Scared of Nukes....why?

Nukes are an empty threat, no nation is stupid enough to use them, sure there are close calls, what's the point of demolishing your enemy if your going to get crushed after 30 seconds of relishing in there defeat...

Oh no nukes are coming, everyone get under your desk...

There is no reason to be scared, WW3 will not break out anytime soon. lol Titor, the US is having a civil war, Ok russia they are occupied they won't notice the 15 nukes coming....yah that makes sense. Russia would still get pounded, they wont do it. Its just a fear tactic.

If it does happen, I'll be the one on the roof laughing as my hair falls out.

Terrorists with nukes ... watched any good movies lately?

Yeh, we don't usually see Terrorists or Private Military companies with nukes, but if a terrorist cell got hold of one then everyone should be scared...

The US wasn't afraid to use them during the WW2. Who wou;dn't be afriad to use one? I mean launching at least 2 nukes will get an entire country to surrender. Just like in Japan.

Terrorists getting them is always a possibility, that is what I think most people are afraid of.

Nukes won't reall be used unless a terrorist cell gets ahold of one (or more), or at the start/duing/end of the next world war...

Originally posted by CookieMonster000
The US wasn't afraid to use them during the WW2. Who wou;dn't be afriad to use one? I mean launching at least 2 nukes will get an entire country to surrender. Just like in Japan.

Japan didn't have nukes. Launch two at Russia, see if they surrender.

Originally posted by _BLiND_
Nukes are an empty threat, no nation is stupid enough to use them, sure there are close calls, what's the point of demolishing your enemy if your going to get crushed after 30 seconds of relishing in there defeat...

Oh no nukes are coming, everyone get under your desk...

There is no reason to be scared, WW3 will not break out anytime soon. lol Titor, the US is having a civil war, Ok russia they are occupied they won't notice the 15 nukes coming....yah that makes sense. Russia would still get pounded, they wont do it. Its just a fear tactic.

If it does happen, I'll be the one on the roof laughing as my hair falls out.

Terrorists with nukes ... watched any good movies lately?

As Nicole Kidman said the the peacekeepers (a a pretty good movie) "I'm not afraid of those who want 10 warheads - I'm scared to death of the person who only wants 1"

You should be scared of nukes. Utterly astonishing that anyone would have to say this.

The main collar on nuclear war is Deterrence. This is where your enemy is convinced that retaliation will result in their destruction, ergo do not launch. Deterrence is mathematically infinite in a military planner's mind. In reality however, it is eroded by factors such as 1: Irrationality, and 2: Decision-Making. For example, we assume in deterrence theory that Hitler would be rational and not _want_ Berlin to be flattened in retaliatory strikeage. Sometimes this idea fails (as in Hitler's case). An example of Deterrence failing due to decision-making would be where the joint chiefs or whomever do not have sufficient time or circumstance to correctly evaluate the threat and therefore decide to launch, just to be sure. Deterrence-Pure is eroded by these two factors.

There are other collars on nuclear use related to Civility of nations. The primary four components of Civility are 1: Moral ("It is wrong to kill. Societal norms have established this") 2: Friendship ("I would certainly never kill friends. If others are sufficiently friendly, I will not kill.") 3: War-Weariness ("I am not disposed to the idea of fighting. I wish to compromise and simply find peace at any level.") 4: Absolute-Controls ("Nuclear weapons are automated. The decision is out of our hands entirely."). Any of these four factors (together comprising 'Civility') could fail, but ALL of them must fail for Civility to fail, if you follow.

So the two primary collars or restraints on nuclear warfare are Deterrence and Civility. The great thing about these is that there has to be a point where they ALL fail. There has to be a moment where morality, friendship, war-weariness and deterrence all break down for a nuclear launch to occur. Reasoning that such a moment is unlikely, we could safely relax for twenty more years or whatever and not worry (unless we happen to care about the world our children/grandchildren will inhabit).

Unfortunately, nuclear use due to accident is much more likely. accidental usage does not have any of the restraints mentioned in the factors above. In fact, it's worse because accidental usage can come fom a number of fronts. Accidents can and do happen. It was Richard Feynman who called all the NASA scientists out regarding their failure projections in regard to the shuttle. "approaching 99.9%" was essentialy what he heard from them. They had no concept of statistal analysis of failure in relation to systems. The Challenger did not have to explode. Would the world have been different? Listen to scientists at your peril. Basic statistical math is more reliable.

Accident can come from any of four factors, 1: Command (rogue commander launches his missles without authorization), 2:Control (electronic failure, plane crash w/ nuclear weapons) 3: Communications (false communication of attack resulting in counterattack) and 4: Intelligence (false information of impending attack resulting in counterattack).

If ANY of these factors fails, retaliation can be assumed.

Then realize that these factors are multiplied by the number of participating nuclear nations. Pakistan must preserve levels of reliability in the above-mentioned factors that are equally high as it's global neighbors. If either India or Pakistan fails to correctly understand all of these factors, the results are obvious. Massive pain and death in epoch-ending amounts.

Now imagine nuclear proliferation occurring at its current rate. Brazil, Japan, Saudi Arabia etc. Each of these future nuclear countries would be like another whole set of factors placed upon the back of humanity.

Nuclear proliferation is suicide for everyone, including those rich elites who aim to survive. Unless you brainwash your children too, they will hate you for your actions when you finally open the vault and emerge.

