Thanatos

Obama... now he pissed me off...

Talk to Iran... ok
Talk to Russia... fine
Kiss up to the Chinese... gross, but ok

BUT DON'T TOUCH MY NUCLEAR WARHEADS OR DELIVERY SYSTEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is no joke. There is a reason why the Chinese have been advocating a nuclear free world for years and years. Nuclear weapons, believe it or not have been a corner stone for keeping larger wars than WW2 from breaking out. Nuclear weapons give enemys and allies a like the pause needed to look at common sense. You eliminate nuclear weapons or the threat therein and you create a atmostphere where common sense no longer is realistic. There is no reason to pause trying to annihilate an entire culture. Nuclear weapons have kept the relative peace between India and Pakistan, between China and Russia and between India and China and between us and China as well as the Russians. Remove them and you are just asking for trouble. Sure, we don't need enough warheads to destory the entire world. (Personally, that's diffrent). The reason why we settled on 1500-2200 warheads in SORT was to give maximum flexablity to any target situation. The same with the Russians. You wanna get rid of nuclear weapons? Fine, get rid of the real problems in the world first. Then there won't be a need to have them.

I can't believe you're fucking serious.

Note too self: remember this thread for future pointless debate.

ummm ya I am serious.

Ya thought I went by atomic cause I like candy? :ymparty:

No deterrent system is foolproof. Eventually, some lunatic will break the peace and then suddenly half the world is dead. Mutually assured destruction was a flawed plan from the very beginning.

Nothing is foolproof. Even if we eliminated nuclear weapons, you can't eliminate the knowledge on how to constuct one. MAD does do one thing and like I mentioned above, it is giving pause to would be adversaries.

I do wanna clarify something for this thread. The weapons we are talking about are actually thermonuclear devices not specifically atomic weapons. Atomic weapons have a much lower yield and while the threat from terrorists using "atomic" weapons is very real. Most "nuclear" weapons are the much higher yield or the adjustable yield weapons mounted on a delivery system such as a missile, dropped from aircraft. As most nations with these weapons currently use. Also these specific weapons are typically out of reach of your everyday terrorist.

As far as a lunatic launching a nuclear strike, given that you mean some crazy jackass, the answer would be highly improbable. Why? Besides the numerous failsafes encoded into the system, there is still the physical reality of disengaging the mechanical interlocks as well as the means to actually launch a weapon of that type. It takes more than one person to launch a nuclear weapon. In the silos there is a physical distance that can not be overcome by one person. It actually takes 4 hands (two people) to even initilize the system for launch. Also another launch facility has to initilize at the same time. Meaning 4 people have to agree to turn the keys at exactly the same time. Even then, they have to have the launch code, initilization code, mechanical interlock code etc. All nuclear powers use the same system. We sold it to them so that way we can be sure that everyone with their finger on the button so to speak has the same failsafes. (Yes, at the height of the cold war we sold the failsafe technology to the Russians and others. Technically we just gave it to them.)
On a SSBN it is even harder. Even with the launch code and everyone agreeing the interlock codes are not transmitted till moments before the launch. Now, I am sure at some point someone will mention something along the lines of "Well the AF missplaced 6 on a B-52 bomber" Ya, they sure did. They were never armed. They didn't have the arming code. If they had dropped one it would have scared the crap out of some farmer and cost a crap load of money but that is about it. Even if the primary was exposed the radiation level would have been too low to cause any major harm, unless the farmer ate it.

<avoiding topic>
I just always thought you really liked these...

I was referring more towards somebody in power firing one. Nuclear weaponry (and the means to create it) is becoming more and more widespread, despite all of our attempts to prevent it. North Korea claims to have them, Iran has the means to create them, these are places I would not trust with nuclear weaponry (even though they probably only constructed them as a means of defense).

