ... The response to the 150 Tg scenario can still be characterized as ??nuclear
winter, but both produce global catastrophic consequences.

And you said,

You don't purpose nukes the same way you do ICBMs, and you only need roughly 50 nuclear detonations (much, much less than the current quantity of existing stockpiles) to royally fuck up the entire planet and plunge it into a nuclear winter.

And I got pissed off, because the very paper you linked says it would take more than 20,000 nuclear weapons detonated in anger to trigger a true or near-true nuclear winter, with the caveat that serious global-scale problems could result from 1\3 that number.

And yes, I got rather irritated with you, because 50 is not 1\3 of 20,000, even considering internets hyperbole.

What exactly are you trying to say outwardly, then? Is it that the numerous detonations of nuclear weapons over the surface of the earth albeit of a low yield are bad but not nearly as bad as if we use big ones, or if we use the appropriate heigh parameters. Is that what you mean? Because you're not alone in that. For an approximation just look up the proponents of the "nuclear autumn" which I'm sure you are aware of.

No, I'm just saying that fallout concerns are generally massivly overexagerated, and that 50 nuclear weapon detonations will not cause nuclear winter. I already addressed the pay-load issue in the previous post, by stating that current bomb payloads are much smaller than their 1961 counterparts.

Finally, the reason I get so irritated by exagerations, hyperbole, and misinformation with respect to nuclear energy and weapons is that such statements simply help to solidify public opinion against anything nuclear. The general public couldn't even handle the original name for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because it had "nuclear" in the name. "I AIN'T GON BE GETTIN UP IN NO NUKE MACHINE, DOCTOR MAN!"

PD: Don't mistake my overall snide tone for me not being happy for you PhD because that's not the case, but still, I'm damn annoyed at you.

I was snide and annoyed as well, just as I got snide and annoyed by a similar thread last night, also on the topic of nuclear arms. I try my best to correct incorrect details, as that is where the devil is, and then I ticked you off, and your response only ticked me off further.

I always appreciate getting linked a peer-reviewed journal article, though, and thats the first time i've seen THAT on this board.

So, if you will agree with me that irrational fears of nuclear everything are irrational, and that it would take far, far more than 50 service warheads exploding to initiate global consequences, I will agree with you that nuclear weapons are not safe for use in playgrounds (as my posts sometimes insinuate) and there are dire consequences to their use... because they are nukes after all.

And I hope to earn the phD in chemistry before 2010 is out.

Okay, dude, I still will have to disagree a wee bit with you in that fear of nuclear everything is irrational, BUT, I'll admit that I fucked up, yes, you read that right, I indeed wrote that.

And what did I fuck up with? I mixed in a single sentence the quantity of bombs needed to cause the nuclear winter with those needed to just fuck up with the environment. I had a stupid lapsus and ended up writing that, and I have no real excuse other than the fact that I wanted to write something clever about how you don't need a lot of nukes to fuck things up and it backfired(horribly). But still, the article I think does agree with my overall point when speaking in the context of a nuclear war, climate change, and the threath of a nuclear winter(how's that for a segway?). And other than the horrid number you corrected I'm not spreading disinformation.

I'll quote from the article. It states:

Prompted by the recent work of Toon et al. [2007] and
Robock et al. [2007], who showed that a regional nuclear
conflict using 100 Hiroshima-size (15 kt) nuclear weapons,
only 0.03% of the explosive power of the current global
arsenal, would produce climate change unprecedented in
human history, we revisit the nuclear winter issue with a
modern climate model.

Some critics of previous nuclear winter results
suggested that once uncertainties were addressed, the
severity of the results would decrease. Because of the
use of the term ??nuclear autumn?? by Thompson and
Schneider [1986], even though the authors made clear that
the climatic consequences would be large, in policy circles
the theory of nuclear winter is considered by some to have
been exaggerated and disproved [e.g., Martin, 1988]. So
we are motivated to include simulations of mechanisms
not previously addressed, to see whether prior results
would hold up. However, unknowns by definition are
unknown, and it turns out that not only do we still get a
nuclear winter using the previous baseline case, but that
the climate response is much longer than that of earlier
results, and current nuclear arsenals can still produce a
nuclear winter.

However, the
basic conclusion that a large-scale nuclear conflict would
have devastating climatic consequences is not only supported,
but strengthened.

And, finally:

The major policy implication of nuclear winter was
that a full-scale nuclear attack would produce climatic
effects which would so disrupt the food supply that it would
be suicide for the attacking country [Robock, 1989] and
would also impact noncombatant countries.

There you go. Again, I fucked up, but not so much per se. I still think the article is on my side of things considering the way you portrayed yourself, and I will quote you my good sir.

You said: You are being a goon, spreading made-up numbers and pseudoscientific nonsense like the spectre of nuclear winter.

I did fuck up with the numbers, I'll admit that, but my overall argument about the "spectre of nuclear winter" which was detailed in a further post was spot on and in lieu with the article.

Quoting myself: It matters little if said missiles are loaded with a small payload and you give guarantee after guarantee that the newer missiles are just so much better. If you are gonna launch a shitload of them, and in urban areas, no less, you are gonna get a hot mess of smoke. Just how many kilotons is enough when two countries are at war? how do you keep that in check?

Which is in line with my overall stance when contrasted against yours.

I got pissed because you seemed like a nuclear winter denier(looky, a new term there), even going so far as to say that we could just minimize the damage as if people had reins over themselves during a conflict of that magnitude. But you were right in pointing out the fact that my number was made up(even though you called me a goon, mind you), which it was, because I made a stupid and you did right by pointing that up.

But truth be told, even if we don't cause a nuclear winter, a handful of bombs, as low as 50 or 100(of the proper payload quantities, namely Hiroshima ones or twice as big) are just enough to fuck up the environment and cause a weird and unacounted climate change, even without the threat of nuclear winter still looming, which is what I tried to convey but ended doing rather poorly, and ended focusing solely on the nuclear winter issue, which I shouldn't have.

But I still think you are being reticent to accept the fact that you just don't need 1/3 of the nuclear arsenal to royally fuck things up, and you shouldn't.

Look, I'm not afraid of anything nuclear, in fact, I think nuclear energy in this day and age is underused, and I'm a big proponent of its applications. Yet when it comes to nukes that's when I draw the line and I think the data backs it up. You just shouldn't use nukes because the cost is too high.

PD: Good luck with your PhD, and hopefully thing'll go your way(the world of academia is a *****, sometimes).

So that's it for today. I'm watching Silva vs Franklin and then to sleep. If you have further things to say I'll try to get back at you as soon as I can, but not till I get some sleep.

 

[geldonyetich]

When somebody fires nukes at your country, you fire back. It's given because that's how the nuclear war game is played. You have the nukes on a, "if you're stupid enough to use them against me, I'll use mine against you" condition, and the only thing the warhorses get to bicker over is who has more.

To do otherwise is not the great sparing of life you might think it is. The nuclear war game promotes peace on the level that conquering of any country sufficiently developed to possess nukes is an impossibility because they will use them. Because they will definately use their nukes, this deadlocks the possibility of a world war.

If it weren't for this deadlock, who knows, we might be well into World War 4 right now. Given that there's a lot more people [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Population_figures] and a lot nastier weapons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Anti-personnel_BW] now than there were in the 1940s, the environmental damage of a world war may well be as bad as a nuclear exchange.

Technology has made large scale war far too effective at destroying human life and the planet. Consequently, the goal is currently not to allow tensions to ever rise that high.