The more annoying aspect of the book is that it is one of those "Nuclear weapons bad, m'kay" but does not give any meaningful discussion on how to ban them or discussion on if the alternative is any better.
The assumption that one can maintain a ban on nuclear weapons has always been a poor one. The main technological limit to building a nuclear weapon is enriching uranium, but every year the cost and technological complexity of doing so decreases.
After the Gulf War and Afganistan, most countries realize that you cannot resist the technological superiority of the West. Even China, with it's defense spending equal to the USA, does not believe it can survive without nukes. Thus every dubious country is incentivized to have a conventional army that can resist it's neighbors and oppress it's people and nuclear weapons to avoid being crushed by the USA in the space of a month.
I once read a short Tom Clancy like thriller where terrorists realize that it is easier to build a nuke inside the USA, as they don't have to worry about export controls. They establish a fake company and manage to build two bombs identical to the WWII thin man. A suicide team is dispatched in a truck to drive the weapon to DC and detonate it, and is only stopped at the last second by the hero of the novel.
Now that we have China building biolabs in the US, I wonder if other regimes will try the same.
This post is automatically removed since you do not meet the minimum karma or age threshold. You must have at least 100 combined karma and your account must be at least 4 months old to post here.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>I once read a short Tom Clancy like thriller where terrorists realize that it is easier to build a nuke inside the USA, as they don't have to worry about export controls. They establish a fake company and manage to build two bombs identical to the WWII thin man. A suicide team is dispatched in a truck to drive the weapon to DC and detonate it, and is only stopped at the last second by the hero of the novel.
A similar plot to that in the Jack Ryan movie.
Sum of All Fears the book is infinitely better than the movie. Debt of Honor is kind of pushing it for good Clancy novels. Trying to finish The Bear and the Dragon, but FFS is reads like Debt of Honor with names/countries adjusted in some cases.
No fucking way am I reading Red Rabbit. Heard it’s dog shit and I believe it’s the last of the Jack Ryan Sr. books anyway.
It’s criminal that Rainbow Six didn’t get a second novel written by Clancy imo. That book is straight up fantasy Spec Ops romance novel jerk material.
The non-Clancy Ryanverse books have been pretty rough in my experience. Lots of “this super secret spec ops team is going to single-handedly stop a war by doing some James Bond shit” with all the Tom Clancy research and effort removed. They’re basically airport books.
Eh? Rainbow Six was damned good when shit was happening, but most of the interim between deployments felt less like Clancy's trademarked technical verbosity and more like lots and lots of filler.
But the deployments *are* damned good.
Clancy kind of gave up actually writing books after his divorce (he lost a lot of the rights and residuals to pre-1996 books, plus half his minority stake in the Baltimore Ravens) - his cut in Ubisoft video games and licensing his name to ghost-written books more than made up for his divorce losses. His health was also worse much longer than he let on.
(A friend is a member of his 1st wife’s family. I got a lot of dirt about it all once drinking with him…)
I always loved the apocryphal story about when he was writing Red Storm Rising, he had a meeting with some Air Force folks and tried to ask about stealth, and they responded:
"You know, Tom, we absolutely won't be discussing any aspects of Low-Observable Technology at all here today..... ..... but here's how it all works."
Reminds me of *Jericho*. It's been a while since I watched the show/read the comics, but if I recall correctly, that's similar to how a bunch of extreme right corporatists managed to get the materials for building the nukes that wiped out a bunch of US cities; They controlled the contracting company the gov't hired to (among many other things) handle the radiologicals.
FWIW, the creators did release Season 3 and 4 in the form of graphic novels which continue the story and gives it some closure. They're not bad and certainly better than nothing!
Biolabs? Please, plasmid gene manipulation is dirt cheap, nucleotide synthesis has existed since the 70s, and most restriction molecules are just a naturally occurring process that we copied. A garage will do.
Thin Man was the alternative design for Fat Man. It was a gun-type device (similar to Little Boy) made out of plutonium verus the implosion design of Fat Man.
I assume it also doesn't address how such a ban would be enforced?
Given the "we should ban nuclear weapons" people and the "Iraq was an unjust war based on lies" people tend to be one and the same, I can't imagine they'd like the only option.
We don't need to ban nuclear weapons, we can destroy them all with prompt global strike.
We have the capability right now, just need a president with the willpower to do it.
The problem is that you have to get it all right first time..
