A Case For Unilateral US Nuclear Warhead Reductions

Lasrick writes "Interesting read of the geopolitics between the U.S. and Russia when it comes to reducing nuclear warheads. Pavel Podvig is a physicist trained at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology who works on the Russian nuclear arsenal, US-Russian relations, and nonproliferation. His take here is essential to understanding what is happening between Washington and Moscow on nuclear weapons cuts." Reader auric_dude also sent in a link to a few other views on the issue.

Comments

My Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't say you are considering unilateral cuts and expect the other guy to give you a deal, so you might as well make the cuts.

Re:My Argument

[clarkkent09]

Russians will never give up nukes. It's their only defense against China.

Re:My Argument

[buchner.johannes]

Russians will never give up nukes.

They already gave up a significant fraction. See START.

It's their only defense against China.

Is your imagination so limited?

You imply China is attacking. How so?

You don't need more than 10 nukes to annihilate China, so why keep >100?

In short, lots of false assumptions.

Re:My Argument

[__aaxtnf2500]

10 nukes to "annihilate" China? This is simply malarkey.

Re:My Argument

[__aaxtnf2500]

The Chinese don't even deploy warheads mated to delivery vehicles. Any research whatsoever on China's nuclear force posture would reveal this. China's nuclear force is purely defensive, as of now, and there is no indication that China seeks expanded capabilities.

Re:My Argument

[arth1]

You don't need more than 10 nukes to annihilate China, so why keep >100?

You are aware that China is the second largest country in the world, larger than the US?
With more megapolises than any other country in the world?

It's a about money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things. They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.

Some say the nuclear arms race was as much as way to drain money out of the USSR until it collapsed as much as anything else. We're done with that, and I'm sure both sides are sick of throwing money in to a pit. You really only need to blow the world up once, if you're going to do it at all.

I also hear that most nuclear material for peacetime power reactors comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.

Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.

Some say the nuclear arms race was as much as way to drain money out of the USSR until it collapsed as much as anything else.

Yeah, those people obviously don't work for the Brookings Institute, or the Sante Fe Institute, and so they have no understanding of the games theory basis that led to the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), resulted in the "Cold War", and kept us out of a hot war.

We're done with that, and I'm sure both sides are sick of throwing money in to a pit. You really only need to blow the world up once, if you're going to do it at all.

If we were sick of throwing money into a pit, we wouldn't have approved TARP, TARP2, and we would have had some campaign promises kept, like closing Gitmo, and getting us out of our two major wars, instead of getting us into two new ones as well. That'd save a bunch of money right there.

I also hear that most nuclear material for peacetime power reactors comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads.

You heard incorrectly. RTG's, or Radioisotope Thermionic Generators, operate on Plutonium. These are used in spacecraft and space probes, Mars landers, and so on. The U.S. mostly buys the Plutonium for those from Russia and other former Soviet republics. Commercial power reactors, other than breeders, run off of Uranium, and the Uranium not only isn't weapons grade, it *can't* be, since if it were, the reactors wouldn't operate properly. Breeders can run on Plutonium, but most of them operate from reprocessed fuel, or as a means of reprocessing fuel.

The U.S. only operates two breeder sites, for the purpose of producing medically useful isotopes, and they are generally not run at capacity. They are under the control of the DOE, and there has been serious talk lately about shutting the one in Oak Ridge down. At which point we will be buying those isotopes from Japan and France - assuming Japan restarts their reactor network again, rather than it committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid.

Re:It's a about money.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

There's a little thing called "shelf life". Nukes have one, too.

Re:It's a about money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

There's a little thing called "shelf life". Nukes have one, too.

There's a little thing called "sanity" too, which isn't apparent in any fucking plan of keeping any of it operational in any state other than dismantled, destroyed, or re-purposed. People used to have it, until greed got in the way.

Re:It's a about money.

[Arker]

"Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey"

Not really. A one-time cost to decommission, defrayed by salvage, versus a large recurring expense.

"Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East."

Cant say that I disagree on that. But nukes are extremely expensive toys and the maintanence cost is huge, and NOT mostly on personel. Just maintaining the nuclear arsenal accounts for around $18million a year currently and it's rising every year.

These are very delicate, precision machines, and each and every one of them is a minimum of 20 years old, many much older than that. As time goes on they require more maintanence, and it becomes more expensive.

I'm no naive hippy and I am ok with paying for deterrence. But it's clear we could cut our stock in half tomorrow with no reduction in deterrence. An arsenal that is capable of destroying the entire planet is in no way inferior to one that would be capable of destroying the planet a dozen times. It just costs less.

What the US administration has been trying to do, however, is get the Russians to make some concessions in return for us reducing our stock. This just wasnt a great approach to take. It probably actually spooked the Russians, who wonder why we are so concerned about their arsenal, hmmm? And they have other reasons to resist. They have indicated they are not interested in bilateral agreements that were reasonable back in the cold war days. It's a multipolar world, there are many nuclear nations, not just two and their respective pack members. The Russians want negotiations that include all the other nuclear powers as well. And the US administration would probably find that very reasonable if it werent for Israel...

At any rate we should cut stock for a number of reasons. It would soothe the Russian fears and might well lead to them reducing their own stock in response, but that's not the reason to do it, that's just some possible gravy.

"If we were sick of throwing money into a pit, we wouldn't have approved TARP, TARP2, and we would have had some campaign promises kept, like closing Gitmo, and getting us out of our two major wars, instead of getting us into two new ones as well. That'd save a bunch of money right there."

True that.

Re:It's a about money.

[khallow]

I'm no naive hippy and I am ok with paying for deterrence. But it's clear we could cut our stock in half tomorrow with no reduction in deterrence. An arsenal that is capable of destroying the entire planet is in no way inferior to one that would be capable of destroying the planet a dozen times. It just costs less.

No such arsenal has ever existed that could do that once, much less a dozen times. Instead, I think that Russia's cited behavior (basically stonewalling to get Obama to unilaterally cut nukes) indicates that they think that they'll get a lot of mileage from further reductions in the US arsenal and similarly would lose a lot of capability from cutting their own arsenals.

Re:It's a about money.

[Anonymous Coward]

"committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid"

That is some calloused, thinly veiled racism you felt you had to add there at the end, huh? You do realize that moderates (non nuclear/anti-nuclear zealots) look at that and think, "fuck, I wasted my time reading a post from another fucking nut-job. . ." Really, I actually was considering the points of your post until a came across that little turd you left there. It was like finding a fucking maggot in my food. Go fuck yourself!

Re:It's a about money.

[BitZtream]

Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

And dealing with the decay that you let build up because you were too lazy to maintain them is more costly still. No, 'let them sit' is a stupid fucking idea. Far more cost effective and safe to reprocess them into reactor fuel.

They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.

Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.

You should probably try becoming part of this century before telling us about nuclear stockpiles. We don't have nukes sitting in holes in the desert anymore, which is why we don't need as many. We just launch them from subs that no one knows where they are so they can't be taken out.

Some say the nuclear arms race was as much as way to drain money out of the USSR until it collapsed as much as anything else.

Yeah, those people obviously don't work for the Brookings Institute, or the Sante Fe Institute, and so they have no understanding of the games theory basis that led to the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), resulted in the "Cold War", and kept us out of a hot war.

We're done with that, and I'm sure both sides are sick of throwing money in to a pit. You really only need to blow the world up once, if you're going to do it at all.

If we were sick of throwing money into a pit, we wouldn't have approved TARP, TARP2, and we would have had some campaign promises kept, like closing Gitmo, and getting us out of our two major wars, instead of getting us into two new ones as well. That'd save a bunch of money right there.

I would suggest you take a basic economics and a history course, then learn WHY TARP actually happened rather than what your friends told you. You first need to understand that the magical failed banks failed because laws were changed that suddenly ... on PAPER ... made them insolvable. They were never actually doing bad, they just suddenly became illegal to operate.

I also hear that most nuclear material for peacetime power reactors comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads.

You heard incorrectly. RTG's, or Radioisotope Thermionic Generators, operate on Plutonium. These are used in spacecraft and space probes, Mars landers, and so on. The U.S. mostly buys the Plutonium for those from Russia and other former Soviet republics. Commercial power reactors, other than breeders, run off of Uranium, and the Uranium not only isn't weapons grade, it *can't* be, since if it were, the reactors wouldn't operate properly. Breeders can run on Plutonium, but most of them operate from reprocessed fuel, or as a means of reprocessing fuel.

The U.S. only operates two breeder sites, for the purpose of producing medically useful isotopes, and they are generally not run at capacity. They are under the control of the DOE, and there has been serious talk lately about shutting the one in Oak Ridge down. At which point we will be buying those isotopes from Japan and France - assuming Japan restarts their reactor network again, rather than it committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid.

Or the operate on other things, which even wikipedia lists. blah blah blha I stopped reading here because you're just spewing untrue bullshit.

Re:It's a about money.

[Arker]

"No such arsenal has ever existed that could do that once, much less a dozen times."

There are a little over 5,000 warheads in the US stockpile (as of 2010 wikipedia quoting reuters.) That's enough to hit every small city in the world, and most of them twice. Each is many, many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The initial blast fatalities alone from a full scale launch would decimate any nation on earth, it would make things like hurricanes look like hangnails.

The rural population outside the cities would survive the initial blasts, but the lingering effects of radiation would decimate that remnant in short order - as well as the populations of any areas that were not initially struck directly. And only a small fraction of those weapons would need to be detonated to invoke a nuclear winter which would make survival problematic even if all the explosions are on the other side of the globe from you.

Life would continue, yes, the cockroaches would inherit the earth. But humanity would be lucky to survive even in stone age form.

Re:It's a about money.

[Virtucon]

It's a jobs program dumbass! We keep hundreds of scientists employed studying the decay and effectiveness of the warheads. A few of those scientists keep our Courts and Laywers in business along with all of the investigators and juries when they steal secrets for China. Not to mention all of the investigative reporters that would be out of work if they didn't have something to write about. We put thousands of people to work in the military making sure that they're safe and handled properly. Not to mention all of the DOE bureaucrats that oversee the the kit and kaboodle.

No, we need more nukes now to grow American Jobs!

Re:It's a about money.

[Ceriel Nosforit]

instead of getting us into two new ones as well.

Three.
A certain three-letter club in Germany appears not amused at all, and their politicians who actually seem to represent them talk of US actions resembling those of a cold war.

I would love to see IDS log stats from the US.

Re:It's a about money.

[dbIII]

Decommissioning is happening with the older ones whether you pretend it isn't or not, so bringing that up is misleading the readers. A cut in the number of warheads can be achieved by not making as many replacements.

Re:It's a about money.

[Arker]

There are according to a quick ask google a total of 2851 Cities with Population of 150,000 + on earth. That appears to be accurate to me if you have a better source feel free to present it. Assuming that is correct, 2149 could be allocated two, which is easily "most" of 2851. 161 of those would be in the US btw.

