The Nuclear Disarmament Game

[amorrow2]

So as far as keeping the new nuclear powers in check with a credible deterrent does, let us see if we can come up with any sort of number of warheads the rest of the world might need to retain. Right now, the world has about 13K warheads. In order to keep North Korea and Pakistan and maybe Iran in check, how many warheads would we need. How about 500 warheads. In other words, the world plays the disarmament game until there are 500 warheads left and then, for the while, we stop playing the disarmament game.

So let us say that Iran goes nuclear. You know, we could just sit down and *talk* with Iran and say "Ok Iran. You are a nuclear power now. You are in the club. All the other members of the club have been playing the disarmament game. Why don't you play the game too. You know that MAD applies to your nukes also." The same for North Korea. The same for Israel for that matter.

I guess I am trying to ask some fundamental questions here about what is rational. For instance, is the test ban treaty between the USA and Russia rational?

Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

or the 1996 test ban

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

They are not perfect but I suggest that they are progress and that they are rational.

Rather than focus on these short term issue, why not ask questions like "What is a rational goal for 100 years from now" and then ask "If it is rational for 100 years from now, then why is it not a rational goal to pursue starting now?"

You know, at least Trump sat down and talked with the leader of North Korea. Later when he was back home, he did say something like that the USA would react with an "overwhelming response" if North Korea tried anything with their nukes, but I still respect that he talked with North Korea

Again, why not play the disarmament game until the world has about 500 warheads left and then stop playing the game for a while. Is that not a better world than the current situation?

 

[Deleted member 619]

So let us say that Iran goes nuclear. You know, we could just sit down and *talk* with Iran and say "Ok Iran. You are a nuclear power now. You are in the club. All the other members of the club have been playing the disarmament game. Why don't you play the game too. You know that MAD applies to your nukes also." The same for North Korea. The same for Israel for that matter.

You really have no idea about how people think. You can't reason with ideologues. When the leader of Iran says he wants to wipe Israel off the map, do you think this is hyperbole? You clearly don't understand the fundie mindset.

I guess I am trying to ask some fundamental questions here about what is rational.

What's not rational is your entire approach to this topic. You handwave away cogent objections dealing with how the world is, rather than your puerile fantasy of what it should be.

You might as well be discussing metaphysics.

 

[amorrow2]

You know, Iran had Pakistan as an example of how an Islamic country might handle it's nukes. Pakistan has been through like four wars with India over the Punjab and it has not gone nuclear. Both these Islamic countries understand MAD: if Iran launched just one nuke at Israel, Israel would retaliate with ten nukes. Despite it's rhetoric, I think that even a nuclear Iran would be sane enough to not use it's nukes, despite the very powerful emotions.

 

[Deleted member 619]

You know, Iran had Pakistan as an example of how an Islamic country might handle it's nukes. Pakistan has been through like four wars with India over the Punjab and it has not gone nuclear. Both these Islamic countries understand MAD: if Iran launched just one nuke at Israel, Israel would retaliate with ten nukes. Despite it's rhetoric, I think that even a nuclear Iran would be sane enough to not use it's nukes, despite the very powerful emotions.

Yeah, the real thing is that Pakistan hasn't yet had a truly fundamentalist head of state since it became a nuclear power. I wouldn't get too comfortable about that yet.

Incidentally, you do know that Israel would have very little time to respond, right? And that's assuming accurate launch detection, which is far from a given. It's not a huge distance, and that's not even accounting for the fact that Iran has allies in the intervening region that also has truck with Israel (which is far from surprising, given Israel's depredations in Palestine). Satellites can detect a launch via infrared signature, thought there's a time delay.

Your preposterous appeal to MAD fails utterly, because fundamentalists aren't rational, and Islamic fundamentalists, in particular, have no compunction in being destroyed by the infidels, because that will ensure their place in paradise.

Sorry, but while you think you're being irrational, failing to take into account the fundamentalist mindset is about as deeply irrational, not to mention utterly fucking stupid, as it's possible to get. You're being even less rational than them by failing so horribly to acknowledge that these are not rational people. If they were, they wouldn't be fundamentalists.

You are entirely without a clue of how any of this works, and all you do is keep digging that idiot hole. I usually find it's best to stop digging when the ground gets to eye level, yet here you are, antipodes bound, and entirely clueless about your own cluelessness.

 

[amorrow2]

Mikhail Gorbachev is still alive and he is still advocating getting rid of all nukes.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Whoopie doo.