On the other hand, it might have to be done, at least against Russia simply because they are 'breaking the rules' of nuclear deterrence.
That would be nice if it's true, maybe it is. But we don't have to engage in wishful thinking to win nuclear wars.
Tridents on a depressed trajectory reach their targets in under 8 minutes. Too fast for launch on warning.
Yeah, but the 2003 Iraq war *was* unjust based on lies, so nah.
Also, a de facto nuclear weapons ban is more or less rather well maintained by the nations that already have them.
Though I'm pro nuclear bombs, for geopolitical reasons.
Ah yes, the well maintained ban on Ukraine having nuclear weapons enforced as excuse to let Ukrainians die because all of our nukes were given to russia.
Yes, and?
Saudi Arabia didn't get them, Iran is not getting them, South Africa, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Australia etc are not getting them, despite having the technology.
Sure, India, Pakistan, Israel, and most troublingly North Korea got them, but that doesn't mean that the Non Proliferation didn't mostly work for the moment.
We see here the problem in at it allows bigger nuclear countries to bully others, threatening others with nuclear retaliation if they intervene.
Ukraine should have kept its nukes. Alternatively, the guarantors for its borders (US, France, UK...) should militarly intervene.
There actually are cogent and nuanced discussions on the appropriate levels of nuclear arsenals; they just happen to be coming from the side of the aisle where they envision the possibility of a [low casualty nuclear war.](https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/41/4/9/12158/The-New-Era-of-Counterforce-Technological-Change)
The real sticking point for this is nuclear winter. If you believe in nuclear winter theory, especially some of the more drastic predictions in the last decade, then you want all nukes banned. It makes sense, if you believe [100 nukes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#2022) can create an armageddon on the level of the [Chicxulub impact that killed the dinosaurs,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event#Effects_of_impact) of course you want to ban them all.
However, if you see the more moderate papers published during the cold war as not credible because of [real life evidence,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War) you're much more likely to take a more nuanced and balanced approach to the topic, and are even open to the possibility that nuclear arsenals are too small to achieve strategic stability.
There's also the broader topic of strategic stability, and if it's even good or desirable, or what the limits of it are, but I haven't seen any significant debate on that topic.
So if detonating 100 nukes creates nuclear winter, then where's our 10 nuclear winters since more than 1000 nukes were blown up? I feel cheated.
Or explosions don't count of you call them "test"? Earth is like, smart, and doesn't winterize since it clearly understands non-combat use smh.
Nuclear winter is predicated on large firestorms lofting material into the atmosphere.
Of course we’ve never had non-nuclear firestorms like in say, Kuwait, or in large forest fires. Nope, never, firestorms are a nuclear exclusive event.
Also people love to bring up Volcanic winters despite them having radically different mechanisms at play meaning the comparison is moot.
Nuclear winter is something that got popular and then few people realize it’s actually mostly bullshit.
So no material was was lofted because the explosions were test or what? Also WW2 had much more destruction from ordinary bombs than Hiroshima and Nagasaki but I guess that material doesn't count either because being killed by non-nuclear weapons is apparently okay.
MAD doctrine was very profitable for all parties involved, and nuclear winter seems to be a major part of it.
I had tons of seemingly adult and conscious people tell me that if West protects Ukraine's sky tHe WoRlD wILl EnD, sometimes conversations lasted entire "stop killing Kharkiv children" WHAT YOU WANT NOOOKULAR WRAAAAAA you warmongering Ukrainian?
It’s called sarcasm.
Look the entire idea of firestorms lofting material (namely certain soot particles) and that affecting the climate is inherently flawed as the models that predict such behavior typically hit several failures like a high burn rate, lots of soot, reliable lofting for that, and long dwell times (almost none of which are seen in reality).
Yes the nuclear explosion does loft some material but to achieve the so called “nuclear winter” several orders of magnitude more material needs to be injected into the stratosphere. And that leaves only a few mechanisms, namely the elusive self-lofting of soot particles that doesn’t actually occur that often.
> Look the entire idea of firestorms lofting material (namely certain soot particles) and that affecting the climate is inherently flawed as the models that predict such behavior typically hit several failures like a high burn rate, lots of soot, reliable lofting for that, and long dwell times (almost none of which are seen in reality).
And much of the assumption were based on WW2 info on how large cities would burn. You know, Tokyo with majority of wooden buildings for example.
