Nuclear War

Nuclear War inevitable?


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Urwumpe

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Let me remind you, that WWI begun with absolutely none ideology disagreements between the fighting nations, just like thousands of wars before it and many after it. Ideology is no more than a tool, or a habit, and is more commonly used inside a particular country rather than in international affairs.

WW1 started because absolutist rulers failed solving their problems inside their family. If a nuclear bomb had been available by then, it would have been used in the thought of "Lets show them who has the bigger muscles here."
 

fsci123

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Unfortunately that's the case. Women used to have a softer shape back then. Nice smooth curves. Not that skinny anorexic Twiggylike look of today. War is hell, indeed.

Well I am highly offended even though I am not a woman my only thing to say is: have you ever been to the ghettho of America?

Well as for T.Neo saying about what would happen if my town was hit by a nuclear weapon... Well I live in the heart of NYC and I don't want to see anything happen to civilians only to militants...
 

T.Neo

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Generally a large-scale nuclear exchange is supposed to be about targeting civillians...

You have tactical nukes but their indiscriminate nature can make them difficult to use against combatants. If you're having such large problems that you need to use tactical nukes to solve them, you're already obviously fighting a very major conventional war.

And what if there is a major conflict and you are conscripted? Then what?
 

Dambuster

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Well I live in the heart of NYC and I don't want to see anything happen to civilians only to militants...

Most soldiers are civilians, when you take off their uniforms.


And what if there is a major conflict and you are conscripted? Then what?

Then I look at whether I think the cause is something worth fighting for...if so, I sign up. If not, I say 'FU' to the government and go to the nearest available prison. ;)
 

fsci123

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Generally a large-scale nuclear exchange is supposed to be about targeting civillians...

You have tactical nukes but their indiscriminate nature can make them difficult to use against combatants. If you're having such large problems that you need to use tactical nukes to solve them, you're already obviously fighting a very major conventional war.

And what if there is a major conflict and you are conscripted? Then what?

I am pretty prepared to join the reserves once I get out of highschool... Well russia has good standings with us... China is desperate but we have strained relations... Europe is happy with us and there is noone is Africa with nukes... And those who are hostile and are not totally dependant have either so little nukes or nukes with sub-par power and there is only one country who is hostile and have no connections whatsoever is NK and they have a poor missle range and asumin they declared war on the US and SK there gas suply will be cut off and there forces will be disabled...
 

Dambuster

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But you can't really predict what's going to happen, to be honest. When WWII started, the ultimate casus belli was that the UK and France had promised to protect Poland, and when Poland was invaded they then declared war. As unlikely as it seems, for all we know Donald Trump could be elected President with Sarah Palin as VP in 2012 (suitable year, anyone?), immediately go on a harebrained escapade with the USMC to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Oman and Yemen (and maybe even the so-called 'country of Africa', if Mrs Palin has a say in the target list), and Russia would come to defend those countries. Hello WWIII - and possibly associated nuclear war. (This is definitely one of those cases where I would tell any country trying to conscript me to piss off.)

So yeah - that's unlikely in the extreme, and I'd be utterly amazed if it did happen - but it wouldn't surprise me at all if many other wars in the history of the world seemed unlikely to the citizens of the world shortly before they broke out, and that's why I think that trying to predict these things is difficult in the extreme.
 

Mantis

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I guess it depends on what you mean by nuclear war. An all-out nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia is highly unlikely. The whole concept of MAD comes into play. A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan is more likely but still pretty unlikely. On the other hand, a nuclear attack by a rogue state such as Iran is entirely possible because the fear of retaliation/death would not come into play. Even in the darkest days of the cold war, NATO could always count on the Russians acting reasonably and with self-preservation in mind. The same cannot be said for a rogue state or a terrorist organization. I believe that someone, somewhere will eventually launch a nuclear attack agaisnt someone else but I don't beleive that we'll see an armageddon scenario where east and west exchange a few thousand megatons of warheads. The most likely scenario is Iran launching a nuclear strike on Israel and the Israelis reducing Iran to a smoking parking lot in retaliation.
 
