For we who grew up tall and proud, in the shadow of the mushroom cloud
January 6, 2017 3:48 PM   Subscribe

We’re going back to the kind of dangers we had during the Cold War. At 89, former U.S. secretary of Defense Bill Perry finds himself an unexpected prophet of doom: “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War, and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”
posted by bitmage (75 comments total) 47 users marked this as a favorite
 
My money is on the coming invasion of Europe escalating unexpectedly, if we're setting up a betting pool or whatever. I guess the Chinese reclamaination of Taiwan could turn bad but it seems less likely somehow.
posted by Artw at 4:06 PM on January 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


I do like the prophet of doom stuff, but it seems decidedly old school. I'm a 9/11 survivor though, so that made a bit of an impact on me.

I'm far more concerned what a few people with $5,000 and a working knowledge of CRISPR could do with C. botulinum and some idealism.
posted by mrdaneri at 4:27 PM on January 6, 2017 [13 favorites]


I might not have grown up during the Cold War, but have been recently educating myself on all the terrible ways an nuclear bomb can kill you right quick and not so right quick. Terrifying stuff. Seems like the existential problems now are short to medium term nuclear war or medium to long term global warming. Humanity might not be able to stave off either in the end, but we should damn well try because the problems are essentially human based.
posted by Mister Cheese at 4:38 PM on January 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


My money is on the coming invasion of Europe escalating unexpectedly

Interestingly, according to a recent YouGov poll, the closer you live to Russia, the less concerned you are about the chance of war.

Anyway, this December article by Eric Schlosser seems to indicate that the problem is the age of American nuclear arsenal itself. Apparently a lot of the systems are so old there aren't parts for them, and the chance of malfunction is high.

In that context, then, perhaps Trump's pronouncement about reinvesting in nuclear weapons... makes... sense.... gah.

Anyway, I, as a Canadian, was so disturbed when Trump won that I had trouble sleeping for a week. I worried about my kids. And my wife. And my parents. I live about a ten-minute drive from a major naval installation on Vancouver Island, and the Trident base in Bremerton, as well as the Nimitz at Everett, are located close by.

So I suppose in the event of an attack, it will be over quickly. But I hadn't thought about this in over twenty years (save for the chance of a North Korean attack on Japan, where I was living).

Sad!
posted by My Dad at 4:39 PM on January 6, 2017 [17 favorites]


One new concern is the post-Soviet Russian de-escalation strike doctrine. It was developed after the fall of the Soviet Union, motivated by the recognition that the American military of the 1990s had a huge technological advantage in conventional weapons. The idea is that if Russia is losing a conventional war, or fears USA/NATO intervention on a matter of great national importance, Russia would detonate a few nuclear weapons, either against military targets or just in the middle of nowhere as a warning shot. The goal of the strategy is to signal that anything the USA/NATO might hope to gain in war would be outweighed by the highly probable risk of further escalation if conflict continues. Horrified, cooler heads would prevail, and the conflict would de-escalate down to a ceasefire.

This doctrine, still in effect, was not developed with Trump in mind.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:46 PM on January 6, 2017 [14 favorites]


My Dad: Interestingly, according to a recent YouGov poll, the closer you live to Russia, the less concerned you are about the chance of war.
I don't see any eastern European nations on that chart, so it seems hard to draw that conclusion from it.
posted by ragtag at 4:49 PM on January 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


Jerry Brown (my governor!) had a very affecting essay on this in the NYRB.
No one I have known, or have even heard of, has the management experience and the technical knowledge that William Perry brings to the subject of nuclear danger. Few have his wisdom and integrity. So why isn’t anyone paying attention to him? Why is fear of a nuclear catastrophe far from the minds of most Americans? And why does almost all of official Washington disagree with him and live in nuclear denial? Perry himself may provide the answer:
Our chief peril is that the poised nuclear doom, much of it hidden beneath the seas and in remote badlands, is too far out of the global public consciousness. Passivity shows broadly. Perhaps this is a matter of defeatism and its cohort, distraction. Perhaps for some it is largely a most primal human fear of facing the “unthinkable.” For others, it might be a welcoming of the illusion that there is or might be an acceptable missile defense against a nuclear attack. And for many it would seem to be the keeping of faith that nuclear deterrence will hold indefinitely—that leaders will always have accurate enough instantaneous knowledge, know the true context of events, and enjoy the good luck to avoid the most tragic of military miscalculations.
While many complain of the obvious dysfunction in Washington, few see the incomparably greater danger of “nuclear doom” because it is hidden and out of public consciousness. Despite an election year filled with commentary and debate, no one is discussing the major issues that trouble Perry. It is another example of the rigid conformity that often dominates public discourse. Long ago, I saw this in the Vietnam War and later in the invasion of Iraq: intelligent people were doing mindless—and catastrophic—things. “Sleepwalking” is the term historians now use for the stupidities that got European leaders into World War I and for the mess they unleashed at Versailles. And sleepwalking still continues as NATO and Russia trade epithets and build their armies and Moscow and Washington modernize their nuclear overkill. A new cold war.
posted by grobstein at 4:59 PM on January 6, 2017 [19 favorites]


I don't see any eastern European nations on that chart, so it seems hard to draw that conclusion from it.