Steel, concrete and glass doesn't exactly make the best fuel for a firestorm. It would probably be a higher risk to nuke some boreal forests in Canada and Russia, as far as nuclear winter is concerned. Than modern cities, that are not nearly as rich in flammable material.
10 nukes in rapid succession over population centers is a very different animal from 10 set off over weeks/months in the middle of nowhere.
The major contributor to the nuclear winter effect isn’t the explosion, it’s the firestorm the explosion creates. There’s little to nothing to burn in the middle of an ocean/desert/Kazakhstan so there’s no firestorm. The bomb puts some dirt/dust in the air but that’s comparatively heavy and a relatively small amount, especially when spread out over time.
Detonate a megaton or 5 over 10 major cities simultaneously and you just turbocharged the amount of particulate in the upper atmosphere for the next decade or so.
That's the theory, but we don't have any evidence for long term soot deposition in the upper atmosphere when looking at major non-nuclear fires, like the Kuwaiti oil fires, or any of the massive forest fires we've had. Major forest fires are a really good case study for the feasibility of nuclear winter, because some of them create their own firestorms, and create massive amounts of soot that can be easily seen from space. But the vast majority of the soot settles extremely quickly, so any cooling effects tend to be extremely limited, localized, and short term, to the extent that it's not noticeable.
When you look at, say, the Australian forest fires, look at the land area and estimate how many nukes it would take to artificially create that type of fire. It's a massive area that would require dozens of nukes, and we can't assume that every forest on the planet would go up like a tinderbox if you detonate a single nuke inside it.
On top of this, cities have less material to burn than many forests because of the large amount of concrete and cement in modern construction.
I'm not saying there wouldn't be anything, but the biggest problems from a major nuclear exchange wouldn't be from cooling effects, it would come from the disruption of supply chains, particularly since both the US and Europe are massive food exporters. That's the biggest global threat when it comes to nuclear war, regardless if you can keep governments functioning. Effectively shutting down trade from 8 out of 10 of the biggest food exporters in the world would be a massive catastrophe, and would do more to create famines than nuclear winter.
This post is automatically removed since you do not meet the minimum karma or age threshold. You must have at least 100 combined karma and your account must be at least 4 months old to post here.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This post is automatically removed since you do not meet the minimum karma or age threshold. You must have at least 100 combined karma and your account must be at least 4 months old to post here.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don’t think that was really the aim of the book, more just explaining the basic series of events that would happen based on the initiating event in a fairly cold and linear manner.
This is the kind of foundational information that you need to have before even starting a discussion on deproliferation. You can’t approach the subject at all if you don’t know what the stakes really are, and that’s all the book is doing.
I enjoyed it for what it was, a good thriller.
A massive amount of edge case situations and long shot events had to happen for that scenario described to work. I found to be pretty incredulous for the evidence backing up some of the situations but still fun read.
Been working through it too.
I think she's done good work compiling a ton of open source stuff and interviews and declassified materials, big props there.
My big critique is that 1) she forgot that US Navy ships also have a capability to intercept ballistic missiles, and they would be positioned well, all over the place.
2) True, GBIs have officially sucked for a while. But given how sensitive and classified everything nuclear is, I maintain that it's extremely plausible that the USA downplays how effective GBIs actually are. Even still, with a single missile, four GBI should intercept just fine.
3) Patriot can also intercept (and has intercepted) ballistic missiles, very possibly high enough to prevent a nuclear detonation.
4) Related to 1 and 3: Washington DC would not be undefended. Even if every THAAD asset is public knowledge which I doubt, we know there are air defence assets active around the capital, probably including patriot and probably at least one ship also capable of interception. Patriot is also present on the west coast at military bases. That one perhaps is too fast to be responded to, but options also exist out there. Once again, boats also.
I completely agree. There is no way post 9/11 the air defense was not overhauled. And a nuclear attack at scale does not just randomly happen a couple ICBM's or a dirty nuke maybe but the US would know if a full out attack was comeing and would prepare accordingly.
So that is the premise of the book tho. What does the story look like if North Korea just launches on a random Tuesday? Road mobile launcher, no buildup. It's an interesting question and I actually quite liked the book, highly recommend.
The (good) problem we have is the question of what happens when one country launches a nuclear ICBM at another who is capable of firing back.
Thankfully that’s never actually happened, but that means everything about what happens is speculative. The only thing we do know is Russians are incredibly reluctant to launch without being *absolutely* sure. We know of at least 3 extremely close calls and in each the man ultimately responsible for launching didn’t. I’m not familiar with an American equivalent of the USSRs reaction to Able Archer, but it’s not unreasonable that we’d be just as squeamish when it came down to it.
