Note to people who haven't read the paper: This isn't seriously about building a nuclear bomb destroying super-ray. The authors even admit that this is waaaay beyond our current technology. The whole paper feels like a con attempt by the authors to talk governments into building smaller muon colliders as an intermediate step. Of course these smaller colliders could also be used to study concepts of a higher energy collider that could produce anti-nuke rays. But for the most part, these smaller colliders would be incredible physics discovery machines. Muon colliders are basically the holy grail of experimental particle physics. They offer higher energy collisions than electron colliders because muons are much heavier, but they also offer higher precision than proton colliders because muons are elementary particles. The difficulty is sourcing and accelerating them. This is insanely complicated, which is why noone has done it yet. But if you can talk some government knobheads into building it to study forced nuclear disarmament or whatever, the reason why they do it doesn't really matter.
In some sense the authors were already successfuly by triggering all this discussion here on HN about the purely theoretical implications on geopolitics (rather than the very real, down-to-earth implications for modern particle physics).
I agree with that. But this was expected reaction of HN. I will take your comment as a chance to quote the P5 report [1]
> There is a compelling physics case for constructing a 10 TeV or more pCM collider. Such a collider would search for direct evidence and quantum imprints of new particles and forces at unprecedented energies. There are several approaches: a 10 TeV muon collider, a 100 TeV proton-proton collider such as FCC-hh at CERN, or possibly a 10 TeV high-energy e+e– or γ-γ collider based on the wakefield acceleration technology. Any of them would enable a comprehensive physics portfolio that includes ultimate measurements in the Higgs sector, a broad search program providing access to new hidden sectors by producing a substantially higher mediator mass or probing even smaller coupling, and opportunities to produce new particles directly. All options for a 10 TeV pCM collider are new technologies under development and R&D is required before we can embark on building a new collider.
I disagree, that the authors aren't serious about it. They are just aware and state it clearly, that it is not realistic with current tech. But I do believe, they would like to see it being build one day. They are from Japan btw. the only country that suffered from 2 direct nuclear hits.
"The whole paper feels like a con attempt by the authors to talk governments into building smaller muon colliders as an intermediate step. Of course these smaller colliders could also be used to study concepts of a higher energy collider that could produce anti-nuke rays. But for the most part, these smaller colliders would be incredible physics discovery machines."
So why a con attempt, when it is just logical to get there step by step by building smaller colliders, that also enable awesome new research?
If they would not have stated clearly, that the concept is too futuristic currently, then it would be a con attempt. But they did.
>This isn't seriously about building a nuclear bomb destroying super-ray.
What a pity. Imagine how peaceful the world would be today if we could suddenly and irrevocably destroy every single nuclear weapon, across the globe, in one fell swoop.
Well, we better leave them entombed in their casings for a more advanced society to develop the technology to do this .. if we can do it for scrolls, we can do it for bombs.
Worth noting that with "disable" here they mean "trigger an immediate explosion with ~3% of their actual yield". That can still be a lot, expose radioactivity, etc:
> When the neutrino beam hits a
bomb, it will cause the fizzle explosion with 3% of the full strength. It seems that it is not
possible to decrease the magnitude of the explosion smaller than this number at this stage.
It is important to decrease this number to destroy bombs safely. We are not sure what this
means when the plutonium or uranium is used to ignite the hydrogen bomb. We may just
break the bomb or may lead to a full explosion.
If such a tech existed, it could give a new edge to MAD though, because just storing nuclear bombs would suddenly carry a risk of "spontaneous" nuclear explosions. This might already be enough to have a chilling effect. (Then again, it might not...)
* Likely a dirty explosion, spreading radioactive contaminants.
* The area where the beam is targeted (couple meter radius) gets a 1 Sv/sec dose, for about 100 seconds. "compared with the U.S. Federal off-site limit of 1 mSV/year"
I'm also curious if anything inside the earth gets dosed by the beam? I don't know enough about neutrinos to speculate.
Also, wouldn't one assume that these bombs have neutron shields on them, to prevent accidental triggering by the stray neutron source? Hence, they'd really need the beam to target _inside_ the bomb, not just near it.
Finally, skimming the paper, I didn't see mention of the energy levels of the neutrons they expect to hit the radioactive materials. Most radioactive isotopes don't have a large cross section for fast neutrons. Is it expected for this hadron shower to generate thermal neutrons? Otherwise, the beam would need to be several orders of magnitude stronger...
