Thoughts on nuclear war

Great Debates
1

I was watching the movie WarGames this morning and a few things occurred to me, things that I had hashed out very passionately in my history class this past semester. What happened in the class was a little roleplaying, and the results were quite ghoulish to me. My teacher, a former nuclear missile officer, contrived a scenario where there was spotty information but what was clear was that the former Soviet Union (or current Russia, if you prefer) was lauching their missiles and the President was presumed dead. A few students acted as a council and made the decisions concerning our response.

These students, all around 18 or so, do not remember the halcyon days of MAD and duck and cover. Even I, at 29, caught only a part of the nuclear scare during the Reagan years, so I can understand that. What I was amazed at, however, is how when they came to the end of the scenario, having vacillated for about 15 minutes about making a decision and being informed that the USSR had launched a full-scale nuclear strike, chose to lauch a full retaliatory strike, pretty much assuring the end of the world. What’s more, they did it laughing, and that so shook me up that I started to literally rage at them. They had no idea of the import of their decision. It’s almost as if they thought it could never happen, that the decision could be made as if they were playing Civilization III and all they had to do was hit reset and it would all be undone.

I have a few questions for you, and then I will answer them with my own thoughts.

First: Does the idea of possibly “winning” a nuclear war make it more likely to happen?
Second: As in the movie WarGames, if we remove men from the silos due to “reliability” issues, does that make nuclear war more likely to happen?
Third: Given the general bemusement and willingness of my classmates to push the button, in addition to their general ignorance of the fear that used to accompany nuclear weapons and the thought of nuclear war, should we be concerned about 30-40 years from now when that generation is in charge?

My responses:

To the first question: Absolutely. If MAD is assumed no sane person will push the button. However, since launching nukes is a fundamentally a political decision, if someone determines that not only can a nuclear war be won but they have a strategic advantage they may, repeat MAY, choose to launch. A follow-on with this is a missile shield like the one that Bush is proposing. That is scary because it may affect the balance in such a manner that one day a President may choose to launch, knowing that the US is safe from opposing missiles. To my mind that is not a good thing.

Second: Again, yes. If a machine is responsible for launching we may be certain that it will not hesitate. Just between you and me (and everyone else reading this) if Russia launches their missiles I would hope that the people in the silos (on both sides) would use their consciences and decide for themselves whether they want to end the world. I’m not on PRP (Personnel Reliability Program, what the military uses to monitor their nuclear officers and enlisted men and their psychological state at any given time) and I would never want to be because of that. After saying this I almost certainly couldn’t be anyway. Basically, leaving men in the silos may allow something to survive, whereas a machine would not.

Third: That scares the hell out of me. This is not Doom, this is life as we know it that we’re talking about. It is not a joke. With no institutional memory of the Bad Old Days, they may begin to think about nukes as just another weapon, again making them more likely to be used. I’m not convinced that the current crop of college kids quite understand that. YMMV, of course, but after my experience where they theoretically ended the world with a chuckle I find that to be a grave concern.

I’m willing to defend my thoughts, flesh them out a bit more if needs be, and I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong, but as of right now these are my opinions, and I’m pretty concerned about it. Nukes have left the public consciousness and have graduated to punchlines of jokes or climaxes of video games. I’m not asking for a return of the Evil Empire, but I think we definitely need to be aware of exactly what it is that these weapons can do and how we need to be more conscious of their existence, especially since the threat hasn’t gone away, it was just relegated to the shadows.

So, what do you guys think?

2

Is it possible that some or all of them may be using laughter to deal with nervousness?
Laughter at the subject of death, or nervous laughter, is a difficult to deal with thing, but they may be quite frightened by the possibility of atomic weapons.

Perhaps your instructor would be willing to assign a viewing of The Day After, if you raised your concerns?

BTW–these young people feel safe. Therefore, the mission of the USAF was a success, in the Cold War. Congratualtions on a victory. Life, & innocence, were preserved. :slight_smile:

3

I’m with you on the first two:

Yes, in fact applications of Game Theory in the 1950’s had some advisors calling for a US first strike because they considered a Soviet first strike inevitable sooner or later.

Watch Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ again (Von Neumann is thought to be the inspiration). The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is that it is certain to assure mutual destruction, and your enemy knows this. Deterrence, it is argued, depends on this 100% assurance.

This question has been asked throughout history - the fact is that young people grow up. I don’t think they’re underestimating the scale of destruction of their way of life - they’re just making damned sure that similar consequences follow for the nation or group which caused it (again, this is just sound deterrence), while immaturely laughing it off.

In any case, as we explored in this thread, ‘only’ the Northern Hemisphere would be drastically affected even by all-out nuclear war: it might even prove beneficial in the long run to developing infrastructure in the South over that short period in which the North was too hot to handle, radioactively speaking.

4

Perhaps, but to this point we have had people in charge who remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Soviet Union detonating their first hydrogen bomb, or Reagan posturing with Pershing missiles in Europe. All in charge have done the duck and cover drill.

This generation, the ones that came of age in the 1990s, remember none of this. A nuke does not have the horrible mystique it does for you and me and our parents. If Bush weren’t talking about the missile shield or new tactical nukes I doubt very many of them would even be aware that we still have any left. They have become shadow weapons, but no less destructive, and like I said before I’m just not sure that they have any respect for what they are, what they’ve done, and what they can do.

5

Well, this generation was also brought up on accurate and horrifying representations of the immense destructive power of nuclear weapons in films like Terminator 2. I think they are perfectly well aware that a single multiple warhead missile will wipe out most people in a city, and certainly after being trained to do those jobs involving such terrible decisions (which, of course, I rather doubt that the particular youthful cross-section you shared a class with would ever be in a position to influence).