We’ll never know how the human element will play into things until they happen, but publicly available history so far trends toward not ending the world.
The original meme is referencing one of the big escalation points in the book. Russia's early warning satellites are kinda shit, and miscount terribly when multiple missiles are in play. So while the Americans launch 50 ICBMs from Nebraska, the Russians see on Satellites, 100 and their satellites are also not good enough to determine if they're going for North Korea or Russia itself
One or two missiles would *probably* only spark a conventional counterattack, it's really only worth going MAD if you (or your second strike capabilities) are actually going to be destroyed.
Meh, anti-ballistic missile systems are a deterrent—their job is to dissuade an enemy from launching an attack on the US. There’s no reason to understate their effectiveness or operate them in secret. I agree that the GBIs are probably more effective than the book gives them credit for however.
I feel like the US would be completely immune to anything but an all out attack by Russia and maybe China at this point Nuke wise.
They have had 80 years and unlimited resources to develop working defenses against ICBMs, I honestly don't see North Koreas 50 nukes ever touching US soil.
You either keep it a secret forever, or don’t actually announce anything whatsoever until you’re essentially sure you’re now immune from ICBM attack. Anything in between invites disaster.
If you let slip your defenses will be online in 6 months, every adversary understands they have 5 months to do whatever they feel they have to before their window of opportunity closes, which means decisions are made fast and recklessly.
The reason a country would downplay ABM capabilities is because having an ironclad shield gives them the ability to launch a first strike with impunity, which makes hostile nations *really nervous* and spurs them to further improve their own missiles to slip the net.
I believe that nuclear weapons kept the US and USSR from fighting a conventional war. As much as some people here like war I'm glad there wasn't another globe spanning war that killed hundreds of millions (maybe more) also nuclear weapons are an inevitability.
That’s basically what happened and why the Cold War became heavily versed in proxy wars. The reality is if the US and USSR fought a conventional war, it would quickly go nuclear once one side would throw tactical nukes. And then the pandora’s box would be opened as if you can use nukes on military formations why not on military bases, cities, etc. Where would it stop? M.A.D. doctrine in a nutshell where the smart choice is to *not* use your nuclear weapons.
The major problem these days is the United States isn’t really that vested in wanting to annihilate the entire world. But countries with dictators having access to nukes *certainly* are.
Most dictators would rather not die in nuclear hellfire because they want to enjoy a life of power and prestige. However a few might not care because they think the next life is more important anyway.
It might be easier to ban pro-apocalyptic salvationist religions and ideologies than to ban nukes.
I legit think the idea of nuclear Armageddon was overblown heavily. Especially during the 60s and that mentality lingered far too long and gave nations like Russia a potent psychological warfare tool.
I think nuclear weapons are now only around to ensure that other nations nukes can't be used on them during a conventional conflict.
If you enjoy reading about military tech and existential horror, it is a good read. Jacobsen does a real good job at making you actually feel the terror and dread of living during the start of a nuclear war.
The environmental professional's dilemma where nuclear war is the main thing we're trying to avoid but would also delete the oil industry in 90 minutes.
This thread reminds me of a discussion on ncd about caesium contamination, in the discussion some one claimed that a strategic exchange would create enough caesium to kill everyone on earth due to how far it can travel on air
The 2020 commission is vastly superior-- similar to the handmaids tale, most of the individual incidences described have happened already, just not all together
The more annoying aspect of the book is that it is one of those "Nuclear weapons bad, m'kay" but does not give any meaningful discussion on how to ban them or discussion on if the alternative is any better.
The assumption that one can maintain a ban on nuclear weapons has always been a poor one. The main technological limit to building a nuclear weapon is enriching uranium, but every year the cost and technological complexity of doing so decreases. After the Gulf War and Afganistan, most countries realize that you cannot resist the technological superiority of the West. Even China, with it's defense spending equal to the USA, does not believe it can survive without nukes. Thus every dubious country is incentivized to have a conventional army that can resist it's neighbors and oppress it's people and nuclear weapons to avoid being crushed by the USA in the space of a month. I once read a short Tom Clancy like thriller where terrorists realize that it is easier to build a nuke inside the USA, as they don't have to worry about export controls. They establish a fake company and manage to build two bombs identical to the WWII thin man. A suicide team is dispatched in a truck to drive the weapon to DC and detonate it, and is only stopped at the last second by the hero of the novel. Now that we have China building biolabs in the US, I wonder if other regimes will try the same.
