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ShumaGorath wrote:Can we get a mod in here to police the troll?

Mmm...responding to a crack is trolling in Shumatown. Got it.

But who Trolls the Troll?

But to be pertinent to the thread:
Obama needs a win, any win at this point, even its a bad win. This should be way more concerning than start as it blows one of his key points out of the water and greatly increases the chances Holder will not be with us as AG come January.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/11/senior-administration-official-defends-ghailani-trial-verdict.html
That pretty much blows the whole "try 'em civilian courts" thing right out of the water.

Why?

dogma wrote:Why?

They blew the case, an easy case. 280 people died and he helped kill them and was convicted of one count. He almost walked. An important witness was premitted to testify. He might get 20 years. Thats nothing.

Holder's done.

What in the hell would we want to reduce our nuclear arsenal for?

There's no more Cold War. That's fantastic. Are we so sure that we really will never need a huge pile of nukes in the future though? Seems rather myopic to me. Not to mention the fact that the article doesn't really address the Russians pretty much telling the US to go feth itself when it denounced Russia's actions in South Ossetia when talking about the "relationship" between the two countries.

Well, Texas and New Mexico are both upping the ante in their annual "who has the hottest chili" competition. A little plutonium should be just the ticket to win this year.

Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium

Monster Rain wrote:What in the hell would we want to reduce our nuclear arsenal for?

There's no more Cold War. That's fantastic. Are we so sure that we really will never need a huge pile of nukes in the future though? Seems rather myopic to me. Not to mention the fact that the article doesn't really address the Russians pretty much telling the US to go feth itself when it denounced Russia's actions in South Ossetia.

What in the hell would we want to keep our nuclear arsenal for?

There's no more Cold War. That's fantastic! Are we so sure that we really will ever need a huge pile of nukes in the future though? Seems rather paranoid to me.

Monster Rain wrote:What in the hell would we want to reduce our nuclear arsenal for?

There's no more Cold War. That's fantastic. Are we so sure that we really will never need a huge pile of nukes in the future though? Seems rather myopic to me. Not to mention the fact that the article doesn't really address the Russians pretty much telling the US to go feth itself when it denounced Russia's actions in South Ossetia when talking about the "relationship" between the two countries.

They cost a hell of a lot to maintain, make our position concerning nuclear arms control the world over tenuous and difficult to enforce, we have roughly six times the number we actually could need, it makes non aligned nations like china and russia feel the need to have a similar arsenal, and we're in a time of severe national debt.


That enough reasons? It also doesn't help that many of them are aging and their CNC network is out of date.

The Dreadnote wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:What in the hell would we want to reduce our nuclear arsenal for?

There's no more Cold War. That's fantastic. Are we so sure that we really will never need a huge pile of nukes in the future though? Seems rather myopic to me. Not to mention the fact that the article doesn't really address the Russians pretty much telling the US to go feth itself when it denounced Russia's actions in South Ossetia.

What in the hell would we want to keep our nuclear arsenal for?

There's no more Cold War. That's fantastic! Are we so sure that we really will ever need a huge pile of nukes in the future though? Seems rather paranoid to me.

Paranoid or pragmatic? The idea that the whole world will always be best buddies forever now that the Cold War is over is a bit naive.




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ShumaGorath wrote:They cost a hell of a lot to maintain, make our position concerning nuclear arms control the world over tenuous and difficult to enforce, we have roughly six times the number we actually could need, it makes non aligned nations like china and russia feel the need to have a similar arsenal, and we're in a time of severe national debt.

Those are some good reasons, yes.

Meh, you know what Shuma? I will allow us to knock our arsenal down to twice what we actually need if your numbers are correct. Make it so.

Monster Rain wrote:Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium

Monster Rain wrote:
Paranoid or pragmatic? The idea that the whole world will always be best buddies forever now that the Cold War is over is a bit naive.

Those nuclear weapons sure have a fantastic ability to deter violence and induce compliance. Why, they worked wonders on Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. They just walked right out of power when we asked.

Also, I totally want to live in a world where the US has engaged in total nuclear war with any other power. That sounds grand. The multiple trillion dollar loss to the economy sure will boost my bear stocks.

Dogma, please tell me you aren't comparing a third-rate dictator and some tribal barbarians with the former Soviet Union for which the arsenal was built.

Monster Rain wrote:Dogma, please tell me you aren't comparing a third-rate dictator and some tribal barbarians with the former Soviet Union for which the arsenal was built.

