Because nuclear war is survivable as a civilisation? We never had enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the human race or reduce ourselves to stone-throwing cavemen.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48853686]The American nuclear forces have had their fair share of incompetence too: [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash[/url]
Also these days the nuclear forces in the USA are being slowly stripped down and the remaining bombs are obsolete and manned by bored or inept staff who are put in charge of what's considered a dead-end job. The costs of maintaining them has been steadily growing over time, due to a lack of standardization and inept handling. It costs more to maintain the small number of bombs the US has today than it did for them to manufacture thousands of them in the 1960s.[/QUOTE]
The US and Russia have a treaty to slowly reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles and limit deployments. Got a reputable source for your claims of the US using "inept" staff to maintain their nuclear weapon stockpiles? I'm guessing not.
Yes the US has had incidents with them in the past and probably will again in the future but nothing too serious has ever happened as a result. Because the nuclear warheads themselves are properly maintained and work as expected.
If you want poorly maintained nuclear weapons, look at some of the Soviet states.
[QUOTE=download;48853748]Because nuclear war is survivable as a civilisation? We never had enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the human race or reduce ourselves to stone-throwing cavemen.[/QUOTE]
It isn't survivable. Tens of millions would be instantly incinerated, followed by massive firestorms and radiation poisoning killing many more. The global economy would effectively cease to function, the international telecommunications system would break down, climatic disaster would result in the destruction of major agricultural producing regions, refugees would flood about, civil order would dissolve, etc.
It's survivable in the sense that about a century afterwards a few hundred million people would be living in medieval conditions and suffering from extremely high rates of cancer.
[QUOTE=Morgen;48853780]The US and Russia have a treaty to slowly reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles and limit deployments. Got a reputable source for your claims of the US using "inept" staff to maintain their nuclear weapon stockpiles? I'm guessing not.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/muclear-missile-officers-suspended-drug-cheating-scandals[/url]
A whole bunch of officers got into shit for abusing drugs, cheating on exams, drunkenness, sleeping on the job, among other serious problems.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48853801]It isn't survivable. Tens of millions would be instantly incinerated, followed by massive firestorms and radiation poisoning killing many more. The global economy would effectively cease to function, the international telecommunications system would break down, climatic disaster would result in the destruction of major agricultural producing regions, refugees would flood about, civil order would dissolve, etc.
It's survivable in the sense that about a century afterwards a few hundred million people would be living in medieval conditions and suffering from extremely high rates of cancer.
[url]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/muclear-missile-officers-suspended-drug-cheating-scandals[/url]
A whole bunch of officers got into shit for abusing drugs, cheating on exams, drunkenness, sleeping on the job, among other serious problems.[/QUOTE]
34 officers, discovered and corrected by the air force itself. They then retested the entire officer force involved with them after that. If anything that shows how well they are maintained and how the conduct of people involved in the program is monitored, even up to the highest ranks.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48853801]It isn't survivable. Tens of millions would be instantly incinerated, followed by massive firestorms and radiation poisoning killing many more. The global economy would effectively cease to function, the international telecommunications system would break down, climatic disaster would result in the destruction of major agricultural producing regions, refugees would flood about, civil order would dissolve, etc.
It's survivable in the sense that about a century afterwards a few hundred million people would be living in medieval conditions and suffering from extremely high rates of cancer.
[/QUOTE]
A nuclear war between Russia (and in the past the USSR) and the "West" would mostly be limited to Europe and North America. Immediate casualties (and we'll call immediate less than 3 months) would be in the range of a few hundred million people due to the preference for counter-force targeting.
Most radiation casualties would be in the areas where plenty of ground-bursts would take place and areas with very heavy air burst use. That means Germany, North Western US and Western Russia. Refugees aren't world-ending. Civil order is unlikely to dissolve except in the worst devastated countries in Europe because civil disobedience will be crushed by the military.
Nuclear Winter is also considered bullshit. Temperature drops won't be much more than 2 or 3 degrees. Sucks to be you in nuclear devastate Europe but the rest of use will be reasonably okay after that.
The parts of the world they get little nuclear attack will be back to where they are now in 10 years, the areas o heavy nuclear attack will be 50 to 100 years. We're not going to suddenly forget technology because of a nuclear war.
Oh cool, are they gonna sell us Canadians the old shitty ones again like last time.