While Poland is a central European country (not Eastern), for sure, it would have to be freaked out by Russia. However, as you know, Finland borders Russia, and has been threatened by Russia.

Sweden borders Russia (in the Baltic) and has been threatened. Russia threatened to nuke Denmark a while ago.

And I'm sure you know that Russia has moved nuclear-capable missiles into Kaliningrad (it's a territory on the Baltic bordering Poland and Lithuania, and across from Sweden and Denmark).

So I think the survey (as accurate as surveys ever are these days) is interesting and relevant.
posted by My Dad at 5:15 PM on January 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


I grew up in the days of Red Dawn and The Day After, of Ronnie Raygun's "evil empire". I'd look up at an unusual contrail in the sky and wonder if it could be the reentry track of a MIRV, with everything I knew about to vanish in searing light.

It was a relief when the Wall fell and the threat of a nuclear exchange seemed to fade away. Later, reading about the insane brinkmanship and near misses that had occurred through those decades, I was astonished that we'd made it through.

To think that we have learned nothing from all that, to willingly restart the arms race and push towards the brink once more brings me to despair.
posted by bitmage at 5:17 PM on January 6, 2017 [66 favorites]


The thing that worries me is that there are so many sorta-vaguely-likely bad scenarios, all becoming more likely right now. Escalation between India and Pakistan? Some kind of conflict between Russia and someone else? Terrorists? North Korea? A nuclear accident due to aging equipment or a mistake? And when you add to that the possibilities of, say, badly contained pandemic flu (or bioterrorism! CRISPR and terrorism is a totally new anxiety for me tonight!)....I just keep thinking that all these things are problems where you need smart, dedicated people with some interest in the common good to keep everything from falling apart, and we have Trump, Bannon and the rest of that gang of fools. I can believe that we can get through eight years without, say, escalating nuclear conflict in Europe. But it's hard for me to believe that we can get through eight years of everyone in the world knowing the US is ruled by an idiot and his dishonest cronies without anything else really bad happening. We might dodge one bullet, but not a hail of them.
posted by Frowner at 5:24 PM on January 6, 2017 [26 favorites]


My Dad: So I think the survey (as accurate as surveys ever are these days) is interesting and relevant.
No criticism there—it's very interesting and relevant! (Particularly Finland, which Russia has historically regarded as it's own.) But I want a larger sample, especially from countries like the Baltics and Transcaucasians, before I think the general point (that countries nearer to Russia are less concerned about war with it) can stand.

(For example, maybe the Nordics just tend to be generally peaceful or optimistic people, while Western Europeans (including America) just tend to be really warlike! I don't really know: I'm a rather sheltered American living in the middle of nowhere and I've only really been starting to learn about this sort of thing in the last year, courtesy of the fun-train that was 2016. But with only two broad categories of countries considered, it's hard to see past the bias, is all I meant. Sorry if it came off otherwise!)

(And sorry for the quasi-derail, everyone else. ♥)
posted by ragtag at 5:50 PM on January 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


For example, maybe the Nordics just tend to be generally peaceful or optimistic people

Sure, now, but back in the 10th century…
posted by mushhushshu at 5:56 PM on January 6, 2017 [6 favorites]




This is a ghoul having thrived by mechanisms and priorities that maintain the "blissfully unaware". Uncritical praise of his "accomplishments", of this benevolent shepherd, is repulsive. The likelihood of unrelated events are a product, not a sum, a fact he happily works around to frame his best pitch:

Perry invites his listeners to consider all the various scenarios that might lead to a nuclear event. “Mathematically speaking, you add those all together in one year it is still just a possibility, not a probability,” he reckons. “But then you go out ten, twenty years and each time this possibility repeats itself, and then it starts to become a probability. How much time we have to get those possibility numbers lower, I don’t know. But sooner or later the odds are going to get us, I am afraid.”

The man's addiction is elitism and, boy, what a drug.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:13 PM on January 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


The likelihood of unrelated events are a product, not a sum, a fact he happily works around to frame his best pitch: ...

It is neither. The relevant law is binomial. But sum is a fine first approximation.