Of course the definition of city is somewhat arbitrary and this is a ballpark figure but I think it makes the point. There are huge urban areas that are counted as several cities but can still be taken out with one of the larger warheads. There are more spread out areas where you might have to use 2 or 3 smaller warheads. But in essence it's clearly more than enough weaponry to firebomb every densely populated area on earth simultaneously. Actually using a significant fraction of it would cause a disaster that affects not just the targets but comes back and kills us too.

Re:It's a about money.

[t4ng*]

In the early 1980's the BBC made a drama called "Threads" which had occasional narration interrupting the story to explain the science behind the effects of nuclear war. Anyone who thinks nuclear war is winnable, or that we've never had enough nukes to destroy the world should watch it... the entire thing.

There are no lone-wolf heroes or other typical US movie industry bullcrap, just cold, stark, depressing realism. You can watch it for free on YouTube....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MCbTvoNrAg

Re:It's a about money.

[gl4ss]

18 million sounds like peanuts. whats that, 20 patriot missiles?

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

The blast radius of a modern nuke is more than large enough to take out multiple small cities or a large metropolitan area of a major cities and the outlaying (small cities) area.

The blast radius is limited by the curvature of the earth. For most median altitude bursts, this works out to a 13 mile radius for moderate to heavy damage.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

"Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey"

Not really. A one-time cost to decommission, defrayed by salvage, versus a large recurring expense.

There's no salvage value; there's just nuclear material which can't be stored safely very close to similar nuclear material. It's not like the plutonium can be used in anything other than weapons or RTGs, and we only build RTGs for the space program. Given the critical mass for the Pu isotope used in most weapons, taking apart one weapon will fuel most of the RTG-using projects Nasa has planned out for the next 30 years. It's only the Russians who thought using RTGs for civil usage was a good idea (e.g. automated lighthouses). The U.S. still has enough fear/guilt over what they did to win WWII in the Pacific Theatre that the NIMBY effect is huge.

But nukes are extremely expensive toys and the maintanence cost is huge, and NOT mostly on personel. Just maintaining the nuclear arsenal accounts for around $18million a year currently and it's rising every year.

More is spent from the $1T/year on visitor badges for the Pentagon. Seriously. $18M/year is nothing. As a weapon equivalence, that's just over two M1 Abrams main battle tanks, and a heck of a lot more effective as a deterrent than two more tanks would be.

These are very delicate, precision machines, and each and every one of them is a minimum of 20 years old, many much older than that. As time goes on they require more maintanence, and it becomes more expensive.

Only if you care about them remaining operational; otherwise, they are safe where they are. Since your argument is that they should be made non-operational, just let it happen through lack of maintenance. Problem solved.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

There's a little thing called "shelf life". Nukes have one, too.

...after which they decommission themselves by becoming non-operational through the decay of the fissile materials. Which is what these people want. I'm not seeing the problem here that would require actively decommissioning the things.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

18 million sounds like peanuts. whats that, 20 patriot missiles?

6-9 Patriot missiles. Unit cost on a Patriot is 2-3 million, depending on ordinance load. Or 2 M1 Abrams main battle tanks. Or for the cost of a single F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, you could fund the entire program for over a decade.

According to the GAO, the Pentagon spends more than that per year issuing visitor badges.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

"committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid"

That is some calloused, thinly veiled racism you felt you had to add there at the end, huh?

It's a cultural, not racial, reference which was actively relevant until 1970, and is still popularized in NHK broadcast dramas of the Shugunate Era in present-day Japan. It carries the appropriate connotation of "killing oneself over a point of honor". If you read the news reports, the U.S. Navy offered assistance in the early hours of the Fukushima incident, and were rebuffed "as a point of honor".

Would you have preferred I referred to the Hindu practice of Sati? That's also a cultural reference, and while it would be a stretch, one could argue that keeping their nuclear program shut down would be the equivalent of a woman throwing herself/being thrown on the funeral pyre of her husband out of grief.

I think a Bushido-style loss of face is a more apt metaphor for a cause of action in this case, however.

Re:It's a about money.

[khallow]

Ok, so you mention the usual three problems of nuclear war, the tremendous initial blast effect, fallout, and nuclear winter. For people who aren't near a target, who shield themselves from the effects of fallout, and who happen to have a decent food supply to last through the nuclear winter (which pretty much describes most rural people in the developed world), then they survive.

And only a small fraction of those weapons would need to be detonated to invoke a nuclear winter

It's like you're providing the stereotype that I was complaining about all along. Again, what is the point of greatly exaggerating the power of nuclear weapons? It's worth noting here that natural sources of particulates have to be pretty massive to have a noticeable effect on weather and climate. A full blown nuclear war with all the nukes we've ever had just isn't that big in comparison to say the eruption of Mount Tambora.

Re:It's a about money.

[Zordak]

The blast radius of the 100 MT "Tsar Bomba" could maybe have taken out several small cities, but there was never a practical way to deliver that beast. It was just a pissing match. Most of our modern warheads are well under 1 MT. More like 300 to 500 kT. The days of the 20 MT "city buster" are over. At 1 MT, the 5 psi ("everybody dies")* radius is under 3 miles for a surface burst, and the 2 psi radius (most people survive the initial blast) is under 5 miles. What you would really be concerned about is fallout, and that really depends on which direction the wind is blowing. In other words, with the wind blowing south, you could be 5 miles north of a 1 MT burst and still have an excellent chance of surviving the initial blast. At 10 miles, you probably won't even lose your south-facing windows. Not that you wouldn't still have problems. The firestorms at Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused more damage than the initial blast, disruption of infrastructure would be catastrophic, and all electronics in line of sight would be killed by EMP. But it's ridiculous and over-simplistic to claim that a modern nuke would just level multiple cities.

*It's not even that everybody within 5 psi dies. It's actually that with a fairly uniform population distribution, you can draw a radius at 5 psi, and estimate the total blast fatalities as the number of people within that radius.

Re:It's a about money.

[Pinhedd]

>Commercial power reactors, other than breeders, run off of Uranium, and the Uranium not only isn't weapons grade, it *can't* be, since if it were, the reactors wouldn't operate properly

Heavy water moderated reactors such as CANDU can burn a mixture of fuel (known as Mixed Oxide Fuel, or MOX) which can include various isotopes of Uranium and Plutonium at the same time. The process of deweaponizing highly enriched plutonium pits is well understood, but there's simply not a very high demand for it right now as it's much cheaper to acquire uranium fuel the normal way. Right now there are thousands of decommissioned plutonium pits sitting in storage awaiting reprocessing.

Furthermore, there are nuclear reactors that burn weapons grade uranium, namely those powering the US Navy's submarines and aircraft carriers. However, the USA has not manufactured a uranium based weapon in over 50 years.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

And dealing with the decay that you let build up because you were too lazy to maintain them is more costly still. No, 'let them sit' is a stupid fucking idea. Far more cost effective and safe to reprocess them into reactor fuel.

The U.S. does *not* do reprocessing. It has not done reprocessing since 1977, in order to avoid creating additional weapons grade material, which might fall into terrorist hands and/or lead to nuclear proliferation:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/us.html

They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.

Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.

You should probably try becoming part of this century before telling us about nuclear stockpiles. We don't have nukes sitting in holes in the desert anymore,

Wrong. We have 450 land-based Minuteman III ICBMs with MIRV'ed warheads, meaning approximately 1440 warheads which are currently land based. Try doing a simple google search before you spout incorrect information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Land-based_ICBMs

which is why we don't need as many. We just launch them from subs that no one knows where they are so they can't be taken out.

Again, incorrect. Submarines are detectable, even at maximum depth, using space-based side looking synthetic aperture radar (SAR):

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LE13Ad01.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/detection.pdf

Everyone who we care about knowing knows about our subs, just as we know about theirs.

[...]

I would suggest you take a basic economics and a history course, then learn WHY TARP actually happened rather than what your friends told you. You first need to understand that the magical failed banks failed because laws were changed that suddenly ... on PAPER ... made them insolvable. They were never actually doing bad, they just suddenly became illegal to operate.

TARP was needed due to de-regulation, after which banks jumped into the market for creation of derivatives, and created a bunch of worthless derivatives and sold them for real money. These were primarily collateralized debt obligations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program#Purpose

The ability to create CDOs prior to the repeal of Glass–Steagall was based primarily on a decision by the 2nd Circuit Court:

http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/885/1034/144081/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Act#Securitization.2C_CDOs.2C_and_.E2.80.9Csubprime.E2.80.9D_credit

[...Pu-239 uses...]

Or the operate on other things, which even

Re:It's a about money.

[__aaxtnf2500]

To start off, your carefully quoted list of rebuttals is so littered with misrepresentations and ignorance that I suspect it would make someone either (1) acquainted with the reality of the deployment and employment of nuclear weapons, or (2) trained in a nuclear science or engineering ... just make their head explode.
Those weapons have to be decommissioned at some point anyways, therefore if you engage in policies which dictate any maintenance fees be incurred, it is more expensive to keep them. This is obvious on its face, and arguing with this point can only be incredibly ignorant or disingenuous.
Most of the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons has nothing to do with military payroll, but costs incurred by in the maintenance of peripheral force structures necessary to support the force in the pre- and post-SIOP environment. The US strategic defense system is the most expensive and reliable engineered construct devised by man. DOD carves out a very large chunk of the nuclear pie, but it is not the majority, and the bulk of it goes to support forces which are single-purpose nuclear war fighters. So in the event force reductions made certain squadrons redundant, most of those jobs would go away.
Can you city any mathematical proof which states that it is safer for you and your greatest enemy to horde innumerable cataclysmic weapons? I suspect you can't, and you can name-drop conservative think tanks till you are blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that those studies chiefly concern weapons employment and using mathematics to ensure that the use of constrained resources such as warheads are optimal.
Also, neither the Brookings Institute nor the Santa Fe Institute did any foundational work on MAD, only retrospective analysis, which, in the context of the fact that billions of dollars of recurring contracts are wrapped up in the enterprise, is hardly surprising considering the amount of money laying around to throw to those willing to write for the purpose of supporting the current budget.
You proceed with a laundry list of useless strawmen that has nothing to do with the benefits of nuclear force reductions. What in the world does closing Gitmo have to do with the logic of nuclear force reductions?
Nuclear weapons materials fuel almost half of all reactors in the United States, whether it is Plutonium-based MOX or HEU going into naval reactors.
Commercial power reactors, in fact, start with a low-enriched Uranium fuel load, and convert a significant portion of the 238U into Plutonium, which is then fissioned and the energy converted. BWR fuel cycle leverages this more than PWR, but both would be completely uneconomical without the existence of this conversion. Also, for this reason, commercial reactors can, and have, been fueled with ex-weapon plutonium and uranium.
The plutonium that RTG's use is NOT the same plutonium as in weapons.

Re:It's a about money.

