Forbidden Donut

I would like to point out that "t" is not one of the letters immediately surrounding "d".

Also, no. Unless all knowledge of nuclear weapons is purged from the planet, there is no point to a disarming of nations... because it wouldn't be real. Nuclear arsenals would still exist in secret in who knows how many countries.

I'm pretty sure arming all major nations with nuclear weapons would prove to even the playing field more. Though god knows I would never have the balls to test that theory or even wish it to be tested beyond on paper.

Do you think it would really matter if some nations hid away a few warheads? I mean, a nuclear attack on any city would be devastating, but you're talking about a tiny handful of devices that are hidden in storage (someone in the international community is bound to notice when they start preparing the warheads for launch) that are indeed powerful, but not comparable to the devastating power of any of the major power's standard military forces. I absolutely believe the US, without its nuclear weapons arsenal, has the power to decimate countless cities. I don't think any of the major nations need nuclear weapons to devastate another nation beyond repair in a short amount of time. The difference is, nuclear weapons are incapable of being used in a discretionary manner whereas a traditional arsenal can be used in a far more tactical manner.

Beyond that, who would use them anyway? Surely not a major nation; they would have to risk being entirely separated and shunned by pretty much the entire international community. In this day and age, that would basically amount to you single-handily destroying your own economy which will bring any country, regardless of power or leadership, to its knees. The ones that would be far more inclined to use nuclear weapons are the smaller, more radicalized nations that have a very narrow power structure, but that is ignoring the very obvious fact that we are watching every inch of their soil every second of every day. It is also ignoring the fact that they stand literally zero chance of hitting American soil, and we would make sure they were very much disarmed if they could.

Basically, if the world outlawed nuclear weapons entirely, it would be grounds for an immediate world-wide invasion of any country found to possess them. Until that happens though, there really isn't much that we can do to stop other countries from getting them. We are fortunate at the moment that the countries currently trying to make nuclear weapons are also those that rely on us to prop up their economy, so we can use that leverage to our advantage.

I am of the general philosophy that if something is possible then it will happen, so I think it is literally only a matter of time before someone gets and uses a nuclear weapon unless we take legitimate steps to rid the world of the things. Agreeing with Russia that we should probably try to maintain less nukes than it would take to destroy all life on earth 50 times isn't really a legitimate step, in my opinion.

That's a baseless assumption. It also assumed the weapon would be launched.



That's incredibly unrealistic.

Also, as to your "who would use them anyway" it still absolutely boggles my mind that a nuclear weapon hasn't been used against a United States port city yet. USA port defenses are... well, absolute shit, to be honest. All it takes is one fishing boat with a nuke on it and boom, good bye coastal city. It also only takes one country to back-door a nuke (and maybe some funding and operational intel) to anti-American groups.

In my opinion that is the most likely nuclear blast scenario (or variations of), which would be unaffected by your purposed disarmament.

You are correct that I'm assuming it would be launched, but I don't at all think it is baseless. Nuclear weapons are not tiny nor light, and their production is extremely complex. We notice when they're being made, and we notice when they're moving.

Why is it unrealistic? We've had two world wars so far, and that was long before we had the ability to travel or communicate as efficiently as we do today, and both were sparked by far less than a nuclear attack on a sovereign city. Given the unrealistic nature of the topic we're discussion, I don't think a world-wide response to an illegal nuclear strike is unreasonable at all.

It absolutely boggles my mind that you think nuclear weapons can simply be transported around the world with such ease that a fishing boat could discretely smuggle one to a US port city. No one wants nuclear attacks to happen. Everyone that has nuclear weapons, even the most insane among us, understand the grave ramifications for using a nuclear weapon preemptively. Sure, there may be some nations out there willing to part with a nuclear weapon to allow some terrorist organization to do the dirty work for them, but attacking the US would be an unimaginably complex and difficult task. It would take a large amount of nations to simply turn a blind eye to the transportation of such a devastating and indiscreet weapon and would require a complete and utter failure (on a far more wide-reaching and dramatic scale than the failures leading to 9-11) on behalf of the US and all of its allies (which there are quite a lot of).

It seems far more reasonable to me that a nuclear weapon would be used on say... Israel before it was even considered to be used on US soil.

Ah, a war based on the use of a nuclear weapon is not what you originally proposed. That is far more understandable then your original statement:



Also, why do you act as if all nuclear weapons may as well have tracking devices in them? You really think the United States is party to the location of every single nuclear weapon in the world?

Considering N-Korea has tested two nuclear weapons, and the world at large hasn't even figured out the exact locations of the test sites it seems quite plausible to me that the location of every nuclear device in the world is not confirmed.

Edit:

I will; however, concur with this:



I suppose my surprise is more that an attack in general has not been carried out through a US port.

I'd say that Putin is probably trying to play Obama, and that I doubt it will work. I suspect he thinks our new president is a huge pussy and wants to prove it to the rest of the world by making him agree with some touchy feely nonsense.

Nuclear Power Plants and Nuclear Bombs are not far enough removed from one another to eliminate one and not the other, and the good presented by nuclear power so greatly outweighs the risks associated with nuclear weapons that I don't personally think it's worth it. I'm not especially scared of nukes, since they've only been used twice. 64 years ago. And we've gone through that whole BILD UP TEH STORKPYLEZ! nonsense and are back down to something like 15% of the peak quantity of weapons worldwide.

And why use nukes on the US when you can just fly planes into buildings for the price of flying lessons and a plane ticket?

too soon?

No I do not think it would really work.

1. Everyone will not agree to this agreement..and even if they did, no one would really trust each other anyway. Heck we sign treaties and agreements all the time and only follow a handful. If all countries were on a equal playing level then maybe we could see countries making the bomb illegal, but to me, as long as certain countries have a huge disadvantage to other countries, there will always be nuclear bombs or some other form of mass destruction.

Kind of like what we want to do with developing countries. Developing countries are going through massive growth akin to the industrial revolution current global powers had. We fucked up the environment hardcore then, and got a lot of benefit from being able to do so. Now we are saying.."well now that we have all these assets and are awesome, we think you should save the environment, and not be able to reap the same benefits that we did"....."now that we have benefited from having nuclear weapons, its a bad idea now, and we don't think you should, so lets get rid of them"...kind of unfair

2. I don't think invading a country because of a nuclear bomb would end well, and likely to start another world war. There will always be rogue nations, and the rouge nation's partners. Which leads to point 3.

3. Getting rid of nuclear weapons would potentially increase deaths/wars around the world. Not getting into another debate about history, but if Russia and the US did not have nuclear bombs, would it have been more likely that the friction between the two countries would have ended in actual bloodshed? Its been said before, but nuclear bombs insure mutual destruction. If two countries were to fight that had nuclear bombs, all out, whichever country reached endgame of almost conquering the other, would be faced with being bombed...theoretically.

MAD is only applicable to people that have something to lose. The concern is that the same people who strap bombs on their chests to blow up some group seem to have no problem with having their destruction assured.

I also don't think that a true "world war" is plausible in this day and age. Too many connections. Friends and foes have to be a little clearer than they are these days to form alliances as strong as they'd need to be to end up in a war of that scale.

No, far before that we (or somebody else) would grow suspicious of one of their allies and the whole thing would fall apart into a bunch of disparate conflicts.

/otherwise you're sadly right, I'm afraid.

I suppose you are right that a true "world war" is not plausible now. It is entirely possible, but getting to that point would be pretty hard at this point in time.