Doomsday Clock Advanced Another 2 minutes?

[Anomalocaris]

When trump said the United States has the ability to win any nuclear arms race, and should therefore welcome any challenges to a nuclear race as an desirable opportunity to modernize our nuclear arsenal, was he aware that the loser in the nuclear arms race can still easily and completely erase the United States and the trump property empire from the world map?

Furthermore, defeating ballistic missile defense is far cheaper and easier than maintaining an effective missile defense. Russian retains by far the greatest technical expertise required to defeat US ballistic missile defense, and any outright arms race only magnify the possibility that Russia would disseminate anti- missile shield technology to other states and make the vastly costly and marginally effective US ballistic missile defense not credible even against North Korea and Iran?

[abaris]

That's the usual chest pounding. Although Trump may be too stupid to know that.

But half of my life so far I spent during the cold war, with the Iron curtain just being some 20 miles removed from my home. The rhetoric was always the same, the facts too. I'm not sure how many times over both super powers could destroy earth with their arsenal of madness at the height of their powers. But it's still many times over.

I was a bit concerned over Reagan and his rhetoric, but Reagan wasn't as lose a cannon as this one is. He also didn't surround himself with outright nutjobs but with professionals and the whole republican party was a different entity in the early 80ies.

[LastPoet]

As long as they don't take away the guns. Lol.

[Anomalocaris]

As long as they don't take away the guns. Lol.

Yes, as any NRA member knows, you shoot the neutrons coming to get you from the mushroom clouds with your second amendment rights.

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That's the usual chest pounding. Although Trump may be too stupid to know that.

But half of my life so far I spent during the cold war, with the Iron curtain just being some 20 miles removed from my home. The rhetoric was always the same, the facts too. I'm not sure how many times over both super powers could destroy earth with their arsenal of madness at the height of their powers. But it's still many times over.

I was a bit concerned over Reagan and his rhetoric, but Reagan wasn't as lose a cannon as this one is. He also didn't surround himself with outright nutjobs but with professionals and the whole republican party was a different entity in the early 80ies.

Except during the Cold War, a case can be made on either side that the opposing side represent such an fundamentally inimical world that a severe existential threat to one's own social and economic foundation already exist and nuclear parity actually moderates the threat. Currently the only threat posed by modernization of Russian nuclear arsenal is a minute regional diminution of the proponderant US global influence. Unlike the USSR, Russia has neither the ideology, nor the economic and industrial capability, or indeed the growth potential to ever acquire those capabilities, to follow up its regional gains and parley it into hemispheric, let alone global, power.

In other words trump is prepared to put america's continued existence in jeopardy to sustain what is fundamental unsustainable marginal interests of little consequence to fundamental American interests.

In fact, his statement that NATO members ought to pay for protection advanced russian geopolitical interests far more than ever could unanswered unilateral Russian nuclear modernization.

[Aoi Magi]

Enhanced second amendment:

[Anomalocaris]

Based on publically available information, Russia currently has 4,500 nuclear warheads in storage on deployed,  but retains enough fissile material in storage to build about 30,000 additional warheads.  China has 260 warheads in storage or deployed, but has built up a stockpile of material sufficient for about 1,000 additional warheads.

A Cold War era US study shows a limited strike of 1,000 warheads aimed solely at US strategic military targets would lead to 32 million US civilian casualties. The same sized strike aimed at US population centers will cause 160 million us civilian casualties including 100 million dead.

[abaris]

A Cold War era US study shows a limited strike of 1,000 warheads aimed solely at US strategic military targets would lead to 32 million US civilian casualties.   The same sized strike aimed at US population centers will cause 160 million us civilian casualties including 100 million dead.

I consider these numbers to be too optimistic. Death would roam the land for decades, as it did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Infrastructure would be in meltdown as would the economy. Clean food and water would be hard to come by, and that's only scratching the surface. It could well turn into a world like the Fallout series or Mad Max.

[Pat Mustard]

A Cold War era US study shows a limited strike of 1,000 warheads aimed solely at US strategic military targets would lead to 32 million US civilian casualties.   The same sized strike aimed at US population centers will cause 160 million us civilian casualties including 100 million dead.

I consider these numbers to be too optimistic. Death would roam the land for decades, as it did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Infrastructure would be in meltdown as would the economy. Clean food and water would be hard to come by, and that's only scratching the surface. It could well turn into a world like the Fallout series or Mad Max.

If we're lucky.

Consider the report was made at a time when the US was far less dependant on electronics than it is now. Any nuclear strike is going to start with detonations in the upper atmosphere to generate EMP pulses which will destroy electrical infrastructure over a huge area.

[LastPoet]

How much more stupid can we (mankind) get? It is fuck all dumb to even have these weapons aimed at ourselves.

[Anomalocaris]

How much more stupid can we (mankind) get? It is fuck all dumb to even have these weapons aimed at ourselves.

Yes, and how much more dumb is it to put a trump's finger at the button to launch half of it. Even in the height of the Cold War, I never seriously thought the most severely under-qualified American president - Reagan - was significantly more likely to actually order the launch of a nuclear war then the soviet leadership. But I have zero doubt trump is far more likely to order a launch nuclear weapons and thereby, if obeyed, assure the essential destruction of the US through Russian retaliation, than it is for Putin to order a preemptive launch one at the US and destroy the US. If nuclear technology is a test for any global civilization, then perhaps a presidency of trump, for trump, and by trump is the definitive mark of failure to make the minimum grade.