[QUOTE=Morgen;48853890]34 officers, discovered and corrected by the air force itself. They then retested the entire officer force involved with them after that. If anything that shows how well they are maintained and how the conduct of people involved in the program is monitored, even up to the highest ranks.[/QUOTE]
Doesn't the fact that they were this bad in the first place represent a serious problem?
[quote]Revelations of misconduct and incompetence in the nuclear missile program go back at least to 2007, when six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were accidentally loaded onto a B-52 bomber in Minot, North Dakota, and flown to a base in Louisiana.[/quote]
[quote]In October, a senior air force officer in charge of 450 ICBMS, major general Michael Carey, was fired after accusations of drunken misconduct during a summer trip to Moscow. An internal investigation found that Carey drank heavily, cavorted with two foreign women and visited a nightclub called La Cantina, where "Maj Gen Carey had alcohol and kept trying to get the band to let him play with them."[/quote]
This isn't new stuff. It's been ongoing since at least the cold war ended.
Remember that no new nukes are being made, weapons grade plutonium isn't being made, no nuclear tests have been done in decades, etc.
[url]http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nukes-cost-20141109-story.html#page=1[/url]
This article goes into the actual costs of trying to maintain a force of nuclear bombs in this day and age. Escalating costs for maintaining (let alone modernizing) the nukes means it's very very unlikely that politicians are going to be willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on something that people don't want money spent on. The longer these modernization programmes are delayed, the worse it gets as costs escalate and it gets harder to improve facilities.
[QUOTE=download;48853958]A nuclear war between Russia (and in the past the USSR) and the "West" would mostly be limited to Europe and North America. Immediate casualties (and we'll call immediate less than 3 months) would be in the range of a few hundred million people due to the preference for counter-force targeting.
Most radiation casualties would be in the areas where plenty of ground-bursts would take place and areas with very heavy air burst use. That means Germany, North Western US and Western Russia. Refugees aren't world-ending. Civil order is unlikely to dissolve except in the worst devastated countries in Europe because civil disobedience will be crushed by the military.
Nuclear Winter is also considered bullshit. Temperature drops won't be much more than 2 or 3 degrees. Sucks to be you in nuclear devastate Europe but the rest of use will be reasonably okay after that.[/quote]
A temp drop of 2 or 3 degrees is enough to set off persistent and massive harvest failures for several years. Nuclear summer (resulting from the conversion of a lot of lifeforms into CO2) would come in over the next few decades to cause a lot of misery.
[quote]The parts of the world they get little nuclear attack will be back to where they are now in 10 years, the areas o heavy nuclear attack will be 50 to 100 years. We're not going to suddenly forget technology because of a nuclear war.[/QUOTE]
Most major economies would immediately collapse due to a major interdependence upon one another. Most of the other countries in the world would immediately plunge into civil war or suffer as global trade dried up.
Some more isolated nations (like Australia for instance) would see a complete collapse of their society due to the heavy dependence on international trade. The knock-on effects would be massive.
the support for trident is hilarious. bike locks, they make me feel [i]so[/i] safe!
[QUOTE=Morgen;48853780]The US and Russia have a treaty to slowly reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles and limit deployments. Got a reputable source for your claims of the US using "inept" staff to maintain their nuclear weapon stockpiles? I'm guessing not.
Yes the US has had incidents with them in the past and probably will again in the future but nothing too serious has ever happened as a result. Because the nuclear warheads themselves are properly maintained and work as expected.
If you want poorly maintained nuclear weapons, look at some of the Soviet states.[/QUOTE]
Russia pulled out of those treaties, they're rearming now, they have obeyed most of the limits to date but Putin and the leadership have made pretty clear they won't obey when they get to the limits
[QUOTE=Bobie;48854070]the support for trident is hilarious. bike locks, they make me feel [i]so[/i] safe![/QUOTE]
The only hilarious thing in this thread is watching people lacking a basic understanding in politics and world history failing to justify why the world's best ever peace insurance should be canned
I mean fuck, one guy is trying to tell us that the planet's [B]minimum 4154 active nuclear weapons[/B] (just from the stockpiles we know about, excluding entirely NK, Israel, China, Pakistan and India) can't end Humanity
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48853801]It isn't survivable. Tens of millions would be instantly incinerated, followed by massive firestorms and radiation poisoning killing many more. The global economy would effectively cease to function, the international telecommunications system would break down, climatic disaster would result in the destruction of major agricultural producing regions, refugees would flood about, civil order would dissolve, etc.
