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Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#51

Post by bilbo0s »

rootusrootus wrote: post #35
bilbo0s wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh.. If we turn St Petersburg into rubble, I doubt anyone will be worrying about a few trifling conventional weapons. NATO and Russia go at it, and we're all just sitting around next month waiting for the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians and South Africans to sort out who is responsible for which relief efforts. Actually, now I think about it, that quad will probably be far more concerned with determining the disposition…

NATO and Russia go at it and everyone is screwed, there will be no winners, nobody on the sidelines, no picking through the spoils.

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, there would be nations that survive a NATO/Russia war. Namely, any nation in the Southern Hemisphere not called Australia or New Zealand. Mother Nature's winds and Father Physic's half lives combine to give unaligned southern hemisphere nations the break of a lifetime. (Or of a species' lifetime I guess?)

All that said, you are absolutely right about "spoils". No one is gonna be thinking about "spoils". Probably top of everyone's list of questions will be, "How many warheads are left? And what remnants of NATO or Russia control them?"

We're talking about two groups who would have conclusively shown they are perfectly willing to use their nuclear arsenals to achieve their goals. That, combined with the fact that their goals would become a whole lot less lofty overnight makes me think the world would become a very precarious place.

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#52

Post by aguaviva »

andy24 wrote: post #33
xdennis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m Russian, am I the problem? We need @dang here to address this racism here.

I think it's fair to assume that by "Russians" they meant "the society within the Russian Federation, which as everyone knows is multiethnic, and which by and large supports or acquiesces both the dictatorship and the war, or at least says so when asked by pollsters" rather than "Russians" as an ethic group.

One could also say "The problem is with Americans, not Trump" and that would also not be interpreted as racist.

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#53

Post by red-iron-pine »

rootusrootus wrote: post #38
mikewarot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin's successor is likely to be someone even less securely in power, and thus far less rational. I don't want to test our luck with what's left of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

My greatest hope at this point is that much of the Soviet arsenal would fail to function at this point. That might be a pipe dream, but it's what I got.

while I'm sure it's been poorly maintained, there only needs to be enough nukes to ruin global civilization, and it doesn't take that many.

a few hundred, maybe, and back in the day they had thousands.

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#54

Post by Y-bar »

mdp2021 wrote: post #43
Y-bar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it not "just" about war now. The changing climate has also significantly increased the risk for major disruptions on social services such as fresh water supply, electricity, sanitation, and roads/track. We now also need to add those to the list of real risks to prepare for.

Niall Ferguson recently gave a speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocYvwiSYDTA (Address to the 2024 CIS Consilium on the Gold Coast), in which he says that WWIII may be a more urgent risk. It's a race.

This reminds me of Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis from three years ago where they remind us that there will be increased international conflicts due to the effects of climate change:

https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... (1.5 MB PDF)

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#55

Post by daneel_w »

ipnon wrote: post #37

I just watched Patlabor 2 last night, about a civil war in post-Cold War Japan. The main theme is the following: The thing about one-in-a-million events is that they are eventually going to happen once the other 999,999 occur. Thus a government which does not plan for one-in-a-million scenarios is truly derelict and incapable of survival.

Fantastic movie, great political plot, great direction. Part 1 is decent, too.

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#56

Post by mdp2021 »

Y-bar wrote: post #54
mdp2021 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Niall Ferguson recently gave a speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocYvwiSYDTA (Address to the 2024 CIS Consilium on the Gold Coast), in which he says that WWIII may be a more urgent risk. It's a race.

This reminds me of Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis from three years ago where they remind us that there will be increased international conflicts due to the effects of climate change: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... (1.5 MB PDF)

Interesting (and very plain, understandable, commonsensical) - but of course some running conflicts are not not strongly related to climate change.

Of course, when Niall Ferguson spoke, it looked at the contingency: he sees a possibility of catastrophic consequences that may come much earlier than the climatic "Armageddon". (Well, in some news peices today they spoke about "before Xmas"... It makes the order of events very definite.)

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#57

Post by PittleyDunkin »

hyggetrold wrote: post #4

In retrospect, it seems like it was a bad idea for Western countries to assume that things were going to remain peaceful after the fall of the USSR. Glad to see the threat of war being taken seriously.

Why would you say that when we have NATO?

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#58

Post by madspindel »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #44
petesergeant wrote: post #9

Exceptionally well-armed NATO + JEF members, and Finland well within distance to use conventional artillery to turn St Petersburg to rubble. This is a public-awareness and support-building exercise rather than a real concern. This is like the RAF frequently issuing press-releases about intercepting Russian jets.

[flagged]

Yes, and Sweden should claim Rossiya since it was founded by vikings from Roslagen.

Re: Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

#59

Post by nostrademons »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #49
rootusrootus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My greatest hope at this point is that much of the Soviet arsenal would fail to function at this point. That might be a pipe dream, but it's what I got.

Can we not bribe enough Russians to dismantle what is left? Visas, fiat, whatever, spend to disable. We’ll come cleanup the warheads later. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/what-happened-sovie... https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/post-cold-war-worl...

Don't need to bribe them, the free market takes care of that.

There are reports that much of the tritium in Russian nukes has been stolen and sold on the black market. When you have a culture that is basically a kleptocracy, few internal controls, and tritium prices of $30K/gram, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the incentives lie.

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