It might all be sabre ratting at this point but are we a being naive to think it can never happen?
PRK and South Korea, China, the ENTIRE Middle East… when will our planet see the first nuclear attack on another country since WWII?
Poll coming…
At this point, I think it will be never. There just isn’t a way to justify a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear country. How could they pose a threat great enough to warrant complete annihilation? So chances are, they either have nuclear allies or it would just piss off enough of the world that it would guarantee they get all but destroyed. And, of course, attacking a nuclear nation brings up the whole mutually assured destruction.
The only way I could see it happening is if someone truly nuts and bent on either ending the world or genocide at any cost got into power in a less stable nation with nukes. That seems pretty unlikely though.
I think we will see an incident of nuclear terrorism within a couple of decades. Nations are not likely to start nuking each other because of the inevitable retaliation, but terrorists have nothing to lose.
Terrorism will always be a possibility. State-on-state is unlikely, but possible if the right set of circumstances comes to pass–say, an Islamist coup in Pakistan, or a sufficiently wacky Ayatollah in a nuclear-armed Iran. I’m fairly sure that Russia has tighted its launch procedures since the 1960s–as I recall, it was at the individual commander’s level. If that were still the case, all it would take was one suicidal Russian soldier…
I think it’ll be in the next decade or so.
It almost certainly won’t be from one of the big 5 (US, Russia, UK, France, China), but may well be from someone like a N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan or India.
In a state-on-state situation, I suspect it’ll be N. Korea, but in a terrorism situation, the bomb could come/be stolen from any of the second 4 I mentioned.
There’s also the possibility of ground-up nuclear terrorism- someone might figure out a way to get hold of enough plutonium smoke detectors to make a workable pit, or something crazy along those lines.
I would switch India and China on your list
I think the NK regime knows if they go nuclear their entire leadership will be killed or spend their lives in prison. So I don’t think they’d actually use a nuclear weapon, at least not as an offensive weapon (maybe as a last ditch defensive weapon). However terrorist groups getting a nuke seems like the highest risk. Al Qaeda is (or at least was) full of very well educated people, so making a nuclear bomb wouldn’t be hard for them if they have the fissionable material.
Nation states have too much to lose by using nuclear weapons. Unless a nation is being invaded by another nation w/o nukes, and the nuclear powered nation is about to lose. If Germany had nukes I bet they would’ve used them when the soviets were approaching Berlin. So if a situation like that would ever come up, then I could see a nation using them.
The problem is how realistic is that? there are something like 9 nations with nukes (US, UK, France, Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, N. Korea). Aside from North Korea letting them fly while their regime is on its last legs, I don’t know what geopolitical situations would make this realistic. Maybe if India attacked Pakistan and Pakistan was about to fall too, or if the middle east attacked Israel and were actually successful at it.
I picked within 50 years, because sooner or later I find it inevitable that someone will be ruthless, crazy or desperate enough to use nukes. Pakistan falls apart, India & Pakistan go all out, North Korea collapses and throws everything it has at its neighbors…something like that.
Actually that’s not necessarily true. Pakistan and India for example would likely not totally destroy each other with their limited number of nukes. Which of course just makes the situation more unstable.
I went with 25 years, to allow time for even more proliferation to occur. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next state to use nukes isn’t one of those who are confirmed to have them at this stage.
Oh, how I long for days past (post WWll) when nuclear weapons were simply political weapons as opposed to tactical weapons. Thanks to advances in technology , those days are gone.
(I assumed the OP wasn’t specifically referring to the U.S. attacking another country.)
I’m pretty sure things in the Middle East will keep escalating as they’ve been doing for decades. I went with 10 years.
No. They would simply destroy every major, medium and small sized urban area.:rolleyes:
They don’t have anywhere near the number of nuclear weapons to be able to do that. At most they have about a hundred each. Not the thousands that the USA and USSR were prepared to fire at each other.
I don’t think MAD necessarily requires eliminating every single citizen of the other country, just the ability to do massive and irreversible damage. Sure, Russia and the US had enough nukes during the cold war to kill everyone in the othe country 10x over, but all it really takes is enough damage to make the consequences unthinkable. If Russia had only a hundred nukes, but aimed them all at the highest population areas like New York, LA, Chicago, Boston, DC/Baltimore, etc. it would have served as effectively the same level of deterent. They would have still caused a massive deathtoll, crippled our economy, and toppled our government into anarchy. To some extent, that is actually worse than just killing us all because there’d be more people left to suffer in the aftermath and likely other nations coming in and asserting power and all sorts of things.
So, as far as India and Pakistan, I think they’re evenly enough matched that it still holds. Whereas a nation like North Korea doesn’t have enough to prevent another country from attacking them, within 5-10 years they could at best take out a city or two whereas most of the rest could wipe them out, so at least the self-preservation aspect ought to keep them in check and the rest I think are stable enough not to wantonly attack them.
I agree with this. The big boys have had enough experience and time to develop more mature and safeguarded nuclear weapon systems. Some of the other countries are less stable, have more strapped-together weapon systems (more likelihood of accidents) and have less to lose if they start something. A nuclear weapon is far more likely to come from one of these than the larger countries listed above.
However, I might include India in the larger countries, and I might put Israel in the more likely-to-use countries. Israel is more likely to use them out of real or perceived desperation. Not that I can entirely blame them.
When those who remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its victims are all dead, the risk will be greater. When those who grew up in the shadow of the Cold War are all dead, it will be greater still. When the sabre-rattlers are all born in the 1970s or later, I think the odds go up.
But I hope never.
Oh I will blame them… :eek:
I will blame anyone that launches a nuke for any reason. :dubious:
I said ten years. The technology is to widespread and there are too many fanatics. I think detonation of a radiological bomb is even more certain.
I’ll guess some time between 50 years and never.
There are several plausible ways a nuclear weapon could be used:
- Iran develops, or is about to develop, nukes. U.S. or Israel know where they are but they are underground and can only be destroyed by nukes.
- Kim Jong-un, shy awkward young man who is Supreme Leader of N.K., gets suicidal. Even most dictatorships have some top-level command structure to protect against a single maniac, but are we sure N.K. does?
- Some country, e.g. North Korea, miscalculates and begins a very high casualty war. U.S. calculates quick nuclear retaliation will save lives.
- Renegade individual gets control of nukes. He might detonate one just as a demo for potential purchasers.
- It recently came to light that in 1962 a Soviet submarine almost fired a nuclear torpedo at U.S. ship. Are such tactical nukes still in common use?
These seem like present-day dangers. Since dangers might increase in future rather than lessen, “within 25 years” seems not unlikely.