I'm sure you could hold all that up at a range of a few feet. But a magnetic field strong enough to hold it up 12 miles?
Maybe I'm not understanding this properly. Are you saying a giant magnetic field at the ground and another one on the wire? Or are we building some kind of super structure out of magnets somehow? Like a spiderweb of self supporting magnetic fields?
I'm trying hard to see what you're talking about.
If you're talking about a huge magnetic field on the ground then I don't see how that could work. The intensity of the field reduces exponentially with distance. To be strong enough to support a structure 12 miles high it would have to be too large to be practical. But if you're taking about thousands of smaller fields all interlaced with each other... maybe.
Yes, I am imagining a 12 mile high roller coaster.
You're saying the cables are able to support this tube that is strong enough to keep a partial vacuum inside it and the weight of this train? How exactly are you going to hold up all that weight at 12 miles?
You're not saying magnets will hold it up right? Because... how? Magnets couldn't hold it up from the ground at that range.
Just give me the fisherprice answer here because it sounds beyond fishy... it sounds rotten fishy.
I was reading through it and initially thought it was just flinging the train from the ground up... but apparently it needs a TWELVE MILE HIGH RAMP!... that is not practical. If you used Mount Everest to get a head start it would help but it wouldn't get it near enough to that mark to matter. How the hell does anyone think building this would be possible?
the space elevator ideas are less crazy and they're kookoo for cocopuffs...
How do we inspire corporations to build things or invest on other worlds? How do they make a profit? If they can't then all their focus will be on getting things into low earth orbit.
You get the idea... I'm only arguing that logistically and economically it's probably more efficient which means it's something we could do right now if people were willing to commit to it.
We'll see... I think it's the future.
Actually, what I think will happen is that a robot delivery truck will drop your goods off and a personal robot will pick the goods up off the curb and put them away. That might be 30 years off but we already have trucks that can drive themselves. How long until all of that can be automated?
You can tell your refrigerator what to stock and it will keep tabs on everything in it's inventory. When stocks become low of certain goods... and there will be sensors in your pantry as well... then an order will be placed. A delivery truck that has a route in the area will drop off the goods on your curb and send a ping to the house system. The house system will dispatch a robotic mover that will go out and grab the standardized delivery box. And that will then be brought inside and opened where upon a manipulator arm will take the goods out, sort them, and put them away.
That is more or less how I see things working in the future.
But it has to die. I never liked it... I don't think anyone ever did but it would be nice if there were some magic solution that would fix all it's problems and make it actually useful. If there were such a solution... I'd go for it.
But there isn't... it needs to be taken out back and shot. We can have a cry about that later if we want, bury it with some dignity, and move one with our lives. It's a rabid dog... it's too bad... but that's all there is to it.
Warehouses are frequently by farms already. But the freshest produce is loaded onto refrigerated trucks FROM the field and then from there shipped to the cities.
I don't really care about the endless and completely stupid labor disputes.
Work for the company or don't. No one forces you to take that job. If the job sucks then quit. If enough people just quit the company would have to offer better wages. Who tries to make a career out of bagging groceries? It's a job teenagers do... spare us the living wage mantra.
As to squarefootage to store the food... no they won't. The grosery stores already have warehouse space they use to supply their stores. Why would you need to double that? Simply use what you already have. Only instead of sending the trucks to the store they get sent to people's homes.
As to coupons, I didn't say they wouldn't have coupons just that they wouldn't be printed. They'd be on the website which only costs the company money if people use them. But a paper coupon cost a lot of money. Do you know what it costs to print 10 million coupons a week? Think about it. This is a non-trivial sum.
As to the baggage people... the warehouses already employ a large staff that could be do both tasks. You'll probably have to hire more but it should be less then the number needed to at all those stores.
One of the nice things about an environment where there are no customers is that a company can be radically more efficient because everyone knows what they're doing. Customers screw around and waste time. Everyone has to wait for them to make up their minds. Now the computer does that and the people are kept in an environment where everyone is an expert and everyone knows what they need to do. There is no waiting so everyone is more productive.
