For myself I think they are something that has to go. When it comes to the power of them a single nuke is destructive on its own. Two thirds of Hiroshima ended up getting destroyed by an amount of uranium the size of a pepper corn and nowadays nukes are a lot more powerful. I know we don't have ones this powerful outside the test but here is how powerful the Castle Bravo test was. I'm going to remember this as best as I can from the podcast about the Illusion of Safety book. If you detonated that thing in Washington DC the fallout would kill everybody there, everybody in Philadelphia and half of New York. Like I said it was a test nuke but the nukes of today are still powerful. You don't need to drop a shit load to fuck up a nation. Once one is dropped the damage done will take years for the area to be liveable again. A weapon like that is just wrong.

When it comes to accidents it's amazing that the US didn't have any go off in the country. There's been a few times where a nuke ended up falling out of the bomb bay and there was one that almost nuked North Carolina. If it wasn't for the 5 safety lock that thing would have went off due to the other being triggered. Then there is the Titian 2 which is 3 times as powerful as every explosive weapon that was used in WW2 including the two nukes. A socket from a wrench ended up falling off and on the way down it punched a hole in the rocket which caused the fuel to leak. If a spark ended up causing that to go off that nuke would have went along with it. Recently the US lost track of 50 nukes due to the connection between the base and the control enter going dead. Yes you would still need codes to launch them but it's still the fact we lost track of our nukes. Something like that could be deadly in a terrorist type of attack. There are many other accidents as well that happened. For the US itself we are probably the safest at handling them but it still doesn't change that we almost nuked our self's or lost track of our nukes. Imaging how well nukes are handled in places like India and Pakistan. When an advanced nation like the US has problems with handling nukes less developed countries would have it even worse which is a problem.   

The more countries that have nukes the problem about them greatly increases. Lets face it if every country had nukes that there wouldn't decrease the chances of a nuclear war. The chance of one braking out would greatly increase due to more countries having them and the problems along with it. In the US a glitch ended up making it look like Russia ended up sending 2,000 nukes our way. Imagine a glitch like that happening in a country that is about 10 minutes away strike range from another country that has them. There wouldn't be much time to think so they might panic and send the nukes without first seeing if it is really a strike being launched at them. The more nukes you have the higher the chances of a war with them, the threat of a terrorist act increases and so does the accidents. If we truly want to be safe with nukes then would should deactivate them and pretend they are armed. Nuclear weapons are nothing more than an illusion of safety.

Arent modern warheads designed to have stronger blast yields without nearly as much residual effect?

Anyways I'm not all too sure about it. I feel international politics surroundin them is predatory, fickle, and hypocritical coming from nations who continue to sit on unrealistic stockpiles and would rather allow everyone to lose than to lose themselves. But in the end it's all how you'd expect governments to act.

I wish nuclear energy wasn't held back by these things, fossil fuels need to stop.

Quote from: Majestic Star Dragon on July 29, 2015, 06:01:59 AM

although their potential to stop asteroid collisions may be a it closer to a considerable trade off.

If it's by blowing them up it's not going to work as great as you think. You're still going to have around the same mass coming down to earth and since the asteroid is broken up you're going to have pieces coming down which would do even more damage.

I meant deflecting them. Given enough time (decades or maybe centuries in advanced though) nuclear detonations would chance the trajectory enough to avoid an impact.

MAD only really works when everyone has nukes. Plus it only takes one cock up to implode the planet.

With the likes of Russia, NK and Iran I doubt we'll see disarmament any time soon.

It's really just a question of scale at this point. Airbursts dissipate radiation relatively quickly, so we're not worried about irradiating the planet for centuries, e.g. Fallout. If modern nukes are too big, how about city-busters like Fat Man? Too big still, well then what about blockbusters? Armor-piercing or bunker busters? Should bombs only blow up a single building? Part of a building? Should they just shake the building a little bit and do no harm? Should we only use bullets? Well then how big is too big for artillery or ship guns? Etc.

The possession of nukes by a civilized coalition is a strong deterrent against forces that oppose said coalition. It's pretty much impossible that we'll ever see nations so vehemently radicalized that their citizenry itself is hostile, as we saw from Japan, but who knows?

I mean, I hate the necessity of weaponry to begin with. I don't like things that are created with the sole purpose of killing others.

An incredible feat for the scientific and engineering world, but in all honesty I think they are terrible because they poison lands and kill innocent people and animals.

We should build them.

Quote from: Majestic Star Dragon on July 29, 2015, 06:01:59 AM

although their potential to stop asteroid collisions may be a it closer to a considerable trade off.

If it's by blowing them up it's not going to work as great as you think. You're still going to have around the same mass coming down to earth and since the asteroid is broken up you're going to have pieces coming down which would do even more damage.

stop

Necessary evil.

Quote from: BaconShelf on July 30, 2015, 01:38:55 AM

I'm a great believer in MAD, an it being why we haven't had a major war since WWII.

You can also make the counter that they are the reason why we almost had another major war. Something simple in the monitoring system ended up braking we caused 2,000 fake nukes to be heading towards the US. If we jumped the gun we would have ended life. During the Cuban Missile Crisis which the clock was at three minutes to midnight. There's also that period when Russia set off their first nuke test. Having nuclear weapons are more of a problem than not having them. In today's world the world as calmed down a lot more than what it was during the Cold War and before that. Now it's really just the Middle East starting shit and maybe North Korea which really isn't a threat.

It's a double-edged sword. I mean, I believe that NATO and USSR would have gone to war in the Cold War if the threat of ICBM's wasn't a thing. Nukes are now scaring us into not fighting. Maybe when it gets to the point where we co-operate because everyone is happy, then we will disarm.

If anything we need MORE nukes.