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fsci123

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Though we can't accurately predict what exactly what will happen we can rule out the improbable such as Korea using 8 nukes to propel their government building into a ballistic trajectory to target holy snakes in the Mohave dessert and when these 7 snakes die the United States will begin to levitate and implode into wormhole that will spew gold... Most logical prediction can't be made using a hunch but are made using current an past trends facts and highly probable events...
 

Dambuster

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The most likely scenario is Iran launching a nuclear strike on Israel and the Israelis reducing Iran to a smoking parking lot in retaliation.

I'd actually imagine the reverse is more likely. I find it unlikely in the extreme that Iran will ever get so far as developing a functioning nuclear weapon, and then manage to make a long-range missile program capable of delivering it, without first being on the receiving end of some airstrikes. However, I don't find it at all implausible (given their track record) that Israel would launch a first strike of some sort (perhaps nuclear - looking at how much respect they currently show for international conventions, it would surprise me if they had much respect for any of the accepted norms regarding nuclear weapons).
 
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Mantis

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I'd actually imagine the reverse is more likely. I find it unlikely in the extreme that Iran will ever get so far as developing a functioning nuclear weapon, and then manage to make a long-range missile program capable of delivering it, without first being on the receiving end of some airstrikes. However, I don't find it at all implausible (given their track record) that Israel would launch a first strike of some sort (perhaps nuclear - looking at how much respect they currently show for international conventions, it would surprise me if they had much respect for any of the accepted norms regarding nuclear weapons).

I doubt it. It's their neighbours who have repeatedly tried to wipe them out, not the other way around. I can definitely see the Israelis doing the rest of us a favour and knocking out the Iranian nuclear facilities before they are able to produce a bomb but they would not use nukes as a first strike unless their back was to the wall.
 

Urwumpe

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I doubt it. It's their neighbours who have repeatedly tried to wipe them out, not the other way around. I can definitely see the Israelis doing the rest of us a favour and knocking out the Iranian nuclear facilities before they are able to produce a bomb but they would not use nukes as a first strike unless their back was to the wall.

They had already done it in Syria and Iraq, I would not be surprised if they also do it in Iran. Israel isn't a one-dimensional story, it is extremely complex. Israel isn't a rogue nation, and it isn't a nation of angels. It is both - at the same time, often in the same person. It is a democracy, with many tainted spots, with actually the same conflicts between young and old, that also trouble the rest of the Arabian world. It is a Prussian-like Army that owns its own nation. Its a high-tech country with low-tech problems.

If Israel wouldn't exist, some author would be stoned for creating a fictional one.
 

jedidia

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Europe is happy with us

No, it isn't really, but it's certainly far from perceiving America as a military threat. But even then, Europe joyning forces for a war against a major enemy is something I won't even believe when I'd see it happen...
 

Mantis

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They had already done it in Syria and Iraq, I would not be surprised if they also do it in Iran.

For sure. I expect to wake up one morning and all the news stations will be carrying the story of Israeli airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. From what I understand, most of the Arab world wouldn't be too unhappy about it either. Private, at least, many Arab states would probably applaud the move.
 

FADEC

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My first question is what are the probability of nuclear war...

The probability of a nuclear war luckily decreased during the past decades. In 1945 everything seemed possible and the day for doomsday prophets had come more than ever. Today, without a cold war, we are not facing any threat of a nuclear war. Atomic bombs are basically devices to demonstrate power but nothing more. I doubt any proper government in China, Russia, France, USA etc. would use them. And why? Does not make any sense. The only threat I see is nuclear material in wrong hands, i.e. islamic fundamentalists. But this would not cause a nuclear war though. Instead, it would be pretty nasty for those fundamentalists once US special forces catch them. The killing of Ossama certainly would be just preschool in comparison.

It's 66 years of peace in Europe. That's historic. Russian foreign policy has changed. And China is pretty calm regarding foreign affairs (not comparable to US and European "interventions"). There is no reason to be pessimistic. The big challenges in this century won't be a crazy going Germany/Europe and a cold war, but climate change, world population growth and to manage global economy/globalization instead.
 

fsci123

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For sure. I expect to wake up one morning and all the news stations will be carrying the story of Israeli airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. From what I understand, most of the Arab world wouldn't be too unhappy about it either. Private, at least, many Arab states would probably applaud the move.