It's survivable in the sense that about a century afterwards a few hundred million people would be living in medieval conditions and suffering from extremely high rates of cancer.[/QUOTE][I]What?[/I] Nuclear weapons are not instantly-killing magical death bombs, they have real limits and I'd like to cite peer-reviewed sources backing up this claim. They're far, far less destructive than typically portrayed in television, film, and video games and as for what happens after the nuclear exchange is entirely theoretical.
Either way I know the United States has an entire organization dedicated specifically toward such an event and we have massive warehouses full of food and supplies dedicated to supporting the population in the event of a catastrophic war. So in short: the US government disagrees with you.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48854050]A temp drop of 2 or 3 degrees is enough to set off persistent and massive harvest failures for several years. Nuclear summer (resulting from the conversion of a lot of lifeforms into CO2) would come in over the next few decades to cause a lot of misery.
Most major economies would immediately collapse due to a major interdependence upon one another. Most of the other countries in the world would immediately plunge into civil war or suffer as global trade dried up.
Some more isolated nations (like Australia for instance) would see a complete collapse of their society due to the heavy dependence on international trade. The knock-on effects would be massive.[/QUOTE]All of this sounds like completely absurd nuclear hysteria, cite some sources to back up these claims.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48854581][I]What?[/I] Nuclear weapons are not instantly-killing magical death bombs, they have real limits and I'd like to cite peer-reviewed sources backing up this claim. They're far, far less destructive than typically portrayed in television, film, and video games and as for what happens after the nuclear exchange is entirely theoretical.[/quote]
Except they are destructive. A 16kt bomb in Hiroshima killed 80,000 people due to the direct effects of the blast and resulting fires. Two thirds of the city was flattened, and thousands more died in the years after due to cancers.
If a total nuclear war broke out, the priority targets would be military bases and installations, followed by telecommunications, critical infrastructure, economic assets, etc.
This means virtually every major city in the affected country, the highways, electrical plants and grids, etc.
[quote]Either way I know the United States has an entire organization dedicated specifically toward such an event and we have massive warehouses full of food and supplies dedicated to supporting the population in the event of a catastrophic war. So in short: the US government disagrees with you.[/quote]
How would you move these food supplies? Where would you get fuel for the cars and trains? What about the utterly destroyed electrical network? The breakdown of telecommunications? The damaged roads, the utter destruction of many cities, etc?
Not to mention the destruction of agricultural producing regions, the breakdown of the money economy, radiation, etc. How will you distribute food? How will the seeds be planted when machinery lacks fuel and spare parts or are damaged? What about harvesting and refrigeration? The death of millions of livestock? The lack of fertilizers and pesticides, or the deaths of many farmers?
I mean "the US government disagrees with you", come the fuck on man. The response to Katrina was just one small part of the country and it was a very good one. If the whole country was nuked then the US government would cease to exist and the armed force/police would dissolve into roving bands of murderers and looters.
[quote]All of this sounds like completely absurd nuclear hysteria, cite some sources to back up these claims.[/QUOTE]
[url]https://vimeo.com/18781528[/url]
Seriously, the idea that a nuclear war is survivable is one of the stupidest fucking ideas there is.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48852862]If we had nukes in WW2, when would have they been used? When Japan annexed Manchuria? When Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia, or when he invaded Poland? When Russia invaded Finland and the Baltic states?[/QUOTE]
It depends who had them. If Germany, then Russia would have been annihilated from the start. If Russia, then Germany would have been nuked either when they attacked Russia, or around the time they reached Moscow and Stalingrad. If the United Kingdom had them they'd threaten to use in retaliation for The Blitz. If the United States had them, we'd use it as an alternative to invading Europe like we did to Japan. The US actually did want to use the first Atomic Bomb on Germany, but it wasn't completed before Berlin's demise and surrender.
Lmao Sobotnik thinks 34 jackass Airforce officers represent the entire DoD nuclear force.
[QUOTE=InvaderNouga;48854777]Lmao Sobotnik thinks 34 jackass Airforce officers represent the entire DoD nuclear force.[/QUOTE]
One of your major generals who oversaw 450 ICBMs was fired for being constantly wasted and various other offences.
[url]http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/report-on-the-conduct-of-maj-gen-michael-carey/676/[/url]
Not to mention failed safety inspections:
[url]http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/13/politics/nuclear-air-force-fail/[/url]
Another guy who was in charge of nuclear forces and got into deep shit for lying and chronic gambling:
[url]http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2014/11/22/gambling-admiral-fake-poker-chips/19395377/[/url]
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48854657]Except they are destructive. A 16kt bomb in Hiroshima killed 80,000 people due to the direct effects of the blast and resulting fires. Two thirds of the city was flattened, and thousands more died in the years after due to cancers.