We have gotten ourselves into a circular arms race ever since the first thermonuclear weaponry was created. Other countries created more in order to defend themselves, and in order to defend ourselves from that, we have created more than them. It has slowed almost to a standstill since the Cold War, but the bombs are still there. The only real solution is a infallible means of defense against the weaponry, which is unlikely to exist any time in the near future.

I suppose in the end it comes down to two possible means of defense:

1) Maintaining the current mutually assured destruction scheme whilst we wait for a new solution (if one ever arrives), or for nuclear weaponry to become obsolete (in which case we'll probably have much bigger problems).

2) Attempting to prompt other countries into abandoning their arsenals by doing it ourselves, and leaving ourself without the ability to reciprocate in the meantime.

Both have major flaws, I suppose I am just in the camp of the second (but I don't like either). The thing is, if somebody were to fire an ICBM in this day and age, it would be almost guaranteed suicide for their nation - even if they don't get hit by a missile in return. They would probably be attacked, they would most definitely lose any international standing, nobody would trade with them. I'd like to hope that this would prevent people from firing any (but we can never be certain). At least in the second option they get punished without even more people being needlessly slaughtered (and delivering almost irredeemable damage to the environment in the meantime).


How about a nice game of chess, instead?


[EDIT] - Also, I have other things to say about why I believe that the second option is the better of the two, and that the threat of mutually assured destruction may not be as effective a deterrent as it would seem at first glance (though I definitely agree that it is highly effective). But it's late and I need sleep, it was already hard enough to write all that other stuff coherently, and thats without going into the details.

Fuck nuclear weopons. You think the threat of killing HUNDRES THOUSANDS of people will make everything towards common sense? its madness. Fuck that shit. Nuclear bomb on holland and youve just killed 16 million people. Youll be worse then adolf fucking hitler.

Atomic weopons are b fucking s. Look at me... I got 115 warheads I can nuke u all if u dont listen to me. Its crazy, absurd and fucked up. Throw that shit away. And learn to think in good sense without having warheads sitting under your own damn ass.<br /><br />-- Sun Apr 05, 2009 5:23 pm --<br /><br />Or in other words

WORLD LEADERS, GROW THE F UP

I wish you guys would just say how you really feel.....lol

If you think these "failsafes" are even relevent, then you probably are either ignorant or susceptable to believing idiots who this BS to people in order to calm them down. Never under under estimate the power of a lunatic(a). There are other means of preventing war, ways that don't leave the door open for a retard with a twitchy finger.

there will always be nukes. FACT

there is however, no need for some nations to have literally thousands sitting in stock. 1-3 will do the job guaranteed and that is why we SHOULD begin destroying stock piles.

Fuck this thread.

[THANATOS Wrote:.Teo"]there will always be nukes. FACT

there is however, no need for some nations to have literally thousands sitting in stock. 1-3 will do the job guaranteed and that is why we SHOULD begin destroying stock piles.

Are you kidding? Let's see, something horrible happens and you have to use your 1-3 weapons. Problem solved and now you are defenseless to whatever nations that still have their 1-3 allotment! Peace has always been kept by the threat of somebody bigger than you being able to stomp you if you become a danger to the world.

"Atomic weopons are b fucking s. Look at me... I got 115 warheads I can nuke u all if u dont listen to me." <-Zero

If you really think the US wants to own the world by having nuclear weapons, you have a lot of re-thinking to do. If we or Russia (U.S.S.R.) ever in the history of nuclear weapons ever acted like that, there would already have been a nuclear war.

[THANATOS Wrote:.Huntchuks"]
If you really think the US wants to own the world by having nuclear weapons, you have a lot of re-thinking to do. If we or Russia (U.S.S.R.) ever in the history of nuclear weapons ever acted like that, there would already have been a nuclear war.

LOL =)) =)) =)) =)) =))

OF FUCKING GOD, too funny.

Fact the US = hegemony

the system is polar and we are the pole

to maximize our security it makes sense to pressure other nations into denuclearization