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Former Crypto-Analyst Analyzes the Danger of Nuclear Weapon Stockpiles
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that noted encryption pioneer Prof. Martin Hellman has a new passion; estimating the risk of our current nuclear weapons policies. His web site, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, asks the question, 'How risky are nuclear weapons? Amazingly, no one seems to know.' Hellman therefore did a preliminary analysis and found the risk to be 'equivalent to having your home surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.' The web site and a related statement therefore urgently call for more detailed studies to either confirm or correct his startling conclusion. The statement has been signed by seven notable individuals including former NSA Director Adm. Bobby R. Inman and two Nobel Laureates."
I find the summary misleading. I thought the risk analysis was about incidents with nuclear weapons when at peace, but he only calculates the risks of all out nuclear war.
While it's an interseting number it's not a useful one to take a decision, since one of the sad premise of today's war strategy is that, since others have the nuclear weapon, you must have it too. No one is going to dump his nuke stocks because he might have to use them some days.
It's like doing an article summary saying "having a gun in your room is dangerous", when it really means "a gunfight is something that might happen".
I would have been more interested by numbers about the effects of an all out nuclear war. The only ones I can remember are that a US president was told (during the cold war) that scenarios predicted 300 million american death *at best* in a *winned* nuclear war against Russia. The second one ( which I'm not sure about) is that, at the peak of the number of nukes between US and Russia, they could have "destroyed the earth 52 times" (killed everything on it? phisically shatter?).
Does anyone have more details concerning these numbers?
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
...which are managed by a monkey and operated by people with a god complex.
You might find this refreshing then.
Quite frankly, I reckon even if these (carefully screened) individuals who control the nuclear arsenal were trigger-happy, they'd quickly rethink their situation when they realize they have the destiny of the world in their hands. Yes, even the chief monkey in the White House.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
That's reassuring, because it seems unlikely that my home will ever be surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.
Just because this guy invented an encryption technique, doesn't mean he less capable of studying the risks than some nuclear expert. At a first glance, he doesn't seem to claim anything outrageous.
Beware of "celebrities" with a cause, but not necessarily more or less then "experts" with a cause
I work very close to the issue at hand and can testify to seeing major gaps in the "careful screening" that goes into clearing the persons responsible. And it's distressing - Minor security incidents that clearly implicate cleared individuals go largely uninvestigated (petty theft, etc.) But, on a bright note, there's so much redundancy and security-bureaucracy that the security environment for special nuclear material or critical weapons components is actually very good (if rather expensive).
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Well, since he's a well-known crypto-analyst, my guess is that he's incredibly paranoid and vastly overestimates any chance of catastrophe. So... I guess that makes him qualified to make scaremongrish claims, in a strange way.
I'd rather be in a home surrounded by nuke plants than by coal/oil plants, anyway.
During peacetime, things would be much cleaner in my environment.
And, if the missiles ever really start flying, I would be assured of a quick ticket outta here, before having to live in a screwed up world full of nuclear winter.
Besides - power plants used to be targeted anyway, I'd bet - *regardless* of what source/type of fuel they used.
Mod story "boring and pointless fearmongering (again)"...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
This is about like the guy who does the obituaries column in the local paper sounding the alarm about nuclear war - meaningless, but no doubt it makes him feel better....
You picked a poor metaphor. The guy who did the obituaries in the New York Times was Theodore Bernstein, who is most distinguished for arguing at an editorial conference before the imminent Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion that the Times had an obligation to print what they knew about the invasion, which would have scuttled the invasion. (That was the journalistic equivalent of the engineer's pre-flight conference before the Challenger disaster.) That invasion led to the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cuban missile nuclear showdown, which was as close as we've ever come to destroying the world.Bernstein was accused of left-wing sympathies during the days of the blacklist, and as a result, the Times busted him down to the obituary page. Back in those days, we had a social contract that, if you committed yourself to a corporation, they would give you a job for life, so instead of firing people who were drunk or incompetent, the Times would just assign them to the obituary page. Unlike everyone else, Bernstein revolutionized the obituary page by writing serious obituaries.
Bernstein also wrote a textbook about copy-editing called Headlines and Deadlines, which is still used in journalism schools. The main point of that book, BTW, was that copy editors should check the facts of a story, and make sure it gets all sides. If the Times had followed that advice, they would have avoided some recent humiliations. So Bernstein got the last laugh again.