If a total nuclear war broke out, the priority targets would be military bases and installations, followed by telecommunications, critical infrastructure, economic assets, etc.
This means virtually every major city in the affected country, the highways, electrical plants and grids, etc.
How would you move these food supplies? Where would you get fuel for the cars and trains? What about the utterly destroyed electrical network? The breakdown of telecommunications? The damaged roads, the utter destruction of many cities, etc?
Not to mention the destruction of agricultural producing regions, the breakdown of the money economy, radiation, etc. How will you distribute food? How will the seeds be planted when machinery lacks fuel and spare parts or are damaged? What about harvesting and refrigeration? The death of millions of livestock? The lack of fertilizers and pesticides, or the deaths of many farmers?
[url]https://vimeo.com/18781528[/url]
Seriously, the idea that a nuclear war is survivable is one of the stupidest fucking ideas there is.[/QUOTE]
Wow, you used a tv show as evidence.
Ignore him guys, he's not interested in discussing this
[editline]8th October 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Dr.Critic;48854361]The only hilarious thing in this thread is watching people lacking a basic understanding in politics and world history failing to justify why the world's best ever peace insurance should be canned
I mean fuck, one guy is trying to tell us that the planet's [B]minimum 4154 active nuclear weapons[/B] (just from the stockpiles we know about, excluding entirely NK, Israel, China, Pakistan and India) can't end Humanity[/QUOTE]
You don't need anihilation to provide deterrence. You also don't know how nuclear weapons are primarily targeted.
[QUOTE=download;48854850]Wow, you used a tv show as evidence.
Ignore him guys, he's not interested in discussing this[/QUOTE]
Threads was researched by the leading scientific authorities of the time and is essentially as close as you can get to a realistic view of the impact of a nuclear war. (Officials in the British government also contributed, and one of the Civil defense advisers stated that a nuclear war was not survivable).
Here are the various sources it used:
[url]https://falloutwarning.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/threads-select-references-and-bibliography-by-kevin-hall/[/url]
There's also mentioning that official recommendations from the British government on how to survive a nuclear war (such as shelter making or food storage) were hopelessly ineffective and often contradictory.
I mean painting your windows white, removing everything burnable in the house, and hiding under the stairs or in a basement is going to only marginally increase your chances of survival.
The biggest thing people don't realize is that its not the initial blasts which will destroy civilization, but the fact that the infrastructure which sustains it will basically become inoperable. Most people will starve to death, die from easily preventable diseases, or simply commit suicide.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48852843]You'll need them when we decide to stop covering your asses, most of your nuclear deterrent comes from Minuteman IIIs in South Dakota. Your nuclear deterrent policy is an apparatus of ours, and on that note you cannot keep expecting us to subsidize European defense when as a people we're getting more and more isolationist every year.[/QUOTE]
Uhhh, that's pretty much what I said.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash]Americans already think Europeans do absolutely nothing as a whole anyway,[/QUOTE]
The EU has the largest GDP and the second largest share of manufacturing production after China in the world. How is that 'doing nothing'?
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash]and we're starting to severely question the size and cost of our own government. I'm pretty sure every US poster here knows at least one person who's wondering why we have expensive military bases in Europe. Not many people have forgotten about the base closures during the Clinton era, and questioning why we needed to close US bases but keep all those foreign bases when we had just "beaten" the Soviets.
That sentiment hasn't died, it's just taken a new form.[/QUOTE]
Yes and my whole argument was that we need more nukes to lessen this dependency. What is your point here?
[QUOTE=amorax;48856863]Uhhh, that's pretty much what I said.
The EU has the largest GDP and the second largest share of manufacturing production after China in the world. How is that 'doing nothing'?
[/QUOTE]
Pretty sure he means defense and politics. Not economics. The EU is seen as quite split (UK exit, Greek exit, etc). And the defense spending in most EU nations is below the 2% GDP NATO requires. Some nations in EU and NATO have no military.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48851116]Nuclear bombs are a long term waste of money too. It's much more productive to pursue diplomacy. Also there's mentioning that we aren't going to go to war with Russia, North Korea, or Iran anytime soon.