The argument he's making is substantially correct.
posted by grobstein at 6:18 PM on January 6, 2017 [12 favorites]


Remember also that the town you live in is like number four on the list of targets.
posted by bondcliff at 6:22 PM on January 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


Where I live is about half air force bases, half population centers, so I do take this personal.
posted by grobstein at 6:29 PM on January 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm out: Claiming Armageddon as "personal" is straight-up bizarre and applying adjectives to one's conclusion is not conclusion. Independent events are mathematically treated as products, and the application of Probability theory (the binomial you cite) as relevant, isn't.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:42 PM on January 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm out: Claiming Armageddon as "personal" is straight-up bizarre and applying adjectives to one's conclusion is not conclusion. Independent events are mathematically treated as products, and the application of Probability theory (the binomial you cite) as relevant, isn't.

I didn't actually mean the "personal" thing to provide added support to my argument. Just chatting w/ bondcliff. Personally I don't think it's bizarre to care that I live in the overlap of many likely nuclear target zones.

And I know you're "out" so I don't want to have a whole debate.

But I want to clarify the probability theory point so other readers don't get confused.

Both of us are making points of probability theory. I am not somehow bringing in probability theory to distort a discussion that should be just "mathematics." Probability theory is of course the branch of mathematics concerned with probabilities. Probability and mathematics are friends.

The probability of a conjunction of independent events is the product of the probabilities of the events. I.e., the probability that several independent events will all happen is the product of the respective probabilities that each will happen.

But this is not what Perry is trying to describe. Perry is saying, sooner or later we will hit one of the nuclear danger triggers. He is not trying to describe the probability that all of these events will happen simultaneously. He thinks -- very plausibly -- that hitting just one of those independent events would trigger Armageddon.

So the product is the wrong probability. If the product was right, then adding more independent nuclear dangers would make us safer, since it would decrease the product of the probabilities. That can't be right. And it isn't!

Instead, each independent nuclear danger -- each possible trigger for Armageddon -- makes us less safe. The progression is approximately binomial, B(n, p) > 0, with n the number of independent nuclear dangers (which is partly a function of time -- Perry's point), and p the probability of each one triggering.

Although the answer is not given by the sum of the probabilities, sum is a better heuristic than product for informal reasoning, because at least the danger increases rather than decreasing on n.
posted by grobstein at 7:06 PM on January 6, 2017 [29 favorites]




The Reddit AMA he did about ten months ago (linked near the end of the FPP article) is worth reading as well. I'm astonished it wasn't upvoted more.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:44 PM on January 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


The likelihood of unrelated events are a product, not a sum, a fact he happily works around to frame his best pitch: ...

It is neither. The relevant law is binomial. But sum is a fine first approximation.


The likelihood of no event is the one-complement of a product of the probabilities of each independent event (which is kinda like a binomial probability, except with potentially different ps for each Bernoulli trial).
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:58 PM on January 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


Discuss the finer points of probability, mathematics and the related nomenclature. It will shield you from 5psi+ overpressure events and gamma rays/neutron flux just fine.
posted by bert2368 at 8:06 PM on January 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


The Tale of Happiton (sl Douglas Hofstadter)
posted by Sebmojo at 8:10 PM on January 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


I swear to god - I'm thisclose to finding a Kickstarter that will pay for anonymously sending a bunch of copies of THREADS to Trump and everyone in his damn cabinet.

Who's with me?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:27 PM on January 6, 2017 [14 favorites]


Russia is going to try to take Gotland ahead of retaking Lithuania to cement the Baltic as it's own little lake.

Problem number one, Sweden has seen through this, and put a token armor contingent on the island. In NATO speak, this is a "trip wire" - the second you engage with this single little tank unit, BOFORS artillery and missiles and SAAB self-flying 5G jets come into play, and now Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain AND the UK are upset and calling up conscripts and re-purposing automated factories to a war footing, as if they hadn't started once Trump took office, and they all know America will sit this one out because of and you still don't have Gotland...

...and how certain are you that Sweden doesn't have nukes? They have anti-missile lasers and self-flying jets and one hell of a missile program. How certain are you Spain or Italy don't have nukes? Taiwan? Japan? Saudi Arabia?

Finland?

If they don't have them now, how quickly could they acquire them?

Putin, even in the age of Trump, remains the most dangerously stupid man ever to control an empire. He thinks he's clever by undermining American democracy. He's just ripped away the American safety blanket. He will be surprised to see the horrors awaiting Russia underneath.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:40 PM on January 6, 2017 [20 favorites]


The likelihood of no event is the one-complement of a product of the probabilities of each independent event

No, it's the product of the complements of the probabilities of the independent events, and I am prepared to defend that statement with the full force of my nuclear arsenal.
posted by sfenders at 8:44 PM on January 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


No, it's the product of the complements of the probabilities of the independent events, and I am prepared to defend that statement with the full force of my nuclear arsenal.

Sorry, yes, I mistyped (which is different than a typo). I gave the probability of at least one of the events not happening, which is a bone-headed and supremely "unuseful" thing. The ravages of age...

