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Nukes of Hazard (2013)

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Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#51

Post by arethuza »

gambiting wrote: post #41
arethuza wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fall-out effects from such a large & dirty H-bomb detonated at ground level would have been pretty bad - you wouldn't want to be downwind of such an event. [Edit 1] Actually, if you consider the indirect effects of the use of such a weapon - particularly the large number of refugees fleeing contaminated areas, huge numbers of injured etc. while such a detonation wouldn't destroy an entire state it would probably redu…

>> suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK were complete overkill... As Schlosser says in his book - because of the lack of coordination between the Air Force, Army, US Navy and Missile Forces, at one point there was something like 400(sorry if I remembered the number wrong,but it was in hundreds) nuclear rockets aimed at Moscow, many of them with multi-megaton payload. If they were…

I remember the figure of 400 as well - don't know if that included UK weapons as well (e.g. the Chevaline upgrade to Polaris was mainly about defeating the ABM defenses around Moscow).

NB An interesting article by Charlie Stross on the relationship between the US and the UK's "independent" deterrent:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#52

Post by fela »

chriswarbo wrote: post #37

> In 1960, the computer at... NORAD... warned, with 99.9-per-cent certainty, that the Soviets had just launched a full-scale missile attack against North America... They later discovered that the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase, in Greenland, had interpreted the moon rising over Norway as a missile attack from Siberia. This is why numbers shouldn't be reported with too many significant figures…

In which case can you define what an error interval on a probability estimate means? :)

I think probabilities can either be well calibrated or not. (Which then of course begs the question of how you define being well calibrated for probabilities of events that happen very rarely). An error interval does not seem to make too much sense.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#53

Post by omh »

dghf wrote: post #46
mootothemax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is much the same now, the UK doesn't have launch codes and operates the whole thing as a sort of dead-man's switch, apparently partly based on if the Today program has been broadcast on Radio 4. Are you sure you're not confusing that with nuclear submarine commanders checking that BBC Radio 4's still broadcasting as part of their "is the country still there" checks? From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_r…

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders.

It's certainly true that the UK has a sort of dead-man's-switch (depending on exactly what the letter of last resort says).

But I presume that there is also a more active communication method as well. If the Prime Minister wanted to launch the nukes then he would be able to send a message to the subs and launch immediately.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#54

Post by mootothemax »

dghf wrote: post #46
mootothemax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is much the same now, the UK doesn't have launch codes and operates the whole thing as a sort of dead-man's switch, apparently partly based on if the Today program has been broadcast on Radio 4. Are you sure you're not confusing that with nuclear submarine commanders checking that BBC Radio 4's still broadcasting as part of their "is the country still there" checks? From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_r…

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders.

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders

I've always understood "dead man's switch" to literally mean something operating without human intervention. Probably explains the confusion!

That said, the options available to the commander do leave some room for interpretation:

- retaliate with nuclear weapons;

- not retaliate with nuclear weapons;

- use his own judgement; or

- place the submarine under allied country command - if possible

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#55

Post by InclinedPlane »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #31
InclinedPlane wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, human civilization would still have survived a full scaled thermonuclear exchange during the height of the Cold War. Things would not have been great, but humanity would still have survived.

"Humans" as such would have still survived, but I don't know, if that what would have been left of it would be realistically to be called "civilization". I am also not to sure, if they (the remnants) would survive for long with global climate change and radioactive fallout everywhere.

Almost certainly a Cold War maximum nuclear war would result in collapse of industrialized civilization as we know it, concomitant with an enormous reduction in worldwide population. Nevertheless, a lot of things would almost certainly remain: literacy, agriculture, metalworking, the ideas of science and industry, and so on. Human civilization would be in a very bad state for a good long time, but it would mostly be a setback to previous eras, not complete destruction of civilization.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#56

Post by dghf »

mootothemax wrote: post #54
dghf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders.

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders I've always understood "dead man's switch" to literally mean something operating without human intervention. Probably explains the confusion! That said, the options available to the com…

"I've always understood "dead man's switch" to literally mean something operating without human intervention.... That said, the options available to the commander do leave some room for interpretation".

Yeah, hence my gutless hedging with "sort of".

Maybe "failsafe" would be a better term, like in the film of that name, where the bombers are instructed to ignore any order to abort once they pass a particular point. (Actually, "fail-deadly" would be more accurate: why wasn't the film called that?)

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#57

Post by DennisP »

chriswarbo wrote: post #37

> In 1960, the computer at... NORAD... warned, with 99.9-per-cent certainty, that the Soviets had just launched a full-scale missile attack against North America... They later discovered that the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase, in Greenland, had interpreted the moon rising over Norway as a missile attack from Siberia. This is why numbers shouldn't be reported with too many significant figures…

Put it that way and it sounds like 99.9999% is just an excessively precise version of 99%. Really it's the difference between .01 and .000001. It's just an expression of the order of magnitude: one in a hundred, a thousand, a million.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#58

Post by dghf »

mootothemax wrote: post #54
dghf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders.

Not really a confusion: if the letter of last resort (sealed orders to be opened in the event the Government is destroyed) says "launch the nukes", you do have a sort of dead man's switch, assuming the sub's captain follows the orders I've always understood "dead man's switch" to literally mean something operating without human intervention. Probably explains the confusion! That said, the options available to the com…

I also find it interesting that the effectiveness of these orders rely purely on the captain's sense of duty, as (assuming the system has worked correctly) the only other person who knows what they say is dead.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#59

Post by jacquesm »

winestock wrote: post #6
rtpg wrote: post #5

>And the missile was armed. Schlosser says that the explosive force of the warhead on a Titan II is nine megatons, which is three times the force of all the bombs dropped in the Second World War, including the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If it had detonated, most of the state of Arkansas would have been wiped out. That is the scariest thing I have read in a while. I always had the impression t…

The largest nuclear detonation set off by the United States was Castle Bravo. It was fifteen megatons. It had serious fallout issues, but it did not cause the kind of damage that is claimed for this weapon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo

Such activities should not just be labeled a crime against humanity but as a crime against the eco-sphere.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#60

Post by InclinedPlane »

VMG wrote: post #44
InclinedPlane wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, human civilization would still have survived a full scaled thermonuclear exchange during the height of the Cold War. Things would not have been great, but humanity would still have survived.

But you're much more likely to be born into a world where this event didn't happen. The history of nuclear accidents is not a good indicator for the risk of nuclear war due to survivorship bias. The fact that we haven't observed a nuclear war in history might have less to do with the likelihood of nuclear war and more with the fact that fewer people would be able to observe that history. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w…

Ah, interesting, a bit like a quantitative version of the anthropic principle. It presupposes that civilizations that have recovered from doomsday scenarios will never be as large as those that never had such an event occur. Perhaps on the timescale since the Cold War that holds.
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