(Not that the idea isn't cool as fuck)
EDIT: Thinking about it a bit. If I understand the paper correctly, the beam has to be at 1000TeV to penetrate the Earth and hit the target, so you can't decrease the beam's strength and mitigate the above issues. But if the beam could be PWM'd, then you can effectively do that. And if you can lower the effective energy of the beam, then it might be possible to spray a slow and steady stream of neutrons inside the bomb, slowly decaying all the radioactive isotopes. It would take a lot longer, on the order of months, and would probably be detectable, but at least there wouldn't be that pesky issue of turning it into a small dirty bomb...
I wonder what that means for our "dial-a-yield" designs.. The B61 can be adjusted to 0.3KT, 1.5KT, 10KT, or 50KT. Is the 3% yield on the smallest possible setting or the largest? Some of them used to be 10kt or 350kt -- 3% could still be a massive explosion if applied to the latter.
Hm. Do neutrino beams occur naturally in the universe?
From my almost illiterate level: It seems like a supernova will produce a bunch of neutrinos in one go. And they are affected by gravity. So a black hole near with a supernova could act as a gravity lens and "focus" the neutrinos.
Does this mean that any nuclear bomb has a (infinitesimal) chance of exploding with 3% of their actual yield, apparently on their own?
As expected, the example application given is only one option, and this is basically a long-range radiation death ray:
> We are certainly aware of the fact that this kind of device can not only target the nuclear bombs but other kinds of weapons of mass destruction and also, unfortunately, any kind of living object including human.
If I understand it correctly, from skimming the paper, this depends on the beam passing through earth without interaction and then "emerging" (starting to interact) at a precise point. Is that how these beams work at least in theory, i.e. will a "perfect" beam emerge in a point rather than distributed along a line due to the process being probabilistic? Of course, getting the beam perfect would then be the next challenge.
(Conveniently, this part of the problem seems to have been left for a separate publication.)
Ignoring the calls for it to be built by a "one world government", it would be difficult to do this in secret. Those that possess nuclear weapons would simply keep it from being built. Since it can't destroy all nuclear weapons at once but has to do so one at a time, using the power equal to the generation capacity of the UK, it wouldn't take long for any nuclear nation to detect this and simply nuke the source long before it could destroy even a small fraction of the existing nuclear stockpile.
As a thought experiment, it's pretty good. But there's no real practical application.
This is the same argument as having a nuclear missile shield that is 100% effective.
If such a shield becomes operational, then there's no reason not to first strike anyone without such a shield, as there'd be no repercussions.
So, by that same logic, the opponent knows this, and thus, it's in their interest to first strike, before the shield becomes operational. So the MAD doctrine no longer applies, and we'd have destroyed the world.
Therefore, even starting to make such a technology will very quickly spiral the world into a nuclear appocalypse.
If it is build deep deep underground, it might work long enough to get the job done. But there are other ways to stop such a project, besides nuking it.
> We are certainly aware of the fact that this kind of device can not only target the nuclear bombs but other kinds of weapons of mass destruction and also, unfortunately, any kind of living object including human. But we should emphasize that the device itself is not a weapon of mass destruction. The reason is as follows: The calculation in section 2 and
section 3 shows that it takes 1 second for this device to cover a 1 m2 with the radiation dose of 1 SV. It takes more than a year to cover the area of 10 km2 with this value of dose per unit area. It is extremely unlikely that no measure is taken after a few minutes of exposure of this kind.
I don't get it: it seems to be dangerous for people inside the beam, but it isn't? What kind of measures you can take if a city is aimed to with an invisible beam, probably from space?
Yeah, telescopes can see where the beam is aimed to buy then what? Neutrinos go through every shielding.
What am I missing?
The only thing I can think about is that to build that structure in space you have to be sure to suppress any missile from Earth and to win the war that your enemies will fight against you down here. Those are probably the measures to be taken.
> only thing I can think about is that to build that structure in space you have to be sure to suppress any missile from Earth and to win the war that your enemies will fight against you down here.
Absolutely. There are many technologies where if your enemy manages to create it you are already in an un-winnable situation. For example nuclear warheads pre-positioned in orbit with solid reentry boosters. If you have that you can nuke anyone with seconds of warning. The correct counter to this strategy from your enemy is to kill you before you can implement this plan.