[__aaxtnf2500]

The blast radius is not limited by the curvature of the earth, as dispersion of an overpressure wave of sufficient magnitude would 'hug' the earth.
The blast zone is limited by energy deposited into the atmosphere surrounding the device following the chemical reactions which remove the transparency of the air surrounding the weapon, and former weapon materials.

Re:It's a about money.

[__aaxtnf2500]

Keep in mind that MIRV'd weapons are constrained to deliver warheads in proximity to each other. This fact means that it is more useful to look at launcher count vice warhead count.

Re:It's a about money.

[RobertLTux]

most likely the thing to do that would be closest to sane is

1 sort out which of these rotten eggs is in the worst shape (aged out or otherwise gone funky)
2 decommission those as required
3 DO NOT REPLACE THEM
4 repeat every year as needed
5 PEACE Profit!!

as long as MAD is still on the table then anything "extra" is not needed

Re:It's a about money.

[bryanandaimee]

As others have stated the combined arsenals of Russia, US and China are not capable of destroying the world 12 times over. Might I suggest a little light reading? Herman Kahn wrote some clear books on the subject. "On Thermonuclear War" and "Thinking about the Unthinkable". In summary the worst case scenario, in which all nuclear weapons are launched at high population density areas, gives about 50% casualties long term in US and Russia. But there is very little chance of that scenario as even the most maniacal despot would go after enemy military bases first and population second. That is not to say that 50% casualties is acceptable or that nuclear war is not frightening, but we need more clear thinking and realism and less hyperbole and hysterics. Clear headed strategy is a much better deterrent than a head in the sand reliance on MAD as your only deterrece philosophy.

Re:It's a about money.

[arth1]

...after which they decommission themselves by becoming non-operational through the decay of the fissile materials. Which is what these people want. I'm not seeing the problem here that would require actively decommissioning the things.

Um, you are aware that Pu-239 has a half life of over 14000 years, and U-235 a half life of over 700 million years?

Re:It's a about money.

[Arker]

With all respect, you are wrong. 50% population loss would only be the *beginning.* The property damage combined with the massive increase in mortality rates for decades would threaten and quite possibly end the existence of our species. Best case scenario we would be reduced to stone age population levels and our modern civilization and societies would effectively cease to exist. People object to me calling this 'destroying the world' because there would still be a rock here flying around the sun and some living things on it, but that would be the end of the world we live in.

"Clear headed strategy is a much better deterrent than a head in the sand reliance on MAD as your only deterrece philosophy."

Agreed. Didnt advocate anything like that.

Re:It's a about money.

[WheezyJoe]

A full blown nuclear war with all the nukes we've ever had just isn't that big in comparison to say the eruption of Mount Tambora.

I think it depends on what you call "full blown". When the theory of Nuclear Winter became popular, the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Russia was at its height, and deterrence was based on Mutually Assured Destruction, where the scary part is "Assured". Ever since the only vehicles for nukes were bombers piloted by humans (ala Dr. Strangelove), it has been assumed that not all nukes would reach their targets, and further assumed that some that do will not properly detonate (fizzle). If your strategy is to "assure" that your targets are obliterated before those targets lob nukes at you, you need to counter these problems... with redundancy.

The worst case scenario was that only 1 in 5 nukes would reach their targets and detonate properly. Accordingly, in an all out preemptive attack, you assign 5 warheads for every target in order to assure success. Hence, destroy the world 5 times over.

Agreed that most nukes do not compare to Krakatoa or a decent sized meteor, but with entire arsenals going off at once (tens of thousands of devices) there is good reason for a lot of dust to be kicked into the atmosphere.

That was then. Nobody has kept their arsenals at the size they were since Reagan and Gorby. Nevertheless, no reason to push it, eh?

Re:It's a about money.

[bryanandaimee]

50% is not just the beginning, it's the worst case scenario for the longer term mortality including immediate death and radiation sickness. More realistically you see more like 10% with most of the damage being at military bases and other infrastructure. Long term mortality rates may climb somewhat due to induced cancer but only in a severely pessimistic scenario (rampant slaughter and barbarism) do they increase massively. In what reality do 200 million educated, skilled americans allow their entire civilization to crumble around them without raising a finger?

And I might add that some simple and inexpensive precautions that the MAD politicians have advocated against would reduce even the 10% number.

The radically pessimistic estimates of life after thermonuclear armageddon are based on poor back of the envelope estimates and eroneous premises. It's all in the books cited above. They are actually pretty well written and easy to get through.

Re:It's a about money.

[Arker]

Increased cancer? Are you freaking serious? With all urban centers destroyed outright, industrial capacity wiped out, radioactive fallout and nuclear winter going on, you think increased cancer rates are what we will be worried about? I am sorry you seem intelligent and serious but that is just absurd.

The books you are referring to are propaganda. And yes, they are well written. It takes a good writer to make the laughable and absurd seem serious and scholarly.

Re:It's a about money.

[khallow]

The worst case scenario was that only 1 in 5 nukes would reach their targets and detonate properly. Accordingly, in an all out preemptive attack, you assign 5 warheads for every target in order to assure success. Hence, destroy the world 5 times over.

Except that the world is much more than just a few military targets in the US or the USSR. If your intent is to destroy infrastructure, then there were far more nukes than necessary. If your intent was to destroy the human race with raw nuclear force, well, you need more nukes.

Agreed that most nukes do not compare to Krakatoa or a decent sized meteor, but with entire arsenals going off at once (tens of thousands of devices) there is good reason for a lot of dust to be kicked into the atmosphere.

My point is that the larger volcanic eruptions of history dump a lot of volcanic ash and sulfur compounds into the upper atmosphere - on the order of cubic kilometers of the former and millions of tons of the latter. Sure, the detonation of tens of thousands of warheads over urban areas will result in a considerable injection of soot into the upper atmosphere from the many firestorms.

The point is we've seen similar effects to a nuclear winter just in human history and they just aren't that bad. I think they're portrayed as that bad because there's a group of people with a vested interest in exaggerating the harm of nuclear war. I'm not advocating for nuclear war, but I think it's worth noting here that not everyone will adhere to this dogmatic belief of nuclear war and some of those people and countries will have and perhaps will use nuclear weapons of their own. This could potentially create a very lethal blindness towards someone's willingness to use nuclear weapons.

Re:It's a about money.

[tlambert]

The blast radius is not limited by the curvature of the earth, as dispersion of an overpressure wave of sufficient magnitude would 'hug' the earth.

The blast zone is limited by energy deposited into the atmosphere surrounding the device following the chemical reactions which remove the transparency of the air surrounding the weapon, and former weapon materials.

Your statement does not agree with the actual results observed during nuclear tests:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/damage-caused-by-nuclear-bomb/6176/

Re:It's a about money.

[The Wild Norseman]

basically stonewalling to get Obama to unilaterally cut nukes

Obama cut nukes? Are you daft? Why would a man bestowed with a Nobel Peace Prize wish to do something as silly as reducing a huge stockpile of WMDs?

Re:It's a about money.

[RevDisk]

Na. People have been opposed to sanity since the dawn of humanity. Why be content with your own women, food, and caves when you can smash Throg's head and take his stuff? You may not need it to survive. But it'd be more comfortable and you never did like Throg's attitude anyways.

Nuclear weapons have only been used offensively twice, and most folks think they saved more lives than they cost during that usage. They have a variety of theoretically useful purposes. Not keeping some around is more irrational than keeping some around. Thousands is unnecessary (not likely "insane"), but not keeping a couple dozens or circa hundred around is fairly short sighted. It's highly unlikely any nations will be using them anytime soon.

Re:It's a about money.

[RevDisk]

*blink*

There seem to be plenty of wars between non-nuclear countries. Also, wars predate nuclear weapons.

So I have no idea why you assume reducing nuclear weapons would have any impact on peace.

Re:It's a about money.

[RevDisk]

Warheads have a much shorter period. If not maintained, they lose their ability to initiate after a period of time. The exact timing is likely classified, but would be between 10 and 25 years depending on the design. They rely on chemical explosives and some very advanced electric switches, which have limited lifespans.

Re:It's a about money.

[arth1]

Warheads have a much shorter period. If not maintained, they lose their ability to initiate after a period of time. The exact timing is likely classified, but would be between 10 and 25 years depending on the design. They rely on chemical explosives and some very advanced electric switches, which have limited lifespans.

Yes.
However, that doesn't support the GPs claim of nuclear weapons "becoming non-operational through the decay of the fissile materials".

Re:It's a about money.

[RobertLTux]

but talking about NUCLEAR war nobody wants to be First To Fire due to MAD if MAD comes off the table then things could get ugly

Re:It's a about money.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Warheads have a much shorter period.

Exactly.

A much shorter period than, say, 700 million years. Or even 14 thousand.

Re:It's a about money.

[Zontar The Mindless]

You seem to have missed the reference to "Mutual Assured Destruction". The concept was popularised in a film as, "The only way to win is not to play the game", IIRC.

IOW, the parent was saying we should keep enough nukes around to maintain the balance of terror--you and your neighbour don't need to keep 50 cannon each, when 2 or 3 will suffice to level the other's house.

This helps keep the big powers from going after each other directly. Alas, as we learnt during the Cold War, it does nothing to stop proxy wars between the principals' sidekicks or wars among third parties; and as we're finally figuring out now, it doesn't deter attacks by non-state actors.

"Deployed"

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA consistently refers to a reduction in "deployed" warheads. For those who don't understand the nuance, there are still many more warheads not currently deployed. We call those "stockpiled" arms. A reduction in deployed warheads is pointless unless we talk about a global (no pun intended) reduction in arms. Why, you ask? Because we have stealth bombers and fighters with global reach. Those stockpiled weapons could be locked and loaded on our jets in short order if we wanted. Suddenly, they are now "deployed" warheads.

The truth remains, until nuclear weapons stockpiles are reduced below MAD levels, reduction in arms is just for show. We'll always have enough in storage to kill each other a few times over, but that's not really what matters. What matters is that we are constantly trying to establish a dialog with people who don't like us rather than take a beligerant stance. That, more than anything else will result in reduced nuclear tensions.

Re:"Deployed"

[ShanghaiBill]

A reduction in deployed warheads is pointless

It is not pointless. A deployed warhead is more likely to be stolen by Al Queda, more likely to be involved in an accident, more likely to be launched by a rouge commander, and more likely to be used in a first strike. The first strike capability is particularly destabilizing, because our "enemies" then need to keep their own nukes on hair trigger alert, or build enough of them to ride out a first strike and still retaliate.

Re:"Deployed"

[Nidi62]

It is not pointless. A deployed warhead is more likely to be stolen by Al Queda,

al-Qaeda is more likely to steal a warhead attached to a plane sitting on a flight line or in a ready hangar or deployed in a nuclear sub 150 ft underwater than sitting in some warehouse? Really?

Re:"Deployed"

[murdocj]

I have a hunch that the stockpiled nukes are not sitting in crates next to the $100 hammers.

Re:"Deployed"

[ebno-10db]

If the stockpiled weapons are that useless, why don't we just get rid of them?

