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Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

reuters.com

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Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#511

Post by trashtester »

lordnacho wrote: post #477
dudeinhawaii wrote: post #428

I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…

There's this concept in game theory that it's sometimes worth it to hurt yourself in order to hurt an uncooperative player. If you are always thinking "how do I minimize harm to myself" you get salamied to death. Same as in a poker game, you can't fold every time someone raises big, just because you don't know which times he actually has good cards. If you do he ends up with all your chips. Other thing is about MAD.…

Russia has a bit more than a couple of nukes, as does the US. I believe I've seen the numbers indicate that the present arsenals that are currently in service are too small to erase humanity, but they are definitely big enough to cause hundreds of millions to a few billions of deaths.

If we consider the situation of just 1-2 warheads are used in a conflict, I think it really hard to gauge the effect on public perception, and I suppose it also depends on the circumstances. If for instance, they were used in an unprovoked terrorist attack, killing 2-4million in a city, the response could be like after 9/11, but x100.

If they were used to stop a military aggressor, killing "only" 10k soldiers in the field, their may lose their mythical status, and this could be the opening of Pandora's box, increasing the probability that they are used in later conflicts.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#512

Post by swyx »

rob74 wrote: post #444
ciex wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a nuclear power plant has a failure as catastrophic as that in Chernobyl it is active (radioactive) for a _very_ long time, with no way of shutting it down. The immediate site of the power plant will be uninhabitable for about 20,000 years, however, the wider area might become safe to live in in just a couple of hundred years. While radiation levels decrease in general, there have also been measurements of incre…

Uninhabitable for humans, but it's great for wildlife (who don't care if they get cancer later in life, or don't live long enough to get it). And no, AFAIK no three-eyed fish has been sighted yet...

interesting, i wonder if we get any examples of accelerated mutation causing some new evolutionary adaptation we have never seen before

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#513

Post by Aeolun »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #478
jskrablin wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MAD works both ways. And some European countries (like the above mentioned France) have nuclear weapons. So I don't think Putin would make it to the French coastline easily. Ukraine should have made use of the material from the Chernobyl power plant while it had the chance. A threat of dirty bomb being delivered to Moscow would have stopped Putin. I guess their politicians are too naive and didn't consider this an op…

MAD was only really feasible when just three countries had nukes. It was abandoned a while back. Russia chose to pursue nuclear supremacy over conventional defense. They have the biggest arsenal, as well as super-nuclear and super-sonic ICBMs to deliver them. Russia is the only country I know that thinks it might actually be able to win a nuclear war.

> Russia is the only country I know that thinks it might actually be able to win a nuclear war.

Unless you find some way to simultaneously take out all nuclear installations in the world, or prevent their misiles from impacting your territory, this seems extremely hard.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#514

Post by m0llusk »

flyinglizard wrote: post #261
pkaye wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America will do nothing except 'strongly condemn' what's happening, just like the rest of the world. People don't want a 'world police' anymore.

“People” don’t want their regular neighborhood police either, but take it away and people start appreciating it.

The defund the police rhetoric caused politicians in my city to poll the populace and it was found that 85% wanted more police.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#515

Post by davorb »

chewz wrote: post #460
danso wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, your hypothetical is just too far detached from reality to debate — you really think Russia in 2022 is remotely strong enough to sweep across Europe, and the only thing stopping that ambition is fear of MAD? Huh? > I don't know that NATO has the guts to give Putin that bloody nose. Again…what? Based on NATO’s military inaction re: Ukraine, you’ve concluded that NATO will also do nothing if Russia were to actua…

Every Russian general is born with the ambition of driving his tanks to the Atlantic Ocean. And that won't be much different from what Tsar Alexander did in 1812/1813 with similiar meager resources. So yes, Putin probably is considering this scenario at least in his wet dreams... And it seems like largest country in Europe (by area), with 200 thousand strong army, tons od most sophisticated NATO weapons and 8 years o…

Ukraine has 200k soldiers. But most of them are grunts with rifles. Russia has all kinds of equipment and combined arms. You can't really compare the two.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#516

Post by ajnin »

toyg wrote: post #426
eps wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ France and the UK

Those two don't have the resources to project significantly (like superpowers), nor the pressure of border conflict (like the others I mentioned). So their nuclear capabilities are somewhat irrelevant.