Because of that you will want to sneak it by your enemy. But with this… even that is hard. Surely they will see when you light up this much energy generation no matter how sneaky you built it up? Unless you provide some plausible explanation, like hide it in an active carbon capture scheme or something.
Or you might build it in such a way as to avoid attribution. For example make a very stealthy von-neumann probe launched at the asteroid belt designed to reconfigure matter there for solar power harvesting and build this particle accelerator in-situ. You can disguise the initual launch as a failed interplanetary mission perhaps. And when it lights up pretend you didn’t know who did it?
There not arguing it's safe. They're arguing that after firing for a few minutes at most, nuclear capable nations will have noticed it. Thus, the largest area you can "wipe out" is very small. Compare that to an actual wmd which has an effective area of many square kilometers.
That is like only about 12% of the US defense budget. And I'm pretty sure, much less than what the US has spent on ICBM interceptor research in the last 30 years.
So if it was feasible, I think it would have already been built. Not necessarily as a first strike weapon, but definitely something take out the birds in the atmosphere once they flew
Wow super cool, didn't realize that was a possibility.
1000 TeV when we're currently at ~13 TeV seems like one problem. 1000km ring requiring ~10 Tesla powered magnets likely be another.
Those "technical difficulties" aside seems like aiming it would be a massive problem. Would need the beam to exit and that exit would have to be movable - realistically pointing "down". Not like you can take a beam like that and just turn corners, haha. That "2d" picture of it hitting through the earth is ms-paint level optimistic.
Would nuclear weapons be the only thing affected? Feels like it would be bad to be on the other end of this thing if the beam spread was too big.
To aim the beam to targets on Earth you have to build it in space and be able to maneuver that pretty large Death Star. Probably just a ring instead of a sphere.
The invisible beam is probably a non starter for movies. If somebody will put this idea on screen they'll find a way to make neutrinos visible.
It's a neutrino beam... doesn't that mean it can be selectively directed to only disable SOME nuclear bombs... on the other side of the earth, where host country arsenal is not.
E: looks like the beam is actually aimed, I was expecting some explosion that takes out all nukes simultaneously. good luck finding nuke subs.
Although would a smaller version be viable ABM defense against nukes? Assuming you can hit them a few "minutes" and have them explode at 3% yield. Which is still kiloton range given full yeild of modern weapons.
And spray the resulting mess over a large population. Maybe you can hit them before they reach your cities? Over the ocean, the explosion might not be too much of an issue.
Looks you could easily defend against this thing by storing nuclear warheads in an empty cavern, suspended by ropes in midair. Most of the heating isn't from neutrinos hitting the target, but hitting dense matter in a wide vicinity of the target, creating showers of secondary radiation. So creating a void around the target should give you many orders of magnitude of shielding.
Come to thing of it, orbital nuclear weapons would be pretty safe too?
I don't think I've ever seen a sci-fi rendition of this concept. It means that an advanced enough alien species could come to a planet, from orbit disable all nuclear weapons and power plants, then start their invasion. Not as cinematic as a Death Star planet explosion, but sounds like a good tactical move for a galactic empire.
If you can travel between solar systems and have enough resources that you want to conquer (not just render inhabitable) a gravity well then you likely don’t need to worry about nukes - point defences will be able to detect and neutralise them before they got anywhere near your ship
I assume any civilization with the tech to get to earth would also have the ability to shoot down any nukes heading their way or simply throw it in reverse long enough to dodge them, no huge TeV particle beam necessary
In this paper 100TeV are called “totally ridiculous” but now scientists want to build a new hadron collider which would have that capacity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271297
A highly insightful quote, oddly enough from Jurassic Park:
---
John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
---
Imagine this were possible. You'd have just destroyed what is likely the primary reason that the past ~80 years have been this weird blip in history where there's been no major and unrestrained war between two world powers. The most obvious embodiment of this is the reason that the Cold War is now called the Cold War, and not WW3. There's also the reality that in this new WW3 which we'd near to immediately create, we'd likely see the rapid emergence of the chemical, biological, and other weapons that every major nation totally aren't developing.
Of course we do stand a good chance of destroying ourselves with nukes, but it's not entirely clear to me that we stand less of a chance of destroying ourselves without them. And adding to this equation is that if the nukes are gone on day 1, then WW3 starts on day 2.