So the probability of at least one event happening is actually the one-complement of the product of the one complements of the probabilities of the independent events.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:51 PM on January 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


This Cold War baby has no love for nukes. I wish we could get rid of them all. Conversely, I'd distribute one to each person so we'd all have to get along. Screw you NRA!

Here's a classic.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:53 PM on January 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


I used to tell the NRA types they'd get no money from me until they advocated nuclear proliferation. An arms is an arms, eh?

Blank stares all around.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:56 PM on January 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, for a few short years it seemed the world was ready to step back from the brink of all out thermonuclear war, but then it crept back. Under Bush the lesser the childhood nightmares came back, memories of teachers blatantly telling us in elementary school that we should live each day as if it were our last, because we were probably all going to die in a nuclear war. I think I know the solution to the Drake Equation: as a technological species progresses, the amount of power available to any given individual rapidly approaches the point where some insane or evil person gains enough to kill off his own species, and does so. That Russia still has, last I heard, their Dead Hand doomsday system in place, and the US system has several systems that could also initiate an exchange, so once one city is glassed, it is doubtful that the genie can be put back into the bottle before we get to play Fallout for real.
posted by Blackanvil at 8:59 PM on January 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


If you're interested and feeling up to it: NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein. On NUKEMAP you can target any city or area; specify a yield in kilotons or select a preset such as "Fat Man," the Nagasaki bomb, or "Tsar Bomba," the largest USSR bomb tested (over 50 megatons); set for airburst or surface, casualties, and fallout; click detonate and see the results (+96.6 million detonations and counting).

Tsar Bomba: "the most powerful nuclear explosion ever detonated." Detonated Oct. 30, 1961.
posted by cwest at 9:02 PM on January 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


This doctrine, still in effect, was not developed with Trump in mind.

If we're lucky, Putin will decide that having the Asshole In Chief on his side will provide sufficient deterrent that the nukes won't be necessary.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:12 PM on January 6, 2017


Cheeto Voldemort has been rattling sabres at North Korea.....
posted by brujita at 9:19 PM on January 6, 2017


NUKEMAP says I live within the air blast radius of a typical chinese ICBM dropped on Everett and the 3rd-degree crispy recipe radius of stuff dropped on Bangor or Oak Harbor. I'd prefer to live at the epicenter, frankly. Maybe I'll paint a slogan on the roof which will ensure I get my very own nuke.
posted by maxwelton at 9:22 PM on January 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


Perry interviewed on Late Night Live in August last year
posted by flabdablet at 9:49 PM on January 6, 2017


The online course mentioned in that interview
posted by flabdablet at 9:52 PM on January 6, 2017


How certain are you Spain or Italy don't have nukes? Taiwan? Japan? Saudi Arabia? Finland?

It's actually quite challenging to build nuclear weapons, for one thing. And it would be difficult to keep them a secret in a liberal democracy.

Anyway, although I have Estonian heritage (my grandmother, now dead, was taken by my great-grandparents across Russia in 1919 to settle in newly created Estonia; she watched the Russians march in in 1939, and watch the Germans march in from the basement of a bombed-out house in 1941; she later fled to Germany in 1944), I am not totally convinced that Putin/Russia intends to invade the Baltics. What's the purpose here? What strategic problem does Putin/Russia want solved?

I think the purpose is weaken NATO. After all, Russia (and some Trumpists) complain that NATO expanded up to Russia's borders, despite a post-Cold War promise this would never happen (even though it's important to consider the fact that Poland, Estonia and other countries WANTED to join NATO to protect themselves against Russia).

So if NATO is the problem, then perhaps the solution is to weaken it, and this is happening.

The danger of course is that something unexpected will happen... We (NATO member countries, citizens of liberal democracies) are basically living in a state of undeclared war.
posted by My Dad at 10:00 PM on January 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


How certain are you Spain or Italy don't have nukes?

There are currently ~60 nuclear weapons on Italian soil, based there under the American "nuclear weapons sharing" program.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:40 PM on January 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


He thinks -- very plausibly -- that hitting just one of those independent events would trigger Armageddon... Instead, each independent nuclear danger -- each possible trigger for Armageddon -- makes us less safe.

There's no arguing with the maths there. Each additional opportunity for nuclear danger increases not only the overall probability of one specific nuclear danger happens, but further compounds the probabilities – as individual dangers are held by an increasingly diverse group of uncoordinated actors.

That is not the greatest concern here – a specific, individual nuclear event nor overall nuclear armageddon. It is difficult to make the leap from one individual nuclear event to global all-out nuclear war. For all the doomsday planning of the American and Russian governments – mutually assured destruction and whatnot – that outcome seems relatively dubious. It is strong posturing. However it simply doesn't make sense that if one device is released and used in the wild in either country, that the opposing leader calls for the incineration of the world.