I also advocate getting rid of all nukes, and have done so for decades.

That has no bearing on your naïveté or the fact that it isn't going to happen. Your religious fantasy has no basis in reality.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Your preposterous appeal to MAD fails utterly, because fundamentalists aren't rational, and Islamic fundamentalists, in particular, have no compunction in being destroyed by the infidels, because that will ensure their place in paradise.

If they are gonna nuke us anyways, the only reason for us to have nukes, would be vengence, which is highly irrational.
Leaves 3 rational options:
1. Prioritize the survival of the human race and accept our death(if they get their hands on enough nukes to end the world).
2. Kill or imprison them all, before they can get their hands on nukes.
3. Join them and keep our mouths shut.

Anyone got a better option? If not, I think I have no choice but to join Islam as soon as a fundamentalist country gets its hands on nukes.

 

[Deleted member 619]

There are vastly more options than that, but none of them are any more realistic than yours or, indeed, amorrow's.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

I said rational, not realistic. If you want realism ... we are fucked. Nothing we can do about that.

The whole idea of nuclear weapons is completly insane to begin with. MAD is insane. Fundamentalism is insane.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

My solution is to keep a tenuous balance until one of these weapons becomes so fucking decrepit that it begins to just flood its locale with radiation or go off in a silo, forcing countries to disarm lest they set their own assholes alight.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Uhm .. bad news psikhrangkur ... that already happened multiple times in the US. Not exactly what you described, but close enough.

U.S. Nuclear Accidents

Article: U.S. Nuclear Accidents

www.lutins.org

The worst accident so far, was when they accidentally dropped a nuke inside of the US ... luckily it didnt go off, but that was a damn close call.
22 May 1957
A 10 megaton hydrogen bomb was accidentally dropped from a B-36 bomber in an uninhabited area near Albuquerque, New Mexico owned by the University of New Mexico. The conventional explosives detonated, creating a 12 foot deep crater 25 feet across (in which some radiation was detected) and ejecting fragments and debris up to a mile from site.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

So, uh, two of those entries were kind of close to what I was suggesting? One was a weapon being triggered in a silo due to an elevator malfunction, and one was fired into the base of a silo due to an electrical fault. Nothing about the warheads themselves deteriorating to the point where their removal/destruction was our only recourse.

Yeah, that's bad. It's also an accident with a bomber, and not a warhead deteriorating to the point of becoming a liability even if left alone.

 

[Sparhafoc]

You could easily just write a computer program to list out the 15K turns of the game, maintaining nuclear parity and such and just get the representatives together and start playing the game, maybe a round a day. (Destroying one warhead per day). It would still take around 50 years to play the game to the final round.

You have a thing for spherical cows in a vacuum.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I said rational, not realistic.

Another colossal logic fail. If it isn't realistic, there's no way to present a rational case. not rational. Game over.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Another colossal logic fail. If it isn't realistic, there's no way to present a rational case. not rational. Game over.

I disagree.

 

[amorrow2]

What I am looking for is a goal and a pathway. How about this as a goal: a repeat of what has just happened over the past 40 years. Between 1985 and 2020, the number of nukes have fallen from 60K to 15K. It is now only 25% of what it was. Let us set a goal of repeating that. So the goal is by around 2060 that we reduce the total number of nukes to around 4K.

We could still talk about the disarmament game and publish the document that lists the rounds of the game (what country's turn it is to destroy a nuke that day) and imagine that the nuclear powers are, in a sense, playing the game.

Who knows? The idea might catch on. And when the number gets down to 1000 or 250 or something like that, who knows? If we have a century or two of World Peace, maybe the nuclear powers will just take the game seriously and play the game right down to the final round.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I disagree.

Of course you do, for reasons we've already established. You think this is news?

You have every right to be wrong, if you wish.

 

[Deleted member 619]

If we have a century or two of World Peace

You're adorable.

 

[amorrow2]

Another risk we take in keeping nukes around for a few more hundred years is the close calls we have already had.

Nuclear close calls - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Cuban Missile crisis being perhaps the most famous incident.

Shultz mentioned some of this in his Stanford talk.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Of course you do, for reasons we've already established. You think this is news?

You mean the completly onesided barrage of insults culminating in you, telling me, how smart you are?
Yes, I do remember that. That was very rude.
Maybe work on that, never too late to better yourself.