I’d launch. Who knows how many of the missiles are actually duds? How do we know how big they are? How do we know if they are aimed properly at targets across the US, rather than just a single target, making most of them redundant? How do we know they are even going to reach us, instead of falling short into the oceans?
The problem with leaving nukes out “on the table” at all times is one word: Cheney.
Or maybe the word is “Preemptive”
No. It would serve no defensive purpose. It would just be mass murder.
Yes. However I would launch them all at New Zealand for several reasons:
- Just because I could.
- New Zealand has always been kinda smarmy about its ‘nuclear free’ stuff.
- Gotta make sure the southern hemisphere is trashed too, so that their remaining ‘human’ stock is just as horribly mutated as our remaining ‘human’ stock. It would not do to have post nuclear America recolonized by ‘south of the equator’ types.
If a strategic attack against the US mainland is underway, then in all probability it’s after an escalation chain starting with conventional forces, tactical nukes and then possibly a naval war against missile subs and nuclear cruise missile-armed surface ships. At this point several opportunities to not escalate or to deescalate have already passed by. The next step in the chain is a counterforce strike: attempt to take out as much of the enemy’s land-based nukes as possible. If we’ve reached this point already, I would go ahead and retaliate in kind to a counterforce strike- we basically screwed no matter what.
Along similar lines with Alessan, when I’m working to be elected President, I won’t leave a single doubt in the enemy’s minds that I would launch right back at them. When I’m finally President, as much as I might make peaceful overtures, I’ll be certain to let them know that MAD is still in play.
But when the time comes, I won’t launch a full-scale counter. We’ve already lost and MAD has failed, so why should I bring 100s of millions of innocents down with me? If the enemy leader really is crazy and this was unprovoked, I might do a small-scale strike to knock them out on the theory that they pose a threat to the world and I can do a little good before we go up in flames. If there was a reasonable provocation though, we just made the wrong move and we have to accept the consequences. Sucks to be us, and good luck to the other guys.
ETA- Or, what Squink said. Damn Kiwi bastards!
Petrov knew it was likely a false return. If somehow he’d suffered a mental sprain and not realized that, why would someone above him not have come to the same conclusion?
One of the reasons Petrov elected to believe it ws a glitch was that what the computers were telling them made no sense. He wasn’t the only smart person in the USSR. The Soviets weren’t idiots, didn’t like the idea of nuclear war any more than we did, and this probably wasn’t the only time there was a hiccup in the early warning system.
Who and where they are fired at is immaterial. Were any significant percentage of the world’s nuclear armament detonated, the consequences dwarf the sum of all other human efforts in terms of damage to the ecosystem.
Fallout from nukes exploded in central China comes down in Pennsylvania, as demonstrated by China’s open air nuke tests. The Russian Federation, who now owns most of the nukes formerly owned by the CCCP, would face almost reflexive nuclear response from China, perhaps the Ukraine, and possibly France, England, even India, Pakistan, and whomever else has Nukes and ain’t advertising it.
A nation which has demonstrated willingness to launch preemptive nuclear war will not be suffered to exist any longer than it takes to obliterate it. North Korea probably understands this. Certainly Russia does.
Tris
Regarding MAD: it sounds good on paper, but in practice we have never had a pure MAD doctrine in the sense of both sides maintaining arsenals that make each other mutually unusable. If perfect deterrence was possible, it would be effectively the same as a world in which nuclear weapons didn’t exist, and we’d be back to conventional strategic war WW2-style.
Thus, you have the stance that while nuclear weapons may be the absolute last measure, they have to at least in principle be usable. And part of that is the escalation chain I mentioned earlier. Instead of a single choice between “peace” and “blow up the world”, intermediate choices are available which make the cost of escalation heavy but less than absolute. The steps are essentially “peace”, “conventional war”, “battlefield tactical nuclear war”, “theater attacks on the other side’s allies”, “naval war against sea-based strategic nukes”, “counterforce strike against land-based nukes”, and “blow up the world”.
There’s disagreement on whether this makes nuclear war more or less likely. Critics claim that it amounts to a slippery slope that makes escalation to full countervalue war more likely. In the 1980s peace activists bitterly opposed the (re)introduction of intermediate-range “theater” nuclear missiles to western Europe, as well as proposals to develop and field improved enhanced radiation (“neutron bomb”) tactical nukes. Supporters of such measures claimed that making each level of escalation more feasible paradoxically made deterrence stronger and escalation overall less likely, thus fullfilling the spirit of MAD better than a single “massive retaliation” doctrine.
Given the OP’s username, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by his answer.
But yes, with great regret and probably while being wracked with sobs of anguish, I would order a retaliatory strike. Consistent with the SIOP options I was presented, it would be proportionate to whatever strike had been launched against the U.S. I would not want to, in essence, reward the leader of the aggressor nation for attacking us, and would also want to ensure that he did not live to rule the world (what blasted and irradiated parts of it remained).
Hell yes.
I would order the launch for reasons others have mentioned.
I might not if I was convinced they had launched against us by being tricked or something along those lines.
Only if I can push the launch button with my erection.
Ooooh…can I marry you?
I’d love to nuke Antarctica. I hate Antarctica. Stupid penguins.
I want to shoot the moon out of the sky so it crashes into Earth .
So, what all this about World War 3?
Wait - killing millions of people isn’t inconsistent with being pro-life, but if some of them are pregnant women it is? The bizarre straw men people throw around on this topic - especially when it’s off topic here - are ridiculous.
Anyway, yes, I would launch. First, one side cannot instantaneously launch its entire arsenal. The faster you can act with a counterforce strike, the more nukes you can suppress or destroy before they can hit you.
Even if that weren’t possible, I’d still launch. Nuclear war is not the world-ending scenario that the common perception of it is. More devastating than anything in human history yes, but modern militaries are designed to function in a post-nuclear world. It’s the opening salvo in a longer war. If you fail to strike in retaliation, the western allies will be devastated while the Soviet forces relatively untouched - they then will be able to steamroll over Europe and destroy the US at will. And there will be enough people and functional structures left within the western allies to be worth saving - nuclear war doesn’t wipe countries off the map. You cannot let a country that proved itself to be so heinous as to launch a massive nuclear attack have a free reign to do with the rest of the world as it pleases.
The way I see it, the OP starts threads here illustrating his strong pro-life views and then comes out with this OP, where he says he personally would kill millions of innocent people. I think that killing any innocent people is pretty inconsistent with pro-life in general, but since some pro-life folks are very concerned with the unborn, I just though I would point out that his nuclear strike would cause a large number of abortions (probably more than the most prolific doctor).
Sometimes I get the feeling that some of the most vocal advocates of pro-life causes really think that pro-life just applies to unborn in their own country (or of their own faith, color, social class, etc.).
So, while I think this is probably a derailment of this thread, the OP has pretty much lost all pro-life credibility with me.
So I shouldn’t be able to support any war at all? In this scenario I chose what I believe to be the best solution.
I would say that to be consistent, a pro-life person would not support attacks on innocent civilians.
I try to do what is best for humanity. And I think a nuclear retalitation attack will prevent the enemies of the US who will be tyrannies like China or Russia from dominating the world will be in the long run better.