> Of course we do stand a good chance of destroying ourselves with nukes, but it's not entirely clear to me that we stand less of a chance of destroying ourselves without them.
The problem with nukes is they're an absorbing state. Once the nuclear war happens there's no retries. Nukes present an x% chance of near-extinction over the next T years. That x% goes up as T goes up, asymptoting to 100% as T becomes sufficiently long, assuming no ground-breaking paradigm shift in global cooperation such as a single world government, which won't happen in our lifetime due to how hardwired nationalism and nativism is. Each generation, we're going to keep rolling the i.i.d. nuclear dice and x% will go from 2% to 10% to higher as T goes up, then eventually it'll happen. Recall that it almost happened in the Cold War, only one random person who stopped it is the reason you're alive.
The main argument I'd accept for nukes is that we need to reduce hot war in the short-term to accelerate economic and scientific progress, which will then reduce other civilization-scale problems (like climate change, pandemics, cancer treatments, diversifying life to other plants) to a point where the perpetuation of the nuke existential risk becomes justified.
the interesting thing is, the device may have to be built but possibly never operated. the existence of this device would make all nuclear-bomb-holders scramble to disarm them.
OTOH we'd also have to know where the bombs are pretty precisely, if i understand correctly. i'd put the bombs on a nuclear airport luggage belt and have them go around in circles. makes a moving target out of them.
The authors seem surprisingly sanguine, even enthusiastic, about the prospect of a World Government. To me, it sounds like the whole world stomping on your face forever.
This is actually a great plot for a supervillain in a movie. Simultaneously detonate all nuclear weapons on Earth, albeit at 3% of it's power. That would seriously fuck us up.
Most nukes are underground, so most of the fallout would be contained. And the result would be a world not fearing anymore for accidental or intentionally nuclear anhilation.
So most would consider that supervillain a super hero.
For better or worse, autonomous weapons seem to be more practical, and something like this would be a pretty big deterrent against having nuclear weapons in the first place.
[+] [-] sigmoid10|2 years ago|reply
In some sense the authors were already successfuly by triggering all this discussion here on HN about the purely theoretical implications on geopolitics (rather than the very real, down-to-earth implications for modern particle physics).
[+] [-] bluish29|2 years ago|reply
> There is a compelling physics case for constructing a 10 TeV or more pCM collider. Such a collider would search for direct evidence and quantum imprints of new particles and forces at unprecedented energies. There are several approaches: a 10 TeV muon collider, a 100 TeV proton-proton collider such as FCC-hh at CERN, or possibly a 10 TeV high-energy e+e– or γ-γ collider based on the wakefield acceleration technology. Any of them would enable a comprehensive physics portfolio that includes ultimate measurements in the Higgs sector, a broad search program providing access to new hidden sectors by producing a substantially higher mediator mass or probing even smaller coupling, and opportunities to produce new particles directly. All options for a 10 TeV pCM collider are new technologies under development and R&D is required before we can embark on building a new collider.
[1] https://www.usparticlephysics.org/2023-p5-report/the-recomme...
[+] [-] lukan|2 years ago|reply
"The whole paper feels like a con attempt by the authors to talk governments into building smaller muon colliders as an intermediate step. Of course these smaller colliders could also be used to study concepts of a higher energy collider that could produce anti-nuke rays. But for the most part, these smaller colliders would be incredible physics discovery machines."
So why a con attempt, when it is just logical to get there step by step by building smaller colliders, that also enable awesome new research?
If they would not have stated clearly, that the concept is too futuristic currently, then it would be a con attempt. But they did.
[+] [-] boffinAudio|2 years ago|reply
What a pity. Imagine how peaceful the world would be today if we could suddenly and irrevocably destroy every single nuclear weapon, across the globe, in one fell swoop.
Well, we better leave them entombed in their casings for a more advanced society to develop the technology to do this .. if we can do it for scrolls, we can do it for bombs.
[+] [-] kaptainscarlet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xg15|2 years ago|reply
> When the neutrino beam hits a bomb, it will cause the fizzle explosion with 3% of the full strength. It seems that it is not possible to decrease the magnitude of the explosion smaller than this number at this stage. It is important to decrease this number to destroy bombs safely. We are not sure what this means when the plutonium or uranium is used to ignite the hydrogen bomb. We may just break the bomb or may lead to a full explosion.
