I have beeen thinking lately about how it is such a strong condemnation of american thought that destoying the entire world was a valid option in tbe cold war
Probably says more about global warming than I'd like as well.
One of the things Daniel Ellsberg goes into detail about in Doomsday Machine is how the actual plans that were drawn up, with highly trained and qualified people, were all complete bullshit. They involved hundreds of plains criss-crossing all over China and Russia (both were to be targeted no matter the circumstances), dodging each other's nuclear blasts by seconds, but the plan only worked if all the planes took off at the same time, were all travelling the same direction, and that wind didn't exist anywhere on the planet. They actually had people working hard on formulating plans where all three impossible parameters were assumed. It's really amazing we aren't all radioactive soup by now.
Every time I hear some ndw detail about it I am even more impressed we made it through.
First there was the launch codes being all zeros. This plan that would immediately fall appart causing more chaos. The russian radar systems kept having false alarms they woudl juzt ignore
I wouldn't be so sure. I think a very likely scenario is that climate change causes the kind of political chaos and upheaval that could send nukes flying, and that's basically game over. Another fun fact about those impossible plans (that might very well still be enacted in an extreme scenario) is that, while they knew at the time that it would only take a few thermonuclear bombs to irradiate the entire world, they didn't have any concept of nuclear winter, and if I remember correctly, the threshold to trigger that doomsday scenario was even lower than the "hot planet" scenario. Nukes may very well still be the endgame one way or another.
on the plus side, a global nuclear war should put a quick temporary halt to global warming. technocrats could call it rapid fission modulated geoengineering
It's really insane how a bunch of world leaders basically have a button that says "END WORLD", and we are not absolutely scrambling to reach some sort of global disarmament agreement.
Nuclear Winter was a valid risk, but more recent studies have shown a long term climate impact (ie, more than a few years of failed harvests) from nuclear war was unlikely (barring something like nuking the permafrost, which would take things in the other direction.)
Where can I read about this? I googled "American plan to destroy the world" and it showed me a bunch of stuff about China destroying America???? (inshallah)
I have beeen thinking lately about how it is such a strong condemnation of american thought that destoying the entire world was a valid option in tbe cold war
Probably says more about global warming than I'd like as well.
One of the things Daniel Ellsberg goes into detail about in Doomsday Machine is how the actual plans that were drawn up, with highly trained and qualified people, were all complete bullshit. They involved hundreds of plains criss-crossing all over China and Russia (both were to be targeted no matter the circumstances), dodging each other's nuclear blasts by seconds, but the plan only worked if all the planes took off at the same time, were all travelling the same direction, and that wind didn't exist anywhere on the planet. They actually had people working hard on formulating plans where all three impossible parameters were assumed. It's really amazing we aren't all radioactive soup by now.
Every time I hear some ndw detail about it I am even more impressed we made it through.
First there was the launch codes being all zeros. This plan that would immediately fall appart causing more chaos. The russian radar systems kept having false alarms they woudl juzt ignore
I wouldn't be so sure. I think a very likely scenario is that climate change causes the kind of political chaos and upheaval that could send nukes flying, and that's basically game over. Another fun fact about those impossible plans (that might very well still be enacted in an extreme scenario) is that, while they knew at the time that it would only take a few thermonuclear bombs to irradiate the entire world, they didn't have any concept of nuclear winter, and if I remember correctly, the threshold to trigger that doomsday scenario was even lower than the "hot planet" scenario. Nukes may very well still be the endgame one way or another.
on the plus side, a global nuclear war should put a quick temporary halt to global warming. technocrats could call it rapid fission modulated geoengineering
It's really insane how a bunch of world leaders basically have a button that says "END WORLD", and we are not absolutely scrambling to reach some sort of global disarmament agreement.
Nuclear Winter was a valid risk, but more recent studies have shown a long term climate impact (ie, more than a few years of failed harvests) from nuclear war was unlikely (barring something like nuking the permafrost, which would take things in the other direction.)
Where can I read about this? I googled "American plan to destroy the world" and it showed me a bunch of stuff about China destroying America???? (inshallah)