[HN Gopher] Accidental Nuclear War: A Timeline of Close Calls
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Accidental Nuclear War: A Timeline of Close Calls
Author : atlasunshrugged
Score : 29 points
Date : 2021-01-22 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (futureoflife.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (futureoflife.org)
| nickt wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article and I recommend reading "Command
| and Control" by Eric Schlosser if you want to scare yourself half
| to death by reading about how careless we've been with our
| "toys".
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-cont...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| We should really move towards nuclear disarmament, these weapons
| need to go, we have been lucky so far, but we will not continue
| to be. It's playing with fire.
| doggydogs94 wrote:
| Sounds good, except that it will never happen.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| I was on team total disarmament for a long time, but now I
| think very clear no-first-strike policies, limited arsenals, no
| automated controls, and clear, transparent, and multifactor
| launch decision chains are the way to go. Nukes are terrifying,
| but I think it's pretty clear that they have also put a lid on
| major international conflict. We're not putting the genie back
| in the bottle... so we may as well put the bottle in a
| bulletproof glass cage and keep it under heavy guard.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| They've put the lid on direct military superpower conflict,
| so far, with some very close calls.
|
| But there's been plenty of indirect superpower conflict, and
| in the last couple of decades this has moved into
| disinfo/infowar and direct cyberwar.
|
| You might think this is less dangerous. But instead of ruined
| smoking cities you end up with governments run by foreign
| interests which are hostile to their own populations,
| supported by extravagant disinfo efforts designed to create
| confusion, paranoia, fear, and distrust.
|
| That genie is going to be even harder to put back in its
| bottle.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| Even if you can trace a direct line from "nukes preventing
| global conventional war" to our current mess of
| misinformation and cyberwar, is taking the lid off a hot
| war between China and the US (for example) the better
| alternative?
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Lots of nasty viruses are literally inside bulletproof cages
| and under heavy guard inside high level biocontainment
| facilities, but there have still been instances where they've
| gotten out of the lab. (This is not a reference to SARS-
| CoV-2.)
|
| Any time you're relying on humans not to do something that
| technically can be done, over a long enough period of time,
| someone eventually will probably do it. Disarmament puts much
| larger barriers in place than locking them up and putting
| walls of red tape around them.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| What is the alternative though? Disarm completely except
| for North Korea and probably China and never knowing for
| sure that everyone else has totally disarmed?
|
| I think we need to bring nukes right to the front of public
| consciousness so we can at least have the debate and make
| some sane policies. I've often wondered if a scheduled,
| highly public test would shock people into action.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Multilateral disarmament treaties similar to the SALT
| treaties with the USSR? Maybe at the UN level rather than
| simply administered by individual countries?
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with that in principle, but
| practically speaking North Korea is not going to
| cooperate and I doubt there's enough trust between the
| other nuclear powers for a full disarmament treaty. The
| second best, and more realistic, option is to make
| everything very public and transparent... which is really
| just MAD, but with smaller arsenals.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| That sounds like a good way to get a major city nuked.
|
| We already have enough conventional weapons to bomb NK
| back into the Stone Age, should it be necessary. I'm not
| sure which other countries you're referring to that are
| not trustworthy diplomatically, but, IIRC, there are only
| a handful who have nuclear capability (China, Russia,
| Israel?, Iran?), and those can be dealt with using
| existing satellite monitoring capabilities to detect
| nuclear buildup, and treaty monitoring.
|
| I would much rather reduce arsenals to zero or near zero
| levels than risk having _Jericho_ happen in my backyard.
| [deleted]
| dfsegoat wrote:
| Related: _Fail-Safe_ (1962) is a fictional novel where attack
| codes are transmitted to a group of US bombers on airborne alert
| (standing by to attack the USSR) - due to the failure of an
| electrical component. I think it 's still very relevant in this
| day and age.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_(novel)#Plot_summary
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Related: an excellent Sandia Labs documentary on various close
| calls we've had and how the United States learned from those
| events and engineered a variety of safeguards: https://share-
| ng.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/alw...
|
| It's an highly recommended overview of many of the issues
| surrounding accidental -- or unauthorized -- nuclear explosions
| (it was originally made for internal use at the Lab).
| openasocket wrote:
| It's close calls like these that make me especially concerned
| that North Korea now has nuclear weapons. MAD works fine, as long
| as you assume both sides are perfectly rational and competent.
| But even when countries put great effort into safety and control,
| accidents happen. And sometimes the only thing that stops
| Armageddon is someone using common sense, and remembering that
| the other side is human too. North Korea is well known for
| cutting corners, and they have a population largely insulated
| from the outside world, under strict totalitarian rule. When
| their radar malfunctions and says a dozen nukes are inbound, how
| likely is it that some officer is going to realize that just
| doesn't make any sense, and go against orders trying to confirm
| it?
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah with MADD it seems like only a matter of time when
| somethings fail (human(s) tech, combination) and a catastrophic
| mistake is made.
|
| Too many situations started, and were saved simply by
| happenstance or imperfect information.
|
| IIRC during the Cuban missile crisis local Russian commanders
| had the authorization to launch if they felt the US was
| invading. Because of course, you couldn't have a deterrent if
| you weren't able to launch during a communication blackout. Of
| course that also meant that any given accident or
| misunderstanding could lead to a launch and full scale
| response. Control of starting the war was now in the hands of
| folks with even less information...
|
| MADD seems to guarantee a war as much as deter it.
| wahern wrote:
| Yep. That MAD prevents nuclear strikes is an absolute article
| of faith at this point, used to reject unease outright; not an
| objective, practical calculus. Like all natural phenomena there
| will be exceptions and deviations. A nuclear incident is
| inevitable.
|
| The real question to my mind is whether the benefit of nuclear
| deterrence suppressing non-nuclear conflict is greater than the
| cost that will be incurred from MAD failures/exceptions. But
| that's an almost impossible question to answer today. Still,
| it's a more honest perspective. I suspect we don't look at in
| this way because the public would almost certainly decide
| (perhaps irrationally) that they're far more afraid of a
| nuclear strike than the slow slaughter of conventional warfare,
| creating pressure to discard nuclear weapons entirely.
| beebmam wrote:
| Nuclear proliferation brings us closer to mass atrocity and I
| worry deeply about it
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| How would an accident in Greenland precipitate general war?
|
| These kinds of hysterics don't help when analyzing a rather
| serious issue.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It says right there
|
| >A radar alert from Thule, Greenland was sent to NORAD,
| announcing the detection of dozens of Soviet missiles launched
| for the United States
| likpok wrote:
| There was another accident in Greenland where a plane crashed
| carrying nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons did not have a
| nuclear detonation, but the conventional explosives inside
| did.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Yes, years before the accidental crash I'm talking about.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I think part of it was just highlighting how often accidents
| occur and showing that with these weapons it could quickly lead
| to a huge response
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Use of the term "hysteric(al)" is a huge red flag for me. I
| virtually never see it applied reasonably. In this case, the
| article is simply outlining a history of the issue. The
| Greenland case is relevant and interesting.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I used the term specifically because their claims about the
| Thule crash don't add up. A nuclear detonation at Thule
| wouldn't mean general war (hackles would be raised but lots
| of other phenomenologies would be used as part of the
| warning, verification, and attack characterization
| processes).
|
| EDIT: Also, at the distance the crash was from the base,
| assuming a weapon detonated on impact the facilities would
| have experienced ~1 psi of overpressure. I strongly suspect
| they'd still be operational afterwards.
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