As to the perishable aspect... pack it in ice and let the customer know digitally when the delivery will arrive. The company should be able to know... they have gps on the trucks, they know where peoples' homes are, they can statistically estimate the rate at which orders are unloaded, they know how many orders are between point A and B, and they know the exact route the truck will take. Delivery time baring accidents or road work should be something that can be estimated with some accuracy. At least give people an hour heads up so they know it's in the pipe.
Deliveries would probably have to be limited to certain days every week depending on neighborhood. So one street might be mondays and thursdays. And another street might be Wednesdays and Fridays.
As to rush deliveries convenience stores will still exist and the system will deliver at any time day or night for an extra service charge. But if you want to avoid the service charge you'll keep your orders to the schedule.
It would be better then nothing but not much better.
As to not being home... I anticipate there being some means of leaving it at your home. Furthermore, if it comes on a scheduel every week or a couple times a week then you could be expected to make ONE or two appointments a week? Just have it come at a time when you will always be home for it. if that isn't possible then again, there should be a means for simply leaving it there without damaging anything. Something like a large specialized mail box. You have to think of people "just doing things" this way. In the same way we have drive ways to accommodate our cars or mail boxes or cat doors. We add stuff like this all the time as needed.
If you have an apartment or condo complex it would be no big deal to either task the doorman with watching it or having a special compartment like the mail nooks for groseries.
The US has had jurisdiction of course for a long time. But it can only maintain it for as long as it doesn't claim it. That's the catch 22.
If the US starts dictating terms on it's corner of the internet then many international services that reside there will fracture into their own segments and the global internet will break down into national jurisdictions.
Not everyone was on computers in the 90s. Most people are today. And as many other people have pointed out in this thread, many large companies are already trying this in pilot programs with success.
Amazon apparently has a pilot program in Seattle. the prices are still above the grocery store but if they scale up that might come down quiet a bit. Big outlets like Costco have enough volume that they can demand better prices from producers and they tend to pass that on to customers as an inducement to use their service.
If Amazon or something like them gets big enough they should be able to get better prices and pass them on.
My argument here is that they should be able to charge the SAME price as the store without a delivery fee. They're not paying for a store front and they're not paying for the people that manage the store. I don't see why the delivery trucks if properly managed would cost more then all the brick and mortar overhead combined.
Well said, my impression of the situation is roughly the same.
I think they'd also save on labor.
I often shop at my grocery store late at night. I have odd hours and I'm in there at 2 am sometimes. They store is FULL of people from the warehouse. The people that work at the store don't actually stock it. Men in come in trucks every night, unload pallets of goods, and then run around the store to put everything on the shelves.
What if every one of those guys rather then stocking the store drove a single truck on a route. that would not only eliminate the cost of the store which is typically five percent or less of total expenses but it would also cut out all the clerks and what not at the store itself. That HAS to save a lot of money and it could very easily be put towards free delivery. Of course have a minimum delivery order to keep people from abusing it. But the savings from nixing the store have to be huge.
Exactly. This is how the mail service works and how they used to deliver milk.
Actually, when I was a baby, my mother had diapers delivered. I'm not ancient this was in the 80s... a guy would come by and drop off cloth diapers and pick up the soiled ones...
It works because they have routes. Just like the garbage trucks.
Obviously this is going to start in big cities first. I live in Los angeles... not a dense city but a large one.
As to Amazon prime... if you focus on Super Saver orders and try to order in 25 dollar chunks then you can get zero shipping charges without amazon prime.
I order lots of stuff from amazon all the time and almost never pay shipping.
My experience in NY was that everything had a crazy price. My brother was going to university there for a few years. He was ordering his cat food by mail order. That's something you'd never do in Los Angeles. But if you're in a tiny apartment in Manhattan then you do crazy stuff like that.
