71–80 of 250 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Major conflicts only happen in non nuclear states. In all honesty I’ll bet that’s what has kept India and Pakistan from a war.
Ahem... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_wars_and_confli...
I recently finished Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety [0]. I can't recommend the book enough for how eye opening it really is into how blasé we have been with nuclear weapons. We've been reckless and by all accounts it is a miracle we haven't had a serious accident (there have been a few, just not on our own soil). The number of close calls is just astounding. Fur…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
This is why nuclear non-proliferation is important. Its difficult enough for a super power to safely store and control its WMD. Each new nuclear state magnifies the risks, and all the more so because they lack the after action experience that a half century of mishaps delivers.
> Its difficult enough for a super power to safely store and control its WMD.
There has never been an accidental detonation of a nuclear device. The problem this article describes was one in rocketry, insulation, and adherence to protocols.
Nuclear non-proliferation is important, but this article is not the reason why. The reason non-proliferation is important is because of the ramifications of using the devices, not challenges in storing them.
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Wouldn't you rather live in a world where all governments had zero nuclear weapons each? A nuclear bomb serves no other purpose than killing huge numbers of civilians in a short period of time. Shouldn't we strive for a world where nobody has that capability? Not to mention that in the United States, one man has unilateral and final authority to launch a nuclear first strike. Edit: countries -> governments
The main purpose of nuclear bomb is to deter nuclear attack by ensuring MAD. We should strive for a world where nobody has a chance to use nuclear bomb. And, currently, a handful of countries having them is the best way to ensure that. If all countries claim to destroy their nuclear bombs and never ever make a new one, would you trust all of them?
Until it isn't. But then it's too late to try anything different.
> If all [governments] claim to destroy their nuclear bombs and never ever make a new one, would you trust all of them?
I don't trust statements from governments, as a general rule.
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Not an aerospace engineer or anything. I think the fear was that the rocket may tip over and collapse under its own weight. I wouldn't be too surprised if that could trigger an ignition of the rocket fuel at the very least, risking nuclear contamination. While the physics package surely has numerous safeties, I'd be concerned that the safeties would be damaged in a way that no one could really predict after falling 8…
Any damage to the warhead would likely make it impossible to have a nuclear reaction. In order to do that, the warhead would have to explode multiple precisely shaped conventional explosives with precise timing. If any one of them was deformed, nothing (apart from the small conventional explosion) would happen, even if all the safeguards incorrectly decided to explode the warhead.
> risking nuclear contamination.
not a nuclear explosion. A conventional boom could spread radioactive materials all over.
I recently finished Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety [0]. I can't recommend the book enough for how eye opening it really is into how blasé we have been with nuclear weapons. We've been reckless and by all accounts it is a miracle we haven't had a serious accident (there have been a few, just not on our own soil). The number of close calls is just astounding. Fur…
Hey it's not all bad, we managed to convince Ukraine to destroy their nuclear weapons and it worked out really well for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
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Arms reduction is even more important. I'd rather live in a world where 20 countries have 50 warheads each, then one where two countries have 4,000 warheads each. A weapon detonating by accident is terrible. Thousands of weapons on hair-trigger alert is civilization-ending. It's absolutely insane that we're conditioned to believe that this is not only normal - but the best possible state of affairs.
> I'd rather live in a world where 20 countries have 50 warheads each, then one where two countries have 4,000 warheads each. I absolutely would not. Those 2 countries know far more about the process then those other countries, and they have the budget to do it right. You would have to duplicate labs, and computers, and other efforts 20 times in your scenario, and each of those labs will not be as good as the 2 highe…
In this vein, Politico noted six years ago:
>I talked with the president at one of those fundraisers some months back, and I asked him, "What keeps you up at night?" > And he said, "Everything. Everything that gets to my desk is a critical mass. If it gets to my desk, then no one else could have handled it." So I said, "So what's the one that keeps you up at night?" > He goes, "There are quite a few." > So I go, "What's the one? Period." > And he says, "Pakistan." > I get that: There's the question of whether Zardari's government is actually in control, or whether the military is. And how close the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or whoever else is to having their hands on real weapons of mass destruction. It's the closest government there is to allowing those weapons to either be used or sold to places that we really wouldn't like to have those weapons. That's a concern for all of us.
One bad actor ruins the game.
This wasn't really that big a deal. By the Minuteman era, warheads were safe against fires and crashes. Nuclear weapons from several B-52 bombers hit the ground hard in crashes without a nuclear explosion. (Sometimes the implosion charges did go off, but not symmetrically, as is needed to get implosion.) The Minuteman missile itself had a solid fuel engine. This was nowhere near as bad as the incident described in "C…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any damage to the warhead would likely make it impossible to have a nuclear reaction. In order to do that, the warhead would have to explode multiple precisely shaped conventional explosives with precise timing. If any one of them was deformed, nothing (apart from the small conventional explosion) would happen, even if all the safeguards incorrectly decided to explode the warhead.
parent was concerned about > risking nuclear contamination. not a nuclear explosion. A conventional boom could spread radioactive materials all over.
There are no radioactive materials in the warhead. In other words: there are no materials that undergo radioactive decay. What is in there are fissile materials: ie. materials that emit neutrons upon being irradiated with neutrons.
The only way the warhead might become radioactive is if it partially detonated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arms reduction is even more important. I'd rather live in a world where 20 countries have 50 warheads each, then one where two countries have 4,000 warheads each. A weapon detonating by accident is terrible. Thousands of weapons on hair-trigger alert is civilization-ending. It's absolutely insane that we're conditioned to believe that this is not only normal - but the best possible state of affairs.
Wouldn't you rather live in a world where all governments had zero nuclear weapons each? A nuclear bomb serves no other purpose than killing huge numbers of civilians in a short period of time. Shouldn't we strive for a world where nobody has that capability? Not to mention that in the United States, one man has unilateral and final authority to launch a nuclear first strike. Edit: countries -> governments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
artifical lakes, mining, terraforming, diverting asteroids, propulsion for extremely large spaceships, fighting intergalactic invaders etc.