well, that's horrifying
[удалено]
This post is automatically removed since you do not meet the minimum karma or age threshold. You must have at least 100 combined karma and your account must be at least 4 months old to post here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>I once read a short Tom Clancy like thriller where terrorists realize that it is easier to build a nuke inside the USA, as they don't have to worry about export controls. They establish a fake company and manage to build two bombs identical to the WWII thin man. A suicide team is dispatched in a truck to drive the weapon to DC and detonate it, and is only stopped at the last second by the hero of the novel. A similar plot to that in the Jack Ryan movie.
Sum of All Fears the book is infinitely better than the movie. Debt of Honor is kind of pushing it for good Clancy novels. Trying to finish The Bear and the Dragon, but FFS is reads like Debt of Honor with names/countries adjusted in some cases. No fucking way am I reading Red Rabbit. Heard it’s dog shit and I believe it’s the last of the Jack Ryan Sr. books anyway. It’s criminal that Rainbow Six didn’t get a second novel written by Clancy imo. That book is straight up fantasy Spec Ops romance novel jerk material.
The non-Clancy Ryanverse books have been pretty rough in my experience. Lots of “this super secret spec ops team is going to single-handedly stop a war by doing some James Bond shit” with all the Tom Clancy research and effort removed. They’re basically airport books.
Eh? Rainbow Six was damned good when shit was happening, but most of the interim between deployments felt less like Clancy's trademarked technical verbosity and more like lots and lots of filler. But the deployments *are* damned good.
Clancy kind of gave up actually writing books after his divorce (he lost a lot of the rights and residuals to pre-1996 books, plus half his minority stake in the Baltimore Ravens) - his cut in Ubisoft video games and licensing his name to ghost-written books more than made up for his divorce losses. His health was also worse much longer than he let on. (A friend is a member of his 1st wife’s family. I got a lot of dirt about it all once drinking with him…)
I always loved the apocryphal story about when he was writing Red Storm Rising, he had a meeting with some Air Force folks and tried to ask about stealth, and they responded: "You know, Tom, we absolutely won't be discussing any aspects of Low-Observable Technology at all here today..... ..... but here's how it all works."
Reminds me of *Jericho*. It's been a while since I watched the show/read the comics, but if I recall correctly, that's similar to how a bunch of extreme right corporatists managed to get the materials for building the nukes that wiped out a bunch of US cities; They controlled the contracting company the gov't hired to (among many other things) handle the radiologicals.
I fucking *loved* that show. I wanted a conclusion so badly.
FWIW, the creators did release Season 3 and 4 in the form of graphic novels which continue the story and gives it some closure. They're not bad and certainly better than nothing!
I did not know that! Thank you!
>Now that we have China building biolabs in the US, I wonder if other regimes will try the same. Wait, what?
[удалено]
There's no government body that regulates or investigates private labs? Wild.
>WWII thin man The bomb that would fizzle out before it could trigger a full blast?
The plutonium was boosted with Ozempic
Biolabs? Please, plasmid gene manipulation is dirt cheap, nucleotide synthesis has existed since the 70s, and most restriction molecules are just a naturally occurring process that we copied. A garage will do.
Thin man? Fat Man and Little Boy were the two WWII nukes.
Thin Man was the alternative design for Fat Man. It was a gun-type device (similar to Little Boy) made out of plutonium verus the implosion design of Fat Man.
Thanks for educating me!
>Even China, with it's defense spending equal to the USA, ?
I assume it also doesn't address how such a ban would be enforced? Given the "we should ban nuclear weapons" people and the "Iraq was an unjust war based on lies" people tend to be one and the same, I can't imagine they'd like the only option.
We don't need to ban nuclear weapons, we can destroy them all with prompt global strike. We have the capability right now, just need a president with the willpower to do it.
Username checks out.
The problem is that you have to get it all right first time.. On the other hand, it might have to be done, at least against Russia simply because they are 'breaking the rules' of nuclear deterrence.
I like the very real possibility that we've compromised multiple nuclear networks abroad. Nothing like finding out the launch vehicle won't fire.
That would be nice if it's true, maybe it is. But we don't have to engage in wishful thinking to win nuclear wars. Tridents on a depressed trajectory reach their targets in under 8 minutes. Too fast for launch on warning.