The result of that thinking is the nuclear stalemate that those of us growing up in the 70s and 80s remember. That each country is now capable of destroying human civilisation in an hour, and therefore the default state of the world is 'incinerated', and we live in the moment immediately ahead of that – our lives occupy the gap in an uneasy peace.

At any moment, either through accident or intention, with one press of a button, life as we know it is over. We only live on through the careful management of a tense relationship between two gunfighters, each with a hair-trigger. What keeps us alive isn't our own desire to survive, but rather the other's desire not to die.

What an amazing and dismal state to exist within – knowing that we can destroy civilisation and then breathing deeply in appreciation each time we come to the brink and survive.

While global armageddon may be the greatest theoretical threat, I doubt that it is the greatest practical threat. The greatest practical threat is likely much, much darker – and that is the legitimisation of high-volume incendiary warfare. Not death by a single striking blow, but rather an attack of a thousand cuts.

If the largest nuclear weapon would murder millions in a city, what kind of damage will the smaller of the arsenal do? If a foreign power were to attack a major metropolitan area like New York or Paris, the devastation and grief will call for a strong striking response, but theoretically, what would the options be?

If we lose 1M people in a nuclear first strike or terrorist event, does it make sense to sacrifice another 1M? Another 10M? That was the basis of mutually-assured destruction. That if we are attacked and lose 1M people, then fuck it, we may as well retaliate and risk the other 64M or 349M. Hopefully we will win, some will survive, and we will rebuild.

To me, that very much sounds like the horror of fiction and posturing of big men military strategists – because it doesn't make any sense to the first mover side. If attacking the opponent with a large-scale device means that they will readily sacrifice the vast majority of their people to assure my elimination, that is the doomsday scenario. The ultimate question is whether I believe they will actually do that or not. Until now, the unknown probability of that response has probably gone a long way to ensure these arsenals have never been used.

However. What if I launch a small scale device at a tertiary city? Or better yet, a small scale device right across the border in someone else's territory where you technically have no sovereignty? What if I incinerate 50,000 people? Is that enough to trigger your doomsday response?

While that scenario certainly represents an atrocity, would it be enough to justify a full-blown armageddon response? Somehow I doubt it. If a foreign power attacked a tertiary city – like Detroit – with a low-grade device and the casualties were in the tens of thousands, would we really launch a full-scale extinction-level response?

I don't think we would – because it doesn't make any sense to sacrifice the rest of the country.

Granted, I am playing devil's advocate with the numbers. Some people may say we should go armageddon if even one American falls to foreign nuclear attack, and others will say that the threshold is much, much higher.

The point is that I don't necessarily believe the doomsday scenarios, as much as I believe in a longer series of smaller and eventually much more vicious attacks. It would be a hard-pressed case for either power to launch an ICBM at the other, because that's that Big Extinction Level Event the world awaits with bated breathe. Far more likely would be a deniable attack – like an airliner loaded with a warhead in the hold. I think we would see death tolls in the thousands or ten-thousands.

Then the ultimate conundrum, because what has been legitimised there is small-scale nuclear war. Once that happens, the resulting devices will likely be small – maybe ones that take out blocks – but tremendous in economic cost. Everything from responding to the attacks, to managing the contamination, to the long-term healthcare costs from poisoning.

Further, it is possible to defend the leadership against that level of nuclear warfare, where it would be very difficult to defend anyone against full-theatre armageddon attacks. The fact that it would be possible to defend some people against small-scale nuclear warfare, increases its likelihood massively.

That is likely the greatest initial threat – and the true nightmare scenario. Not the one where the world ends in massive nuclear fire – although that would be awful – but rather one where we legitimise the use of weapons that kill and poison people 10,000 at a time.

Finally, I am less fearful of $5,000 and CRISPR because those kinds of biological attacks are indiscriminate and would provoke the full response of the rest of the world. Technology is not at the level of being able to tell a Russian from an American from a North Korean (yet), and therefore those attacks will remain in the domain of terrorists rather than state actors.

Small-scale nuclear attacks however may well be the clear and present danger that move us from a world of unsteady nuclear peace, to a world of constant, low-grade nuclear war.
posted by nickrussell at 11:44 PM on January 6, 2017 [12 favorites]


These articles always talk about terrorists constructing and using a nuclear weapon, but I wonder whether a far more possible and useful move (to terrorists) might be to fake a nuclear attack.

If, for example, Daesh decided that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would serve its purposes, how difficult would it be to do something that would make India think it was under attack, and needed to respond before its ability to respond was impaired?
posted by XMLicious at 11:51 PM on January 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


The most likely first nuclear war is going to be between India and Pakistan over water. As a sad commentary on humans the second most likely first nuclear war will be between western nations over something completely stupid.
posted by fshgrl at 12:25 AM on January 7, 2017 [8 favorites]


The most likely first nuclear war is going to be between India and Pakistan over water.

