Nuclear Age Peace Foundation - Take Action

[Monolith]

This came with the latest Nuclear Age Peace Foundation-Newsletter:

Turn the Tide Campaing - Charting a New Course in US Nuclear Policy

I thought that it might be interesting for the US-citizen here on this forum. Well, at least I hope so...

[Luis Antonio]

NO NUKES, NO NUKES!

Brother Monolith, I like nukes for one reason: They tell us how are we stupid as humankind. They slap our faces with our own stupidity.

so...

NO NUKES, NO NUKES, NO NUKES!

Nukes feed the slavery in china, preserve authoritarism in several governments around the world and is used to keep peace by fear and not by agreements and mutual respect.

[Monolith]

Uh, well, maybe THAT interests you?

[CM]

I personally am pro-nukes. I mean Pakistan has nukes and support our right to have it. Inshalalh we will never have to use them.

[Morril]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM I personally am pro-nukes. I mean Pakistan has nukes and support our right to have it. Inshalalh we will never have to use them.

Then why have them?

[CM]

In case we have to use them

[Chanak]

Yep. That's basically what kept the Cold War from being a hot one. The Soviet Union had nukes, the US had nukes, stalemate. Nuclear deterrent, as it is called. Neither was willing to launch against the other for fear of a retalitory strike. So these guys sit in remote under-mountain installations watching screens, piped in to satellites, waiting for the first sign of a nuke launched somewhere (yeah, you see installations like that in the movies, but they do exist; my father worked at one). If it happens, a little call goes out to the President of the US. He carries the means to authorize the US to strike back. Scary stuff.

[dragon wench]

Call me naive if you like, but I repeat what has been said many times before...
In the event of nuclear war there are no winners, period.

We have all seen the horror that occurred when those bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki... now atomic bombs are far more powerful.. many times over.... *shudder*

[Morril]

But:
1. The cold war is finished (I gues). And there is basically only one true "superpower" now - USA. USA and Soviet are now almost allied and don't need atom-missiles because of cold war between them. 2. I can not understand why a country as Pakistan need nukes. And don't tell me it is because of the "neighbour country"
EDIT: Why is DV always 2 minutes faster than me

[Xandax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luis Antonio <snip> I like nukes for one reason: They tell us how are we stupid as humankind. They slap our faces with our own stupidity. <snip>

Nicely put in my opinion.
Nuclear weapons are one of mankinds blunders.
Atomic power can be usefull, but to utilize such power into weapons, which we have enough of to blow our planet up several times over is .... well - foolish for so many reasons.

What is the need in having them?
If some other nation strikes first - it dosen't matter if you can retaliate, , because much of the nation is wiped away anyway, either by the blasts or the fallout.
If your nation strikes first, some other nation is going to retaliate, and that will also wipe away much of the nation.

It is like the movie "Wargames" - "the only way to win is to not play". And if that is the only way - then there is no need to have the weapons in the first place.

Sure some "rogue state" will get them, so "we" have to have them as well..... And "rogue states" have (want) them, because "we" have them.
Visious circle.

[fable]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon wench Call me naive if you like, but I repeat what has been said many times before... In the event of nuclear war there are no winners, period.+

Do you remember Chris Crawford's Balance of Power, a game that appeared in 1990 which allowed you to play as the US in a world populated by 70+ nations, each with its own agendas? You could launch nuclear strikes--but if you did, others would retaliate, and a giant screen black screen with white lettering would appear, telling you: YOU LOST. IN A NUCLEAR WAR, NOBODY WINS.

We have all seen the horror that occurred when those bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki... now atomic bombs are far more powerful.. many times over.... *shudder*

We don't even need to look that far back (though of course, we should). At the time of Chernobyl, the US government, under the enlightened and sensitive rule of Ronald Reagan, proclaimed far and wide that no nuclear crisis could ever be worse, and see....? Nothing happened. Of course, the logic was completely flawed; but on top of that, Chernobyl has become a continuing disaster of epic proportions. It's been estimated that if all the lives lost in the affected area since then were considered in their development of unusual cancers (ie, children developing pancreatic cancer at the age of 5), the amount would be 10 million. No lifestock or crops grown there can be eaten. The average life expectancy is in the 20's. Governments don't want to talk about Chernobyl because it's a horror story that will reflect terribly on nuclear energy, which is the only alternative many nations consider reasonable to fossil fuels--but it won't go away.

[Chanak]

Though the Soviet Union might be finished, the threat of nuclear war is not gone. The US might be the "only" superpower left, but a number of nations possess nuclear weapons...China, for example. Also, the existence of dismantled nuclear weapons in Russia and the former Soviet republics is something that is very troubling...as evidence exists which suggests weapon components, and even weapons-grade plutonium, is being sold off to the highest bidders. There is little to no accountability for the stockpiles of the former USSR.

The Hydrogen bomb has been vastly juiced-up since it was first developed in the 1950's. At the heart of it lies a lesser, atomic bomb which triggers the reaction which makes the frightening thermo-nuclear power of that weapon possible. From what I understand, everything in a 50 mile radius of ground zero would be directly affected by a hydrogen bomb. In the military, they trained us to fall prone on the ground, with our eyes squeezed shut and our face buried in our arms in the event of a nuclear explosion...as the initial flash created by the detonation can literally burn your eyes in the sockets.