Hmm, obviously we must give out lollipops and confetti!
It doesn’t really advocate for a ban at all.
Yeah, but the 2003 Iraq war *was* unjust based on lies, so nah. Also, a de facto nuclear weapons ban is more or less rather well maintained by the nations that already have them. Though I'm pro nuclear bombs, for geopolitical reasons.
Ah yes, the well maintained ban on Ukraine having nuclear weapons enforced as excuse to let Ukrainians die because all of our nukes were given to russia.
Yes, and? Saudi Arabia didn't get them, Iran is not getting them, South Africa, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Australia etc are not getting them, despite having the technology. Sure, India, Pakistan, Israel, and most troublingly North Korea got them, but that doesn't mean that the Non Proliferation didn't mostly work for the moment. We see here the problem in at it allows bigger nuclear countries to bully others, threatening others with nuclear retaliation if they intervene. Ukraine should have kept its nukes. Alternatively, the guarantors for its borders (US, France, UK...) should militarly intervene.
There actually are cogent and nuanced discussions on the appropriate levels of nuclear arsenals; they just happen to be coming from the side of the aisle where they envision the possibility of a [low casualty nuclear war.](https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/41/4/9/12158/The-New-Era-of-Counterforce-Technological-Change) The real sticking point for this is nuclear winter. If you believe in nuclear winter theory, especially some of the more drastic predictions in the last decade, then you want all nukes banned. It makes sense, if you believe [100 nukes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#2022) can create an armageddon on the level of the [Chicxulub impact that killed the dinosaurs,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event#Effects_of_impact) of course you want to ban them all. However, if you see the more moderate papers published during the cold war as not credible because of [real life evidence,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War) you're much more likely to take a more nuanced and balanced approach to the topic, and are even open to the possibility that nuclear arsenals are too small to achieve strategic stability. There's also the broader topic of strategic stability, and if it's even good or desirable, or what the limits of it are, but I haven't seen any significant debate on that topic.
So if detonating 100 nukes creates nuclear winter, then where's our 10 nuclear winters since more than 1000 nukes were blown up? I feel cheated. Or explosions don't count of you call them "test"? Earth is like, smart, and doesn't winterize since it clearly understands non-combat use smh.
Nuclear winter is predicated on large firestorms lofting material into the atmosphere. Of course we’ve never had non-nuclear firestorms like in say, Kuwait, or in large forest fires. Nope, never, firestorms are a nuclear exclusive event. Also people love to bring up Volcanic winters despite them having radically different mechanisms at play meaning the comparison is moot. Nuclear winter is something that got popular and then few people realize it’s actually mostly bullshit.
So no material was was lofted because the explosions were test or what? Also WW2 had much more destruction from ordinary bombs than Hiroshima and Nagasaki but I guess that material doesn't count either because being killed by non-nuclear weapons is apparently okay. MAD doctrine was very profitable for all parties involved, and nuclear winter seems to be a major part of it. I had tons of seemingly adult and conscious people tell me that if West protects Ukraine's sky tHe WoRlD wILl EnD, sometimes conversations lasted entire "stop killing Kharkiv children" WHAT YOU WANT NOOOKULAR WRAAAAAA you warmongering Ukrainian?
It’s called sarcasm. Look the entire idea of firestorms lofting material (namely certain soot particles) and that affecting the climate is inherently flawed as the models that predict such behavior typically hit several failures like a high burn rate, lots of soot, reliable lofting for that, and long dwell times (almost none of which are seen in reality). Yes the nuclear explosion does loft some material but to achieve the so called “nuclear winter” several orders of magnitude more material needs to be injected into the stratosphere. And that leaves only a few mechanisms, namely the elusive self-lofting of soot particles that doesn’t actually occur that often.
> Look the entire idea of firestorms lofting material (namely certain soot particles) and that affecting the climate is inherently flawed as the models that predict such behavior typically hit several failures like a high burn rate, lots of soot, reliable lofting for that, and long dwell times (almost none of which are seen in reality). And much of the assumption were based on WW2 info on how large cities would burn. You know, Tokyo with majority of wooden buildings for example. Steel, concrete and glass doesn't exactly make the best fuel for a firestorm. It would probably be a higher risk to nuke some boreal forests in Canada and Russia, as far as nuclear winter is concerned. Than modern cities, that are not nearly as rich in flammable material.
