Our Brittle Navy
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@Jolly this brings up an interesting question.
Say you’re the chief executive and you learn that bombs are on their way to your country. There’s nothing you can do at this point, all major cities have been targeted and then some.
This is a hypothetical so bear with me - and I’m making it cleaner than it would be.
What do you do as the person with the finger on the trigger?
No one knows the threshold concretely for nuclear winter, but let’s say you know that the chances go up by an order of magnitude if you respond (IOW the end of major life on earth).
Do you launch? Let’s say you already know it’s over for your country one way or the other.
Now obviously a strong posture of MAD is right before the bombs launch. Is it still the right thing to do after?
(Understandable) revenge vs. ending life on earth
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@xenon said in Our Brittle Navy:
@Jolly this brings up an interesting question.
Say you’re the chief executive and you learn that bombs are on their way to your country. There’s nothing you can do at this point, all major cities have been targeted and then some.
This is a hypothetical so bear with me - and I’m making it cleaner than it would be.
What do you do as the person with the finger on the trigger?
No one knows the threshold concretely for nuclear winter, but let’s say you know that the chances go up by an order of magnitude if you respond (IOW the end of major life on earth).
Do you launch? Let’s say you already know it’s over for your country one way or the other.
Now obviously a strong posture of MAD is right before the bombs launch. Is it still the right thing to do after?
(Understandable) revenge vs. ending life on earth
You launch. And you follow JFK's example. You want to leave no enemies with nuclear capability left standing.
We came so close under Kennedy, the bombers were fueled, nukes loaded and sitting on the runways with engines running.
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@xenon @Jolly What was that famous book about a situation where a US plane gets orders to prepare to nuclear bomb USSR, and misses the "turn back" message?
I will not spoil it for those who have not read, but the US president has to make a tough decision.
I remember being interested in it, because I was interested in language, and the translators had a pretty big role to play in the book.
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@taiwan_girl It could be. I heard the scenario in Sam Harris' podcast on his conversation with William Perry. (U.S. Sec Def in the 90's and an analyst during the Cuban missile crisis). Highly active in nuclear non-proliferation now.
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I found it. The book is Fail Safe.
"The title refers to the "fail-safe point" used by the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to prevent an SAC bomber from accidentally crossing into Soviet airspace and precipitating a nuclear war. In general, a fail safe ensures that, as far as possible, the machine or process will not make things worse in the event of something going wrong. The title's irony is that the nature of SAC's fail-safe protocols could make things worse, causing the event it was intended to prevent."
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Jolly said in Our Brittle Navy:
The Soviets always thought they could survive a nuclear exchange. Don't know what the Chinese think....
Well, if you just look at population numbers, mainland China would have a greater number of survivors.
Horrible to think, but if 99% of the people are die, 1% of 1.5 billion is more than 1% of 300 million in the US.
Maybe they would have to bring back Chairman Mao's backyard steel furnaces used during the Great Leap Forward.