Anyway, I hope that and similar businesses take off. I think they're ultimately a better way to get goods to people then the store fronts. Ideally the warehouses and the delivery trucks should be different companies entirely. Sort of the same way newspaper printers work in England. In England, the newspapers and the printing companies that make them every day are different companies. As such small papers can enter the market with very low overhead and compete with larger older papers. In the US most newspapers own their printing presses so its very hard for competing papers to get the same coverage and really compete on an even basis.
I'm not suggesting that the company not make a profit. I'm suggesting that by shifting away from brick and mortar institutions they can make up the difference. So they'll still have a nice profit margin. It's just the consumer will be paying the same price.
Right now when I buy something in the store, I'm paying for that store and the people that are working in it. If I order the same thing and it is delivered at the same price... then I'm not paying for that store or those people anymore. Instead it's going to the delivery truck and the delivery guy.
My argument here is that the truck and the guy should be cheaper then the store.
Maybe I'm wrong... I just think it should be explored more deeply. Someone pointed out that some dotcom companies tried it and died. That may be so but many of those companies were very badly run. It might just need to be tried by a more professional outfit.
First, you're being exceeding and entirely unnessarily rude. Rather then appear superior, this sort of behavior makes you appear childish. This is just a word to the wise in case you weren't aware pointless insults make you sound stupid.
Second, obviously people get paid. However, there is an expense in maintaining retail space in the middle of a city. There is an expense to issuing mail coupons. There is an expense to having check out baggers in the store. There is an expense to having the managers. there is an expense to send trucks to the store and unload goods.
I am hoping that by eliminating all of that there is enough savings to pay for the cost of having a truck deliver to the door directly. For example, leasing space often is 5 percent or a little less of total spending. By not having a store front they eliminate that and get five percent right there. Total number of employees per customer should also be reduced. Labor costs are typically the largest expense in any business. Any thing that can bring those costs down will probably have a big impact on the bottom line.
So the economics aren't that irrational. Had you bothered to think about it a bit before acting like a spoiled child... you might have realized that. I suspect you're too interested in protecting your ego at this point to actually give the idea a fair hearing. But this is my likely vain attempt to have a rational discussion with you.
A fair point, but possibly they just did it the wrong way? The idea seems sound. Why did they need their own warehouse space for example? Why not make use of existing grocery store space?
Possibly if Ralph's (large grocery chain on the west coast) partnered with them? That way they only need the servers and the trucks. The supply chain and the warehouses would already be there.
If they want to impress me, then find a way to let me order groceries from home to be delivered at my home at no additional charge.
That has to be possible. Look at Amazon with their no shipping charges on anything over 25 dollars rule. If the grocery stores had that it would be amazing. And while some people might like going to the grocery store... I don't like shopping in person.
How great would it be if you could order everything up at home, compare all the prices from a dozen outlets, and get everything you want right to your front door.
Some might say it has to cost extra for that. But does it? Think of what you'd save if you didn't have to have so many grocery stores. Imagine if instead you had a small number of convenience stores for common items and everything else came from warehouses. The warehouses are there anyway. That's where the stores get everything from. So instead of a big truck coming around at 2 AM to restock the grocery store... the trucks instead move around your neighborhood dropping off packages of groceries. Frozen goods can be packed in ice. There is a theft issue there but we can work that out with something that looks like a big specialty mail box.
This is doable and it would be much more efficient. Less traffic on the road. Less real estate wasted on a service that isn't required.
Everything can go from the warehouse to our door step. Just a web prompt in between.
Some people don't have computers? Put a kiosk in the convenience store and they can have it delivered to their home.
Maybe this is a stupid idea... But I'd use it exclusively.
1. the USSR wasn't contained because it wasn't crazy. It was contained because it couldn't survive an engagement with the US. Had the Nazis or imperial Japanese faced a nuclear US they wouldn't have engaged in military adventurism. MAD can contain a small number of nuclear powers and remain stable. The size of the powers is less relevant then the NUMBER of them. Think of each one like a pair of dice... These dice are rolled occasionally... if one of them lands on the right number then they could launch their weapons. As such, nuclear war is inevitable. However, the likelihood and frequency increase geometrically with the number of powers that have nuclear weapons.