If such a tech existed, it could give a new edge to MAD though, because just storing nuclear bombs would suddenly carry a risk of "spontaneous" nuclear explosions. This might already be enough to have a chilling effect. (Then again, it might not...)
[+] [-] fpgaminer|2 years ago|reply
* 3% explosive yield
* Likely a dirty explosion, spreading radioactive contaminants.
* The area where the beam is targeted (couple meter radius) gets a 1 Sv/sec dose, for about 100 seconds. "compared with the U.S. Federal off-site limit of 1 mSV/year"
I'm also curious if anything inside the earth gets dosed by the beam? I don't know enough about neutrinos to speculate.
Also, wouldn't one assume that these bombs have neutron shields on them, to prevent accidental triggering by the stray neutron source? Hence, they'd really need the beam to target _inside_ the bomb, not just near it.
Finally, skimming the paper, I didn't see mention of the energy levels of the neutrons they expect to hit the radioactive materials. Most radioactive isotopes don't have a large cross section for fast neutrons. Is it expected for this hadron shower to generate thermal neutrons? Otherwise, the beam would need to be several orders of magnitude stronger...
(Not that the idea isn't cool as fuck)
EDIT: Thinking about it a bit. If I understand the paper correctly, the beam has to be at 1000TeV to penetrate the Earth and hit the target, so you can't decrease the beam's strength and mitigate the above issues. But if the beam could be PWM'd, then you can effectively do that. And if you can lower the effective energy of the beam, then it might be possible to spray a slow and steady stream of neutrons inside the bomb, slowly decaying all the radioactive isotopes. It would take a lot longer, on the order of months, and would probably be detectable, but at least there wouldn't be that pesky issue of turning it into a small dirty bomb...
[+] [-] perlgeek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeyouse|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otikik|2 years ago|reply
From my almost illiterate level: It seems like a supernova will produce a bunch of neutrinos in one go. And they are affected by gravity. So a black hole near with a supernova could act as a gravity lens and "focus" the neutrinos.
Does this mean that any nuclear bomb has a (infinitesimal) chance of exploding with 3% of their actual yield, apparently on their own?
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|2 years ago|reply
> We are certainly aware of the fact that this kind of device can not only target the nuclear bombs but other kinds of weapons of mass destruction and also, unfortunately, any kind of living object including human.
If I understand it correctly, from skimming the paper, this depends on the beam passing through earth without interaction and then "emerging" (starting to interact) at a precise point. Is that how these beams work at least in theory, i.e. will a "perfect" beam emerge in a point rather than distributed along a line due to the process being probabilistic? Of course, getting the beam perfect would then be the next challenge.
(Conveniently, this part of the problem seems to have been left for a separate publication.)
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|2 years ago|reply
As a thought experiment, it's pretty good. But there's no real practical application.
[+] [-] chii|2 years ago|reply
If such a shield becomes operational, then there's no reason not to first strike anyone without such a shield, as there'd be no repercussions.
So, by that same logic, the opponent knows this, and thus, it's in their interest to first strike, before the shield becomes operational. So the MAD doctrine no longer applies, and we'd have destroyed the world.
Therefore, even starting to make such a technology will very quickly spiral the world into a nuclear appocalypse.
[+] [-] lukan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|2 years ago|reply
I don't get it: it seems to be dangerous for people inside the beam, but it isn't? What kind of measures you can take if a city is aimed to with an invisible beam, probably from space?
Yeah, telescopes can see where the beam is aimed to buy then what? Neutrinos go through every shielding.
What am I missing?
The only thing I can think about is that to build that structure in space you have to be sure to suppress any missile from Earth and to win the war that your enemies will fight against you down here. Those are probably the measures to be taken.
[+] [-] krisoft|2 years ago|reply
Absolutely. There are many technologies where if your enemy manages to create it you are already in an un-winnable situation. For example nuclear warheads pre-positioned in orbit with solid reentry boosters. If you have that you can nuke anyone with seconds of warning. The correct counter to this strategy from your enemy is to kill you before you can implement this plan.
Because of that you will want to sneak it by your enemy. But with this… even that is hard. Surely they will see when you light up this much energy generation no matter how sneaky you built it up? Unless you provide some plausible explanation, like hide it in an active carbon capture scheme or something.
