EDIT: For clarification, I feel that the current situation on the ground in the war (vs. say a year ago) might indicate that an attack on Russia might not result in instant nuclear war, which is what prompted my question. I am well aware of the “instant nuclear Armageddon” opinion.
Serious question. I don’t need to be called stupid. I realize nuclear war is bad. Thanks!
I have some doubts that Russia’s nuclear weapons are even in operational order.
maybe they try to launch them, and they just self-destruct inside their silos. or, they fly, but fall out of the sky still in Russia, or, they actually fly all the way to the destination, but fail to detonate.
to be sure, this is not something that we should wager on. I just think it would be funny if it turned out that way. just a fun little daydream of imperialist fascist scum getting put in the ground where they fucking belong.
Russia is believed to have about 6500 nuclear weapons. Even if ninety-nine percent of them fail, that’s still 65 cities turned to ash.
More likely several hundred, not 65.
Each nuke carries multiple warheads that split up in space and fly to individual targets.
Aren’t the multiple warheads for the same target, though?
That seems like a ridiculous number of nuclear munitions. Like why so many?
The existence of this post (and its title in particular) might give you a clue…
So that even if 99% fail or get shot down, 65 cities are still turned to ash.
The US and the USSR engaged in a race to have the most nukes. After the fall of the Sowjet Union international treaties were put in place to reduce the number of nukes in both east and west.
Don’t quote me, but if I remember correctly, at the height of the cold war, both sides had more than 12.000 nukes each.
Humanity had enough fire power to delete the entire globe roughly 40x over then. Why? Because bigger is better.
That’s dumb. They didn’t do it just for shits and giggles. They did it because in a nuclear exchange, you only get one shot so you need to overwhelm your opponent’s defenses.
Partially yes, but there’s an even more mundane reason; with nuclear weapons, if the other side has 5, you need 6: five to destroy their five, and one to destroy their capital. But when they discover that, they’ll decide that they need seven: 6 to destroy your 6, and one to destroy your capital. Add in some uncertainty to that feedback loop, and an arms race immediately becomes an exponential curve moderated only by the amount of time production takes and the amount of resources each nation is willing to commit at any given time.
There’s a very real way in which the proliferation of arms is, itself, an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.