He does make a point, and it's not like it made the Soviets dance to your tune either.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Dogma, please tell me you aren't comparing a third-rate dictator and some tribal barbarians with the former Soviet Union for which the arsenal was built.

He does make a point, and it's not like it made the Soviets dance to your tune either.

No but it did send them spiralling into an increasingly expensive arms and space race that they couldn't afford, ultimately bankrupting the USSR and leading to the end of the Cold War.

It's a good job our economic systems are so rebust and solid.

Heh heh.

reds8n wrote:It's a good job our economic systems are so rebust and solid.

Well hindsight is always 20/20...

As long as you can afford the opticians' fees anyway eh ?

I take the point that, realistically, some degree of Nuclear deterent needs to be kept, if only for "just in case".

But the current stocks are are OTT with regards to what we can see being needed. And bearing in mind the awful problems we are/may be looking at with regards to "lost" or stolen nuclear weapons from the former USSR finding their way to all manner of people we'd rather not have them,.. well.. sometimes, less is more, especially with regards to security.

reds8n wrote:As long as you can afford the opticians' fees anyway eh ?

I take the point that, realistically, some degree of Nuclear deterent needs to be kept, if only for "just in case".

But the current stocks are are OTT with regards to what we can see being needed. And bearing in mind the awful problems we are/may be looking at with regards to "lost" or stolen nuclear weapons from the former USSR finding their way to all manner of people we'd rather not have them,.. well.. sometimes, less is more, especially with regards to security.

This is true - I can't remember the actual statistic but apparently at the height of the Cold War, the US had enough nukes to destroy the entire world 5 times over or something incredible. That's an awful lot of mutually assured destruction for your taxpayer $ right there!

Indeed.

I'm all for redundancy in systems but..well... maybe if you've failed to destroy the world with your first two salvos of hot sexy atomic death, chalk it up to experience and don't go for third times the charm.

filbert wrote:This is true - I can't remember the actual statistic but apparently at the height of the Cold War, the US had enough nukes to destroy the entire world 5 times over or something incredible. That's an awful lot of mutually assured destruction for your taxpayer $ right there!

You'll want to find the exact statistic, and clearly define 'destroy the entire world 5 times over'. The peak nuclear arsenal would be enough to put a fireball on every city over some certain size, but not nearly enough to hit every town and village, much less kill every human, much less wipe out life on earth, much less do noticeable physical damage to the Earth as a whole. In general the excessively huge number of warheads were there from a combination of posturing and wanting to have enough warheads that you could deliver a counterstrike if the other side delivered a first strike.

Well..

as of 4th of May this year

The Pentagon said it had a total of 5,113 warheads in its nuclear stockpile at the end of September, down 84 percent from a peak of 31,225 in 1967. The arsenal stood at 22,217 warheads when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

The figure includes warheads that are operationally deployed, kept in active reserve and held in inactive storage. But it does not include "several thousand" warheads that are now retired and awaiting dismantlement, the Pentagon said

After that it gets awkward..

Carl Sagan and his colleagues in their studies found that a war in which 100 megatons were exploded in low-yield airbursts over cities could ignite thousands of fires. The smoke from these fires would be enough to generate a Nuclear Winter, darkening and chilling the earth and reducing world food crops

Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA., 1983.

Add to that the fallout, firestorms, total economic collapse of existing societies -- potentially irreversibly if, for example, things like oil fields are hit and/or polluted .. which, let's be honest, they would be.

So.. yeah, it's unlikely -- but not impossible -- that we wouldn't see or get the very mantle of the earth cracking, continental sized wildfires, mega tsunamis etc etc.. but. for us, it's game over.

I guess there might be a few hardy souls left over, enough to be fodder for our new radioactive mutant overlords or to star in an increasingly pisspoor series of films for a few years.

Meh, sebs got it.

reds8n wrote:Well..

as of 4th of May this year

The Pentagon said it had a total of 5,113 warheads in its nuclear stockpile at the end of September, down 84 percent from a peak of 31,225 in 1967. The arsenal stood at 22,217 warheads when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

The figure includes warheads that are operationally deployed, kept in active reserve and held in inactive storage. But it does not include "several thousand" warheads that are now retired and awaiting dismantlement, the Pentagon said

After that it gets awkward..

Carl Sagan and his colleagues in their studies found that a war in which 100 megatons were exploded in low-yield airbursts over cities could ignite thousands of fires. The smoke from these fires would be enough to generate a Nuclear Winter, darkening and chilling the earth and reducing world food crops

Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA., 1983.