Let's not forget that we've already had the first nuclear war. So we've got a baseline estimate for the least damage that such a thing can cause. Which would be two hundred thousand civilian deaths.

What if I launch a small scale device at a tertiary city?

By the standards of today's weaponry, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atrocities were perpetrated using small scale devices. So we already know how that "what if" plays out.
posted by flabdablet at 2:09 AM on January 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's actually quite challenging to build nuclear weapons, for one thing.

A long time ago I took a course from William Perry where we discussed nuclear proliferation. According to what I recall, he believed that nuclear weapons were not technically difficult to build, but they were very expensive (and you faced a certain amount of international disapproval for doing it). Thus, countries developing nuclear weapons tended to be those under certain circumstances: for example, countries facing a threat that they did not feel that they could deal with conventionally. Examples given were Israel (developing nuclear weapons because they felt themselves to be surrounded by hostile neighbors), but also countries which dismantled their nuclear weapons programs: Taiwan, for example, started a nuclear weapons program because of the threat of the PRC, but stopped after the US made certain guarantees.

If you believe this, of course, the consequences for naming three countries to an "Axis of Evil" and invading one of them were clear: faced with a conventional threat (the US military) that they were unable to deal with conventionally, Iran and North Korea would develop nuclear weapons. And they did.

Unfortunately, it's also clear that not everybody agrees with this model and that some people believe the problem is that trying to make treaties is weakness.
posted by Comrade_robot at 3:40 AM on January 7, 2017 [11 favorites]


Sitting here in Zone One of Ground Zero, I'm more expecting a dirty bombing than a nuclear explosion. A coordinated set of small trash-can bombs having just enough radioactive material to show up on Geiger Counters, but enough to cause a panic and flight of residents and businesses, resulting in economic disaster and civic disruption.
posted by StickyCarpet at 4:44 AM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I grew up in the 80s, born in 1969. I grew up outside Chicago under the holding pattern for planes flying in O'hare airport. I remember playing outside the house and becoming more and more afraid every time an airplane flew overhead. They flew so low. We had tornado drills at school, but I became sure they were nuclear bomb drills. And that they would do nothing to protect us. I was so glad when the wall came down, the end of the cold war. I can't believe this is happening again.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 8:37 AM on January 7, 2017 [5 favorites]


I really doubt any terrorist groups are making a serious attempt at smuggling a dirty bomb into the west. The risk of detection is just so, so much higher than a conventional attack, and it's not clear the effect would be any bigger than, say, shooting up a crowded place with an assault rifle.

The US or Russia deploying nukes in the Middle East now that neither has to worry about the other retaliating for it, on the other hand... Putin maybe needs the EU oil markets too much to try it, but his puppet seems reckless enough to go ahead with it and not care about the consequences.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:42 AM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


The final tally for 9/11 is that it "only" killed 2996 people, and look at America's response. I don't see an easily provoked Commander in Chief doing nothing in response to a small, Hiroshima-sized nuke on a smaller American city. If 140 characters is enough to provoke a response, then the destruction of something smaller and less protected, like the entire city of Philly, home to the President-elect's alma mater, might make him go nuclear, literally.

And in today's fact-less, mainstream-media-disbeliving world, would the mob stop to listen to any so-called experts, if it was a conventional bomb, but one big enough to cause a mushroom cloud to be seen over downtown Philly, and recorded and replayed on smartphones the world over? A few conspiracy theorists bloggers claiming proof of nuclear material and the talking heads on the TV claiming that it was not a nuclear bomb would be wasting their breath.

Would we sit back and do absolutely nothing, while the terrorists just laugh at dead Americans whole burning our flag? No, the only question left is if we'd nuke the Middle East (despite not having a clue who hypothetically bombed Philly) first and then go for the oil, or send in Seal Team Six under the cover of night to take all the oil first (um, somehow), and THEN nuke it (the Middle East; all of it).

I'm most frightened by the thought that in, response we'd invade Iran to get their oil and have no pretensions about it being for any reason other than to kill "terrorists" and take their oil.

Sacrificing the rest of the county doesn't make sense, but, hey, neither does building a wall between the US and Mexico.

(Dear NSA, this is only hypothetical, I don't wanna be on any of your lists)
posted by fragmede at 8:43 AM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's actually quite challenging to build nuclear weapons, for one thing.

I think that statement needs some qualification -- it's challenging, I suppose, on an abstract level, but a bomb program is probably on par with a modern vertically-integrated aerospace firm. If you can build a modern fighter jet from the ore on up to the finished product, you can almost certainly build a tactical nuclear weapon (miniature A-bomb; miniature hydrogen bombs are significantly more difficult), given enough time. It's just a lot of investment for a single end. If you don't really need nukes, building fighter jets -- like Sweden does -- is a much better use of your defense dollars; a fighter-jet factory has a lot more economically-beneficial uses than a nuke-weapon plant, which you hope just makes very expensive garbage.