America already destroyed those facilities a month ago... We used a super-virus to overload the computers and to destroy centrifuges... Iranian threat deleted...
 

garyw

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you are talking about Stuxnet which was a targetted computer virus. There is no such thing as a 'super virus'.
 

Eagle1Division

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No, it isn't really, but it's certainly far from perceiving America as a military threat. But even then, Europe joyning forces for a war against a major enemy is something I won't even believe when I'd see it happen...

Wait... Wasn't that the idea behind NATO?

IMO nuclear war has a lot to do with how technology progresses.
Well, at least full-scale war.

I'm going to look at two things, and it's a bit complicated...
So first there's a localized nuclear war. Say Pakistan bought some nuclear tech from NK and decides to hit Jerusalem. A small scale nuclear strike would probably invoke a massive conventional war in the middle east, but chances are, because so few Arabic nations are closely connected politically with major western or eastern players, it would stay small-scale.
Perhaps the worse that could happen is both Russia and the U.S. getting involved... At opposite ends. Politicians would doubtlessly do anything to avoid this, though, and the war would still stay localized in the middle-east.

And now NK. Same story, except in this case they get wiped off the map. IMO the only reason nobody has taken them out yet is because of the wonders of modern media, any nation that liberates that heck hole will get all the blame of NK's horrible government.
I.e, South Korea wipes out NK, which has a massive poverty-stricken indoctrinated starving population. The wonders of modern Media put all the blame on South Korea, and imply the poverty was from the war and South Korea's fault.
Well, you can insert any nation in place of "South Korea". So ultimately doing the world a favor would result in very bad press.

Now, on a bigger scale the second thing: Globalized Apocalyptic nuclear exchange.
The way I see it, we live in a short period of human civilization where we get to enjoy an era of peace that is both unprecedented, and unlikely to happen again, just because of human nature, as long as there are multiple political entities living in tight quarters. (i.e., on the same planet.)

B.N., before nukes, Wars were quiet normal. If you go a generation without war, peoples' base desire for violence gets satiated by starting conflict, then they're reminded of the horrors of war and return to peace for a time.

Then came globalization in the 1900's, suddenly the whole world was connected. Well, since the whole world is now connected, everything happens on much bigger scales. Bigger industry, bigger economies (hello modern stock trade) and bigger wars.
In the modern Globalized era, WWI and WWII are normal wars. I seriously consider the possibility that the Atom bomb is the soul reason WWIII didn't start months after WWII because of tensions with Soviet Russia.
There was an 11-year gap in-between WWI and WWII, if you use that for an average, then by now there would have been 5 more world wars since WWII. Now, consider this:
Think the world was connected for WWII? Nothing compared to today. Faster, longer-ranged aircraft and (conventional) ballistic missiles, and most of all higher population, would make conventional wars today make WWII look puny.
But, that's not what happened, instead, we entered the next age, the age of M.A.D.
In this era, historically there have been minor conflicts, but no wars in any real sense, with Korea as a possible exception. No World Wars, no cities getting bombed in huge airborne raids, no tactical ballistic missiles raining death on civilians from military bases on the other side of planet Earth. (Newer generation V-2's, essentially.)
Peace and relative tranquility, peace brought about in fear, as we all sit in the shadow of Death; the nuclear-tipped ICBM, which has the potential to end humanity as we know it.
It's like we're in the cave with a giant. Nobody wants to get in a fight and wake the beast.

Then, either one of two things happen:
1) MAD fails, and everything goes up in mushroom clouds, or
2) Someone makes a ballistic missile interception system, capable of handling huge volumes of RV's, and the giant is dead.
Then the world enters A.N.: After Nukes.
If this happens, then the era of World Wars returns, and we experience a sort of conventional Apocalypse.

Only thing that can stop this is the everlasting struggle in-between armor and weapon that's been going on in the field of weaponry since the dawn of time. A high-volume interception system would be a victory for "armor". If ICBM's can counter it somehow, then weapons gain the upper hand and we live peacefully in the shadow of ICBM's once again.
 
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