For those who would like to know what they are getting into before digging into a 20k+ words article: the article is an account by Howard Morland of the history of the H Bomb, the need for openness in nuclear research, and his personal experience when challenging the government for trying (and failing) to censor an article of his explaining how such a bomb could be built.
Thanks, lots of things I did not know, for instance that "hydrogen" bombs are actually mixed fission and fusion and actually typically quite dirty.
Also interesting point about how the USA doesn't actually need the bombs (since the collapse of the USSR, at least ?)... considering how ridiculously huge their military is ??
I'd beg to differ on the USA not needing these bombs. They may be terrible weapons full of deeply problematic moral questions, but as long as vast arsenals of them exist in the hands of definitively hostile countries like Russia and China, the U.S certainly does need them. In an ideal world, these weapons would have never been developed at all, but since they have been, I prefer multiple politically counterbalanced powers having them over one side rejecting them completely while others maintain theirs and use them to threaten the world ever more frequently.
Just to note a further obvious point, the death of the USSR is irrelevant in this context. It didn't at all stop modern, politically aggressive Russia from having at least hundreds of usable nukes with which to threaten Europe.
The US does need nuclear weapons as long as other nations have nuclear weapons that can strike the US and allies.
For one thing, the US military is strong but they aren't bomb-China or conquer-Russia strong. The article is from 2007 so the calculus with China has changed which has improved their military significantly in last decade. Finally, it doesn't really matter how strong military is when the opponent can vaporize it at will.
For any party that's hit, "several hits on capital + several other major cities + military bases hit" is effectively the same (deterrent) as "every major city hit". Both equate to "country in ruins" regardless exact # of cities hit. And therefore, an non-starter.
Having enough missiles to have a chance of hitting every adversary's missiles while still in their silo's, is... nonsense. In an all-out conflict, any number of missiles would 'escape', and massive devastation on all sides the result.
But I do wonder whether we'll see 'accidental' nuclear explosion some day. Non-rational dictator that pushes the button, conventional conflict escalated into nuclear one, terrorism, or plain stupid accident / misunderstanding / technical glitch. There have been some near misses already, and higher # of bombs / missiles certainly ups the odds.
It took me 4 days on and off to read this, but it was highly rewarding just in terms of its writing and how compactly such a large amount of background and new information was conveyed. Thanks for posting.
I understand the argument that from a balance-of-terror perspective, submarine yields intended for decapitation strikes might dissuade or physically incapacitate (theoretical) cooler heads from (somehow?) de-escalating the conflict once nukes were in the air, but by the same token, I don't quite get it, because submarines are second-strike. One would think that a second-strike decapitation threat is exactly what might give a madman hiding in a bunker second thoughts about launching in the first place.
As far as my own personal preparations for surviving a nuclear holocaust, it probably makes no difference that I now understand the fusion lie, aside from a having a new bit of trivia to amuse myself with while I wait to die. In a way, though, the thought that there is no bunker deep enough to be safe is comforting. If everyone I know is going to die, I would like to think that the people responsible for it will die, too.
