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Nukes of Hazard (2013)

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Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#81

Post by mkaziz »

simonh wrote: post #74
Rapzid wrote: post #43

I wouldn't have thought how trumped up and ludicrous this all was. I was born in 1984, so I really started becoming aware in the bubble that existed after the wall fell and before 9/11. Sure, I read 1984 and Farenhiet 451 but the seemed like commentary about the future, what could become. Apparently they were just as relevant when they were written. Constant war with the "enemy". The threat of attack at any time. Con…

> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities. I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to h…

If we're talking statistics, far more Americans die of diabetes and heart problems than terrorism. Better to spend trillions of dollars there, no, instead of bleeding that money in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#82

Post by Perseids »

simonh wrote: post #74
Rapzid wrote: post #43

I wouldn't have thought how trumped up and ludicrous this all was. I was born in 1984, so I really started becoming aware in the bubble that existed after the wall fell and before 9/11. Sure, I read 1984 and Farenhiet 451 but the seemed like commentary about the future, what could become. Apparently they were just as relevant when they were written. Constant war with the "enemy". The threat of attack at any time. Con…

> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities. I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to h…

> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.

Seriously?

There ought to be something analogously to Godwin’s law to declare discussions lost after this class of arguments.

To answer in kind: "I'd like to ask how you would explain the proportionality of the respond to the families of the tens to hundreds of thousand civilian casualties[1] in the Irak war." OR "[…] explain the justice and civility of the 'war against terror' to the hundreds (?) of innocent prisoners in Guantanamo bay." OR even "[…] explain the trillion dollar [2] that were spent on the military instead on fighting aids, cancer, malaria, diabetes,… to those suffering or those who have lost friends or family."

Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater effects to society and the relative danger of the threat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count_project

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror#Costs

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#83

Post by Houshalter »

Rapzid wrote: post #16

"...the American public was regularly frightened by warnings about the dangers of a nuclear attack that was always made to appear imminent" Not much has changed.

Did you even read the article? Such fears may have been totally rational.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#84

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Houshalter wrote: post #80
InclinedPlane wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is far from certainty. Industrialization depended on having easy and abundant access to natural resources like coal, oil, and various metals. We've exhausted the easy deposits of these resources, the ones a preindustrial civilization could get to. If civilization were to collapse now, it may never rise again.

Nah. We've got information, which is more valuable than energy and not likely to be lost in a collapse. Civilization doesn't require pissing away prodigious amounts of energy on every little thing - that's just the way we do it when we have lots of energy.

Also, there's plenty more available energy on this planet, many times the amount we've used so far in building this civilization. Methane Hydrate, Thorium to name a couple. We're just drunk on oil right now, but don't confuse that with 'using up all the energy.'

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#85

Post by maxerickson »

Houshalter wrote: post #80
InclinedPlane wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is far from certainty. Industrialization depended on having easy and abundant access to natural resources like coal, oil, and various metals. We've exhausted the easy deposits of these resources, the ones a preindustrial civilization could get to. If civilization were to collapse now, it may never rise again.

It would be problematic for the rebuilders if we managed to vaporize everything we've built, but at the moment, pure metals are far more available than they've been in history.

We've also probably evened out the geographic availability (so for example you can scrape together a few hundred pounds of copper pretty much anywhere there is a little bit of settlement).

I agree that coal/energy would likely be a problem.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#86

Post by mnw21cam »

axman6 wrote: post #21
myrandomcomment wrote: post #17

How hard is it to report facts. "The plane split in two, the base was evacuated, and the fire burned for two and a half hours. But the explosives in the warhead didn’t detonate; that would have set off a chain reaction." This statement seems to imply the bomb would have went off, which is just not true. The physics just do not work that way.

Depending on the design, isn't there some chance that the heat could detonate the conventional explosive used to force the nuclear material together? as far as I understand it, there is definitely a risk of detonation, though it's hopefully very low. Physics is not directly the reason for it being so low either, but more safeguards put in place to ensure detonation only happens when it's supposed to and is prevented…

Most high explosives will not detonate when burnt. They need to have a shock wave running through them for the detonation to occur. The initial shock wave is usually created using a detonator, which uses a very small amount of a much more risky explosive.

You can get a lump of C-4, and use it as fuel for a fire to cook over without any danger, and in fact soldiers certainly used to do this. You can also hit it with a hammer - the shock wave caused by this isn't strong enough to cause a detonation.

In terms of a nuke, you need to detonate a set of independent lumps of explosive with very precise timing, in order to get a compression lens that will squash the fissile core sufficiently to get a nuclear explosion. Heat is unlikely to cause this to happen with a sensibly-designed bomb.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#87

Post by kome »

simonh wrote: post #74
Rapzid wrote: post #43

I wouldn't have thought how trumped up and ludicrous this all was. I was born in 1984, so I really started becoming aware in the bubble that existed after the wall fell and before 9/11. Sure, I read 1984 and Farenhiet 451 but the seemed like commentary about the future, what could become. Apparently they were just as relevant when they were written. Constant war with the "enemy". The threat of attack at any time. Con…

> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities. I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to h…

> I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.

The statistical ridiculousness of terrorism is explained by this https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ more than anything. Try to explain that to Iraqi families as well (among others). So called "terrorism" is more like a sane reaction to this shit.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#88

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

simonh wrote: post #74
Rapzid wrote: post #43

I wouldn't have thought how trumped up and ludicrous this all was. I was born in 1984, so I really started becoming aware in the bubble that existed after the wall fell and before 9/11. Sure, I read 1984 and Farenhiet 451 but the seemed like commentary about the future, what could become. Apparently they were just as relevant when they were written. Constant war with the "enemy". The threat of attack at any time. Con…

> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities. I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to h…

> > The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities.

> I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMD

yes, and their population was also kept in constant fear of the western WMDs that were actually aimed at them. All that also served similar ends in their governments's own little empires.

Source: museum of communism, Prague. https://www.flickr.com/photos/strawberryfrog/8233554/in/phot...

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#89

Post by vadman »

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…

The actual points range when rating wines/spirits is only 20 or 30, depending on who does it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirits_ratings

Does not make it any less ridiculous.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#90

Post by DennisP »

mariusz79 wrote: post #78
zorbo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you back that up with some numbers, or a source perhaps? Because that just sounds like fearmongering. We've already had two nuclear plant meltdowns, and life on earth is doing just fine.

Fear mongering? Let's see: First of all, Chernobyl Exclusion zone is about 1000 mile^2. [3] Life is not doing just fine there. And the effect of Fukushima meltdown are not going to be known for the next few years, but there are indications that it may not be as harmless as we are led to believe.[4] There are currently 62 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 100 nuclear reactors in 31 states in the United…

Actually life is doing better in the Chernobyl zone than it was when there were humans there. Humans stay away because they don't like slight increases in cancer probability, not because life is impossible.
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