2. MAD requires nuclear powers be bound into BINARY relationships where the more militaristic faction ideally has a weaker position. MAD does not work in a multipolar world. During the cold war the Soviets knew that any bomb that went off on their soil was the fault of the Americans. And the Americans knew that any bomb that went off on their soil was the soviets. Thus both powers knew who to blame if something happened and could destroy that power. As a result nuclear war was not survivable. In a multpolar world a third party can strike at another target and they'll have no way of knowing who to blame. What if Iran for example nukes Russia? Who do the Russians blame? If the Iranians don't say "oh we did it"... the Russians will have to investigate and try to find out. Maybe there isn't enough evidence since the whole area was blown to hell? What happens if a bomb goes off in China... was it the North Koreans? Maybe it was the Americans? You don't know. MAD doesn't work in a multipoloar world because you can't verify the aggressor.
As such as more powers get nuclear weapons... MAD becomes unsustainable and nuclear war becomes EXTREMELY likely.
In that case, the ideal solution is to withdraw from all non-essential military relationships and HOPE for a nuclear war between your rivals or between your rivals and third parties that are not allies. In fact, it might even be in your interest to start a war between these powers while carefully ensuring you are not implicated.
This is what happens when everyone has nuclear weapons. I kid you not... tens of millions will die at the very least... perhaps billions.
You're looking at situations where the great powers to REMAIN after it's all over could well be a collection of countries in Africa and South America while old great powers lie dying in cities of radioactive glass.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you could hold all that up at a range of a few feet. But a magnetic field strong enough to hold it up 12 miles?
Maybe I'm not understanding this properly. Are you saying a giant magnetic field at the ground and another one on the wire? Or are we building some kind of super structure out of magnets somehow? Like a spiderweb of self supporting magnetic fields?
I'm trying hard to see what you're talking about.
If you're talking about a huge magnetic field on the ground then I don't see how that could work. The intensity of the field reduces exponentially with distance. To be strong enough to support a structure 12 miles high it would have to be too large to be practical. But if you're taking about thousands of smaller fields all interlaced with each other... maybe.
I'm not grasping how it works.
Be patient with me here...
Yes, I am imagining a 12 mile high roller coaster.
You're saying the cables are able to support this tube that is strong enough to keep a partial vacuum inside it and the weight of this train? How exactly are you going to hold up all that weight at 12 miles?
You're not saying magnets will hold it up right? Because... how? Magnets couldn't hold it up from the ground at that range.
Just give me the fisherprice answer here because it sounds beyond fishy... it sounds rotten fishy.
I was reading through it and initially thought it was just flinging the train from the ground up... but apparently it needs a TWELVE MILE HIGH RAMP!... that is not practical. If you used Mount Everest to get a head start it would help but it wouldn't get it near enough to that mark to matter. How the hell does anyone think building this would be possible?
the space elevator ideas are less crazy and they're kookoo for cocopuffs...
How do we inspire corporations to build things or invest on other worlds? How do they make a profit? If they can't then all their focus will be on getting things into low earth orbit.
You get the idea... I'm only arguing that logistically and economically it's probably more efficient which means it's something we could do right now if people were willing to commit to it.
We'll see... I think it's the future.
Actually, what I think will happen is that a robot delivery truck will drop your goods off and a personal robot will pick the goods up off the curb and put them away. That might be 30 years off but we already have trucks that can drive themselves. How long until all of that can be automated?
You can tell your refrigerator what to stock and it will keep tabs on everything in it's inventory. When stocks become low of certain goods... and there will be sensors in your pantry as well... then an order will be placed. A delivery truck that has a route in the area will drop off the goods on your curb and send a ping to the house system. The house system will dispatch a robotic mover that will go out and grab the standardized delivery box. And that will then be brought inside and opened where upon a manipulator arm will take the goods out, sort them, and put them away.
