I recently read 'Nuclear War' by Annie Jacobsen.
It really drives home the whole 'nuclear wars cannot be won', thing. Most of us realise that, but hearing a genuinely accurate, meticulously researched moment-by-moment account of a hypothetical nuclear holocaust is fascinating.
Unless you're a literal fucking madman, there's no way that you're going to be first to push the big red button. There's always a risk of that, but I don't feel we're at any more risk of a flippant nuclear conflict now than we were when we had Yeltsin at the helm. And as much as we like to talk about how destabilised or unregulated these Communist/Soviet dictatorships might be, there's probably a fuckload more regulation when it comes to their nuclear arsenal than we give them credit for.
Much more efficient to sow social destabilisation in your target nation and let the morons murder each other. Maybe introduce another biological agent as a catalyst to really get the hackles up. I don't think it's bombs that'll be the end of us. I think it'll be each other.
(, Mon 17 Mar 2025, 20:31, Reply)
This assumes that those with power act rationally
One of the significant issues with unaccountable authority is that you are at the whim of a single individual, from mad kings to hitler deciding it would be clever to invade both the balkans and Russia in a single summer.
Putin gambled he would be able to knock Ukraine out in weeks and instead got into a grinding attritional conflict 2 years on, and might be going on 2 more years if he hadn’t got his man in the White House. It was quite a misjudgment, about his own forces and the international response, but he’ll be sensible about nukes, won’t he?
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Mon 17 Mar 2025, 22:47,
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It might depend on who else in the command chain wants to live.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Tue 18 Mar 2025, 2:19,
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perhaps, though dictators don't tend to deal with disobedience charitably either
I'm not privy to Vlad's disposition or desires. He may have reached some late life not-give-a-fuck stage where he wants to go out with a bang, for all we know.
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 18 Mar 2025, 3:26,
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Hasn't he so far?
Did you miss the bit where I mentioned that we got through Yeltsin's term without any mishaps despite the fact he was absolutely fucking shitfaced for the majority of it? Or the bit where I suggested regulation in these countries is likely significantly more strict than we're led to believe by western sources?
As unhinged as we might paint Putin/Kim/etc, I don't think any of them are at all likely to initiate a nuclear attack. Even if they were, I think it's unlikely that any nation has a literal 'big red button' that simply needs to be pushed by said bloodthirsty leader in order to initiate said offensive.
By far the biggest risk factor would be an accidental/malicious triggering of a nation's Launch on Warning system - but we're at no more risk of that happening now than we have been at any other point during mass nuclear armament.
(, Tue 18 Mar 2025, 6:48, Reply)
Regulation? I'm not sure you understand how autocracies work.
Let me sum up:
Putin does what he wants, when he wants, and anyone who opposes him is repressively crushed, in a country where a mildy critical tweet is currently attracting 20+ year prison sentences, and responding to one with an emoji is considered treasonous (and he seems to be bringing back forced labour in drone factories in a nostalgic retro move). He's also supreme commander of the army and has given himself emergency powers, so it's his decision alone about war and nukes.
And it wouldn't be some icbm launch in vladivostok like in your war games imagination with the big countdown to impact clock. It would be a detonation in kyiv that takes out the high command and a nice chunk of the city for good measure, which the russians would immediately blame on the Ukrainians themselves and deny any involvement, calculating that the US under their new pro-putin ally Trump wouldn't retaliate and initiate ww3. And when the fallout clears they'd control the ukraine and conduct their own thorough investigation that exonerates them, like MH17. Of course, he could miscalculate like he did with the initial invasion. but when you're dictator, nobody tells you it's a bad idea
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 18 Mar 2025, 11:26,
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no, but I'm not massively naive enough to believe Putin is constrained by regulation
nor do I think it's particularly likely he'll use nukes when he thinks he can annex the ukraine by conventional means. But I think if his power was threatened and he calculated it was advantageous to use them, a bloke who is fine with running up close to million casualties of this own people wouldnt have qualms about the risks
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 18 Mar 2025, 13:40,
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I think it's unlikely that any nation has a literal 'big red button' that simply needs to be pushed by said bloodthirsty leader in order to initiate said offensive.
Weren't the US nuclear codes famously set to 00000000? If that's the level of security the US has with probably the largest most advanced military in the world I wouldn't put it past Putin to literally have a big button on his desk behind a "break glass to end the world" window to stop him accidentally pressing it when he puts his coffee down.
(, Wed 19 Mar 2025, 10:35, Reply)
Technically, yes. In order to arm the missiles.
But the launch command still needed to be issued from two separate locations.
There was a Dead Hand procedure in place where the launch could be initiated from a single location on a timer, but that timer could then be terminated from any other location should the launch be unauthorised.
Don't get me wrong, the 00000000 arming codes were still pretty crazy, but as I said in my previous comment, I think we're at much higher risk of a nuclear apocalypse via incompetence/bad actors than we'll ever be from a single bad-tempered head of state.
(, Wed 19 Mar 2025, 16:28, Reply)