Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a Nuclear War Yet?

http://nautil.us/blog/why-hasnt-the-world-been-destroyed-in-a-nuclear-war-yet

by sasvari • 11 years ago

44 97 11 years ago

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Simple really. Rational nations led by rational leaders have had access to nuclear weapons. Both sides had one goal, to live, which means never really wanting to use them

the danger this day and age is that are some very irrational powers, possibly including leaders and the countries they represent, that, well, don't think the same.

Even India and Pakistan get along because neither side is governed by fanatical leadership. Likely the real danger comes from one of the more intolerant sects of Islam

yodsanklai• 11 years ago

I wonder, why are nuclear weapons so hard to build? is it possible that in a near future an average terrorist is able to build one?

simonh2• 11 years ago

They are hard to build because once the chain raction starts in the nuclear material, the resulting reaction tends to break up and disperse the nuclear material before the chain reaction progresses very far. It's called a fizzle. Fission bombs are designed with a wrap-around concave shaped charge of conventional explosive around the nuclear material. This is detonated as the critical mass of nuclear material is slammed together, and the compression wave from the conventional explosion holds the fissioning mass of nuclear material together long enough for the chain reaction explosion to complete. The engineering for this and the precise timing and controll of the detonation sequence is extremely hard.

hga• 11 years ago

Getting the fissionables to make a bomb requires major industrial effort. And an "average terrorist" would only be able to build a gun assembly bomb like Little Boy, which requires a lot of uranium 235.

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

They are quite easy to build. Finding pure enough fissile material is the hard part.

andyjohnson02• 11 years ago

Nuclear weapons are hard to engineer [1]. Assembly requires a lot of expensive engineering resources and access to raw materials. By the time you've got the infrastructure together you're no longer an average terrorist, but more like a small state or maybe a corporation, and vulnerable to espionage or military disruption by other players. Terrorists are interested in using terror to achive

BUT the US government ran a study in the early sixties, called the "Nth Country Experiment" [2], that took a few recent physics PHDs and paid them to see if they could develop a design for a nuclear weapon. They surprised everyone by designing a credible implosion weapon. So it can be done. And the amount of available information and technology is better than fifty years ago.

[1] http://fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment

lmm2• 11 years ago

The ones in 1945 were prototypes with everything that implies. And fundamentally we don't build or use a lot of them, so they're slow to improve (think space rockets, not microchips).

That said they're not that hard, and they get easier every day. At an anti-proliferation conference a few years ago Iran argued that any world-class university physics department probably has the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, and commentators agreed. Eventually it'll reach the point where a high school AP student could do it.

Houshalter5• 11 years ago

I've always wondered about the Chicago Pile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1

It's a very primitive device compared to a nuclear weapon, but it could have created an runaway nuclear reaction and do a ton of damage.

meira4• 11 years ago

United States dumps two bombs with no reason in Japan and you are saying that only rational leaders and rational nations have access to nuclear weapons?

We are not in a nuclear war because US makes more profit based in the fear than in the use of the bombs. Don't play this "intolerant" game.

Kurtz792• 11 years ago

I´m neither American nor a fan of US foreign policy, but you seem to be overlooking the small fact that the US was at war with Japan at the time.

The bombs made clear that the US had the upper hand in warfare technology (and no scruples in taking advantage of it) and that action ended the war without additional casualties on US part.

The decision wasn't neither humane nor merciful , but from a rational point of view made a lot of sense.

mikeash7• 11 years ago

Really, "with no reason"? There were plenty of reasons. You can debate whether they were good or bad, or justified what was done, but to just dismiss it all as "no reason" is ridiculous. Even people who think that dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was completely reprehensible will still say that there was a reason for it, like putting a fright into the Soviets.

Houshalter5• 11 years ago

You can debate whether it was ethical to use them or not, but you can't say it was irrational. They were at war with the country and trying to use every advantage to end it as quickly as possible.

That's very different than starting a nuclear war for the hell of it knowing your country will be totally destroyed as a result.

simonh2• 11 years ago

It's not that simple at all. Several times systems and procedures were set up to trigger nuclear escalation, and even though those sytems and procedures indicating making an attack, the person who had the final say in doing so chose not to. Thsy didn't make that choice necessarily knowing about game theory or Nash equilibriums, they weren't following deliberately concieved national strategic policy. They just made a judgement call.

