I am disgusted by the “nuke 'em all with all the nukes” thread. But it illustrates the difference (time to Godwinize both threads) of the levels of evil between Stalin and Hitler. Stalin had a pile of nukes by the end of this life. He didn’t use them. Hitler would have used every damn one of them.
Killing millions of people because you can, whether they can fight back or not, is evil. That is why we don’t do it. Duh.
Okay, and this deserves a mention too:
Feynman was a scientist. What he would have commented about on data that he didn’t comment about isn’t science, it is speculative bullshit.
Please. With all due respect to Sam, who is one of our more intelligent and sophisticated Dopercons, he ain’t no Saturn V, and certainly not in that scenario.
Except that he’d already have dropped his bombs on San Francisco, Honolulu and Oakland by now. I’m pretty sure the Air Force only wants people who’ll push the button when they’re told.
I mean, I don’t know many USAF wing commanders but I’m pretty sure all the Air Force personnel I do know would recoil in horror at the thought of vaporizing 50 million noncombatants.
I was part of a Missile Combat Crew that had primary control and responsibility for the 10 Minuteman missiles within our flight. At the Launch Control Facility we could monitor and launch the missiles. The LCF was connected to the 10 LFs in the flight through a system of hardened underground cables. There we 5 flights in a squadron for a total of 50 missiles and 3 or 4 squadrons in a wing.
This ex-USAF enlistee (cryptologic linguist) does recoil in horror at the concept. Like any sane being, it would take an act of God (and note I am an atheist) to get me to nuke someone outside of Civilization V. Any employer that employs tens of thousands of people will let a few loons slip thru. They can be so good at appearing normal for periods of time.
Actually no; they want people who’d be willing to do so if given the orders, not ones who’d likely push the button if given the smallest opportunity. The phrase “loose cannon” comes to mind.
Hey, no selection system is perfect, and the ‘gleefully eager’ can sometimes tone it down enough to pass for sane. That’s why there are procedures in place that require ‘presidential authorization codes’ and ‘two men on the switch’, neither of which can launch on his own.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a random nutter can get in there, sometimes. Our subject of this thread seems to be ‘one of those nutters’. Makes me feel much better about all the times I was working as a construction inspector on a SAC base. It was made incredibly clear to us that ‘Those guys hanging out with M-16s’ just outside the construction barricades were there, not to protect us, but to shoot us, if we went beyond the barricades. I went on Google Maps satellite pix and looked at where I was, once, a while ago. The pavement I was responsible for is easily visible, 20 years later. I was about 150 meters away from the active bombers, with active nukes.
Yeah, I would have been drilled thru the head if I’d stepped over that line. I wasn’t tempted. And that doesn’t begin to address the fun when I was at a local SPACECOM facility, which was about 20 miles away from the SAC base.
The key-operated switches were 12 feet apart, so it was impossible for one person to turn both.
The commander and deputy both had turn keys within two seconds of each other or the launch sequence would not happen.
And additionally, the final command to launch also required another outside “vote” (two missileers performing the same procedure at another Launch Control Center).
If everything was done correctly, explosive gas generators would push open the 110-ton blast doors covering the silos and the Minuteman missiles would streak toward the sky. Then the “MISSILE AWAY” lights would illuminate on the commander’s console.