It always surpises me how little people fear nuclear weapons. Given that it takes to launch only one of them to trigger the cascade and that there are some 15,000 of them around the world the scenario seems pretty believable. What's worse, virtually every doomsday scenario ends with nukes burning everyone alive.<p>Scared of global warning? Here we go: Icebergs melt, the sea level rises. Bangladesh is under water. 100M refugees flood India, Pakistan and China. Recall the political turmoil caused by couple of million refugees in Europe. How would it go if it happens at much larger scale in the area with three nuclear powers? Boom! You are fried meat.<p>Is economic inequality your nightmare? Are you afraid it can lead to similar outcomes as in 1914? Well, add nuclear weapons to the mix. Inequality causes political instability, political instabiliy ends up with nuclear weapons in the hands of weird people. Kaboom! There goes breathable atmosphere.<p>Nanotechnology eating the world? Antibiotic-resistant supergerms? Out-of-control artificial intelligence? Whatever your nightmare scenario is it always ends the same way. Catastrophe leads to chaos. Chaos leads to loss of control of nukes. One is lauched. All other follow automatically. Adieu, cruel world.<p>Now, this is a genuine question: How come that people, even intelligent people, like those on HN, are not scared shitless?
Serious , but somewhat rhetorical question. I don't expect an answer, certainly not a simple answer.<p>Why just nuclear weapons?<p>Shouldn't the scope be wider, say all weapons of mass destruction? But even then, conventional weapons become weapons of mass destruction when used in massive quantities (e.g.: massive aerial bombing during WWII).<p>So in a world without nuclear weapons, wouldn't state actors just go back to doing things nuclear weapons do but with conventional weapons?
For people wanting really great analysis of nuclear issues, check out Jeff Lewis's Arms Control Wonk podcast. There's three episodes analyzing the Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons treaty amongst many other fascinating topics like missile defense.<p><a href="http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/podcast/" rel="nofollow">http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/podcast/</a>
Interesting... just the other day, there was a discussion concerning the physics prize being giving to three people (which is already bending the rules) when there are often dozens or hundreds of people involved. The will is quite specific about "person" for all of them.<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html</a>
The ~7,000 warheads that the US and Russia still have are a clear and present danger to humanity, but I would hesitate to get rid of all of them and have world scale conventional war return. Maybe a few dozen very well protected and spread-out nuclear warheads and delivery systems per country would be the ideal situation.
Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN, called Trump a moron the other day.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BeaFihn/status/915598750969712640" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/BeaFihn/status/915598750969712640</a>
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Nothing has done more to stop large powerful nations from getting in serious shooting wars than the background threat of nuclear retaliation.
> But none of the nine known nuclear powers in the world - including the UK and the US - endorsed it.<p>Proving that this group is completely ineffective and their peace prize is a joke. Just a bunch of bureaucrats who sit around saying "oh yes, nuclear weapons bad, pass the caviar please".
This is disgusting. How do they deserve any reward when north Korea has atomic weapons, when Iran nearly had atomic weapons, and probably will have it after 10 years when the agreement is over.<p>Nobel prizes for peace have become "what is the biggest historical ironical joke we can make this year". Obama getting that prize for worse than nothing, then this.
This is just plain silly. They might as well award the thing to my old friend Paul, who styles himself a peace poet, and writes shit poor poems about how we should all just, you know, not make <i>war</i> on each other anymore. At least he really needs the money. Nukes don't go away because profiled do-gooders whine about them.<p>The litterature prize, btw, really, really, <i>really</i> needs to go to Randall Munroe one of these years. Yes, I'm dead serious.