Houshalter5• 11 years ago

You don't need to know anything about game theory to say "hey, I don't want to start a nuclear war and think I should precede very cautiously."

The only two incidents I'm aware of where it got that close, one was stopped by an officer before it even got up the chain of command. The other got to Yeltsin, who made the very rational call to wait and see if there was an error before starting a nuclear war.

tormeh• 11 years ago

Even Iran and Saudi Arabia are pretty rational when it all comes down to it. The leaders are usually just pious on the surface - not even close to suicidal martyrs[0]

The real problem is the suicide sects, which is what I assume you meant.

0: http://nerdist.com/sex-nerd-sandra-30-harem-hottie/ (Interview with a former prostitute to the harem of the prince of Brunei. Alcohol is verboten in Brunei as a muslim country. Not only did the royals, other leaders and prostitutes do alcohol, they also did cocaine and everything else you can imagine)

abandonliberty• 11 years ago

This is reminiscent of Machiavelli's The Prince, which is a very interesting read far more nuanced than popular knowledge would imply.

He mentions a leader should only appear to be very pious.

Of course, there are claims that the book was seditionary; designed to mislead the powerful and create unrest.

coob2• 11 years ago

Rationality won't save us, according to McNamara[1]

[1] http://nothingbuttherain.com/2013/08/12/lesson-2-rationality...

exarch• 11 years ago

What a bunch of colonialist garbage. You're probably Israeli, right?

"Rational nations"? Get real. No nations are rational. Nations are driven by political systems that are driven by the emotions of the populations of those places. Are human emotions rational? Are human emotions more rational in Israel than they are in Ghana or North Korea?

classicsnoot3• 11 years ago

https://www.ted.com/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_te...

oskarth3• 11 years ago

I'm glad the author says "one starts to wonder if it really is plain dumb luck". Another way to answer the question:

Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a Nuclear War Yet?

Because in an alternative universe where there was a nuclear war, this has already happened, and there was no one left to ask the question. Or if there was, they certainly had better things to do.

See also: most questions and statements about real estate in 2007, or on Long Term Capital Management and their scientifically proven methods before their demise.

Survivorship bias is a PITA.

EDIT: Someone doesn't understand probability. Possible worlds is the only rigorous way of reasoning about counterfactuals.

onion2k2• 11 years ago

It could be that, for some as yet unknown reason, nuclear war is impossible so in all the countless other worlds nuclear war has never happened.

oskarth3• 11 years ago

Do you have any reason to believe that to be the case?

I agree that self-preservation has probably been a factor in the more than dozen close-calls the world has seen, but I would hardly call it impossible. There are many instances of humans failing to self-preserve.

dghf• 11 years ago

The Anthropic Principle as applied to nuclear Armageddon (or lack thereof).

drostie• 11 years ago

The problem is that we don't truly believe in the strongest notions of the Anthropic principle. You can relativize it to yourself and then apply it to future events: "I will sit locked in this room where this bomb will detonate unless these numbers on my lottery ticket are the winning numbers tomorrow" does not sound wise but insane.

speakeron• 11 years ago

The trouble with the alternate worlds (and the very similar quantum suicide) idea, is that there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population). Why haven't we seen any of those paths?

smacktoward3• 11 years ago

there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population)

Not with modern thermonuclear weapons, there isn't. There's no hole you can dig deep enough to save you from one of those going off right next to you.

lmm2• 11 years ago

What's the expected number of person-minutes of life among people surviving a nuclear war? I'm guessing a lot less than for people surviving the absence of one.

macspoofing• 11 years ago

Give it time. We've only had nuclear weapons for a few decades.

Ygg22• 11 years ago

Actually, for more than half of century.

dagw• 11 years ago

Actually, for less than 600000 hours.

cm21872• 11 years ago

I think the only reason is luck really.

Stalin died shortly after the Soviet Union became a nuclear power. I read an interview of Beria's son explaining that Stalin was planning an all-out nuclear war. Given that killing a few dozen million people wasn't really a big deal to Stalin, there was a real risk he would have gone ahead.

McNamara in the excellent Fog of War also mentioned that Kennedy was extremely close to giving the order to bomb Cuba, I think he even mentioned that at one point the order had been signed, ready to go.

