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Should Nuclear Devices Be Kept On Hand To Protect Against Near Earth Objects?
Lasrick writes: Seth Baum ponders whether nuclear devices should be kept on hand for the purpose of destroying near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a threat to the planet. Baum acknowledges that "The risk posed by NEOs is not zero, but it is small relative to the risk posed by nuclear weapons." Even so, Baum writes, since the consequences of an NEO hitting the earth would be catastrophic, keeping 10 or 20 nuclear devices available might be a good idea, and would be "insignificant compared to the thousands now held in military arsenals."
Have you seen how much effect a nuke is likely to have on a significantly sized NEO? None whatso fucking ever. If an NEO is enough to wipe us out, it won't be screwed by a nuke.
Also the ideal launch point for such a nuke would be from space, not Earth.
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And what delivery mechanism do you propose we have ready for those devices? Its not like we have superorbital spacecraft just lying around.
"The risk posed by NEOs is not zero, but it is small relative to the risk posed by nuclear weapons." Even so, Baum writes, since the consequences of an NEO hitting the earth would be catastrophic
Wrong. The risk posed by NEOs is small in probability and extremely high in magnitude; the risk posed by nuclear weapons is larger in probability and smaller in magnitude. Space rock impacts cause mass extinctions; nuclear weapons detonations cause international incidents and poorly-defined human responses.
We have a fantasy that one nation launching a nuke will result in all nations nuking each other until the earth is a ball of slag; a more rational mind recognizes MAD as suggesting one nation launching a nuke will result in all nations reducing that nation to a ginormous glass parking lot. In reality, we haven't seen that situation, and our assessment of human psychology suggests it's more likely that a single strike (rather than constant, ongoing bombing) would result in shock, hesitation, and a lot of talking; ongoing nuclear bombing of a single nation would probably result in all other nations shaking like water-laden chihuahuas while trying to talk down the offenders (see Germany. Twice. With all of Europe wetting itself both times).
Nuclear war has a low but significant probability, itself spanning a wide berth of probable outcomes with impacts ranging from nothing notable to devastation. The human race would survive even in the worst projections, just bombed back into the stone age. NEO impacts have an insignificant but real probability, when limiting our view to those objects which would destroy the earth. Limiting nukes to "slag the human race back into the stone age" produces a similarly insignificant but real probability, more attainable by joint intent of all world leaders but hardly more likely; expanding NEO impacts to "a range of possible outcomes from smashing buildings to vaporizing all life off the planet" and scaling each magnitude of impact against the various magnitudes of impact of nuclear war immediately demonstrates that we take meteor impacts pretty frequently, most hitting uninhabited areas or blowing up in the sky with no damage, so nuclear war seems vaguely more likely in all scenarios.
The absolute outcome of a planet-killer tells you it's easier to hide from nuclear war. A few nukes are an acceptable trade-off, since disarmament is impossible and creates its own risks (i.e. secret nuclear stockpiles--if you really disarm, how do you know the other guy isn't lying, and ready to nuke you when it's clear you really have no nukes?)
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We have no delivery system, no fire control system, probably no software to guide it to the object, no information on a nuke's impact on the object, etc.
It's like trying to decide if you should keep that 105 howitzer shell around when you have no gun, no one trained to use it, and no way to target anything with it.
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You mean NEOs like Russia? You can't get any nearer to Earth than that.
+1 - humor is a great way to get at the tough issues. To put it more bluntly, though: "no, nuclear devices should be kept on hand to protect against politicians". The nuclear-armed nations have not gone to war with each other, and they won't because nuclear weapons (along with ICBM's) ensure that politicians can't simply send poor boys off to die for their lustful ambition on wealth and power without also impulsively risking their own safety.
This is unprecedented in the history of the nation state mechanism and has had major positive effects (if one considers empirical evidence rather than irrational fear). Sorry, it's not the pretty table at the UN that keeps bad leaders from misbehaving; until we can ban politicians, taking away their risk exposure would be the stupidest course of action conceivable. In the US only 5% of the population even trusts them to make sound decisions.
Maybe I should just change my .sig to "incentives matter" - the fear-mongers love to pretend otherwise, so this never stops coming up.
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Thanks, you really summed up my response to the submitter, which would have been along the lines of, "What makes you think that we will ever NOT have nuclear weapons?"
For the very reasons that you mention
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Reagan was badly upset when he realized that the Russians actually thought that Able Archer 82 was actually a lead up to war. He got a lot more serious about arms control talks after that.
And it is not policy that use of Nuclear Weapons is survivable, the policy as of the latest Nuclear Posture Review is that the US will not guarantee no-first-use, which is not the same thing. However, we do provide that assurance for countries who have signed the NPT.
The idea is that giving a no-first-use guarantee allows the assumption that the US will accept being hit with devastating non-nuclear weaponry and not retaliate because we might not be able to retaliate in "kind" because we don't have a non-nuclear weapon that does the same amount of damage. It also is meant to allow us to maintain a credible threat against heavily militarized countries like North Korea or China without having to match them conventionally. Not providing a guarantee is not the same thing as a definite retaliation, even if something like that came to pass.
Moreover, even your fundamentalist Air Force generals are not going to launch without a reason. They may believe that they will get taken up in the Rapture, but that doesn't mean that they will start the war that kills billions of people to do it. They may be believers in an eventual apocalypse, but only truly crazy people believe that they are the ones who are meant to start it.
Don't get the idea that I feel safe with nuclear weapons around, but I don't think it is impossible for us to avoid destroying the planet with them. In any event, they are here to stay and we need to learn to live with them. I think that enough people have done the calculus in their heads about what they would do if called upon to end the world. Some military folks may perhaps be capable of a first attack out of nowhere, but even the military are not automata.