The Swedes have had a nuclear power program for decades and this has involved heavy-water reactors under government control, which were certainly capable of producing plutonium. So they may have Pu reserves sitting around somewhere, dramatically lowering the lead time to produce weapons if they were so inclined. There are a variety of other countries in similar circumstances (Japan, Taiwan, Germany, etc.) -- they have never acknowledged, and probably honestly do not possess, actual weapons, but they probably have the raw materials on hand that would allow them to produce one on a shorter timeline than a Manhattan Project program involving the actual radioisotope refinement would require.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:18 AM on January 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you can build a modern fighter jet from the ore on up to the finished product, you can almost certainly build a tactical nuclear weapon (miniature A-bomb; miniature hydrogen bombs are significantly more difficult), given enough time.

I was thinking more of a delivery system (and a device that can be delivered given the constraints of such a system).

Anyway, as someone else mentioned, there are plenty of American nuclear devices scattered on bases around the world, including in frontline states in the Baltics.
posted by My Dad at 10:02 AM on January 7, 2017


It's just a lot of investment for a single end. If you don't really need nukes, building fighter jets -- like Sweden does -- is a much better use of your defense dollars; a fighter-jet factory has a lot more economically-beneficial uses than a nuke-weapon plant, which you hope just makes very expensive garbage

More to the point, it's easier to sell jet fighters than nukes. Never forget that a lot of Swedish socialism is funded by marketing world class weapons of war.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:06 AM on January 7, 2017 [5 favorites]


As an informative aside, if you find yourself in the Tucson area, and this topic is of interest to you, it is very much worth the three or four hour trip to the Titan II museum.

Two lucky participants per tour group get the thrill of turning the the launch keys simultaneously and killing several million simulated people.
posted by mrdaneri at 11:07 AM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


localroger's excellent essay on atomic weapons “A Pilgrimage to Trinity” seems to have fallen off the Web, so I've had to link to archive.is.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:13 PM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I still think my favorite Star Trek episode captured the madness of all this.
posted by lagomorphius at 12:49 PM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]




We had tornado drills at school, but I became sure they were nuclear bomb drills.

We did the same thing, tornado drills where you'd file into the hallways and go fetal where there was no sun. It was routine.

It always struck me insane that we'd maintain who knows how many of these phalluses of death. And two decades now of blank stares in warning, I can relate to Perry's concern.

These shouldn't exist, and the US stockpile makes me so nervous.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:22 PM on January 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


And you know? The framing of this post kinda pisses me off. We're not going back to anything. These damned things have been around a while now, waiting for some jerk to use them. It's quite a thing growing up in their shadow, knowing full well I come from the country with the most.

Maybe Fallout and Mad Max made this stuff all seem kinda cute and fun, but it's not.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:38 PM on January 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


The fear is back. It had been gone for 30 years or so and I hate to say I was not missing it in the slightest.
posted by Artw at 10:23 PM on January 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure exactly when the next update to the Doomsday Clock comes out, but from the last few I guess it's going to be sometime around the inauguration. I have a feeling they won't be moving the minute hand backwards.
posted by ckape at 1:29 AM on January 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


For me it's been a long time burr in the back of the damn mind. It undercuts all our claims to spreading freedom, and yah-de-dah. It's THE weapon of terror.

You want some democracy? We got it on tap. It's called Nuka Cola.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 5:35 AM on January 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


So why isn’t anyone paying attention to him? Why is fear of a nuclear catastrophe far from the minds of most Americans?

Same reason we don't like talking about climate change and other big, scary possibilities. Plus we have all these great games and the Internet...

Is there any point in blaming the MSM? I mean, they now exist in their own overlapping worlds of clickbait and oh-so-serious wonkery. It's hard to see how Americans could learn to take these threats seriously, and now they've got the distraction-in-chief all up in their twitter things aren't likely to change any time soon.
posted by sneebler at 7:09 AM on January 8, 2017


I have long maintained that there should be International Everyone Watches Threads Day. Every school, every church, every sports arena, every place with a television turns on Threads at exactly the same time. Dubbing and subtitles will be provided for every nation.

At the end of the movie, a single screen pops up: THIS COULD STILL HAPPEN. IF YOU WANT TO AVOID IT, MARCH ON YOUR LEADERS NOW AND DEMAND TOTAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT.

Then there would be an hour of videos of romping puppies.
posted by RakDaddy at 7:32 AM on January 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you want a movie that's even more disturbing than Threads, check out The War Game by Peter Watkins.
posted by My Dad at 12:16 PM on January 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


In other news about capabilities to destroy the human race that are about to be placed into Trump's hands, the most recent episode of 60 Minutes (S49E16) included a segment entitled "The Coming Swarm" covering the development of autonomous weaponry within the U.S. military.