The Cold War is gone, but I think we have another danger. Drones and Robots have made it much cheaper for big powers to be more aggressive militarily. And the US is working actively on shields that could shoot down ICBMs. If the US can attack cheaply on the ground (as in with no US casualty) and not be deterred by a nuclear response, war is just bound to happen.

darkmighty• 11 years ago

Yes, it's a diabolical situation that a good defense system actually increases the risks, that is, a defense system promotes war.

It's a risk-vs-return situation: the nuclear standoff brings the risk of complete destruction, but that has low probability; while conventional weapons make mutual obliteration harder, but increase the likelihood of some war.

arethuza4• 11 years ago

"Stalin was planning an all-out nuclear war"

It seems unlikely that Stalin would have planned a war which would have been so completely one-sided. The Soviets didn't really achieve any kind of parity with US strategic weapons until well into the 1970s.

Starting an "all out" war with the US with LeMay in command of SAC would have been national suicide - and the Soviets knew they were at a huge disadvantage. Stalin was lots of things but I don't think he could ever be accused of being stupid.

Edit: Mind you I suppose it was possible that the Soviets thought they could invade Western Europe and survive the inevitable US and UK attack - but the US would have been untouched in such a scenario which probably wouldn't be a good idea...

cm21872• 11 years ago

I think the point was rather that Stalin was happy to use nuclear weapons casually, as just another weapon in the arsenal.

We tend to forget that all sides in WW2 happily carpet bombed cities and civilians. Using nuclear weapons to achieve the same result more efficiently would have been only a logical evolution.

In a way we are lucky that nuclear weapons only arrived late in the game and that after the war all sides preferred a status quo.

a8da6b0c91d2• 11 years ago

If the US can attack cheaply on the ground (as in with no US casualty) and not be deterred by a nuclear response, war is just bound to happen.

This gets at the real reason there have ever been some long spans without huge wars: stable balance of power. Usually in world history when the World Order changed much there were big wars involved. In the 20th century the USSR and China and NATO formed a relatively stable set of opposing forces.

ethbro2• 11 years ago

Also, the adage that democracies are disinclined to [suddenly] go to war.

Which builds in a moderating effect to the calculus when at least one side has democratic government.

charlysisto• 11 years ago

Because we're still here to write about it !

Sorry for this silly recursive joke. However it has a point : For some philosophers (e.g : Gerard Dupuy) theorizing the self realizing prophecies, in order to prevent a catastrophy, you need to think about it as if it already happened in the future. It is the only way to act on it to counteract the curse of determinism... Enjoy the paradox !

towelguy2• 11 years ago

Humanity might get wiped but the world will stay where it is. What amount of energy is necessary to actually destroy the world?

saiya-jin3• 11 years ago

If by world you mean earth, and by destroying you mean something like splitting planet open, then I presume way more than current arsenal of usable nukes.

Destruction of mankind would be relatively easy, we've become frail and our society severely depends on easily disruptible things like electricity. If you mean destruction of life itself, anything short of black hole/sun going supernova is not enough.

mikeash7• 11 years ago

The gravitational binding energy (what it would take to turn the Earth into a collection of floating, unbound gravel) is equivalent to about a week's worth of the Sun's total output. (Not a week of what the Earth receives, but a week of the entire output. Quite a lot.)

The energy required merely to sterilize the crust of all life is vastly lower, of course. But still many orders of magnitude greater than the world's nuclear arsenals.

Even destroying mankind would be pretty tough. Destroying modern civilization is probably doable, but people would endure. Lots of people get by with subsistence farming now, and their lives wouldn't change so much.

Ygg22• 11 years ago

I think people miss point of Dead Hand.

It's not to prevent US from launching a pre-emptive strike, it exists to prevent USSR from launching a pre-emptive strike.

michaelt2• 11 years ago

There was a time when people wondered if it would be possible to have a limited nuclear war. Hypothetically, if Russian land forces invaded France, could we launch a few small nukes at military targets only, to scare them off? They'll see it's a small scale attack and decide not to retaliate because they don't want to trigger MAD any more than we do. Right? And that way we can save money on conventional forces, as nukes are all we need.