Re:"Deployed"

[Anonymous Coward]

"constantly trying to establish a dialog with people who don't like us"

Who is it that you think does not like you? I work with the Russians every day and know for sure that they have no animosity towards Americans although they do get seriously annoyed with the fact that most Americans seem to believe that they won WWII which is contrary to history. Most of it is more like sympathy as they see that America now has a level of propaganda that they had 30 years ago and that American people actually believe what they are told but this is not the same as dislike. Governments and people are different and Russians understand this far more than most and they see the American government as dangerous and evil but that does not mean that they see the American people as any different to people of their parents generation.

Russia did not "collapse" 20 years ago. They had 4 times the military that the US had and the cost was stupid so they cut it by 75%. They still do not see the US as a threat. One reason I work with Russians is because they have more money and can pay me. Our economy collapsed more than theirs did but our propaganda told the story differently.

Re:"Deployed"

[darkmeridian]

It's doubtful that Russia and the United States will discuss a reduction in deployed arms with such naivete that it can be bypassed by keeping the inactive warheads in fire-ready condition. A certain level of "stockpiled" warheads is necessary to support the level of "deployed" warheads due to testing, maintenance, and verification. A reduction in deployed warheads will eventually lead to a reduction in stockpiled arms once we built up the political will to dismantle the suckers.

You're also incorrect when you conclude that just because we have stealth bombers and fighters with global reach, any stockpiled weapon can be deployed right away. There's absolutely no reason to do that when you already have fire-ready warheads cocked and ready to go. Unless, of course, if we already fired all of the 2000 or so deployed warheads and we have to go picking at the bottom of the barrel. More important, we have most of our deterrents stuck in missiles and cruise missiles. We are not going to deliver 2000 nuclear warheads by plane anytime soon.

Re:"Deployed"

[mianne]

The problem with your assessment is that you, yourself, referred to "MAD levels". So within the Cold War "USA vs USSR" context, those stockpiled warheads are utterly useless. Say Russia launched all their nukes toward the US,; the US would retaliate by launching all its deployed nukes toward Russia. So within about 30 minutes or so, most of the world's urban populations will be wiped out in a radioactive firestorm. Okay, so then the CIA spooks within Russia report that most of the Kremlin is now speeding off toward some previously unknown remote underground bunker in the Urals.

How much time do you think it will take to pull some of those extra warheads out of mothballs, arm them, load them onto a supersonic jet, fly them within range, and finally launch them at the suspected target? The warheads wouldn't even be close to getting out into the sunlight before the mushroom clouds appeared at the military base where they were stored.

Now in the post Cold War era, it's theoretically possible that the US, Israel, or other actors could launch a few tactical nukes against reactors in Iran, Pakistan, and/or North Korea, and then theoretically deploy enough stored warheads to replenish the supply to the level before the strikes. But you'll have to factor in the blowback these strikes would have on the global stage--particularly in China and Russia. and a full scale nuclear war might ensue shortly thereafter. If not, at least a huge build up on all sides would promptly commence and tensions would rise the world over to levels not seen since the Cuban missile crisis.

Re:"Deployed"

[Yomers]

In America the people vote for the government. So when if they hate the government then by logic they hate the people.

Exactly GP's point - you seems to actually beleive that citizens of your country freely choose their goverment.

Re:"Deployed"

[gatkinso]

From my understanding they are a "hedge" (that stockpile is actually called that) against unknown situation that can arise in the future. It would take weeks to deploy and use these weapons, but that is a far cry from having to build them from scratch, but it is also a far cry from simply pushing a button and let fly.

I suspect that as nuclear postures step down some future treaties will require that the warheads and delivery systems be unmated, but possibly stored together. After that treaties will require them to be stored remotely.

Re:wrong

[Intrepid imaginaut]

How many have been tested in the last handful of decades? A lot more than sixteen. Give everyone nukes I say, make it so that interference in the affairs of other nations will always come at too high a price. Then people can sort things out for themselves, and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences as they deserve. The age of gunboat diplomacy is at an end.

No problem here.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as we have enough to kill everyone on the planet I'm ok with the reductions.

Re:No problem here.

[Immerman]

Then we best start producing a whole lot more quick, because we don't have nearly enough as is unless we can gather everyone together into great big living bulls-eyes. We could probably wipe out all the major military, industrial, and urban areas on the planet (assuming all missiles flew true, and all defense systems were complete failures), and maybe have enough left over to do some damage to farmland as well, but everything else would be basically fine. The survivors of the initial holocaust might suffer a year or two of "nuclear winter" (which would likely mean a lot more deaths) and a century or so of high rates of cancer and birth defects, but nothing terribly debilitating.

Re:No problem here.

[ebno-10db]

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbxeolK27b4

Re:No problem here.

[murdocj]

Well, lets see... this talked about 1500 "strategic" nukes. Say Russia dropped 1,000 on the USA, or on average 20 per state. I'm guessing that's most major cities, most industrial complexes, most centralized food processing, rail and air transportation, highway hubs, etc. Yeah, a lot of people would survive the initial attack, but unless you can live off of what's right around you, you won't survive the aftermath, even if you don't have radiation sickness.

The other way to think of it is that recovering from catastrophes like hurricanes, earthquakes, etc is really tough, even when the rest of the country pitches in to help. What happens when there is no "rest of the country"?

Re:No problem here.

[ebno-10db]

This. A regular 2000lb bomb leaves about a 30' crater. A nuke is going to leave one 1.5-2 orders of magnitude bigger. So, let's say 3000'. If you are more than a couple miles away in a well built building, and not standing next to the window, you are probably going to live through the initial blast. Fires will probably kill more, but that is dependent on the city you live in. If you live in Nagasaki or Hiroshima with a lot of wood and rice paper buildings, you are probably out of luck.

Even cancer deaths and birth defects are over-feared. Check the stats on Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Sure, you can find some spectacular cases, but statistically the increases were a lot less than was feared and not even close to enough to lead to extinction.

Ok, let's go for it Dr. Teller.

Re:No problem here.

[Areyoukiddingme]

What's sad is, there are Dominionists in this country who think it's their job to bring about precisely that, because of "Biblical prophecy." Their own twisted fantasies of Biblical prophecy, that is. They eagerly label Obama the Antichrist, in hopes of moving the timetable right along, among other bizarre notions. The continuous meddling in Israel is easily attributable to their policies too.

Re:No problem here.

[HornWumpus]

LeMay should be along soon.

Re:No problem here.

[phantomfive]

Are you sure? Wikipedia makes it look like "Dominionism" is an idea built by fearmongers, who make money from peddling fear, more than any real movement. Are you sure it's a real thing?

Re:No problem here.

[rasmusbr]

And to make things worse the planet would be about one order of magnitude above its carrying capacity if it were not for a steady supply of artificial fertilizer, made from natural gas or other fossil fuels. Even if you can live off the land around you now you may be unable to do so after a major nuclear exchange when fertilizer becomes unavailable and agricultural yields drop.

What about hunting then? Well, we are about two orders of magnitude above the Earth's carrying capacity for us as hunter-gatherers. The what little edible wildlife is left today would run out quickly if there were no conservation laws.

That said, even if the population would drop by 99% there would still be 70 million humans on the planet and humans would still be the most numerous mammal species except for the ones that live off of our economy such as rats and other rodents. Even if the population would drop by 99.99% we would still not qualify as a threatened species, not even nearly. In short: there are a lot of humans and killing us all won't be easy by any means.

Re:No problem here.

[cold fjord]

I think your username is well chosen. Once again I'm struck by the sort of parallelism that arises between a username that person's post.

There is no meaningful support for that in the US, and it isn't compatible with the Constitution. It isn't going to happen. You're worrying about the wrong thing.

Re:No problem here.

[Areyoukiddingme]

It's real enough, and yes, the idea is definitely built by fearmongers. You got that part precisely correct. As with many religious movements, the salesmen seldom believe any of what they're selling. That doesn't mean the buyers don't believe it. They do. They're fearful little worms who start out with peculiar notions to begin with. Dominionism is carefully designed to appeal to them, much like Scientology is carefully designed to appeal to a different set of people. All religions are built on false pretenses, but religious movements are quite real, and can be quite dangerous. The jury is still out on exactly how dangerous this particular scam will eventually be.

Re:No problem here.

[BitZtream]

According to studies done at Chernobyl. After a couple of years, new births rapidly stop being part of the cancer riddle group. It doesn't even take decades, just a few years.

Look at factual information from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not nearly as horrible as its made out to be. Yes, people got cancer ... but it wasn't enough that they moved away. The cities were rebuilt where they once stood. Hell, Hiroshima doubled in size within just a few years! As long as you didn't stand on the glowing spot in the center of town, its not nearly as dangerous as people think.

Re:No problem here.

[phantomfive]

How exactly are you sure it's real? To me it sounds like you're sounding a lot like a paranoid nut, with a fear but deta ched from reality.

Re:No problem here.

[drinkypoo]

And to make things worse the planet would be about one order of magnitude above its carrying capacity if it were not for a steady supply of artificial fertilizer, made from natural gas or other fossil fuels

This is a lie. You can produce GREATER yields using proper farming practices. Not "USDA Organic", but cyclical systems involving planting guilds. Today that requires human labor for harvesting, but in the not-too-far future robots will do a better job of identifying ripe food (using lasers, IR cameras etc) and picking it.

Running over the soil with machines to destroy crumb structure and create hardpan, then spraying synthetics which destroy soil diversity by killing beneficial bacteria and nematodes is simply not a good idea. It looks like a good idea if you're a rich fuck who wants to get richer, but it's bad for the rest of us. Stop repeating this bullshit idea.

Even if you can live off the land around you now you may be unable to do so after a major nuclear exchange when fertilizer becomes unavailable and agricultural yields drop.

If you are eating, fertilizer is available. It comes out of your asshole. One of the biggest problems mankind is facing is that we are shitting in our water supply instead of turning crap back into plants. Phosphorous depletion, for example, is becoming a major problem. There is nothing sustainable about so-called "Green Revolution" agriculture, which is just another way of selling out the future for short-term gain. Agriculture has done more to harm the biosphere upon which we depend than all of our other technologies assembled.

Re:No problem here.

[gl4ss]

it's not a bullshit idea... it's what enabled population growth in the west.

green revolution was fucked up but that's long, long after industrial fertilizers deleted famine from the west.

Re:No problem here.

[drinkypoo]

it's not a bullshit idea... it's what enabled population growth in the west.

No, it really isn't. It doesn't increase yields over planting guilds. You're engaging in the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy.

green revolution was fucked up but that's long, long after industrial fertilizers deleted famine from the west.

They did no such thing.

Re:No problem here.

