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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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That seems like a ridiculous number of nuclear munitions. Like why so many?
I recall hearing something about real arms reduction making nuclear war seem like a sane, viable option.
The theory is that we’re safer if all sides know they can completely annihilate each other. No world leaders genuinely want nuclear war (despite what they say, threaten, or imply), so nobody launches a nuke. Flaw - that theory assumes all leaders are sane and rational.
"The theory"... You make it sound like MAD is some obscure fact. I so hope that is not the case. But maybe.... Fuck....
I’m not trying to. This was MANY years ago, so I’m being cautious (perhaps overly so) with the wording.
The US and the USSR engaged in a race to have the most nukes. After the fall of the Sowjet Union international treaties were put in place to reduce the number of nukes in both east and west.
Don't quote me, but if I remember correctly, at the height of the cold war, both sides had more than 12.000 nukes each.
Humanity had enough fire power to delete the entire globe roughly 40x over then. Why? Because bigger is better.
That's dumb. They didn't do it just for shits and giggles. They did it because in a nuclear exchange, you only get one shot so you need to overwhelm your opponent's defenses.
Partially yes, but there's an even more mundane reason; with nuclear weapons, if the other side has 5, you need 6: five to destroy their five, and one to destroy their capital. But when they discover that, they'll decide that they need seven: 6 to destroy your 6, and one to destroy your capital. Add in some uncertainty to that feedback loop, and an arms race immediately becomes an exponential curve moderated only by the amount of time production takes and the amount of resources each nation is willing to commit at any given time.
There's a very real way in which the proliferation of arms is, itself, an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
So that even if 99% fail or get shot down, 65 cities are still turned to ash.
MAD theory and both sides realize that nuke silos are targets for nuke weapons so they had "extras" because everyone knows some won't leave the tube.
Imagine your opponent gets the jump on you in some massive way. Your land based nukes have to launch from somewhere and the enemy is pointing to every one they have sussed out.
You want to still get a meaningful # in the air if the worst happens
The existence of this post (and its title in particular) might give you a clue..
I'm guessing you've never heard of mutually assured destruction
Also, we tested quite a few of them
https://youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY?si=_MiOV_9xD3x4Sa1H
This video is so disturbing, every time. Every detonation is an implied threat, a political message, a promise of violence, a show of power. Every detonation is an environmental catastrophe, a long-term cost that we're still paying, both in the collection and refining of the nuclear material and in the detonation. Every detonation is an economic burden, human time and effort spent making a tool that only makes destruction. The US effectively bankrupted the USSR with this competition.
The systemic cost of the whole thing is just mind-boggling. There's really only one silver lining that I see. Humanity had access to a terrifying new weapon, the power to wipe itself out really. And we didn't do it. At the time of highest ignorance, when very few people in the entire world really understood how bad it could be, and when political tensions were high, we did a lot of posturing but we didn't actually do the worst we could have.
It could have been so much worse, and we (collectively) chose not to make it that way. I do find some comfort in that.
A personal crackpot theory that is almost certainly wrong, is that aliens heard the emissions from these blasts and came to investigate wtf was going on. Physically impossible but still comes to mind everytime I see this.
Because it's a hell of a deterrent. If we strategically destroy 99% of the arsenal they're still capable of effectively wiping out any adversary.
There's a reason we haven't been in a shooting war with Russia.