Will there be a nuclear strike in your lifetime?

[Anomalocaris]

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50% of people here think there will be a nuclear strike in their lifetime. Seems like something you should think about at least a little.

Meh, I don't have that long to live. Priorities my boy, priorities.

I think there is much higher chance you will see a nuclear strike within your lifetime than you will die from a car accident, a plane crash, or a natural disaster.

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Any position I could take on this would seem.to be based on either wishful thinking or bias against the current administration.

I certainly hope that insanity doesn't rule the day.

The US isn't the only one to have nuclear weapons. North Korea has them, Pakistan has them, the former Soviet Union doesn't even have them all accounted for. Trump or not, I'd say chances are better that a country not the US uses them first.

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OP: this is so far off my radar of every day life concerns that I don't really care.

50% of people here think there will be a nuclear strike in their lifetime. Seems like something you should think about at least a little.

The us may not be the only country to have nuclear weapons, but the US is the only country that is likely to think it has such geopolitical and technological advantage that if it were to use nuclear weapons, it would be spare of the consequences that all other nuclear powers can count on to suffer if they were to use it.

It is no secret that the US had been prepared to use nuclear weapons on a number of occasions during the last 70 years explicitly before the opponent has used nuclear weapons, or when the opponent didn't even have nuclear weapons, and at a time when the US homeland is in no way threatened at all.

The first clear example was in Korea.  The US was prepared to nuke the Chinese should china drive UN forces out of Korea when china didn't have nuclear weapon nor had in any way threatened any territory or possession of the US.  The second obvious one was during operation Desert Storm, when the US explicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq if iraq used Chemical weapons against coalition forces, even though Iraq had no nuclear weapons and posed no threat to the US, US possessions, or any real US allies.

I think no other nuclear power is likely to use nuclear weapons unless its home territory is directly threatened, or in the case of North Korea if the regime's survival is in grave danger, or if nuclear weapons have first been used against it.

This comes back to my original assessment that the US is the only power in the world that is likely to use nuclear weapons electively as a tactical asset, even when its home territory, its possessions, or its truly key allies are not under threat,  as oppose to the ultimate weapon of very last resort either because of existential threat to homeland, or as a response to nuclear weapon having been used first against its forces.

This is because the US is unique in having a doctrine to win a nuclear war during the Cold War, and has the nuclear and conventional propounderance to insulate itself from the consequences in most nuclear release scenarios against a lesser power in the post Cold War scenario.