Nuclear Holocaust

[GuerrillaUnReal]

I'm on a big Nuclear Holocaust kick right now. I've watched The Day After, Dr. Strangelove and I just watched Threads for the first time. I'm reading everything I can about it. It seems inevitable that humanity will blow itself to pieces at some point, that just seems logical. Also the question arises about what happens to humanity and the world after all the bombs go off?

In 2015, it seems there's little concern about a nuclear holocaust outside of a terrorist unleashing a small dirty bomb. Yet we're still completely fucked when it comes to radiation and have no way to deal with all the evils of splitting the atom. I couldn't imagine an uglier game killer for humanity.

I also find the theory interesting that if humanity blows itself to pieces after establishing this industrial technological age, we'd never be able to rise above the middle ages again since all the resources would have been depleted already.

What are your thoughts on humanity pressing the button?

[ItsOver]

I can't help wonder if that's why we haven't heard anything with SETI.  Once civilizations get the bomb, they inevitably use it, to the point of annihilation.

Have you seen "Fail Safe" and "Testament?"  "Fail Safe" is excellent.  "Testament" is interesting but not a gripper like "Fail Safe."

[albrecht]

IF you ever heard JBW or Rense, or on the other side of the political spectrum the environmentalists, and their news and experts Fukishima (sic) might be already starting it. (Not to mention the stuff we have here leaking like Hanford and that fire near the "stuff" near St.Louis.) Maybe more of a slow-kill, but, kill the oceans and rivers (and maybe locals)...up the chain my friend. Hopefully not true. In a perverse way, the thermonuclear holocaust could be better than the slow-kill, mutation, baby deformation, starvation, internecine warfare when food-chain breaks, etc? Hows that for good scenarios!?

[Evil Twin Of Zen]

i dunno. what would be the point? i've been closer to WMD than most and seen prep authorized only once while sittin pretty at a global primary (http://www.vp9.navy.mil/about.html). i couldn't say it will or won't happen. considering some nations with a launch on detect policy i'm sure of one thing...if a nation decides to cook one or two off at someone, everyone is gonna join the party.

another good movie is The Bedford Incident. could the events portrayed in the film happen? in a crisis, i give it a 50/50 chance either way. google Soviet submarine B-59 october 1962.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

I went through my global nuclear annihilation freak out in the 80s.  Now i'm pretty secure we're going to wipe ourselves out one way or another, and I'm pretty numb to it.  Not having any decendants I'm just hoping we can hold off a few more decades, or perhaps SciFi is right and AI or some human-AI hybrid will be in control by then.  I think you're right about the resources, though.  Most of the minerals and fossil fuels that are left probably require 20th century technology to recover.  Then again, if the Antarctic migrates north in a few million years there should be some pristine resources there.  There's probably a lot of unrecovered stuff in places like Africa and Siberia too.

More hopefully, didn't the UK labour leader recently reveal that no one would ever push the button in that country?  It was only ever meant to be a very elaborate and expensive bluff.  But, we also have North Korea, India, Pakistan, and whatever other less secure country or militant organization comes online.  We've only had these things for 70 years and we potentially have millions of years of civilization left to us to make a mistake.

[Evil Twin Of Zen]

I went through my global nuclear annihilation freak out in the 80s.  Now i'm pretty secure we're going to wipe ourselves out one way or another, and I'm pretty numb to it.  Not having any decendants I'm just hoping we can hold off a few more decades, or perhaps SciFi is right and AI or some human-AI hybrid will be in control by then.  I think you're right about the resources, though.  Most of the minerals and fossil fuels that are left probably require 20th century technology to recover.  Then again, if the Antarctic migrates north in a few million years there should be some pristine resources there.  There's probably a lot of unrecovered stuff in places like Africa and Siberia too.

More hopefully, didn't the UK labour leader recently reveal that no one would ever push the button in that country?  It was only ever meant to be a very elaborate and expensive bluff.  But, we also have North Korea, India, Pakistan, and whatever other less secure country or militant organization comes online.  We've only had these things for 70 years and we potentially have millions of years of civilization left to us to make a mistake.

the big sky kitty will get us first. 

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

the big sky kitty will get us first. 

Death by cuteness?

[Evil Twin Of Zen]

Death by cuteness?

sure. until it becomes planet litter box.

[=Schlyder=]

I say bring it on. The sooner the better.  Get it over and done with, then pick up the pieces after realizing "Well, that was a bad idea."  LOL

[SredniVashtar]

More hopefully, didn't the UK labour leader recently reveal that no one would ever push the button in that country?  It was only ever meant to be a very elaborate and expensive bluff.  But, we also have North Korea, India, Pakistan, and whatever other less secure country or militant organization comes online.  We've only had these things for 70 years and we potentially have millions of years of civilization left to us to make a mistake.

Yes, Jeremy Corbyn is his name. He has been vilified for saying so, of course, but it makes a change to hear someone actually having a genuine position on a subject, and making others think about what they are doing. Our PM is an empty suit who will never rock the boat, but for the first time in my living memory we have an opposition leader who is prepared to say something unpopular because he happens to believe it is the right thing. Whatever happens, he is making life interesting here at the moment, and people are looking stupid when they criticise him. They even had the nerve to pretend that he wasn't showing enough respect to the war dead on Remembrance Sunday (he didn't bow low enough, apparently!), so you can't expect much from them in the way of rational discourse.

The problem of the idea of a deterrent is that eventually something is going to spring a leak. You rely on people being rational, for one thing, but I don't think the climate these days is the same as it was in the sixties. There are a lot of people around who are prepared to send the world to hell because they don't have much interest in life anyway and want some fairy land where they don't have to do any thinking at all. You also need to keep investing in bigger and badder weapons to keep up with the other lot over the water. In the end something is going to blow. You only need one small crack in the wall for the whole thing to come down, and ultimately we need to come to our senses about this madness before it is too late. But I don't think you can get into a position of power any more unless you are prepared to subscribe to a set of stale old shibboleths that the media is comfortable with. I am sure the Corbyn experiment will end in electoral disaster, but we will only have ourselves to blame for that.

[SredniVashtar]

There was a popular British TV show a few decades back now called 'Yes, Prime Minister' which summed up the fallacy of nuclear weapons pretty well. At the time we had Polaris, but there was talk of adopting Trident as the new megakiller that will keep us safe in our beds. We still have Trident over here now, and the armed forces are always going on about spending more and more money to update this bloody thing so that we can kill more and more people more and more efficiently.

Anyway, the PM in the show was debating whether to spend all this money on renewing nuclear weapons, and met some guy who didn't agree. He put forward various scenarios about whether to push the button or not, and they were all incremental acts of aggression that would not warrant a nuclear response. He called them 'salami tactics', as I remember, where it all happens slice by slice, rather than presenting a leader with a definite problem that requires an overwhelming response. Any leader who is sane (however shifty and evil) would never confront another leader like that. I am sure even a latter-day Tsar like Putin wouldn't try to start a pissing contest like that. I guess an insane leader would do that, but if that is the case then a 'deterrent' would have no effect in the first place anyway.

[pate]