[Immerman]

Actually my intent was to suggest that even a global thermonuclear war wouldn't be that bad for the survivors, and certainly wouldn't kill everyone even if that was the explicit goal (which it wouldn't be). As far as Chernobyl was concerned virtually everyone was rapidly evacuated from the 1,000 square mile "exclusion zone" where fallout was extremely heavy. In the aftermath of a GTW that wouldn't be an easy option, so the survivors would likely continue being exposed to and ingesting radioactive material until it decayed to background levels - decades to centuries - so you would still expect elevated rates of cancer and birth defects until then. Not debilitating levels of course, but certainly higher than the current norm.

Re:No problem here.

[Immerman]

Not hardly, except for purposes of hyperbole. DNA evidence suggests that humanity was at one point reduced to around 2,000 individuals during the last ice age and we recovered just fine. I'm betting millions, if not hundreds of millions, would survive a global nuclear war.

Re:No problem here.

[Immerman]

What you're failing to consider is that all that infrastructure is most important to people living in cities - you need to pump a massive continuous stream of resources into them to keep them alive. But those would also likely be the major nuclear targets after military and industrial targets were eliminated. So who would be left? All the rural people who are currently responsible for producing enough food to support those cities. Sure, maximum yield would begin to plummet without access to chemical fertilizers and replacement machine parts, but demand would have almost vanished so that's unlikely to be an issue.

Re:No problem here.

[Areyoukiddingme]

There's extensive support for it. But you're right, none of it is meaningful. Or at least, not that you'd notice. I know people who subscribe to some of that crap, so I know it's real, and that's why I talk about it—personal experience.

Re:No problem here.

[Areyoukiddingme]

Because I personally know people who believe much of what Dominionists preach. Probably believe all of what they preach, but they don't admit that in my hearing. They do really exist, out here in fly-over country. You'd be amazed what people are willing to believe, in the hinterlands. Shit, most of them believe in a sky daddy in a big beard and a bedsheet who grants wishes if you beg hard enough. Believing specifics about an End Time that sky daddy wants isn't much of a stretch, for most of them.

At odd moments, I regret the decline of the Catholic church. Neal Stephenson's theories about organized religion practicing information hygiene (specifically Jewish religion, but also Catholics) actually make a great deal of sense, when you look around at the modern world. Both Jewish and Catholic practices are specifically designed to channel the nutbags into relatively harmless activities that appeal to them. In the vacuum left by the Catholic decline, anything goes, and I don't think you're quite aware of exactly how whacky it really gets.

You do realize that there are people calling themselves Protestant Christians who play with poisonous snakes, right? Is it so hard to believe that there's a sect that thinks it's their duty to precipitate an Apocalypse? Correction. THE Apocalypse, as described by St. John the Divine, in every fevered detail. The Buddhist version just won't do...
I know two generations who believe it fervently. They're real.

Re:No problem here.

[phantomfive]

Is it so hard to believe that there's a sect that thinks it's their duty to precipitate an Apocalypse? Correction

Yes, actually it is. And those snake guys always entertain me. You hear about them every once in a while and then it just dies out.

Re:wrong

[ShanghaiBill]

I think like 16 or something would destroy the entire world's weather for decades so yeah, completely pointless.

No way. Just how big do you think these warheads are? In total megatons, America's nuclear arsenal peaked in the 1960s, and has been declining for half a century as accuracy as dramatically improved. You don't need a lot of yield if you can put it through a particular window in the Kremlin. Most ICBMs and SLBMs have warheads of only a few hundred kilotons. Cruise missile warheads are around 10-20KT. That is a Nagasaki, not a Castle Bravo.

Re:wrong

[Immerman]

How do you figure? Energy-wise a single hurricane can easily dissipate hundreds of thousands of times as much energy as our largest nukes. If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer, but a single large volcano eruption is going to be many times worse than a handful of nukes, and even then the consequences are typically very localized (from a global perspective). The real damage from nukes (aside from the radioactive craters) is fallout - and that doesn't really effect weather at all. Even that would have to be pretty extreme to do more than cause greatly increased rates of cancer and birth defects.

Mr President, we cannot afford a Mine Shaft Gap!

[dkleinsc]

After all, just because the USSR no longer exists doesn't mean they still don't present a deadly threat to the existence of the Free World. Our troops in the Free Republic of Germany need to be properly armed and prepared to bravely defend us from the Red Armies of International Communism. Without constant vigilance, the Khmer Rouge could even gain the upper hand and threaten the Republic of Vietnam and the rest of SEATO.

Needless to say, anyone who opposes these plans is an agent working under the direction of Che Guevera.

Re:The best way tou reduce our stockpile - USE THE

[FrankSchwab]

Hey, I resent that. My state is a shining example of decency, respect for all regardless of skin color and/or sexual orientation, and clean politics that both expresses the will of the people and leads us towards improving who we are as human beings.

Nuke Nevada instead. They're at least used to it. /frank
Phoenix, Az (and only 44 C at the moment; a relatviely cool day)

Re:Mr President, we cannot afford a Mine Shaft Gap

[Bing Tsher E]

Last time I encountered a Mine Shaft Gap I fell down it. No creepers needed, simple self-destruction will suffice. It was a hassle getting down there to pick up all my stuff, too.

And it's not an east-west thing, as Minecraft does not come from either Russia or the U.S.

Comment from a well known pacifist

[ebno-10db]

"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce."

-- Winston S. Churchill

Re:wrong

[ebno-10db]

If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer

Different simulations give different results. Want to try an experiment?

I can't believe it would only take 16 of them...

[tlambert]

I think like 16 or something would destroy the entire world's weather for decades so yeah, completely pointless.

I can't believe it would only take 16 of them... ...to trigger a nuclear winter and totally reverse global warming.

What are we waiting for?

(Also, other posters have pointed out: we've set off more than 16 of them already).

Re:Mr President, we cannot afford a Mine Shaft Gap

[jedidiah]

Russia was an empire long before the tzar and his family got shot. The national character is not going to change much just because of a minor bit of regime change. If Putin weren't effectively president for life, optimism about the new Russia might be a little more warranted.

Hasn't the world flipped over??

[Anonymous Coward]

We've become the Soviet Union, we're spying on our citizens they way they spied on theres.
We have fake money too, exactly the same way Breshnev printing the Soviet Ruble to collapse.
Border controls internally.
Belarussia was Russia's poodle. UK is America poodle.
Even the journalists are like Pravda under the Soviet Union, they talk the government talking points and leak the government authorized leaks and attack the truth like its a crime.
Patriotism is marketed not as "be proud in your country", but "don't dare contradict your leaders lies".
We have elections but we can only elect what the military approves and hasn't leaked and smeared yet.
We have rights on paper but they're waived away for us in secret courts with secret verdicts that can never be challenged.
Stasi worked against their own country, East Germany for the benefit of their masters Russia, GCHQ and NSA.
Words are to be feared, they can land you in ...

Re:Hasn't the world flipped over??

[JWSmythe]

The same things have been happening throughout history. People tend to forget quickly. Things you mention for other countries have happened in the US multiple times in the last century. The actors change, but the stories remain the same. Or ....

    "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
    - George Santayana

Re:Hasn't the world flipped over??

[clarkkent09]

You have no idea what it was like in the Soviet Union. It's easy to look up but you are too lazy.

Re:Why isn't it good for the gander?

[murdocj]

Yeah, I have trouble following the argument of "Russia doesn't want to reduce their arsenal, so the USA should reduce its arsenal, at which point Russia will suddenly feel an overpowering need for arms reductions". Seems like it would be more likely to go the other way... Putin would be able to say "see comrades (whups, slip of the tongue), the West really is weak, we can just sit tight and modernize".

Not that I'm opposed to reducing nukes, I think it would be great if we could get it down to a few subs carrying a second strike force, but I don't think unilateral reductions are going to compel Russia to change course.

Re:Mr President, we cannot afford a Mine Shaft Gap

[murdocj]

jeez, time to lay off the Red Bull.

Re:wrong

[__aaltlg1547]

Not a problem. We'll just fire up some coal-fired electric plants and achieve a fine balance between Nuclear Winter and Global Warming.

Uncharacteristically Stupid

[Terry95]

It never ceases to amaze and depress me that otherwise seemingly intelligent people are mortified by the big bag nuclear boogie man. There is nothing magical about these weapons. Just like every weapon since the wooden club they have strengths and weaknesses. For some objectives they are ideal, for others completely ineffective.

Every one ever built detonated all at once is not remotely capable of destroying the planet or wiping out all human life. Just NO OK? You're 10 orders of magnitude short of that threshold -- in reality it is probably completely unobtainable with these weapons PERIOD. You can certainly destroy a city. You can disrupt a country and international commerce for years to come. But destroy all life? Crack the planet open? Please, you make yourself sound like a uneducated savage worshiping the man with the fire stick.

What they ARE capable of and why the media and politicians are universally TERRIFIED of them is because they are uniquely capable of upsetting the historic definition of war. That is: "War is old men talking and young men dying".

War is a lot less fun when it is something other than sending politically impotent people's children to die in some God forsaken hell hole on the other side of the world. This is the only explanation I can find for the the Nuclear Hysteria. An ICBM can bring the war to Harry Reid, John Boehner and Rupert Murdoch's back yards. But the war it brings isn't really any different than the war bomb laden B-52s have been bringing to targets for decades. Note that I'm not judging those conflicts, just observing to the dead people it doesn't matter very damn much what killed them.

I'm just pointing out that our allegedly "humane" wars about which we lie to ourselves that only the bad guys are killed are all a politically correct illusion. Nuclear weapons make that illusion fairly impossible to maintain. A society has to do some actual soul searching (assuming they can even find its soul under the recordings of reality TV) and decide emphatically YES This Cause is worth risking our lives for, and it is worth killing so many women and children that we can no longer pretend it didn't happen.

In the end nuclear weapons are probably the most humane military instrument ever devised. Depending on exactly how evolved your sense of "humanity" is of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid

[PPH]

And yet, we wet ourselves over the idea that Iran might build one. Oh noes! A Muslim bomb! In case anyone has been paying attention, they already have one. Over in Pakistan.

What possession of "the bomb" does is give its owners a place at the big people's negotiating table. And that's a club we want to control the membership of very carefully. Even if it means killing tens of thousands of people with conventional weapons. Perhaps more than would be killed with a nuke.

Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid

[HornWumpus]

Being the loser in war has often resulted in old men dying. More often then not, of starvation.

Nukes changed the cost/benefit ratio of war. Strategic bombing changed it, nukes made it clear there was no way to (make a profit/advance your cause) via total war. Even the pointy hairs in charge can see that.

Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid

[clarkkent09]

Ayatollah Khomeini: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let Iran burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world"

There is a difference between rational countries having the bomb and countries run by Islamic fanatics having the bomb.

Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid

[darkmeridian]

I love the notion that every single country is exactly the same, and the racist notion that you seem to have that all Muslims are the same. Pakistan and Iran are not the same country despite both being Muslim. Iran was run by a psycho who kept on talking about the elimination of countries. Now, that's not to say that Pakistan didn't proliferate nuclear technology or talk shit, but Iran was much more provocative than Pakistan, and you shouldn't just bundle them together because they're Muslim.

Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid

[Lasse.Vartiainen]

The above quote appears to be fabricated, see for example : http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2007/11/is_iran_suicidal_or_deterrable If you want real quotes for threatening, or wanting to, nuke targets, you probably find more from U.S military leaders.

Re:Uncharacteristically Stupid

[Ambitwistor]

But destroy all life? Crack the planet open? Please, you make yourself sound like a uneducated savage worshiping the man with the fire stick.

Nice rant against an argument made by nobody here.

Re:wrong

[ebno-10db]

If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Recent_modeling

A nuclear war between the United States and Russia today could produce nuclear winter, with temperatures plunging below freezing in the summer in major agricultural regions, threatening the food supply for most of the planet. The climatic effects of the smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than previously thought. New climate model simulations, which are said to have the capability of including the entire atmosphere and oceans, show that the smoke would be lofted by solar heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years.

Sounds like we better get cracking on those mine shafts.

So I put down my sword...

[RogueWarrior65]

and you put down your rock and we try to kill each other like civilized people?
It's not my fault being the biggest and strongest. I don't even exercise.

Re:"Speak softly and carry a big stick"

[ebno-10db]

If we're quoting deceased leaders of the free world that existed in a very different geo-political climate, why not bring Teddy Roosevelt into the discussion?

Because Teddy didn't know about nukes, Winnie did. As for "a very different geo-political climate", it's not clear how that makes nukes any less destructive.

Re:wrong

[Hartree]

No. Not maybe, but no.

Either Mt. Pinatubo or Mt. St. Helens were far larger than that in terms of energy and vastly more effective at coupling the debris into the upper atmosphere. Add to that the large amounts of sulfur compounds they emitted.

So, where was the massive weather disruption or global cooling (or warming for that matter)?

It didn't happen. It hasn't happened then or even with Krakatoa or other massive eruptions of less than Yellowstone or Mt. Toba scale.

16 nukes are an eyeblink compared to the sort of energy flows that Mom Nature has going on all the time. The big thing about nuclear weapons is they emit the energy very very fast and in ways that couple well to destroying buildings, and living things nearby.

As a comparison, (yes, I did the calculation):

The detonation of all the worlds nuclear weapons at the point in time when the arsenals were the greatest (and vastly overestimating by assuming they were on average 1 megaton rather than 100 kiloton range or less) in the ocean, assuming all the energy stays in the water, would raise the temperature of the worlds oceans less than one hundredth of a degree C.

That was in repsonse to someone who assured me that he had it on good authority that it would boil the oceans dry. Unfortunately for him, I paid attention in all those physics classes I took.

Re:"Speak softly and carry a big stick"

[HornWumpus]

Teddy would have loved aircraft carrier task forces. Move them around the globe, like chess pieces, threatening without saying a word.

Re:wrong

[guanxi]

Now we debunk even nuclear war. 'It's all a conspiracy of misinformation to scare you -- like climate change.'

Yeah that's really great and all...

[Mashiki]

Until you realize that Russia is violating the treaty on medium range nuclear missiles. Treaties are only good as long as both sides agree to follow the rules.

Obvious troll is obvious:

[Hartree]

What planet are you on?

Someone posted a wildly inaccurate claim just as wrong as saying hurricane Katrina would destroy the whole earth.

And where in hell did you get the idea that anyone is saying that nuclear war is anything but devastating?

Do you mean that saying that Katrina wouldn't destroy the whole earth means advocating for repeated hits by it since it's just "misinformation"?

In the words of Monty Python: "That's a very silly line. Sit down."

Re:wrong

[tmosley]

This guy knows human nature.

Nuclear non-proliferation is implicit endorsement of war and all the horrors that accompany it. Nuclear weapons have saved more lives than any other technology invented by man since they have been created. World Wars would still be happening every 1-2 decades were it not for them.

Re:wrong

[sconeu]

If every nuke on the planet were detonated the combined dust clouds might cause a year or two without a summer

Great! Now we have a way to fight Global Warming!!! Let's get busy!!!

Article is not very good

[phantomfive]

It's cliche to say the article is not very good, but in this case it truly is missing a serious point:

No plan to get rid of nuclear weapons can be complete without taking China (and others) into consideration. We are at the point that it's not just a standoff between Russia and the US, who both have been reducing their nuclear weapons. Other countries have been actively increasing them, and unless they join in the movement, Russia and the US leave themselves completely vulnerable if they don't maintain at least some nuclear weapons.

I'm in favor of getting rid of nukes, but you can't assume it's just a game between Russia and the US, as this article does.

Re:Article is not very good

[Lawrence_Bird]

Wrong. Estimates for China range from "several hundred" to about 1,500. But regardless of what the exact (and unknowable) figure is, the primary concern with reductions is there comes a point where a smaller adversary - ie, China, India, Pakistan, Israel can leapfrog over you. This point is typically estimated at around 600-1000 warheads. Nuclear weapons area lot cheaper to build and maintain than carrier battle groups and large armies. When one of those smaller countries sees that it can, at low cost, become the number one nuclear power they will take it.

Re:Article is not very good

[Koreantoast]

Agreed. This is what creates problems when warhead counts drop below a certain point. Assume the Chinese have about, say 400 warheads. The US and Russia reduce their warhead count to about 600 each. There is going to be a LOT of temptation for the Chinese to increase their arsenal up to the 600 warhead level in order to achieve parity, to help cement their global superpower status. Or if the number comes down further, to say 300 warheads for those three nations. Other nations that rely on nuclear deterrents, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Israelis and the North Koreans, may be tempted to build more weapons to achieve parity. Parity, which was not achievable when the difference in arsenals was an order of magnitude, might become a temptation when it would only require a small step forward.

Re:Article is not very good

[phantomfive]

And some estimates put the Chinese warhead count up at 1,500.

Re:Article is not very good

[khallow]

And it will continue to be a 2 player game as long as Russia and the US maintain a nuclear arsenal that is one or two orders of magnitude bigger than that of any other nuclear power.

Well, there's the out. There's no particular reason to expect China's nuclear arsenal to remain that small.

Re:wrong

[dryeo]

In 1816 summer never showed up, at least partially caused by the eruption of Mount Tamboura, perhaps amplified by a solar minimum and it being the tail end of the little ice age. Frost and snow at the beginning of June in New England and New York, ice on the rivers in Pennsylvania and swings in temperatures from the 90's to below freezing. Farming was devastated with prices rising extremely, oats went from 12 cents to 92 cents a bushel ($1.51 to $12.45 in to-days money). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_Summer
A bunch of nukes along with the associated fire storms could well do similar, a couple of years with very low agriculture output would be very hard on many of the worlds peoples.

Re:wrong

[Virtucon]

Better make that 32 to be safe. Wait, because of decay and possible failure, let's make it an even 1000.

Re:wrong

[jelizondo]

Mt. St. Helens did not affect weather because the blast was horizontal, if you remember the news there was a hole in the side of the volcano and later the whole north side colapsed. Also there was less sulphur dioxide expelled (1.5 million tons) versus 25 million tons of Pinatubo. (see below)

Now, Pinatubo did have a global effect. PBS writes: In 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines produced ten times as much ash as Mount St. Helens and released more than 25 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The resulting cloud - which formed a wide band around the planet within about a month - resulted in an overall cooling of the global surface temperature by about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

As you point out, Toba did have a greater global effect, but because it coincided with other fenomena, such as a solar minimum and several previous volcanic eruptions not by sheer magnitude alone.

Now, let's try exploding several nuclear bombs in different parts of the world and see what the effects are... If taking some classes in physics was enough for us to accurately predict the effects, we would be Lords of the Universe and not meek, tree-climbing monkeys. So I vote we dismantle the damn things and to hell with experimenting...

We really want to get rid of a bunch of our nukes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them to China. THE HARD WAY!

Re:wrong

[BitZtream]

Yes, because we've established Wikipedia as authoritative and never biased.

These models show the opposite of what happens in nature. A single volcano can release more energy than all of the nukes on the planet combined ... yet there isn't any indication of 'years' of uninhabitable Earth due to said volcanos. Said volcanos actually blast dust into the air ... rather than a detonation of a nuke in air ... which directs most of its force down

You have no idea how much energy it takes to damage this planet. The physics tell us you're wrong.

Re:Why isn't it good for the gander?

[BitZtream]

He could say that ... he wouldn't be the first russian leader to think that way. Its worked out great so far, hasn't it.

Re:wrong

[1s44c]

Sounds like the 'guns make people safe' argument which totally misses the fact that US hospitals are full of people with gun shot wounds.

Re:wrong

[Meeni]

Except that hospital are not full of nuclear weapons victims. There must be something different, then.

Re:wrong

[Meeni]

Mount Tambora doesn't care about your refutations. Even if it is extremely hot, it is a cold blooded natural phenomenon that doesn't care about what you say, and just did what you said is impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

There are, at all time, 20 or more volcanos erupting, nobody care. Yet that single volcano in iceland that was merely -smocking- not even erupting, was a major disruption to the entire northern hemisphere, 3 years ago.

I do not think 16 bombs would be enough. But arguing that because more than 16 have been detonated over the course of half a century, the result would be the same as blasting them all simultaneously is pretty stupid. Arguing that because energy dissipated is inferior, the disruption would be less is also stupid (crickets are not that energetic, but they can provoke vast ravage and decimate human population through famine, much more so than hurricanes that are very energetic but destroy only localized things, what is "energized" matters, a lot).

Re:wrong

[Alioth]

It's not about the energy released. The nuclear winter is not a direct cause of the nuclear explosion or energy released by a nuclear weapon, it is caused by the cities that burn in huge firestorms for some time afterwards. Volcanic ash isn't like the soot you get from our highly flammable cities (all laced with hydrocarbons, plastics, you name it). The nature of the soot from burning cities has a far greater effect than the ash from a single volcano, blocking far more light and absorbing far more infrared radiation, which in turn heats the stratosphere (destroying ozone, so when it finally dissipates you now have to deal with having no ozone layer).

Re:I can't believe it would only take 16 of them..

[Alioth]

Well it'd take more than 16 - a recent simulation showed an exchange of 50 warheads in a regional conflict would likely cause a "nuclear autumn", reducing the growing season in the United States by up to 60 days. Certainly survivable, but with a lot of suckiness for the rest of the world who had nothing to do with the conflict.

The crucial difference between the atmospheric nuclear tests and an actual nuclear war that you and the other posters have missed is that no one tested nuclear weapons on actual live cities. The nuclear winter is not a direct effect of the actual nuclear detonation, it's actually caused by burning cities. Modern cities are extremely flammable - laced with hydrocarbons and other flammable material - and the soot from the ensuing firestorms would be lofted into the stratosphere. Soot is also vastly more effective than volcanic ash at blocking sunlight (and absorbing infrared).

So they're giving the TRUE numbers?