Nuclear weapons protect nothing.

Fear nuclear war.

[All this stuff can be investigated here: www.nukefix.org...]



[edit on 7-1-2005 by smallpeeps]

I'm not scared of nukes because if there is a country that will be it by one of those it will not be mine

The primary target for others countries/terrorist is the united states so why would I be scared

Weird how this thread just died.

Why do we spend our time discussing issues like Democrat vs. Republican when we are all living with a sword of Damocles above our necks?

I have posted elsewhere on ATS about the danger of the "Deterrence Theory" crowd and the statistical odds of failure in regard to the Command, Control, Communications and Information struture designed to prevent an accidental nuclear war.

You should fear nukes. Are we clear on this?

So should we have unilaterally disarmed in front of the Soviet Union? Should we unilaterally disarm now? I think that to be at worst suicidal, and at best irresponsible,, and prone to making our international endeavours more difficult since in the back of everyone's mind the existence of our nuclear weapons make risky moves by our potential adversaries less likely. Great economic powers need great military power, or friends who have great military power, or they will cease to exist when they are overrun for their reasources as they have been throughout history. Try to deny the value of deterrence if you can, but I firmly believe if it were not for our capable nuclear force Western Europe would be communist, Korea would be united under the north, Taiwan would be communist as well. In fact, the Soviet Union, which would have not taken your advice, would have possibly expoited such "weakness" in such a bold move as a first strike, using its nuclear weapons to destroy it's principle capitalistic adversary. Thus I do not fear nukes in our hands or the hands of a country who values the human individual rights as contained in our constitution. Totalitarian despots, religious zealots as embodied by Al Quaeda, Hitler Nazism, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, and all forms of Communism are the most dangerous to have any sharp object, much less nuclear weapons. Indeed, those examples themselves are reasons for the US to have nuclear weapons.
To think otherwise is to be kidding yourselves as to the nature of man, good and evil, and his quest for power, and world history which has proven again and again how these men will return to history periodically, and do anything to gain that power. Anything.

[edit on 17-2-2005 by Cowboy]

So should we have unilaterally disarmed in front of the Soviet Union? Should we unilaterally disarm now?

Unilateral disarmament is not possible at this level of global awareness. We'd just screw it up by overly trusting some leader somewhere.

IMO, nukes represent a global bell which has been rung. The world's people must take the nuclear trigger SECURELY out of the hands of guys like Nixon, Haig, Rummy, Putin, etc.

For example: We could force the banks to give us a system by which a nation's current propensity toward nuclear strike is tabulated on a minute by minute basis. My idea goes like this: Whenever you use your ATM machine, there would also be a screen that'd pop up which asks you to "Please enter your desire for nuclear strike today." and the person could enter a number from 1-100. Over the course of one day's worth of ATM transactions we could have a true picture of what a nation thinks. If anyone's finger slips while typing, their "100" will surely be weighted down by the thousands of other citizens who enter "0" on the keypad.

Such a system would have to be transparent so that we could have certainty of its integrity but speaking as a guy who knows a little about information technology I can tell you it wouldn't be hard.

Banks make a calculated percentage of profit off of all of us year after year. The ATM is essentially the global focus point for all the world's citizens. Why not make the banks assure our safety? Don't they rely on us for their well-being? Fractional reserve banking is of dubious value anyway so why don't we make them give us something real for our money?

You can read my posts on Deterrence Theory in the thread here: Deterrence Theory is a Fraud

[edit on 17-2-2005 by smallpeeps]

I grant you, it is an ideal. We should be free of nuclear weapons in a couple hundred years. I also think that there are enough nutcases out there and totalitarian countries who should have the deterrent, as much as it is worth, and any is good in that case. I would hope that some day we could have no fear of any tyrant, or government which values it's power above the individual rights of the individual.
That day is far away, as much as we are subject to believe today in the west, or the US.
Communists in the Cold WAr believed "history" was the totality and summation of the struggle of "the people" against capitalistic or non-communistic theology. The struggle against capitalism. As it turns out, "history" is the struggle of the rights of the individual against any tyrant, or government, or system like Communism, which claimed to be for the people, but were in the end out just for their perpetualistic power system.
We (the US) are on the side of 'history" . We have a constitution, while not perfect, is the most perfect humanity knows to date.

One hundred years from now this will be all too clear.

Originally posted by Nexus
Yeh, we don't usually see Terrorists or Private Military companies with nukes, but if a terrorist cell got hold of one then everyone should be scared...

the british nuclear re-processing plant at sellafield seems to have miss placed about 20 kelos of plutonium. woops

Bummer.
Looks like some more butt kicking is in order...

[edit on 19-2-2005 by Cowboy]

wait wait...20 Kilos of processed plutonium?!!?!?!?

Welcome to World War III. It's already here... can't wait for the inevitable mushrooms to start a-poppin
Some whack job will sneak one in and vaporize a few hundred thousand people in the name of whatever diety, and then you know the rest of the story.

(btw if a full blown nuke fight breaks out, even the countries that aren't targets can look forward to a nice sprinkling of fallout)

Originally posted by ZetaGundam007
wait wait...20 Kilos of processed plutonium?!!?!?!?

sorry 30 kg.
but it may be a case of sloppy accounting, if you belive UK gov.