6

Yes, absolutely.

Definitely.

It was a game. You were pretending. When I play Grand Theft Auto, I happily race my car down a street full of oncoming traffic. When I’m in a real car, the prospect of doing so scares the hell out of me. When I play Hitman, I occasionally go around killing people indiscriminately for a while just to see how many I can kill before they take me. In real life, the idea wouldn’t occur to me. I’m pretty sure that the idea to occur to me hasn’t even occurred to the idea yet. Your actions in a game don’t correspond to your actions in real life.

You’ve been in combat, and I assume you were in simulated training missions before the real ones. Surely you didn’t act and think exactly in the training missions as you did when it was the real thing? While you probably took the training missions more seriously than those kids took the classroom exercise, that’s because you were in the military where goofing off is less tolerated, and you were training for something that was a very immanent reality.

7

I also think they are well aware of the consequences but being young they treat these things with humour and irreverence to distance themselves from the stress of it. I would probably have done the same thing. “HAHA kill those Russians” blah blah. That sort of youthful immaturity.

8

Absolutely. Although, inre your answer to this one: the missile shield will be obsolete by the time it is able to accomplish a damned thing.

Again, absolutely.

I imagine that by the time that they become of age and start moving into positions of power, there will have been a nuclear weapon set off somewhere. At that point, they will be all too familiar with the fear that should accompany posession of nukes. I would imagine that the students in your class knew that what they were doing was playing a game. While that doesn’t excuse their actions, it provides a context for them.

9

Also Testament and On The Beach. You could have a whole utterly depressing post-nuclear war film fest! A full day of watching humanity rot from the inside!

What were you considering?

You mean something like:

“My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

-The President of the United States, 1984

The further we get away from the attitudes of the generation that actually used them, then treated them as “bargaining chips”, the better.

In addition, the further we get away from when a lot of the biggest and baddest weapons were actually built, the more they’ll be phased out.

While there’s plenty to worry about in terms of nukes, I wouldn’t get too worked up over the attitudes of a bunch of students towards a role-playing game. Despite their not growing up under the gloom of cold war I’m sure they know what a nuke can do.

10

Cite?

11

What really? I think it’s fair to say that the result wouldn’t be pleasant…

12

Quartz is probably one of the people who mean “end of the world” and “destroy the world” literally, as in “reduce the actual planet to pieces”. That, we cannot yet do, but we can make sure that a rather significant portion of all life is destroyed.

13

Yes; you just need a few nutjobs in charge who believe winning is everything and don’t mind breaking a few eggs to win, to get the whole ball o’ wax rolling.

It’s probably a wash. If the order to launch the missles came down, the odds are remote that every single key-turner will refuse to do the deed. Enough missiles will be launched to start the war, after which the use of human or computerized operators becomes a moot point.

I’d be more concerned about the folks currently in charge, myself. Young cadets laughing in a simulated wargame scenario don’t spook me half as much as older, allegedly-more-mature leaders who think it’s acceptable to cherry-pick intelligence and lie to the public to start a war – that’s the mindset that gives you the whole “winning is everything” problem from question #1.

14

rjung, do you really have to do that every time? Can’t we have one thread that doesn’t turn into a petty snipefest about modern American politics? Just occasionally, try not to insert some little stab against Bush in a post. Many of us would like to be able to talk about something else every now and again.

15

Nah. Quartz is one of those people who don’t spot that they haven’t added the smiley. :frowning:

16

Considering the OP is discussing nuclear war, government authorization, the destruction of civilization, and all that sort of stuff, I don’t see how it’s inappropriate.

Some of us think the craziness happening in the world today is at least as scary (if not more so) than the armagedden-hanging-over-our-heads Cold War paranoia of the last half-century; drawing parallels is hardly a reach.

You shouldn’t hang around Great Debates then, methinks.

17

To avoid hijacking this thread, I’ll reply in this Pit thread instead. Sorry for this, Airman.

18

Hey I enjoy his stabs against Bush, so the many of you can just sit there complain some more.

19
  1. Y’know, I don’t know that MAD holds true any more. At this point, I don’t see a nuclear threat on the scale of the USSR: there’s nobody on this planet, absent America, who can wipe our nation out, I believe. Therefore, if we were to get rid of our missiles–if we were to get rid of MAD–I don’t think we’d make nuclear war more likely. (The same logic, and realism, applies to my theory that dancing fuzzy happy bunnies ought to make everyone love one another and end war).

The nuclear threat these days comes from rogue states and from terrorists. Rogue states can be handled through conventional war (or, if retaliatory genocide is copacetic, via the dozen missiles that we keep behind after destroying all the rest); terrorists can’t be handled through nuclear reprisal.
2) Having computers in control is a terrible, terrible idea.
3) You say that the classmates weren’t playing a game of Doom–but they were. It was a game, and the problem was that they treated it as a game. I’d be annoyed at them for not taking the game seriously, but I wouldn’t be infuriated at them.

Daniel

20

Absolutely. It gets more and more probable with increased odds of survival. Remember all the fuss over the missile defense system. Whoever has the most people left at the end is the winner.

Yes. If the system is more reliable, then more missiles get launched. More of them die, and we win.

It’s hard to say given the age of the people you are talking about. Most people that age are kinda dumb. Wait until they are past the drinking age. Then you can be concerned.

IIRC, most of the people that would have their hands on the buttons would be military. Airman, do you feel that the training that they would recieve would prepare them properly for the responsibility?