EDIT: For clarification, I feel that the current situation on the ground in the war (vs. say a year ago) might indicate that an attack on Russia might not result in instant nuclear war, which is what prompted my question. I am well aware of the “instant nuclear Armageddon” opinion.
Serious question. I don’t need to be called stupid. I realize nuclear war is bad. Thanks!
Russia is believed to have about 6500 nuclear weapons. Even if ninety-nine percent of them fail, that’s still 65 cities turned to ash.
That seems like a ridiculous number of nuclear munitions. Like why so many?
I recall hearing something about real arms reduction making nuclear war seem like a sane, viable option.
The theory is that we’re safer if all sides know they can completely annihilate each other. No world leaders genuinely want nuclear war (despite what they say, threaten, or imply), so nobody launches a nuke. Flaw - that theory assumes all leaders are sane and rational.
“The theory”… You make it sound like MAD is some obscure fact. I so hope that is not the case. But maybe… Fuck…
The US and the USSR engaged in a race to have the most nukes. After the fall of the Sowjet Union international treaties were put in place to reduce the number of nukes in both east and west.
Don’t quote me, but if I remember correctly, at the height of the cold war, both sides had more than 12.000 nukes each.
Humanity had enough fire power to delete the entire globe roughly 40x over then. Why? Because bigger is better.
That’s dumb. They didn’t do it just for shits and giggles. They did it because in a nuclear exchange, you only get one shot so you need to overwhelm your opponent’s defenses.
I’m guessing you’ve never heard of mutually assured destruction
Also, we tested quite a few of them
This video is so disturbing, every time. Every detonation is an implied threat, a political message, a promise of violence, a show of power. Every detonation is an environmental catastrophe, a long-term cost that we’re still paying, both in the collection and refining of the nuclear material and in the detonation. Every detonation is an economic burden, human time and effort spent making a tool that only makes destruction. The US effectively bankrupted the USSR with this competition.
The systemic cost of the whole thing is just mind-boggling. There’s really only one silver lining that I see. Humanity had access to a terrifying new weapon, the power to wipe itself out really. And we didn’t do it. At the time of highest ignorance, when very few people in the entire world really understood how bad it could be, and when political tensions were high, we did a lot of posturing but we didn’t actually do the worst we could have.
It could have been so much worse, and we (collectively) chose not to make it that way. I do find some comfort in that.
More likely several hundred, not 65.
Each nuke carries multiple warheads that split up in space and fly to individual targets.