The videos are probably geo-locked and time-windowed, but there's a partial transcript in the second link above; also, a Youtube search is giving me clips from the preceding 60 Minutes episode, so this bit might show up there shortly.
posted by XMLicious at 8:56 PM on January 8, 2017 [1 favorite]




January 20 will mark the first time in the NNSA’s 17-year history that it will exist wholly without its appointed leadership. According to Bob Rosner, the Co-Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the former director of Argonne National Laboratory, the leadership vacuum won’t prevent the agency from fulfilling its essential duties. But it will leave it without an advocate as it tries to secure a budget from Congress, and unable to tackle any new initiatives whatsoever.
posted by My Dad at 11:23 AM on January 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


So, remind me again how the coming era of nuclear insecurity is exactly like the last eight years?
posted by tobascodagama at 12:01 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


I would love to know if there is a method to this madness. It just seems like it will be really difficult for the new administration to get anything it wants to do, done.
posted by My Dad at 12:50 PM on January 9, 2017


The madness is the method. The only thing the incoming administration cares about is loyalty. Well, loyalty and grift. Some of them may see the loyalty as an end in itself, while others may see it as the best way to achieve the grift, but the outcomes for the rest of us are the same either way. (Bad.)
posted by tobascodagama at 1:10 PM on January 9, 2017


So, remind me again how the coming era of nuclear insecurity is exactly like the last eight years?

Having nukes, by definition, is nuclear insecurity. We could have disarmed after the Berlin Wall fell. That we didn't, and still trust in 'great men' to hold back the tide, is a failure.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:15 PM on January 9, 2017


A recent article on "25 Things Turning 25 in 2017" included an item on the 25th anniversary of the Official End of the Cold War. February 1st, 1992, when George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltzin together declared that the U.S.ofA. and Russia were no longer enemies or even 'rivals' (NYT report at the time). It didn't disarm anybody, but what's a few nukes between friends?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:57 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Just for the record, it sort of did eventually: the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom jointly issued the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994, which persuaded Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to surrender to Russia the nuclear weapons they were in possession of as successor states to the USSR.

Which Russia violated by invading Ukraine in 2014, which they presumably would not have done if Ukraine had held on to its nukes and had been able to deter Russia that way. At least I'd think this is what it says to non-nuclear states out there.
posted by XMLicious at 12:06 AM on January 10, 2017 [4 favorites]


And by this means, Trumpian logic is born.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 6:28 AM on January 10, 2017


Yes, it would seem likely to be pretty hard to sell any future countries on voluntary nuclear disarmament after what has happened in Ukraine, and it wouldn't surprise me if — to those outside Ukraine, anyway — that is its longest-lasting effect.

AFIAK, no state in possession of nuclear weapons has ever lost as much territory to armed invasion as Ukraine did with the invasion of Crimea.* Whether possession of nuclear weapons from 1989 all the way through to the present day would have made Ukraine safer overall is debatable (who knows exactly what the Russian strategy would have been had they retained a capability), but insofar as nation-states seek primarily to protect their existence, I suspect the moral of the story will be pretty straightforward: if you lack nuclear weapons, you are at the mercy of those who don't.

* This of course assumes that Iraq under Hussein didn't actually possess nuclear weapons when the US invaded, either time. Off the top of my head the only other place I can think of where a nuclear-weapon state has arguably lost territory to a neighbor by force of arms is the "Line of Control" area on the India/Pakistan border, and that's comparatively small.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:12 AM on January 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Designing a simple nuclear weapon isn't hard -- I've read of a high school physics class back in the 50s who build one sans pit, sent it to the military, who installed a pit and confirmed it went off as designed, and talked with a professor once who claimed he would have his grad students, as a test, design and build a bomb sans pit and using inert materials for the explosives using materials found at local hardware stores -- and said he'd never had to fail anyone for a bomb that wouldn't have worked. Heck, you don't even need explosives for a simple gun-style bomb, just enough uranium and a big enough drop to get prompt criticality before it blew itself apart. I have blueprints, now declassified, for the Fat Man and Little Boy in my collection, and while I suspect some of the info has been elided or changed it has most of the information needed right there.

As for how to start a nuclear war between two already hostile nuclear powers without actually nuking anyone yourself? Simple: most of them are paranoid about the other side blowing up launch facilities to prevent retaliation, so have a launch-on-detection policy; make or buy a bunch of the largest civilian high-power model rockets, the kind that hits Mach1 and can go up a couple of miles, deck them out with enough metal so that they return a large radar signature, then launch them simultaneously from near known launch sites vaguely in the direction of the enemy launch sites. Their early warning systems will go off, confirm multiple launches, and likely kickstart the nuclear exchange before someone realizes it's not real. Considering the number of close calls that we've seen over the years, it has a high chance of success. Please don't do this, I live on this planet.
posted by Blackanvil at 12:59 PM on January 11, 2017


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