Starting a nuclear war means destroying civilization and killing billions of people, so why bother holding such weapons if you can't use them?[/QUOTE]
Haha you make it sound like diplomacy is so easy, if that were true WW1 and 2 would not of happened. Thanks to nuclear bombs the major powers have been at relative peace with eachother for the last half century, history doesn't lie.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48854871]Threads was researched by the leading scientific authorities of the time and is essentially as close as you can get to a realistic view of the impact of a nuclear war. (Officials in the British government also contributed, and one of the Civil defense advisers stated that a nuclear war was not survivable).
Here are the various sources it used:
[url]https://falloutwarning.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/threads-select-references-and-bibliography-by-kevin-hall/[/url]
There's also mentioning that official recommendations from the British government on how to survive a nuclear war (such as shelter making or food storage) were hopelessly ineffective and often contradictory.
I mean painting your windows white, removing everything burnable in the house, and hiding under the stairs or in a basement is going to only marginally increase your chances of survival.
The biggest thing people don't realize is that its not the initial blasts which will destroy civilization, but the fact that the infrastructure which sustains it will basically become inoperable. Most people will starve to death, die from easily preventable diseases, or simply commit suicide.[/QUOTE]
Nope, not seeing evidence, all I'm seeing a long list of books instead of actual scientific evidence.
As for nuclear war survival advice, those weren't designed to protect you from an attack at close range, those were designed to stop your house from bursting into flames at 20km or surviving when your home is knocked over due to overpressure. They may not have explicitly stated that in the survival manuals but anyone with a brain should have been able to see that.
I'm not sure where you're getting this idiotic idea that infrastructure simply vanishes. There are hundreds of thousands of piece of machinery that are highly useful to life scattered all over the country. Most of this machinery is essentially invulnerable to overpressure and most wouldn't be close enough to be damaged by heat.
[QUOTE=download;48853401]I think the UK needs a nuclear deterrent but I'm concerned that Trident will gut the rest of the armed forces to do so. The warheads themselves aren't the expensive part, it's the delivery systems that make up 95% of the 30 billion pounds price tag.
The UK might be better off with a diversified cruise missile and standoff missile based deterrence using a common warhead. A nuclear cruise missile for surface ships, for the Astute Class, for the new F35s and maybe one for a ground-launched cruise missile system like the old Gryphon all use the same warhead design that can be moved about to different parts of the system if need be. Throw in a supersonic short ranged standoff weapon as well fr good measure.[/QUOTE]
There was talk about something like this from the Lib Dems before the 2010 election. The problem with a nuclear deterrent reliant on cruise missiles is that your deterrent becomes possible to defend against. Long range (very short compared to SLBMs) subsonic cruise missiles can quite easily be shot down, they can and do even crash. You don't want a hypothetical nuclear threat to consider the thought that they could shoot down the missiles you launch at them because it removes doubt in their mind as to your capability to retaliate and therefore your ability to deter suffers.
Another glaring issue is, what happens if we ever find ourselves firing conventional submarine-launched cruise missiles in anger? If a nuclear power is on the receiving end and is aware of the make up of our deterrent then the last thing you want is for them to be wondering whether or not you're launching a nuclear first strike.
[QUOTE=download;48857161]Nope, not seeing evidence, all I'm seeing a long list of books instead of actual scientific evidence.[/quote]
Most of the evidence is from the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and given there hasn't been a nuclear war yet it's going to be pretty limited. However, we can draw upon studies looking at the damage caused to the atmosphere, which will knock-on with time:
[url]http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf[/url]
[quote]As for nuclear war survival advice, those weren't designed to protect you from an attack at close range, those were designed to stop your house from bursting into flames at 20km or surviving when your home is knocked over due to overpressure. They may not have explicitly stated that in the survival manuals but anyone with a brain should have been able to see that.[/quote]
It still doesn't make sense. The official advice tells you to take the doors off and use them to construct a shelter, but to also keep your doors shut to prevent fires spreading.
In the instance that a fire catches in one house, it's all too easy for it to spread and engulf the neighboring houses since the inhabitants will either be dead or huddled in their shelter.
[quote]I'm not sure where you're getting this idiotic idea that infrastructure simply vanishes. There are hundreds of thousands of piece of machinery that are highly useful to life scattered all over the country. Most of this machinery is essentially invulnerable to overpressure and most wouldn't be close enough to be damaged by heat.[/QUOTE]
It's not so much that actual physical machinery is irreversibly destroyed, but the fact that modern civilization depends on critical institutions and telecommunications. In the destruction of these, civil authority dissolves within several weeks (Eastern Europe during WW2 being a good example).