Or you might build it in such a way as to avoid attribution. For example make a very stealthy von-neumann probe launched at the asteroid belt designed to reconfigure matter there for solar power harvesting and build this particle accelerator in-situ. You can disguise the initual launch as a failed interplanetary mission perhaps. And when it lights up pretend you didn’t know who did it?
[+] [-] digitallis42|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhilipRoman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SJC_Hacker|2 years ago|reply
That is like only about 12% of the US defense budget. And I'm pretty sure, much less than what the US has spent on ICBM interceptor research in the last 30 years.
So if it was feasible, I think it would have already been built. Not necessarily as a first strike weapon, but definitely something take out the birds in the atmosphere once they flew
[+] [-] irjustin|2 years ago|reply
Not sure how to get a dollar figure if the tech isn't remotely possible.
[+] [-] maxglute|2 years ago|reply
Meanwhile US nuclear modernzation is 500B until 230, 1.5T until 2050.
Seems like a bargin.
[+] [-] irjustin|2 years ago|reply
1000 TeV when we're currently at ~13 TeV seems like one problem. 1000km ring requiring ~10 Tesla powered magnets likely be another.
Those "technical difficulties" aside seems like aiming it would be a massive problem. Would need the beam to exit and that exit would have to be movable - realistically pointing "down". Not like you can take a beam like that and just turn corners, haha. That "2d" picture of it hitting through the earth is ms-paint level optimistic.
Would nuclear weapons be the only thing affected? Feels like it would be bad to be on the other end of this thing if the beam spread was too big.
[+] [-] pmontra|2 years ago|reply
The invisible beam is probably a non starter for movies. If somebody will put this idea on screen they'll find a way to make neutrinos visible.
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
Destruction of Nuclear Bombs Using Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Beam (2003) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528970 - June 2020 (85 comments)
[+] [-] maxglute|2 years ago|reply
E: looks like the beam is actually aimed, I was expecting some explosion that takes out all nukes simultaneously. good luck finding nuke subs.
Although would a smaller version be viable ABM defense against nukes? Assuming you can hit them a few "minutes" and have them explode at 3% yield. Which is still kiloton range given full yeild of modern weapons.
[+] [-] exe34|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perihelions|2 years ago|reply
Come to thing of it, orbital nuclear weapons would be pretty safe too?
[+] [-] bluish29|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmeddie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midasuni|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikhail_Edoshin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thorum|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EasyMark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lom|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somenameforme|2 years ago|reply
---
John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
---
Imagine this were possible. You'd have just destroyed what is likely the primary reason that the past ~80 years have been this weird blip in history where there's been no major and unrestrained war between two world powers. The most obvious embodiment of this is the reason that the Cold War is now called the Cold War, and not WW3. There's also the reality that in this new WW3 which we'd near to immediately create, we'd likely see the rapid emergence of the chemical, biological, and other weapons that every major nation totally aren't developing.
Of course we do stand a good chance of destroying ourselves with nukes, but it's not entirely clear to me that we stand less of a chance of destroying ourselves without them. And adding to this equation is that if the nukes are gone on day 1, then WW3 starts on day 2.
[+] [-] hackerlight|2 years ago|reply
The problem with nukes is they're an absorbing state. Once the nuclear war happens there's no retries. Nukes present an x% chance of near-extinction over the next T years. That x% goes up as T goes up, asymptoting to 100% as T becomes sufficiently long, assuming no ground-breaking paradigm shift in global cooperation such as a single world government, which won't happen in our lifetime due to how hardwired nationalism and nativism is. Each generation, we're going to keep rolling the i.i.d. nuclear dice and x% will go from 2% to 10% to higher as T goes up, then eventually it'll happen. Recall that it almost happened in the Cold War, only one random person who stopped it is the reason you're alive.
The main argument I'd accept for nukes is that we need to reduce hot war in the short-term to accelerate economic and scientific progress, which will then reduce other civilization-scale problems (like climate change, pandemics, cancer treatments, diversifying life to other plants) to a point where the perpetuation of the nuke existential risk becomes justified.
[+] [-] jusssi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandchild|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristjansson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denton-scratch|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j1mmie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukan|2 years ago|reply
Most nukes are underground, so most of the fallout would be contained. And the result would be a world not fearing anymore for accidental or intentionally nuclear anhilation.
So most would consider that supervillain a super hero.
[+] [-] EasyMark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midasuni|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bowsamic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denton-scratch|2 years ago|reply