That is more or less how I see things working in the future.
But it has to die. I never liked it... I don't think anyone ever did but it would be nice if there were some magic solution that would fix all it's problems and make it actually useful. If there were such a solution... I'd go for it.
But there isn't... it needs to be taken out back and shot. We can have a cry about that later if we want, bury it with some dignity, and move one with our lives. It's a rabid dog... it's too bad... but that's all there is to it.
Warehouses are frequently by farms already. But the freshest produce is loaded onto refrigerated trucks FROM the field and then from there shipped to the cities.
I don't really care about the endless and completely stupid labor disputes.
Work for the company or don't. No one forces you to take that job. If the job sucks then quit. If enough people just quit the company would have to offer better wages. Who tries to make a career out of bagging groceries? It's a job teenagers do... spare us the living wage mantra.
As to squarefootage to store the food... no they won't. The grosery stores already have warehouse space they use to supply their stores. Why would you need to double that? Simply use what you already have. Only instead of sending the trucks to the store they get sent to people's homes.
As to coupons, I didn't say they wouldn't have coupons just that they wouldn't be printed. They'd be on the website which only costs the company money if people use them. But a paper coupon cost a lot of money. Do you know what it costs to print 10 million coupons a week? Think about it. This is a non-trivial sum.
As to the baggage people... the warehouses already employ a large staff that could be do both tasks. You'll probably have to hire more but it should be less then the number needed to at all those stores.
One of the nice things about an environment where there are no customers is that a company can be radically more efficient because everyone knows what they're doing. Customers screw around and waste time. Everyone has to wait for them to make up their minds. Now the computer does that and the people are kept in an environment where everyone is an expert and everyone knows what they need to do. There is no waiting so everyone is more productive.
As to the perishable aspect... pack it in ice and let the customer know digitally when the delivery will arrive. The company should be able to know... they have gps on the trucks, they know where peoples' homes are, they can statistically estimate the rate at which orders are unloaded, they know how many orders are between point A and B, and they know the exact route the truck will take. Delivery time baring accidents or road work should be something that can be estimated with some accuracy. At least give people an hour heads up so they know it's in the pipe.
I've covered all of that.
Deliveries would probably have to be limited to certain days every week depending on neighborhood. So one street might be mondays and thursdays. And another street might be Wednesdays and Fridays.
As to rush deliveries convenience stores will still exist and the system will deliver at any time day or night for an extra service charge. But if you want to avoid the service charge you'll keep your orders to the schedule.
It would be better then nothing but not much better.
As to not being home... I anticipate there being some means of leaving it at your home. Furthermore, if it comes on a scheduel every week or a couple times a week then you could be expected to make ONE or two appointments a week? Just have it come at a time when you will always be home for it. if that isn't possible then again, there should be a means for simply leaving it there without damaging anything. Something like a large specialized mail box. You have to think of people "just doing things" this way. In the same way we have drive ways to accommodate our cars or mail boxes or cat doors. We add stuff like this all the time as needed.
If you have an apartment or condo complex it would be no big deal to either task the doorman with watching it or having a special compartment like the mail nooks for groseries.
The US has had jurisdiction of course for a long time. But it can only maintain it for as long as it doesn't claim it. That's the catch 22.
If the US starts dictating terms on it's corner of the internet then many international services that reside there will fracture into their own segments and the global internet will break down into national jurisdictions.
Not everyone was on computers in the 90s. Most people are today. And as many other people have pointed out in this thread, many large companies are already trying this in pilot programs with success.
Amazon apparently has a pilot program in Seattle. the prices are still above the grocery store but if they scale up that might come down quiet a bit. Big outlets like Costco have enough volume that they can demand better prices from producers and they tend to pass that on to customers as an inducement to use their service.
