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Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

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71–80 of 139 posts

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#71

>Because you invaded a country for no reason (like we did to Iraq), (except the one you invaded is at your borders and we put our guy at its head a couple years ago, and the one we invaded is half a planet from us), we will bring forth the apocalypse. Humans are crazy, seeing how we're speaking about a nuclear war now vs how people spoke about it in the 60s, it's like a mass psychosis, we don't care anymore, or maybe…

> Now bring in the downvotes because ...

Cheap tactics. People will downvote you because you're saying lies and non-sense.

1. It's Russia started the genocidal war and it's Russia uses nuclear blackmail.

2. Ukrainian president was elected in 2019, no one appointed him.

3. Without nuclear deterrence Russia would already use nuclear strikes, because their army is good only in fighting unarmed civilians.

4. There is indeed a mass psychosis - in Russia. But "we" are normal people, we do care, and we are not dumb to see the threats.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only country that is threating 1st strike is Russia. >All of Putin's speeches are available in english on the kremlin website. Shh! --you're spoiling the doublethink. It's the same as how the energy crisis has now become "Russia turned off the taps" when, in fact, Europe decided to shoot itself in the foot by refusing to buy Russian gas, beforehand. Now "Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons" when, in fac…

> "Russia turned off the taps"... Europe decided to shoot itself in the foot by refusing to buy Russian gas, beforehand. Russia has indeed 'turned off the taps' (at least Nord Stream 1). At first the excuse was maintenance work, but when that excuse didn't work any longer they first reduced and then stopped the gas flow completely.

> Russia has indeed 'turned off the taps' (at least Nord Stream 1). At first the excuse was maintenance work, but when that excuse didn't work any longer they first reduced and then stopped the gas flow completely.

There was maintenance work every year at that time. Nobody has seen the maintenance contract, so there are opinions that the reason why Russia refuses to install the repaired turbines is because they wanted to turn off the tap.

While that part is pure speculation, what's agreed fact is that Canada refused to send back the turbines to Russia(because of European sanctions) and after long begging from Germany sent them to Germany instead.

What I also know first hand is that in bigger construction projects nobody would accept hacks(for example an elevator sent through an intermediary rather than the counterparty that signed the contract with) that might result in potential liability issues, especially when the counterparty is already hostile towards you.

Just last week German media reported that if the leaked stays for too long Nordstream will corrode irreparably. Nordstream AG requested to assess and repair the Nordstream damage and Norway refused to give them a permit[1].

So, yeah, maybe. But there are a lot of factors at play here before Russia turned off the tap and even then it wasn't fully turned off.

[1] https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/russia-ukraine-cris...

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also people in the 60s lived through a nuke (1945) and lived through WW2. That living memory is now gone. The problem with the "anti-war" crowd right now, is many appear to be closet Putin supporters. Or at least they're so anti-American that they support Putin by default. It would help the anti-war people not in that camp to carefully disambiguate between wanting to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict -- a laudable…

A large part of the peace movement in e.g. West Germany in the 1980s was "anti-American" but not "pro-Soviet-Union". Not everything is a binary choice, and it gets tiresome to prefix every Internet comment with a whole paragraph of disclaimers. The "anti-war" crowd questions the Western provocations and meddling since the orange revolutions by Nuland etc. It questions the erasure of history since at least 1995. Mears…

> The "anti-war" crowd questions the Western provocations and meddling since the orange revolutions by Nuland etc. It questions the erasure of history since at least 1995.

People who repeat false Kremlin war justification propaganda are being tacitly pro-war. It's double speak to call this behavior anti-war. These are the people I was talking about.

Nuland discussing in a leaked call who should replace Yanukovych and mentioning the one person who was overwhelmingly favored by polls of Ukrainians just prior to Yanukovych's ousting, and would have won an election in a landslide, is not meddling. Her meeting with him, in view of public cameras, isn't meddling. Ukrainian politicans are allowed to meet officials from other countries.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#75
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am struggling with the alternative. So a dictator can invade any country he wants because otherwise he can say "booh, nuclear apocalypse" and because we can't risk to be anywhere near that, we need to give the dictator whatever he wants? And the invaded country has to swallow it? It's easy to write off other people's freedom. This map is very the reason why Putin's threats are empty threats. The US, UK and France h…

> I am struggling with the alternative. So a dictator can invade any country he wants because otherwise he can say "booh, nuclear apocalypse" and because we can't risk to be anywhere near that, we need to give the dictator whatever he wants? And the invaded country has to swallow it? It's easy to write off other people's freedom. Yes, that's how it works with nuclear weapons. It's deeply unfair: international bullies…

No, that is how nuclear weapons work when you are the only entity with nuclear weapons. There was a deeply scary and unstable period of a years post-WWII where this was the case. Having nukes only makes you god if no one else has nukes (and delivery methods).