[bestalexguy]

The USA is deploying a strategic anti-missile systems. Russians are freaking out on that. Provided anti-missile systems really work (you never know) the Russians' best counter-measure is having many warheads AND many fake ones (the enemy mustn't know which is which).
So, why should the Russian not boycott a new START?

Actually, the only good news since the cold war is that Russian decision-makers (Putin's fat-cat friends) have much more to lose than the average American one.
This is quite different from the cold war era, when the flower-bearing American dreamer was no match for the Soviet war-hungry Politburo member.

One more thing: I'm really bothered by the fact that the Administration is trying to sell a new START as a move towards peace and not a simple cost-cutting measure (is it, /.ters?). Sounds like Tricky Baracky will have to look elsewhere for his little publicity stunt.

Forgive me, but:

[Hartree]

You're missing some pretty obvious things.

What gives you the idea that pointing out something is orders of magnitude off from reality hardly means saying it's what you think should happen?

Superpower nuclear war isn't horrible enough for your argument to work without massive inflation of the effects?

I'd have thought that the hundreds of millions killed initially, the devastation through starvation through food distribution collapse, the ongoing radiological deaths and disease, etc, would be plenty. Those aren't speculation, or theory that require mass fire storms to be ignited and the coupling to the atmosphere to be much more effective than what we already see from carbon particulate. They are direct consequences.

OP was saying that a few megatons of nukes within presumably a few hours would induce catastrophic global climate change. This is the kind of argument that quickly gets shot down, and undermines the person making it. It's a very different claim than saying that could happen in an all out superpower exchange.

It's also completely separate from whether someone is arguing for or against them.

It's an illustration of a common fallacy in argument: The idea that disagreeing with one small area in a contentious issue, is the same as saying all areas are invalid.

The jump to implying that I'm arguing for setting off 16 nuclear weapons for experimental verification is laughable.

Isn't that just the sort of poor reasoning that you'd pounce on if someone tried it with you?

Re:wrong

[Hartree]

I'm quite familiar with Tamboura and the year without a summer. It was not only the volcano, but probably a solar minimum as well and perhaps some other things we don't know about as record keeping and observation were more limited in that time.

The reduction of energy arriving from the sun due to the minimum is an effect that DOES deal with large energy flows on the scale of nature.

The OP was saying that 16 nukes set off would have global devastating consequences for decades. Pretty dubious. Completely dubious unless you throw in some unlikely other effects like uncontrolled mass fire storms (with only sixteen ignition areas, that would require no humans around to take any action to limit spread and an utterly perfect storm of no barriers to spreading. A nuclear fire ignition radius is limited in size. The earth is quite a big place.), or a solar minimum or something else that already put the earth at risk for a smaller effect to be amplified.

Even worst case, two years with low agriculture aren't anything like the scale claimed: devastation, for decades.

At that low a trigger level for mass global consequences, we should have seen coincidences in volcanic activity to have led to that repeatedly over history, and the time length that we have fairly good climate data.

Re:The best way tou reduce our stockpile - USE THE

[gtall]

That's disgusting. It should be Texas.

Re:wrong

[Hartree]

I'm well aware that volcanoes don't have consciousness. *sheesh*

And you had the world in a major cooling period (the little ice age) that was probably due to a solar minimum and other things that we may not know about as global record keeping and observation wasn't very good.

Amount of heat from the sun IS an energy flow that is big on nature's scale. As you point out, it took an already major downturn before hand.

And, look at what the OP was saying. Decades of devastation. Not a couple years of agricultural downturn. but devastation.

"I do not think 16 bombs would be enough. But arguing that because more than 16 have been detonated over the course of half a century, the result would be the same as blasting them all simultaneously is pretty stupid"

Which is why I very much didn't say that. If you note, I even mention that nuclear weapons get a lot of their devastation from FAST emission of that energy. And where did I mention the previous nuclear testing? Others did. You read that into it. I compared it to things that happen regularly in nature. Not just during the eyeblink of human history but throughout long periods of time.

I'm pointing out the need for highly dubious assumptions in the OP's statement for anything like the impact said for such a small initiator.

As you yourself said, 20 or so volcanoes are erupting. Sometimes large eruptions happen simultaneously. If what the OP said was true (decades of devastation fromsuch a small trigger) we should have seen repeated cases of massive impact both in history and in the time which we have fairly good climatic data for.

Several of the replies (Not as much yours. It stays more on target.) Seem to be making the leap that I was saying that we should blow off 16 nukes to do the test, or that I'm saying nuclear war is anything less than devastating, and declaring it a minor little thing like a sunburn.

Uh... Poppycock. Nuclear exchanges would be horrific (how can I amplify that enough for you to know that I think it's a Bad Thing(tm)).

You just get around to pointing out the stupidity of things I did not say. ;)

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wikipedia"? If you bothered actually reading what was linked to, you'd notice that section of the article uses two sources:

  Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University
Environmental consequences of nuclear war by Owen B. Toon, Alan Robock, and Richard P. Turco. Physics Today, December 2008.

Learn what an encyclopedia is before talking crap, especially the same old annoying "anybody can edit Wikipedia lolololol!!111" drivel.

Is this irony or naivete?

[argStyopa]

I find it amusing that - with an apparent straight face - Mr Krepon makes comments like "In his first term, Mr. Clinton midwifed the denuclearization of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, thereby strengthening the Nonproliferation Treaty and jump-starting the implementation of two Strategic Arms Reduction treaties negotiated by his predecessor, George H.W. Bush."

No trace of acknowledgment there of why this was possible?

For those born in the 21st century or for the dis-ingenues of the arms-control religion: these states were de-nuclearizeable solely because they were fragmented states leftover from the shattering of the Soviet Union, one of the most malignant states of the 20th century.

In the 1980s the world's nuclear armament was estimated in the 50,000-warhead range. (30k for the Soviet Union, whose warheads were inaccurate and unreliable, therefore generally larger; 20k for the US)

And you know what? We survived.

The fundamental paradigm of the arms-control zealots (that fewer weapons = less war) has always been as broken as the Grotian fundamentalists trying to legislate away war. Neither recognizes that conflict is endemic to the human condition. It's not the tools, it's the people that use them.

Re:wrong

[Ihlosi]

Energy-wise a single hurricane can easily dissipate hundreds of thousands of times as much energy as our largest nukes.

I have yet to see a hurricane sterilize and vitrify an area a few kilometers across.

Re:wrong

[drinkypoo]

I have yet to see a hurricane sterilize and vitrify an area a few kilometers across.

Thank you. The reason why bringing up how much energy a storm can dissipate is not just meaningless but also a stupid asshole move is that the energy is dissipated in all directions, over the entire course and duration of the weather event. The energy dissipated by an atomic bomb is produced in a very short period of time and concentrated in a relatively small area. That's why it's a bomb, and not a field.

A Russian wanting the US to disarm?

[gatkinso]

You don't say.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the 'guns make people safe' argument which totally misses the fact that US hospitals are full of people with gun shot wounds.

No, the hospitals are not "full of people with gunshot wounds." According to the CDC, they are much more likely there from the 15 leading causes of death in 2010:
1. Diseases of heart (heart disease)
2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases
4. Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
5. Accidents (unintentional injuries)
6. Alzheimer’s disease
7. Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
8. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease)
9. Influenza and pneumonia
10. Intentional self-harm (suicide)
11. Septicemia
12. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
13. Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (hypertension)
14. Parkinson’s disease
15. Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids

Now, it could be argued that the majority of "Intentional self-harms" are gun related (roughly 2/3s are). But since there were more suicides than gun related deaths in the US in 2008-2009 (including homicides), I'd be inclined to disagree with you. Please, also, don't address the number of auto deaths in the same year (HINT: exceeds gun related homicides and suicides combined). Don't believe me, though. Check it out yourself at the CDC. Gun related deaths are a problem in certain age ranges and racial groups. That's the problem that needs adressing, not guns.

Now, go ahead and try the "there are more cars than guns" argument.

There were 254,212,610 registered cars in the US in 2009. There were 33,883 deaths.
The Congressional research office estimates there are 310 million firearms in the US in the same year and a total of 30,470 firearm related deaths (but ~2/3s of those are suicides).

I want to know when, we as a nation, will address the unacceptable accidental poisoning and motor vehicle death toll.
Motor vehicle traffic deaths

        Number of deaths: 33,687 (2010)
        Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.9

Unintentional poisoning deaths

        Number of deaths: 33,041 (2010)
        Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7

What was the death toll due to maintaining the US Nuclear stockpile in 2009? Not sure it even makes it into this discussion.

Re:wrong

[slashmydots]

One nuke spread nuclear test's fallout practically around the entire world. It's now used to date trees under some circumstances. If all 16 were air-bursted, the entire world would be in nuclear winter. Discovery channel documentaries (that aren't about aliens) don't lie.

Orbital rocket = ICBM

[sjbe]

The Chinese don't even deploy warheads mated to delivery vehicles.

Citation needed.

China's nuclear force is purely defensive, as of now, and there is no indication that China seeks expanded capabilities.

That became false the moment China sent an orbital rocket into space. If you can send a man into orbit you can send a warhead just as easily. That very fact is what set off the original space race between the USA and USSR. The most important implication of sputnik was that the soviets could drop a missile on the US with a nuclear warhead attached.

Re:Orbital rocket = ICBM

[__aaxtnf2500]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Republic_of_China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction Follow any of the references regarding warhead utilization, or the FAS's research, or the BAS's research. Even the USG assesses the situation as such.
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/2013_China_Report_FINAL.pdf
China's nuclear force is the smallest of any nuclear weapons state. It does not maintain warheads mated to delivery vehicles.
Your ignorance surrounding the analog between pinpoint-precision MIRV/MARV'd solid-fueled stellar-guided advanced ICBM's and orbital rockets is pretty impressive, but analyzing your statements regarding Chinese rocket capability is absurd given that you don't even address the most important issue regarding the potential for offensive use of the Chinese strategic rocket force: THEY DON'T HAVE REMOTELY ENOUGH launchers. If you can't decapitate and then neutralize the US's strategic defence forces, then how you can you utilize your nuclear forces to prevent annihilating counter-battery? The answer is that you can't.
The only adversarial rocket force capable of even targeting all necessary US non-survivable assets is the Russian SRF. Period.

Re:Orbital rocket = ICBM

[sjbe]

Your ignorance surrounding the analog between pinpoint-precision MIRV/MARV'd solid-fueled stellar-guided advanced ICBM's and orbital rockets is pretty impressive

First off, screw you for the needless insult. Second off did you even read the links you posted? They directly contradict your assertions:

"The Second Artillery continues to modernize its nuclear forces by enhancing its silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and adding more survivable mobile delivery systems. In recent years, the road-mobile, solid-propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinentalrange ballistic missiles have entered service. The CSS-10 Mod 2, with a range in excess of 11,200 km, can reach most locations within the continental United States. China may also be developing a new road-mobile ICBM, possibly capable of carrying a multiple independently"

Furthermore what you are claiming isn't even remotely logical. The Chinese clearly maintain a nuclear deterrence capability but they cannot do that without having at least some of the weapons easily armed and ready to be delivered. The Chinese are not so stupid as to leave their missiles disarmed when it is a certainty that Russia and the USA (and others) have nuclear tipped missiles pointed at China and ready to go on short notice.

you don't even address the most important issue regarding the potential for offensive use of the Chinese strategic rocket force: THEY DON'T HAVE REMOTELY ENOUGH launchers.

