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100% disarmament will simply never happen because the country that hides a few nukes while claiming to have none will win if push comes to shove. Best case in t

100% disarmament will simply never happen because the country that hides a few nukes while claiming to have none will win if push comes to shove. Best case in that scenario is every country is hiding nukes which is arguably not a lot better than the status quo. With Russia explicitly nuclear war if other countries interfere in Ukraine, I also don't see any nuclear arms control talks occuring in the near future.

ilaksh 4y ago
I would argue every country hiding a few nukes is better than the current situation with over 13,000 nukes.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I would argue every country hiding a few nukes is better than the current situation with over 13,000 nukes. Not necessarily. Having "a few nukes" means they will almost certainty used against civilian population centers (coutervalue), because that results in more destruction per nuke. If you have more nukes, it may be sufficiently deterring to only attack military targets (couterforce) and kill fewer civilians. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008: > The first scenario that NRDC ran involved a counterforce attack against Russian nuclear forces. They believed this scenario to be close to the one fabricated by Stratcom. Using the most comprehensive levels of targeting for Russian aviation and naval sites, the total number of warheads required by the first NRDC plan was 1,289... The result of the “attack” as detailed in the report... Then the fallout would descend, creating lethal conditions over an area larger than 775,000 square kilometers... casualties would be between 11 and 17 million, of which eight to 12 million would be fatalities. > But what would happen if the United States drastically reduced the number of weapons in its arsenal and abandoned the pretense that one kind of nuclear targeting is more morally acceptable than another? How many nuclear weapons is enough to deter a nuclear attack on the United States, which, according to the NRDC report, is arguably the only reason for continuing to possess nuclear weapons at all? > To illustrate this, NRDC ran nuclear attack scenarios on Russian cities using either 150 single-warhead, silo-based ICBMs or 192 single-warhead, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM's), essentially the load aboard a single fully loaded Trident submarine. The results from either scenario, each using less than 3 percent of current U.S. nuclear forces, resulted in more than 50 million casualties [computed casualties totaled 52 million people, including 49 million deaths].
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    Humans can literally justify anything. It shouldn't be a lot of little ones or a smaller number of big ones. It should be as close to zero as possible. We don't need any studies to figure that out. Replies like yours are why I believe that humans will not be in control of the earth 50 or 100 years from now. It will be much smarter robots. And that will be a good thing.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > Replies like yours are why I believe that humans will not be in control of the earth 50 or 100 years from now. It will be much smarter robots. And that will be a good thing. Eh, I don't think so. Like it or not, it will be the same old humans in control. Science fiction won't be our salvation.

ilaksh 4y ago

I would argue every country hiding a few nukes is better than the current situation with over 13,000 nukes.

tablespoon 4y ago
> I would argue every country hiding a few nukes is better than the current situation with over 13,000 nukes. Not necessarily. Having "a few nukes" means they will almost certainty used against civilian population centers (coutervalue), because that results in more destruction per nuke. If you have more nukes, it may be sufficiently deterring to only attack military targets (couterforce) and kill fewer civilians. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008: > The first scenario that NRDC ran involved a counterforce attack against Russian nuclear forces. They believed this scenario to be close to the one fabricated by Stratcom. Using the most comprehensive levels of targeting for Russian aviation and naval sites, the total number of warheads required by the first NRDC plan was 1,289... The result of the “attack” as detailed in the report... Then the fallout would descend, creating lethal conditions over an area larger than 775,000 square kilometers... casualties would be between 11 and 17 million, of which eight to 12 million would be fatalities. > But what would happen if the United States drastically reduced the number of weapons in its arsenal and abandoned the pretense that one kind of nuclear targeting is more morally acceptable than another? How many nuclear weapons is enough to deter a nuclear attack on the United States, which, according to the NRDC report, is arguably the only reason for continuing to possess nuclear weapons at all? > To illustrate this, NRDC ran nuclear attack scenarios on Russian cities using either 150 single-warhead, silo-based ICBMs or 192 single-warhead, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM's), essentially the load aboard a single fully loaded Trident submarine. The results from either scenario, each using less than 3 percent of current U.S. nuclear forces, resulted in more than 50 million casualties [computed casualties totaled 52 million people, including 49 million deaths].
- ilaksh 4y ago
  Humans can literally justify anything. It shouldn't be a lot of little ones or a smaller number of big ones. It should be as close to zero as possible. We don't need any studies to figure that out. Replies like yours are why I believe that humans will not be in control of the earth 50 or 100 years from now. It will be much smarter robots. And that will be a good thing.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Replies like yours are why I believe that humans will not be in control of the earth 50 or 100 years from now. It will be much smarter robots. And that will be a good thing. Eh, I don't think so. Like it or not, it will be the same old humans in control. Science fiction won't be our salvation.