5 times we almost nuked ourselves by accident

[downbeatplumb]

My position still stands.

Thats only coz you didnt live through the reality of it.

In england we were only 4 minutes away from the detection of launches to them landing.

As I live near a lot of military bases my chance of continued living would have been zero.

You think your scared of a little bomb from al qaeda, try being scared of a multi megaton nuclear devise landing in your garden.

It was like two men with guns with hair triggers pointed at each others heads for decades.

Could've ended any second in mass death but somehow didnt.

[orogenicman]

My position still stands.

Thats only coz you didnt live through the reality of it.

In england we were only 4 minutes away from the detection of launches to them landing.

As I live near a lot of military bases my chance of continued living would have been zero.

You think your scared of a little bomb from al qaeda, try being scared of a multi megaton nuclear devise landing in your garden.

It was like two men with guns with hair triggers pointed at each others heads for decades.

Could've ended any second in mass death but somehow didnt.

Technically, it can still happen, so we certainly aren't out of the woods. In fact, my feeling, and it is just a feeling, is that we are in more peril today than we were then, but it isn't because of MAD. It is because of declining economies, aging stockpiles, rogue governments, and serious security problems (such as the government computer breeches by the Chinese). Indeed, I think we are in more peril today than ever before.

[Anomalocaris]

For the moment the peril is more in relatively isolated use of a few nuclear weapons, not in the civilization shattering volley of all out nuclear war. But in the long run, I think proliforation not just of rogue nations with a few bombs, but of full spectrum nuclear powers with complete nuclear capabilities, is simply unstoppable as unipolar world order wanes and rising powers like Brazil and India attempts to assert their position as new poles in a multiploar world. The bigger nations with a bigger nation's resources will want more than a few bombs. They will want their own nuclear submarines, reconnosaice and targeting satellite, diversified nuclear delivery platforms capable of surviving a first strike to launch a crippling retaliatory second strike.

Instead of balance of power and mutural assured destruction between 2 monster power as in the cold war, there will be a complex system of 8 or more medium sized, but technologically fully capable, nuclear powers (US, Russia, France, China, UK, Israel, India, Brazil, and later probably Argentina as well) watching each other, with tension stocked by smaller rogue elements with a few bombs.

Mutural assured destruction will not work.

[DeistPaladin]

Mutural assured destruction will not work.

To say nothing of how MAD only works with relatively sane players who aren't, as Sam Harris has said, "dewy eyed at how great the afterlife is going to be."

---

Could've ended any second in mass death but somehow didnt.

It's almost enough to make me think there really is a friendly god watching over us.

...almost...

[Zen Badger]

One can only speculate at the sort of war we would've had if the USSR and the USA had not have had their nuclear arsenals.

Because sure as shit if not for those arsenals they would've been at war within a few years of the Third Reichs capitulation and Europe would have been even more fucked up than it was.

Bad as those weapons are(and they are pretty damn horrific) the alternative was worse.

[Anomalocaris]

Bad as those weapons are(and they are pretty damn horrific) the alternative was worse.

I don't think a high chance of Europe being even more fucked up by another full scale conventional war in the the 1950s or 1960s is worse than a lower but still significant probability of all out nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw pact between 1960 and 1990.

One would be another setback for modern civilization, the other might have ended human civilization completely.

[Zen Badger]

Bad as those weapons are(and they are pretty damn horrific) the alternative was worse.

I don't think a high chance of Europe being even more fucked up by another full scale conventional war in the the 1950s or 1960s is worse than a lower but still significant probability of all out nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw pact between 1960 and 1990.

One would be another setback for modern civilization, the other might have ended human civilization completely.

My point being that the US and the USSR would have gone to war if they had only had conventional weapons and that war would've lasted years if not decades.

At the very least the prospect of being themselves wiped out in a nuclear exchange gave the polititians serious pause for thought.

After all it is very easy to declare war when you yourself do not have to go into the firing line.

[downbeatplumb]

There was plenty of 'hot' in the cold war korea, vietnam and dozens of african natians saw fighting between the capitalists and the commies.

[Zen Badger]

There was plenty of 'hot' in the cold war korea, vietnam and dozens of african natians saw fighting between the capitalists and the commies.

And not forgetting the ongoing conflicts in the Middle east which both sides were quite happy to supply weapons to.

Since the two superpowers(Britain and France didn't count) were understandably reluctant to face off directly(with the escalation that would've entailed) they resorted to supporting and(I suspect) positively encouraging if not actually starting these little brushfire wars.

Presumably with the dual intentions of trying out their toys and testing the mettle and resolve of the opposition.

And although much suffering and destruction was suffered in these "little" wars it was nothing compared to what would have resulted in a full on conventional conflict.

Remembering that the US alone dropped more ordnance on Vietnam in seven years than dropped by ALL the combatants in ALL the theatres of the Second World War.

[Anomalocaris]

Remembering that the US alone dropped more ordnance on Vietnam in seven years than dropped by ALL the combatants in ALL the theatres of the Second World War.

It took a lot of bombs to deforest a tropical country.