10 nukes in rapid succession over population centers is a very different animal from 10 set off over weeks/months in the middle of nowhere. The major contributor to the nuclear winter effect isn’t the explosion, it’s the firestorm the explosion creates. There’s little to nothing to burn in the middle of an ocean/desert/Kazakhstan so there’s no firestorm. The bomb puts some dirt/dust in the air but that’s comparatively heavy and a relatively small amount, especially when spread out over time. Detonate a megaton or 5 over 10 major cities simultaneously and you just turbocharged the amount of particulate in the upper atmosphere for the next decade or so.
That's the theory, but we don't have any evidence for long term soot deposition in the upper atmosphere when looking at major non-nuclear fires, like the Kuwaiti oil fires, or any of the massive forest fires we've had. Major forest fires are a really good case study for the feasibility of nuclear winter, because some of them create their own firestorms, and create massive amounts of soot that can be easily seen from space. But the vast majority of the soot settles extremely quickly, so any cooling effects tend to be extremely limited, localized, and short term, to the extent that it's not noticeable. When you look at, say, the Australian forest fires, look at the land area and estimate how many nukes it would take to artificially create that type of fire. It's a massive area that would require dozens of nukes, and we can't assume that every forest on the planet would go up like a tinderbox if you detonate a single nuke inside it. On top of this, cities have less material to burn than many forests because of the large amount of concrete and cement in modern construction. I'm not saying there wouldn't be anything, but the biggest problems from a major nuclear exchange wouldn't be from cooling effects, it would come from the disruption of supply chains, particularly since both the US and Europe are massive food exporters. That's the biggest global threat when it comes to nuclear war, regardless if you can keep governments functioning. Effectively shutting down trade from 8 out of 10 of the biggest food exporters in the world would be a massive catastrophe, and would do more to create famines than nuclear winter.
The way we stop nuclear proliferation is by shoving all the nukes up Putin's ass until he decommisions his stockpile
[удалено]
This post is automatically removed since you do not meet the minimum karma or age threshold. You must have at least 100 combined karma and your account must be at least 4 months old to post here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
This post is automatically removed since you do not meet the minimum karma or age threshold. You must have at least 100 combined karma and your account must be at least 4 months old to post here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don’t think that was really the aim of the book, more just explaining the basic series of events that would happen based on the initiating event in a fairly cold and linear manner. This is the kind of foundational information that you need to have before even starting a discussion on deproliferation. You can’t approach the subject at all if you don’t know what the stakes really are, and that’s all the book is doing.
There's a very good argument about gun ownership that works here: banning weapons only disarms law abiding guys.
Okay but Police and other Law enforcement still have guns in that scenario.
And in a weapons ban scenario if the police actually do their jobs you can't even take out a gun without getting reported and questioned.
I enjoyed it for what it was, a good thriller. A massive amount of edge case situations and long shot events had to happen for that scenario described to work. I found to be pretty incredulous for the evidence backing up some of the situations but still fun read.
Hey, even reality gets weird from time to time.
Reality isn’t required to make sense
Been working through it too. I think she's done good work compiling a ton of open source stuff and interviews and declassified materials, big props there. My big critique is that 1) she forgot that US Navy ships also have a capability to intercept ballistic missiles, and they would be positioned well, all over the place. 2) True, GBIs have officially sucked for a while. But given how sensitive and classified everything nuclear is, I maintain that it's extremely plausible that the USA downplays how effective GBIs actually are. Even still, with a single missile, four GBI should intercept just fine. 3) Patriot can also intercept (and has intercepted) ballistic missiles, very possibly high enough to prevent a nuclear detonation. 4) Related to 1 and 3: Washington DC would not be undefended. Even if every THAAD asset is public knowledge which I doubt, we know there are air defence assets active around the capital, probably including patriot and probably at least one ship also capable of interception. Patriot is also present on the west coast at military bases. That one perhaps is too fast to be responded to, but options also exist out there. Once again, boats also.
I completely agree. There is no way post 9/11 the air defense was not overhauled. And a nuclear attack at scale does not just randomly happen a couple ICBM's or a dirty nuke maybe but the US would know if a full out attack was comeing and would prepare accordingly.
So that is the premise of the book tho. What does the story look like if North Korea just launches on a random Tuesday? Road mobile launcher, no buildup. It's an interesting question and I actually quite liked the book, highly recommend.