By creating a fully automated doomsday device which will trigger MAD even in the event of a limited nuclear war the possibility of a limited nuclear war is taken off the table - and with it, the possibility of cutting back on conventional forces.

maho• 11 years ago

In the recent discussion about the article "Almost everything in Dr. Strangelove was true" [0], mikeash posted a link to a captivating alternate-history story about the Cuban Missile Crisis going horribly bad:

http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345

arethuza4• 11 years ago

A novel based in the aftermath of a "Cuban War":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day

michaelt2• 11 years ago

In the book "The Stragegy of Conflict" Thomas Schelling proposes accidental launches as a form of "randomised threats" which let you position yourself in between "I certainly won't launch" (not a threat) and "I certainly will launch" (not a credible threat, as not rational due to MAD)

A Washington Post article [1] describes it like so:

So you're standing at the edge of a cliff, chained by the ankle to someone else. You'll be released, and one of you will get a large prize, as soon as the other gives in. How do you persuade the other guy to give in, when the only method at your disposal -- threatening to push him off the cliff -- would doom you both?

Answer: You start dancing, closer and closer to the edge. That way, you don't have to convince him that you would do something totally irrational: plunge him and yourself off the cliff. You just have to convince him that you are prepared to take a higher risk than he is of accidentally falling off the cliff. If you can do that, you win.

So in the Cuban missile crisis accidental launches, not intentional launches, are what the Russians are threatened with. And when designing a nuclear deterrent, it's actually useful if the failsafes aren't 100% reliable - if a rogue general sets your nuclear launch code to all zeros [2] and they make sure the Russians find out about it, that's actually a good thing.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10... [2] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/12/11/for-nearly-20-ye...

erikb2• 11 years ago

Reminds me of that situation in The Dark Knight (Batman 2), where both sides couldn't bring themselves to kill so many people although they were sure that would mean their own death.

I wonder if we people really are like that, because at the same time there are many examples of people having threats to their own life or a loved one's life trigger them to kill another person.

towelguy2• 11 years ago

People donate organs knowing it could reduce their life span.

erikb2• 11 years ago

Well, we talk about immediate, final threats to ones life, not something that might kill you one day in the future. If you hold a gun to one head and tell him to kill another person there is a certain assumption that he will do so.

If you count possible long term threats then of course people don't care. I just think about normal things like smoking, drinking, eating, couchpotatoing.

netcan• 11 years ago

One answer that is possible though not a popular idea is 'The UN.' More broadly it's the international governance that the UN is a part of. The UN's goal is/was largely preventing a nuclear WWIII, so it's at least worth considering.

It's easy to discount the UN. It's ineffective, self righteous without introspection, a paper tiger, a cynical dealmaking forum, undemocratic, etc. etc..

But… There are two influential UN agendas that have been to some extent, effective: Non Aggression and Non Proliferation.

Nonproliferation was a limited success. Only Pakistan, India, Israel & North Korea went nuclear despite it. Those are worrying, but do not amount to inevitable nuclear war.

If nuclear weapons were sold in the arms markets like ICBMs, fighter jets, cutting edge anti missile/aircraft defense systems, etc. then the list of nuclear powers would be much bigger than it is today. Sadaam's Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt & Saudi Arabia would have them (they have everything else). That's just one neighborhood. Non-State nuclear powers would be far more likely. 911 might have been a nuclear attack.

Non aggression is the second principle/agenda. Boiled down it means 'No Wars of Conquest'. If you conquer territory that is "rightfully" yours because ancestors or whatnot, no country will recognize your territorial gains ever.

Non Aggression has also been a limited success. Israel in 1967 is the high profile counter example. Russia in Ukraine is the bigger and more recent one. There have been other violations, but compared to the pre-UN period it is a different paradigm.

Instead, we have a paradigm of "intervention" and occupation instead of conquest or colonialism. It's not ideal but it does change the whole incentive-dynamic. No country's political discourse is dominated by the idea of expanding. That is uniquely true of the last 3 generations and no other period.

In that sense, the UN Non Aggression principle has successfully taken the spoils out of war and prevented the cyclical warfare which created the two Great Wars.

Ukraine is the counterexample and may be the end of the era. Who knows.

TLDR: The UN lowered incidence of wars between major powers via the "non aggression rule" and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to minor powers and non state actors via non proliferation initiatives. These two have been working together to keep the chances of nuclear war down, but it's a shaky system.

lordbusiness• 11 years ago

I couldn't agree more. Expansionist policies at the expense of the incumbent population are less and less accepted.