Nuclear bombs explicitly target major economic assets (such as industrial districts, railways, roads, telecommunications hubs, electrical power generator stations, etc).
In the event of nuclear war, the biggest problem would be finding enough energy to power the machinery lying around, the skilled technicians who can operate the more complex machinery (many living in urban centers will be killed), clearing debris blocking the roads, etc.
I mean if bridges collapse and roads are covered in debris that's the transportation network effectively crippled. The copper wire and Fibre-optic cabling would be almost certainly destroyed in most urban centres, making much of the internet and telephone networks inoperable. Food supplies would be likely limited and difficult to move overland, while most authorities would find it difficult to restore order and organise reconstruction efforts, rationing, law, etc. Medical supplies would either quickly run out or become essentially impossible to manufacture due to the fact that major industrial centres would have been hit.
You're also forgetting toxic pollutants released by the destruction of various chemical plants, the psychological damage and shock on the survivors (as is common among the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the money economy effectively ceasing to exist, the complete cessation of most economic activity, etc.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48850577]Who are we deterring exactly?[/QUOTE]
As I said "future deterrent."
Who knows what the future has in store for any of us.
My take on it being a deterrent is that if everyone barring a few decided not to keep nuclear weapons there would be a bigger chance of those with them to use them as there would be very little coming back.
Now they exist they will always exist and the biggest deterrent would be retaliation.
History tells us that we are capable of using them but would history be different if Japan had nuclear capabilities at the time?
[QUOTE=karlosfandango;48857485]As I said "future deterrent."
Who knows what the future has in store for any of us.
My take on it being a deterrent is that if everyone barring a few decided not to keep nuclear weapons there would be a bigger chance of those with them to use them as there would be very little coming back.
Now they exist they will always exist and the biggest deterrent would be retaliation.
History tells us that we are capable of using them but would history be different if Japan had nuclear capabilities at the time?[/QUOTE]
What makes you sure that we will need nuclear bombs in the future? What about new emergent technologies?
Most of our nuclear bombs are already really old, and since we can't do any tests or make new bombs we're extremely restricted. How can we deter attack in such a situation in the far future?
Also if Japan had nuclear bombs, they would have nuked China for certain, and almost certainly US targets too if they could reach them.
Disarm all countries and then a 3rd party gets their own weapon and were cocked, glorious strategy my friend
[QUOTE=No Party Hats;48857675]Disarm all countries and then a 3rd party gets their own weapon and were cocked, glorious strategy my friend[/QUOTE]
Not really. Assuming stringent regulations and international cooperation, attempts by nations to develop nukes would be considerably limited. The only new country to obtain nuclear devices has been North Korea, and they're all badly made,small, and the country lacks allies. If North Korea even decided to use one in anger it would certainly mean the annihilation of the regime.
[QUOTE=amorax;48850211]Are you completely insane? We're already small enough as a nuclear power as it is. More nukes can only be a good thing.[/QUOTE]
Britain will never use Nuclear weapons. They're a waste of resources. If it gets to the point people start using nuclear weapons, it doesn't matter. We are all likely fucked. Regardless of how many we have.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48857606]What makes you sure that we will need nuclear bombs in the future? What about new emergent technologies?
Most of our nuclear bombs are already really old, and since we can't do any tests or make new bombs we're extremely restricted. How can we deter attack in such a situation in the far future?
Also if Japan had nuclear bombs, they would have nuked China for certain, and almost certainly US targets too if they could reach them.[/QUOTE]
What makes you sure that we won't? All we can do is prepare the best we can for any future attack.
When we negate aggression in the world, then we can relax and stop making them.
[QUOTE] If North Korea even decided to use one in anger it would certainly mean the annihilation of the regime.[/QUOTE]
Only because nuclear weapons exist, so if they didn't.....
On a lighter note I watched gogglebox the other day and one of the son's of the family with the rottweiler's said "why do we need more nuclear bombs, we haven't used the last ones yet."
[QUOTE=KnightSolaire;48858602]Britain will never use Nuclear weapons. They're a waste of resources. If it gets to the point people start using nuclear weapons, it doesn't matter. We are all likely fucked. Regardless of how many we have.[/QUOTE]
...once again, we use them every day.
Furthermore, the whole point is that if we use them we destroy the world. That's why no one uses them, and we live in relative peace between the super powers.
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