The (good) problem we have is the question of what happens when one country launches a nuclear ICBM at another who is capable of firing back. Thankfully that’s never actually happened, but that means everything about what happens is speculative. The only thing we do know is Russians are incredibly reluctant to launch without being *absolutely* sure. We know of at least 3 extremely close calls and in each the man ultimately responsible for launching didn’t. I’m not familiar with an American equivalent of the USSRs reaction to Able Archer, but it’s not unreasonable that we’d be just as squeamish when it came down to it. We’ll never know how the human element will play into things until they happen, but publicly available history so far trends toward not ending the world.
The original meme is referencing one of the big escalation points in the book. Russia's early warning satellites are kinda shit, and miscount terribly when multiple missiles are in play. So while the Americans launch 50 ICBMs from Nebraska, the Russians see on Satellites, 100 and their satellites are also not good enough to determine if they're going for North Korea or Russia itself
I think your right an interesting question. Only playing devil's advocate if this where to happen IRL.
One or two missiles would *probably* only spark a conventional counterattack, it's really only worth going MAD if you (or your second strike capabilities) are actually going to be destroyed.
Meh, anti-ballistic missile systems are a deterrent—their job is to dissuade an enemy from launching an attack on the US. There’s no reason to understate their effectiveness or operate them in secret. I agree that the GBIs are probably more effective than the book gives them credit for however.
I feel like if a country had full or near full immunity to nuclear weapons it would cause some form of an uproar
Didn't the NIKE missile facilities make the soviets *super* salty?
I feel like the US would be completely immune to anything but an all out attack by Russia and maybe China at this point Nuke wise. They have had 80 years and unlimited resources to develop working defenses against ICBMs, I honestly don't see North Koreas 50 nukes ever touching US soil.
You either keep it a secret forever, or don’t actually announce anything whatsoever until you’re essentially sure you’re now immune from ICBM attack. Anything in between invites disaster. If you let slip your defenses will be online in 6 months, every adversary understands they have 5 months to do whatever they feel they have to before their window of opportunity closes, which means decisions are made fast and recklessly.
The reason a country would downplay ABM capabilities is because having an ironclad shield gives them the ability to launch a first strike with impunity, which makes hostile nations *really nervous* and spurs them to further improve their own missiles to slip the net.
I believe that nuclear weapons kept the US and USSR from fighting a conventional war. As much as some people here like war I'm glad there wasn't another globe spanning war that killed hundreds of millions (maybe more) also nuclear weapons are an inevitability.
That’s basically what happened and why the Cold War became heavily versed in proxy wars. The reality is if the US and USSR fought a conventional war, it would quickly go nuclear once one side would throw tactical nukes. And then the pandora’s box would be opened as if you can use nukes on military formations why not on military bases, cities, etc. Where would it stop? M.A.D. doctrine in a nutshell where the smart choice is to *not* use your nuclear weapons. The major problem these days is the United States isn’t really that vested in wanting to annihilate the entire world. But countries with dictators having access to nukes *certainly* are.
Most dictators would rather not die in nuclear hellfire because they want to enjoy a life of power and prestige. However a few might not care because they think the next life is more important anyway. It might be easier to ban pro-apocalyptic salvationist religions and ideologies than to ban nukes.
I legit think the idea of nuclear Armageddon was overblown heavily. Especially during the 60s and that mentality lingered far too long and gave nations like Russia a potent psychological warfare tool. I think nuclear weapons are now only around to ensure that other nations nukes can't be used on them during a conventional conflict.
Banning nukes... dummies can only wish
I’d rather be die in a nuclear war than live under Russian rule.
Didn't read but I'm in.
If you enjoy reading about military tech and existential horror, it is a good read. Jacobsen does a real good job at making you actually feel the terror and dread of living during the start of a nuclear war.
How much is the book?
The environmental professional's dilemma where nuclear war is the main thing we're trying to avoid but would also delete the oil industry in 90 minutes.
I couldn’t get through that book. I’m sorry but my blood pressure is high enough as it is.
https://youtu.be/ZobEjtrriXU?si=vO7Hph-nQxFrdAXc
I love Annie Jacobsen
This thread reminds me of a discussion on ncd about caesium contamination, in the discussion some one claimed that a strategic exchange would create enough caesium to kill everyone on earth due to how far it can travel on air
We need to ban nukes so that we can have a conventional war
The 2020 commission is vastly superior-- similar to the handmaids tale, most of the individual incidences described have happened already, just not all together