It's difficult to be convinced of this assertion when we have ongoing wars, but broadly speaking we are evolving to talk it out as opposed to fight it out.

digi_owl2• 11 years ago

Meh. I find the whole intervention thing very similar to the gradual English/British takeover of India.

You start out with a trading company that to protect their interests start training soldiers.

Then effectively take over administrative control of the place by propping up regional rulers.

But then gets in over its head and gets bailed out by the government.

Never mind the Banana Wars that USA was involved with in South America to protect United Fruit interests etc.

bakhy2• 11 years ago

(In the Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove, the Soviet Union deployed a similar “doomsday device” and also neglected to tell the world about it. In the film, Dr. Strangelove points out that not telling anyone obviates the deterrence of any deterrent device; the real-life Soviets seem to have missed the point.)

When I first read about the system, it was clearly explained that the idea was to put high-ranking Soviet generals at peace. If they know the system is there, they will not go paranoid and launch a nuclear war on their own (Dr Strangelove is one of the best movies ever). Yet, several times after that I have seen this "silly Soviets" way of telling the story, where authors completely seriously imply that the Soviets designed such a thing and then just, presumably out of pure stupidity (?), forgot to tell everyone. How can anyone find such an explanation acceptable?

Makes you wonder how much stupid shit we read every day, and accept it without noticing.

digi_owl2• 11 years ago

From what i recall, there is a exchange in the movie where it is mentioned that the Soviet president (premier?) was planning to unveil the system on May 1th.

bakhy2• 11 years ago

Yeah, they wanted it to be a surprise for the party congress or something :D

pvaldes• 11 years ago

Because a nuclear war with human weapons can not destroy the world nor even the life in the planet. Life is simply tougher than this.

A nuclear accident or weapon excels in one sigle matter, to wipe the human race. Humans are efficiently banned at least in some places of Ukranie and Japan now so... yes, is happening.

ArkyBeagle• 11 years ago

Basically, MAD plus level-headed ... sub captains equals stability. The number of near-misses was vanishingly small.

In a sense, nukes were more peaceful - the practical effect was to replace large armies with nukes for cost reasons. Using nukes destroys them, so there's a disincentive to actually use them. They're only any good if you don't use them. That's some catch, that Catch-22.

The Cold War is oh-so-much not nearly even close to WWI. Bismarck pretty much predicted WWI - down to the Balkan character of the spark that ignited it - not long after he was forced out of power in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Last_warning_...

" According to Albert Ballin, the year before he died Bismarck told him:

    "One day the great European War will come out of some
 damned foolish thing in the Balkans".[81]

riemannzeta2• 11 years ago

Another explanation offered by Schelling is that nuclear is generically different, basically ickier than other explosives.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/lau...

Fukushima is kind of reinforcing that sense of ickiness to the long-term detriment of nuclear as an alternative energy source, which is unfortunate because to me at least it appears to be the most viable.

classicsnoot3• 11 years ago

Submitting for opinions:

If any nation were to 'go nuclear' either preemptively or through natural escalation, they would in one stroke become the new Nazis and hold this title for the rest of recorded history; no societies with direct or indirect recollection of the event would ever forgive or forget the decision. Given that no nation on this planet is truly ruled by one person, the Collective in Charge would have to make the decision to out-Hitler Hitler. Therefore, i believe that even if [Russia were to use a 'Nuc after its initial thrust into Europe failed/ the US were to use a 'Nuc after Russia's initial thrust succeeded/ China were to use a 'Nuc after the Asian Pacific joined together in opposition/etc], no rational state actors would respond in kind.

classicsnoot3• 11 years ago

Also, in line with the above thought, there is no guarantee of global cataclysm if there is a Nuclear exchange. How big was the explosion from the Yucatan impact? Life was changed dramatically, but it was not extinguished.

DonGateley• 11 years ago

Because in this neighborhood of the superimposed wave function that comprises the multiverse that didn't happen. There are also an infinite number of neighborhoods where the ability to ask that question doesn't exist because of the event.

To ask why it didn't happen in this particular neighborhood is to ask why the lack of that event is possible. In a Q.M. multiverse "why" questions get real tricky.

Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a Nuclear War Yet?

Related Stories