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#76
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am struggling with the alternative. So a dictator can invade any country he wants because otherwise he can say "booh, nuclear apocalypse" and because we can't risk to be anywhere near that, we need to give the dictator whatever he wants? And the invaded country has to swallow it? It's easy to write off other people's freedom. This map is very the reason why Putin's threats are empty threats. The US, UK and France h…

> I am struggling with the alternative. So a dictator can invade any country he wants because otherwise he can say "booh, nuclear apocalypse" and because we can't risk to be anywhere near that, we need to give the dictator whatever he wants? And the invaded country has to swallow it? It's easy to write off other people's freedom. Yes, that's how it works with nuclear weapons. It's deeply unfair: international bullies…

Clearly they cannot as the war in Ukraine shows. Russia are losing big time. Do you really think they’ll use nukes if Putin commands it? I highly doubt it. More likely he’ll get a bullet to the head.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#77

>Because you invaded a country for no reason (like we did to Iraq), (except the one you invaded is at your borders and we put our guy at its head a couple years ago, and the one we invaded is half a planet from us), we will bring forth the apocalypse. Humans are crazy, seeing how we're speaking about a nuclear war now vs how people spoke about it in the 60s, it's like a mass psychosis, we don't care anymore, or maybe…

Who are you quoting? > we put our guy at its head a couple years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_el... this is denying that ukraine has agency of its own. Nobody put a guy anywhere. He was elected. > we will bring forth the apocalypse. The only country that is threating 1st strike is Russia.

I'll send you (or anyone) a $1,000 in Bitcoin if you can provide a source where Putin threatened a 1st nuclear strike. Drive-by MSN headlines don't count.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#78
post #14

Glad I live in the very south of Australia.

> Glad I live in the very south of Australia. Don't get too complacent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)

Playing around with https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ a bit, it seems it would take a lot of very powerful nukes before any nuclear fallout would reach the south of Australia. Even with a fictional maximum kilotons (max for nukemap) nuke dropped in Darwin (north Australia) with maximum wind force south wouldn't make the fallout reach the south.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#79
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how it's mostly scattered small towns in East Germany, not large cities (with the exception of the Berlin city center). For instance Altenburg, which is closest to the village I grew up, so naturally I checked that first. It's a completely unremarkable little district town today with an airfield for hobby pilots, but apparently this airfield was a Soviet military base during the Cold War: https://www…

Some of the most specialized companies in Germany have their production in small unremarkable towns (that still have a huge Edeka or Lidl lol). If you want to stop the production of nuclear warheads, you cripple the factories that make high pressure, special alloy cooling pipes for example.

That's more true for West Germany than East Germany during the Cold War era though, East German industry was more centralized or at least in the process of being centralized after WW2. It actually looks like most targets in East Germany were military infrastructure (which is interesting on its own, because I would rather have assumed that the goal was to inflict maximum human casualties, e.g. same as Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#80
post #32

>Because you invaded a country for no reason (like we did to Iraq), (except the one you invaded is at your borders and we put our guy at its head a couple years ago, and the one we invaded is half a planet from us), we will bring forth the apocalypse. Humans are crazy, seeing how we're speaking about a nuclear war now vs how people spoke about it in the 60s, it's like a mass psychosis, we don't care anymore, or maybe…

I have no idea who you are quoting. But bowing down to nuclear threats increases the chance of nuclear war. This is because it will cause more nuclear threats in the future, and also strongly incentivize most non-nuclear countries to acquire nuclear weapons. We currently see NATO provide very stern back-channel warnings against nuclear weapon use to Russia. This is deterrence, which again decreases the chance of nucl…

"long-term peace and trade, and ensuring nuclear weapons are never used" is precisely and explicitly what the US nuclear arsenal is protecting: unrivalled power for the US with no foe capable of resisting it. For this goal they (just like Russia) are willing to risk the lives of millions, see https://critisticuffs.org/texts/ukraine-russia-usa and the quotes from US military doctrines referenced therein.
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