Not sure why you think North Korea and Pakistan can project and not France and UK which both have nuclear attack submarines. The heart of nuclear detterrence lies in those submarines that can cause second strike MAD.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#517

Post by jakeinspace »

rmk wrote: post #364
jakeinspace wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this being repeated, but the state of nuclear deterrence is very different than during the Cuban missile crisis. The US, UK, France, and Russia all have enough nuclear-armed subs sitting just outside of enemy waters to destroy every major target on both sides. The US doesn’t have nuclear weapons in Poland, nor does it need them. Russia cannot stop thousands of ICBMs and hundreds of sub-launched closer r…

You are talking about the military aspects. The political aspects matter too, and sometimes much more than the military aspects. Do you think the US would be content to let Russia place missiles on Cuban soil today? Why is China cagey about the US deploying THAAD on South Korean soil?

Not sure if those were rhetorical questions but of course you’re certainly correct. The difference between those situations (at least Cuba) and the nuclear situation in Europe is that Moscow is already very much in striking distance of British and French nukes, and vice versa. Nobody wants the scary optics of accepting further encroachment of nuclear weapons closer to thei borders, even though it has less tactical value than it did 60 years ago.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#518

Post by maccolgan »

avazhi wrote: post #125
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so options are somewhat limited Ukraine not being in NATO means we aren’t obligated to intervene. We regularly intervene in various things without a treaty requiring it.

America will do nothing except 'strongly condemn' what's happening, just like the rest of the world. The simple fact is that there is no real upside to risking actual war with Russia - that the Russians will dominate the Ukraine while walking away with a bloody nose (in the form of minor troop losses of its own) is a foregone conclusion. Without more, that's a localised conflict that Russia rather hilariously can try…

The time for the US to stop acting as the world police has gone, why does the US need to intervene in a former buffer state ~10000 km away? NATO will presumably step in when the threat comes close enough.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#519

Post by kodah »

trashtester wrote: post #511
lordnacho wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this concept in game theory that it's sometimes worth it to hurt yourself in order to hurt an uncooperative player. If you are always thinking "how do I minimize harm to myself" you get salamied to death. Same as in a poker game, you can't fold every time someone raises big, just because you don't know which times he actually has good cards. If you do he ends up with all your chips. Other thing is about MAD.…

Russia has a bit more than a couple of nukes, as does the US. I believe I've seen the numbers indicate that the present arsenals that are currently in service are too small to erase humanity, but they are definitely big enough to cause hundreds of millions to a few billions of deaths. If we consider the situation of just 1-2 warheads are used in a conflict, I think it really hard to gauge the effect on public percept…

Personally, I think we are well past the point of nuclear armaments. I think, if there is war, it'll be a ground and air war that's like a sophisticated yet familiar chess game and a side war that is mostly anti-war propaganda, pro-Russia propaganda, misinformation, and attacks on IOT and public infrastructure that exhaust the citizenry out of watching the fighting.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#520

Post by dghughes »

chewz wrote: post #460
danso wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, your hypothetical is just too far detached from reality to debate — you really think Russia in 2022 is remotely strong enough to sweep across Europe, and the only thing stopping that ambition is fear of MAD? Huh? > I don't know that NATO has the guts to give Putin that bloody nose. Again…what? Based on NATO’s military inaction re: Ukraine, you’ve concluded that NATO will also do nothing if Russia were to actua…

Every Russian general is born with the ambition of driving his tanks to the Atlantic Ocean. And that won't be much different from what Tsar Alexander did in 1812/1813 with similiar meager resources. So yes, Putin probably is considering this scenario at least in his wet dreams... And it seems like largest country in Europe (by area), with 200 thousand strong army, tons od most sophisticated NATO weapons and 8 years o…

>Every Russian general is born with the ambition of driving his tanks to the Atlantic Ocean.

France may not like that. They're not in NATO. But they have nuclear weapons.

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