"China’s nuclear arsenal currently consists of approximately 50-75 ICBMs, including the silo-based CSS-4 (DF-5); the solid-fueled, road-mobile CSS-10 Mods 1 and 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A); and the more limited range CSS-3 (DF-4)."

That is more than enough launchers to wipe out every major city in the United States or Russia. Just because they don't have as many as the US doesn't mean they don't have enough.

If you can't decapitate and then neutralize the US's strategic defence forces, then how you can you utilize your nuclear forces to prevent annihilating counter-battery? The answer is that you can't.

Did it occur to you that China's strategy may be merely one of deterrence? The notion of "winning" a nuclear war is an absurd one. The Chinese leadership appears to be smart enough to realize this.

Re:Orbital rocket = ICBM

[arth1]

"Chinaâ(TM)s nuclear arsenal currently consists of approximately 50-75 ICBMs, including the silo-based CSS-4 (DF-5); the solid-fueled, road-mobile CSS-10 Mods 1 and 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A); and the more limited range CSS-3 (DF-4)."

That is more than enough launchers to wipe out every major city in the United States or Russia. Just because they don't have as many as the US doesn't mean they don't have enough.

That's (incorrectly) assuming that all the ICBMs have the ability to reach the US, in a combination that would cover every major city. That's a tall assumption. An even taller one is that they would be successful.

This isn't the 1960s and you can let go of your fear that the bogeyman will drop the bomb on you in the middle of the night, and we'll all wake up to a nuclear holocaust.

China's nuclear arsenal is a deterrent. Not an aggressive one, at present. Unlike ours, where a large part is designed for first strike.
This may change, but then again, the Swedes may want to conquer Europe again too. We shouldn't base our defence on what may, potentially, happen, or we'll be cowards in our priestholes.

Re:Orbital rocket = ICBM

[__aaxtnf2500]

If you are offended, please take the time to consider whether or not you are in fact ignorant (don't know about) of the complexities of nuclear warfare.
I wasn't intending to insult you by calling you ignorant, I was informing you of your ignorance concerning nuclear war and you took it personally for some reason. Are you a former FBM skipper, are you a former SAC bomber pilot, a former EAM processor? How would you have even gained knowledge of the basics of nuclear war?
Here's the tl;dr:
1) The Russians are not worried about a Chinese attack because PRC SRF does not provide the PRC with offensive nuclear capabilities.
2) The maintenance of a counter-value or counter-force deterrent capability is irrelevant to my position that the PRC does not maintain an offensive capability.
3) Orbital rocket programs absolutely do not provide all development information necessary to build and deploy an offensive nuclear program, which requires incredibly high accuracy and reliability, neither of which are expected outcomes of orbital programs.
4) If you accept that the Chinese force might only be for deterrence, then you implicitly accept that it is not offensive. Offensive means there exist a manner or scenario in which force employment can largely prevent the employment of adversary weapons.
The only nuclear states which can be considered to deploy offensive nuclear weapons systems are those which are capable of decapitating a nuclear state, destroying post-attack command and control systems, and then detecting, tracking, and targeting remaining survivable assets on the trans-SIOP battlefield. There are two actors which have developed and maintain this capability: the Russians and the Americans. All other states maintain deterrent forces only. The UK and France should definitely be considered as potential offensive actors as part of NATO nuclear weapons employment, but it must also be considered that the UK and France have taken significant actions in reducing their deployed warhead counts and capabilities.
You can keep arguing that China is seeking to develop or has an offensive capability, but you simply have NO IDEA what you are talking about.
China is spending their money on more cost-effective forms of deterrence, such as ASBM's, EW, littoral combat platforms, etc.

Re:Orbital rocket = ICBM

[__aaxtnf2500]

It's not worth arguing with this guy, as you can see that he thinks that a deterrent force is evidence of an offensive posture. It's like handing someone an orange, he says it's an apple, and then he attempts to prove it to you by getting you to admit that it is a fruit.

So they never get used

[sjbe]

Which is what these people want. I'm not seeing the problem here that would require actively decommissioning the things.

Are you really that dense? That might be the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. The reason to decommission them is so that they cannot be used and cannot be perceived as a threat to anyone. Who gives a shit about the cost to decommission them? You decommission them so that they cannot ever explode and kill a huge number of people. Even accidental use of a nuke can potentially cause armageddon which I assure you is a lot more expensive than any decommissioning.

Nukes only deter sane people

[sjbe]

Nuclear weapons have saved more lives than any other technology invented by man since they have been created.

An argument that will be rendered idiotic the moment one gets used. Oh, you think no one is ever going to use a nuke ever again? Sorry but there are more than enough crazy people in the world who absolutely would use one and odds are that someday one of them will get their chance. Nukes are only a deterrent against people who actually don't want to die. One merely has to look to the middle east to see there are plenty of psychopaths out there willing to commit suicide and take a bunch of others with them.

World Wars would still be happening every 1-2 decades were it not for them.

And you plan to provide extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim?

Ask Japan

[sjbe]

Except that hospital are not full of nuclear weapons victims.

I think Japan might dispute that.

Re:Ask Japan

[Meeni]

A nuclear reactor is not a weapon, and hospitals are certainly not full of victims from Fukujima.

Re:wrong

[Immerman]

Hardly. A few years in the freezer is unlikely to have much of a long-term effect, whereas the CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere will likely remain there for the better part of a century.

Re:wrong

[Immerman]

But we're not discussing localized phenomena, we're discussing global weather consequences. As far as weather is concerned the only significant consequences to a nuke are:

* The energy released into the atmosphere, which as I pointed out is negligible
* The dust cloud, which is negligible from a single nuke, though it could begin to be a problem if hundreds or thousands of nukes are detonated.
* The smoke from cities burning to the ground if enough infrastructure is destroyed to eliminate our ability to put out the fires. Which is only really relevant in the case of a full-scale global nuclear exchange where nobody has the resources afterwards to offer aid to the damaged cities.

Nobody is going to make unilateral cuts

[morgauxo]

Why would any nation do that? Everybody thinks they are the good guy. Or.. if they don't they at least see themselves as being on their own side. Are governments any different? Why would one's own weapons be scary? They aren't shooting themsleves! Granted, if they shoot them at the wrong people they will fire back. Also.. if they fired enough of them it wouldn't matter that they all hit on some other part of the world, the whole planet would be messed up. But... 'OUR' nukes aren't going to cause that because we are the good guys and we wouldn't use them that way right?

So.. why would any nation cut their arms unless they thought it was going to result in other nations cutting theirs? What would be the motivation?

Re:wrong

[drinkypoo]

But we're not discussing localized phenomena, we're discussing global weather consequences.

that's right.

The energy released into the atmosphere, which as I pointed out is negligible

you have failed to demonstrate that this focused release of energy does not have significant climate effects. I haven't proved the reverse either, but stop make declarative statements not supported by any evidence.

The dust cloud, which is negligible from a single nuke, though it could begin to be a problem if hundreds or thousands of nukes are detonated.

That depends, of course, on how high up it is when it detonates, and how big it is...

The smoke from cities burning to the ground if enough infrastructure is destroyed to eliminate our ability to put out the fires. Which is only really relevant in the case of a full-scale global nuclear exchange where nobody has the resources afterwards to offer aid to the damaged cities.

So aside from one of these hypothetical terrorist scenarios which never seem to occur, thankfully, in what scenario are we expecting only one nuke?

$18 BILLION

[Ambitwistor]

Just maintaining the nuclear arsenal accounts for around $18million a year currently and it's rising every year.

That's $18 billion a year, on average.

Re:$18 BILLION

[Arker]

Indeed, my typo.

Re:wrong

[Ambitwistor]

Either Mt. Pinatubo or Mt. St. Helens were far larger than that in terms of energy and vastly more effective at coupling the debris into the upper atmosphere. Add to that the large amounts of sulfur compounds they emitted. So, where was the massive weather disruption or global cooling (or warming for that matter)? It didn't happen. It hasn't happened then or even with Krakatoa or other massive eruptions of less than Yellowstone or Mt. Toba scale.

Both Pinatubo and Krakatoa had noticeable climatic consequences. But those effects lasted only a few years, on the surface. (Krakatoa probably affected ocean heat for many decades.) Tambora helped cause "the year without a summer".

16 nukes wouldn't do much, but a large number of nukes could cause a nuclear winter. For the climatic consequences of that, see this paper.

What do you call the first people killed ......

[Sam_In_The_Hills]

.... in a nuclear war? The lucky ones.

Re:wrong

[sconeu]

See that hole there? That's the sar-chasm.

Re:wrong

[Hartree]

"16 nukes wouldn't do much, but a large number of nukes could cause a nuclear winter."

I quite agree. The problem I had was with the small size of the trigger, and the outsize prediction of the effect.

We aren't certain of the whole effect and how big, but unleashing thousands to tens of thousands of them in a superpower exchange could easily have long lasting and devastating climate consequences. (Letting alone the utter horror of everything else from it.)

I think we can all agree that neither the small or large versions are experiments we want to try. :)

Re:The best way tou reduce our stockpile - USE THE

[NemoinSpace]

It was actually chosen in defense of Arizona standing up to the feds. I realize that using doubly ironic sarcasm invariably leads to my posts being modded troll, but no offense was directed at Arizona.

Re:wrong

[Immerman]

>you have failed to demonstrate that this focused release of energy does not have significant climate effects
True, but I have pointed out that *much* larger releases of energy occur on a regular basis, which while not proof does strongly suggest that an energy release less than 0.0001% as large will not have significant long-term effects beyond the distance at which the dissipating energy reaches a comparable energy density. Which would be what, a few miles maybe?

>That depends, of course, on how high up it is when it detonates, and how big it is...
Right, of course. Any nuke detonated in the air will have essentially NO dust cloud. At most the few tons of material composing the bomb itself. It's only a ground-level blast that will vaporize significant amounts of material and blast even more particulate matter into the atmosphere. Still pales in comparison to even a medium-sized volcanic eruption though, so we'd need the cumulative effect of a lot of them to make much difference.

>In what scenario are we expecting only one nuke?
The initial post by slashmydots claiming 16 would be enough to destroy the worlds weather patterns

Lessons of history

[hessian]

There's only two ways to peace. One side destroys the other to the point where the other side doesn't want to be exterminated, or both sides have the ability to exterminate each other and the cost of war is too great.

That's a profound observation reinforced by history.

I'm not sure why people fear it; it means we know what we need to do, instead of what we wish were true.

You'd think all the sciency types would be more open to that.