If Amazon or something like them gets big enough they should be able to get better prices and pass them on.
Checked the prices... seems like they're higher then the store.
So... not impressed. They need to hit the store price point without a delivery charge... at least on orders over a reasonable value.
... I'm imagining some Brazil like pneumatic tube system... Not practical of course but it would actually be awesome.
Come on... how cool would it be if you could order something and then "thunk" it shows up in your tube! :D
My argument here is that they should be able to charge the SAME price as the store without a delivery fee. They're not paying for a store front and they're not paying for the people that manage the store. I don't see why the delivery trucks if properly managed would cost more then all the brick and mortar overhead combined.
Well said, my impression of the situation is roughly the same.
I think they'd also save on labor.
I often shop at my grocery store late at night. I have odd hours and I'm in there at 2 am sometimes. They store is FULL of people from the warehouse. The people that work at the store don't actually stock it. Men in come in trucks every night, unload pallets of goods, and then run around the store to put everything on the shelves.
What if every one of those guys rather then stocking the store drove a single truck on a route. that would not only eliminate the cost of the store which is typically five percent or less of total expenses but it would also cut out all the clerks and what not at the store itself. That HAS to save a lot of money and it could very easily be put towards free delivery. Of course have a minimum delivery order to keep people from abusing it. But the savings from nixing the store have to be huge.
Exactly. This is how the mail service works and how they used to deliver milk.
Actually, when I was a baby, my mother had diapers delivered. I'm not ancient this was in the 80s... a guy would come by and drop off cloth diapers and pick up the soiled ones...
It works because they have routes. Just like the garbage trucks.
Obviously this is going to start in big cities first. I live in Los angeles... not a dense city but a large one.
As to Amazon prime... if you focus on Super Saver orders and try to order in 25 dollar chunks then you can get zero shipping charges without amazon prime.
I order lots of stuff from amazon all the time and almost never pay shipping.
My experience in NY was that everything had a crazy price. My brother was going to university there for a few years. He was ordering his cat food by mail order. That's something you'd never do in Los Angeles. But if you're in a tiny apartment in Manhattan then you do crazy stuff like that.
Anyway, I hope that and similar businesses take off. I think they're ultimately a better way to get goods to people then the store fronts. Ideally the warehouses and the delivery trucks should be different companies entirely. Sort of the same way newspaper printers work in England. In England, the newspapers and the printing companies that make them every day are different companies. As such small papers can enter the market with very low overhead and compete with larger older papers. In the US most newspapers own their printing presses so its very hard for competing papers to get the same coverage and really compete on an even basis.
Anyway, it will happen eventually.
Jesus listen to you little drama queens.
I'm not suggesting that the company not make a profit. I'm suggesting that by shifting away from brick and mortar institutions they can make up the difference. So they'll still have a nice profit margin. It's just the consumer will be paying the same price.
Right now when I buy something in the store, I'm paying for that store and the people that are working in it. If I order the same thing and it is delivered at the same price... then I'm not paying for that store or those people anymore. Instead it's going to the delivery truck and the delivery guy.
My argument here is that the truck and the guy should be cheaper then the store.
Maybe I'm wrong... I just think it should be explored more deeply. Someone pointed out that some dotcom companies tried it and died. That may be so but many of those companies were very badly run. It might just need to be tried by a more professional outfit.
First, you're being exceeding and entirely unnessarily rude. Rather then appear superior, this sort of behavior makes you appear childish. This is just a word to the wise in case you weren't aware pointless insults make you sound stupid.
Second, obviously people get paid. However, there is an expense in maintaining retail space in the middle of a city. There is an expense to issuing mail coupons. There is an expense to having check out baggers in the store. There is an expense to having the managers. there is an expense to send trucks to the store and unload goods.
I am hoping that by eliminating all of that there is enough savings to pay for the cost of having a truck deliver to the door directly. For example, leasing space often is 5 percent or a little less of total spending. By not having a store front they eliminate that and get five percent right there. Total number of employees per customer should also be reduced. Labor costs are typically the largest expense in any business. Any thing that can bring those costs down will probably have a big impact on the bottom line.