@fable: I know fusion power research is still going on, but notice that it gains no publicity at all. I think France leads the way in developing a feasible fusion reactor. It's possible and feasible...it just doesn't receive the funds it needs.

[Morril]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chanak Though the Soviet Union might be finished, the threat of nuclear war is not gone. The US might be the "only" superpower left, but a number of nations possess nuclear weapons...China, for example. Also, the existence of dismantled nuclear weapons in Russia and the former Soviet republics is something that is very troubling...as evidence exists which suggests weapon components, and even weapons-grade plutonium, is being sold off to the highest bidders. There is little to no accountability for the stockpiles of the former USSR.

But that's one of the problems.
If you look at the old times it was easy to define where the problems was. We (the west) must defend against the east who also have nuclear weapons. But now when more and more countries have nuclear weapons in combination with the military "collaps" of USSR leading to uncontrolled spreading of nuclear materiale, the situation is more complex. Take fx (God forbid it) if a teorist group get a nuclear bomb and place it in a big city in USA. How can you protect youself from that? Certainly not by having nuclear weapon your self.
There is also the problem that in the earlier Soviet Union the neuclear weapons was spread over a great territorium. Now when Soviet is no longer the weapons are in hand of different single countries (fx Russia and Ukraine). I am not so worried about Russia, but for other countries I can worry about lack of security or maintaining...
So IMO I can't not see any reason so ever for have nuclear weapons.
As Fable and DV says: there is no winner, only loosers

[Dottie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chanak Yep. That's basically what kept the Cold War from being a hot one. The Soviet Union had nukes, the US had nukes, stalemate.

I think this is a myth. Both USSR and USA had huge conventional armies as well. in addition to this they are located far from each other. An attack in either direction would be an almost impossible feat. You can also take note of the fact that USA did not attack right after the end of WW2, wich was imo the best opurtunity they ever got. They had nuclear weapons, USSR had not. They had intact infrastructure, USSR had not. They had very few men lost in WW2, USSR had somewhere between 20 and 30 million. They had a large army located in europe for a reason that wasnt suspicious at all. I dont think any of those nations had an interest in a conventional war with the other, and so the nuclear weapons only served to make the situation even more tense.

The situation today is more interesting though. I could see a terrorist getting hold of a nuclear weapon would be a big problem, but in the case of petty dictatorships I dont think it is that dangerous. Petty dictators want to be big dictators, not anihilated dictators, and so I think its highly unlikely that they use nuclear weapons.

Also, nuclear weapons today can be used as deterrent against the imperialistic west or russia, preventing them to mess upp things they should not mess upp. On the other hand, if my little personal dream ever gets fullfilled, and you have a UN that is both free from corruption and also have the power to act, Nuclear weapons in the hand of petty dictators can allow them to continue abuse of their citizens, no matter outside pressure.

[Chanak]

@Dottie: Conventional assaults are costly in terms of personnel, equipment, funds, and so on. The ICBMs on submarines, silos in remote areas, and the smaller ballistic missiles like the Pershing II's the US had deployed in Europe were all capable of reaching any target on the globe. In terms of stockpiles, the former USSR always had a larger pile than the US did. It also had more nuclear submarines, silos housing the big ICBMs, as well as railcars outfitted with nuclear missiles (making them rather mobile).

In terms of conventional forces, again the USSR had the larger force. The Warsaw pact forces outnumbered their NATO counterparts by a healthy ratio. Despite all of this, all sides involved understood the total carnage that any overt military manuever by a super power against another super power would produce - conventional or nuclear. So the Cold War was a war of covert operations for the most part...taking place in less developed countries, where the US, Soviet Union, and China all vied against one another indirectly. Coups, countless changes of regimes, and even the lengthy Iran-Iraq war can be blamed on the Cold War.

It wasn't a myth at all. There's no defense against an ICBM once it's launched...unless you have anti-missile capability. Despite the treatment the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) received in the press (it wasn't possible, it was a pipe dream, etc), the Soviet Union took it very seriously. So seriously that Gorbachev - a very smart and pragmatic man - went against tradition and his predecessors and sued the US for peace.

Re: the USSR after WW2...good question. Doubtless, the US and the Allies could have rolled into Moscow and toppled the Soviet Union. And yes, for a brief time the United States was the only nation in the world that possessed nuclear weapons. The Soviets had their own nuclear program at the time, but were a bit behind the Americans. Some of the greatest scientific minds in the world were on the Manhattan Project. Men like Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein...Einstein in particular rued what he helped to unleash upon the world. I don't think world domination was the goal of the United States.

I agree with you, though, that any nation that possesses nuclear weapons won't be the first to use them. No one wants to be. Even terrorist groups, most of which have governmental ties in some fashion, wouldn't be stupid enough to use them. Any terrorist group that threatened to use a nuclear device would be hunted by every government in the world, of this I have no doubt. Friends or foes, I think that would be one cause countries would be willing to temporarily set aside their differences for.