Add to that the fallout, firestorms, total economic collapse of existing societies -- potentially irreversibly if, for example, things like oil fields are hit and/or polluted .. which, let's be honest, they would be.

So.. yeah, it's unlikely -- but not impossible -- that we wouldn't see or get the very mantle of the earth cracking, continental sized wildfires, mega tsunamis etc etc.. but. for us, it's game over.

I guess there might be a few hardy souls left over, enough to be fodder for our new radioactive mutant overlords or to star in an increasingly pisspoor series of films for a few years.

I suppose bottom line is that any opinion on the subject is conjecture since no-one has really done any research into what happens when you explode 5K or so nukes at once across the globe. Suffice to say, it would probably be a bad day at the office.

reds8n wrote: Carl Sagan and his colleagues in their studies found that a war in which 100 megatons were exploded in low-yield airbursts over cities could ignite thousands of fires. The smoke from these fires would be enough to generate a Nuclear Winter, darkening and chilling the earth and reducing world food crops

Carl Sagan's work on Nuclear winter has not survived peer review, so quoting his 1983 work isn't really a good source. But there is reasonable support for the idea of nuclear winter, although you'd need far more than 100 megatons in any of the modern models. But so what? That just gives you the end up modern civilization which, while obviously bad, isn't the same thing as the end of the human race, much less the end of life on earth.

reds8n wrote:So.. yeah, it's unlikely -- but not impossible -- that we wouldn't see or get the very mantle of the earth cracking, continental sized wildfires, mega tsunamis etc etc.. but. for us, it's game over.

Was it game over for us 20,000 years ago when we lived through the last ice age, which was colder than any nuclear winter projections that I've ever seen?

Yeah, it's cool to exaggerate effects of nuclear weapons, but it doesn't really lead to sensible discussion on the topic - jsn't 'the end of civilization as we know it' sufficiently bad that you don't need to exaggerate it? Then again, I am posting seriously in the OT forum, which doesn't usually lead to sensible discussion anyway.

I for one, would welcome the Fallout. I call dibs on the Pip-Boys and....... the Euclids C-Finder.

Frazzled wrote:
They blew the case, an easy case. 280 people died and he helped kill them and was convicted of one count. He almost walked. An important witness was premitted to testify. He might get 20 years. Thats nothing.

How does that ruin the case for civilian trial?

Frazzled wrote:
Holder's done.

I'm not interested in whether or not Holder is done, though I've heard very little regarding that outside random internet rants.


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Monster Rain wrote:Dogma, please tell me you aren't comparing a third-rate dictator and some tribal barbarians with the former Soviet Union for which the arsenal was built.

Hussein was a pretty effective dictator actually. Way better at it than that joker Pinochet.

In any case, my point is that nuclear weapons don't seem to have much of a deterrent effect, given that we're actively involved in hostilities in 2 different nations, and that we've fought numerous wars since obtaining them.

You could argue that nukes keep us out of conflicts with major powers, but I'd counter that no major power will ever use a nuclear warhead on another. The economic cost of doing so would be staggering; far worse than any return strike.

I mean, can you actually imagine a scenario that leads to nuclear war? Would you even want to return fire if such a scenario came to pass?


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filbert wrote:
No but it did send them spiralling into an increasingly expensive arms and space race that they couldn't afford, ultimately bankrupting the USSR and leading to the end of the Cold War.

The arms race didn't bankrupt the Soviets. Terrible economic policy bankrupted the Soviets.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:
Was it game over for us 20,000 years ago when we lived through the last ice age, which was colder than any nuclear winter projections that I've ever seen?

The situation is entirely different. The last ice age occured gradually and slowly giving the humans of the era time to adjust and adapt. This is practically an overnight switch with next to no preparation time, with a population that largely lacks the equipment and skills to survive for any extended period of time in such a setting.

Plus the last ice age didn't have radioactive fallout and lethally poisonous water as an added side affect. The closest past event really would be something coparable to the impact(s) that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. IE a catastrophic event on a planetary scale has, and can again, cause the extinction of the dominant species on the planet.

The difference this time being that we will have built, paid for and unleashed this upon ourselves. Hooray for free will eh !

There was an editorial piece in the Evening Standard last night, which included this and some other examples of issues where some Republicans are more concerned with crippling the Obama presidency than good governance of the nation.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Immigration, were mentioned.

Yes. The Military is going to dismiss Don't Ask Don't Tell soon anyway, but local repugs are mad at the military for it.