So the economics aren't that irrational. Had you bothered to think about it a bit before acting like a spoiled child... you might have realized that. I suspect you're too interested in protecting your ego at this point to actually give the idea a fair hearing. But this is my likely vain attempt to have a rational discussion with you.
A fair point, but possibly they just did it the wrong way? The idea seems sound. Why did they need their own warehouse space for example? Why not make use of existing grocery store space?
Possibly if Ralph's (large grocery chain on the west coast) partnered with them? That way they only need the servers and the trucks. The supply chain and the warehouses would already be there.
If they want to impress me, then find a way to let me order groceries from home to be delivered at my home at no additional charge.
That has to be possible. Look at Amazon with their no shipping charges on anything over 25 dollars rule. If the grocery stores had that it would be amazing. And while some people might like going to the grocery store... I don't like shopping in person.
How great would it be if you could order everything up at home, compare all the prices from a dozen outlets, and get everything you want right to your front door.
Some might say it has to cost extra for that. But does it? Think of what you'd save if you didn't have to have so many grocery stores. Imagine if instead you had a small number of convenience stores for common items and everything else came from warehouses. The warehouses are there anyway. That's where the stores get everything from. So instead of a big truck coming around at 2 AM to restock the grocery store... the trucks instead move around your neighborhood dropping off packages of groceries. Frozen goods can be packed in ice. There is a theft issue there but we can work that out with something that looks like a big specialty mail box.
This is doable and it would be much more efficient. Less traffic on the road. Less real estate wasted on a service that isn't required.
Everything can go from the warehouse to our door step. Just a web prompt in between.
Some people don't have computers? Put a kiosk in the convenience store and they can have it delivered to their home.
Maybe this is a stupid idea... But I'd use it exclusively.
it's more complex then that.
1. the USSR wasn't contained because it wasn't crazy. It was contained because it couldn't survive an engagement with the US. Had the Nazis or imperial Japanese faced a nuclear US they wouldn't have engaged in military adventurism. MAD can contain a small number of nuclear powers and remain stable. The size of the powers is less relevant then the NUMBER of them. Think of each one like a pair of dice... These dice are rolled occasionally... if one of them lands on the right number then they could launch their weapons. As such, nuclear war is inevitable. However, the likelihood and frequency increase geometrically with the number of powers that have nuclear weapons.
2. MAD requires nuclear powers be bound into BINARY relationships where the more militaristic faction ideally has a weaker position. MAD does not work in a multipolar world. During the cold war the Soviets knew that any bomb that went off on their soil was the fault of the Americans. And the Americans knew that any bomb that went off on their soil was the soviets. Thus both powers knew who to blame if something happened and could destroy that power. As a result nuclear war was not survivable. In a multpolar world a third party can strike at another target and they'll have no way of knowing who to blame. What if Iran for example nukes Russia? Who do the Russians blame? If the Iranians don't say "oh we did it"... the Russians will have to investigate and try to find out. Maybe there isn't enough evidence since the whole area was blown to hell? What happens if a bomb goes off in China... was it the North Koreans? Maybe it was the Americans? You don't know. MAD doesn't work in a multipoloar world because you can't verify the aggressor.
As such as more powers get nuclear weapons... MAD becomes unsustainable and nuclear war becomes EXTREMELY likely.
In that case, the ideal solution is to withdraw from all non-essential military relationships and HOPE for a nuclear war between your rivals or between your rivals and third parties that are not allies. In fact, it might even be in your interest to start a war between these powers while carefully ensuring you are not implicated.
This is what happens when everyone has nuclear weapons. I kid you not... tens of millions will die at the very least... perhaps billions.
You're looking at situations where the great powers to REMAIN after it's all over could well be a collection of countries in Africa and South America while old great powers lie dying in cities of radioactive glass.