Who Will Start the Nuclear Holocaust?

[Riesstiu IV]

It appears Aeson is a Nuclear Holocaust denier.

[Will9]

The country that's leaders have stated that they wish to turn the entire world into chaos. (Iran)

[proviisori]

I vote: Canada!

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Spiffor
The US or Pakistan.

The US is likely to be increasingly confident in its anti-missile technology, and thus more keen on using nukes as an offensive measure. However, the US has a tendency to overestimate its technology's effectiveness...

I don't think the US will do that...for one simple reason:

Anyone that we would nuke would be someone who would not be able to massively retaliate (unless a true doomsday scenario unfolds). If a country is unable to massively retaliate against the US, then they probably can't stop the US Air Force eithier. If they can't stop the USAF, then the US will probably conventionally bomb the **** out of them as opposed to nuking them.

[Combat Ingrid]

Montreal

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
It appears Aeson is a Nuclear Holocaust denier.

Seriously speaking, though, I wonder if it will actually be a nation that starts a nuclear exchange in the future, rather than a terrorist group or some other stateless entity. There's a theory going round that actual nations have too much to lose by starting something this crazy. But relatively small groups of actors have nothing to lose and will happily set off something huge.

...

Of course the main flaw there is that it's hard to see how that would actually trigger any exchanges. Say a group detonates a nuclear bomb in a city. Unless that group was clearly aided and abetted by a given government (as was the case with the Taliban and 9/11) I'm not sure the victim state would launch any retaliatory nuclear weapons. But it could happen.

So I put down "Other" with the subgroup "Terrorist group".

[LordShiva]

Re: Who Will Start the Nuclear Holocaust?

Teh huge burrito I plan to eat tonight...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Pakistan for sure out of my top four candidates of USA, Israel, India and Pakistan...

and the rest of my reasoning here

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=5274503#post5274503

[PLATO]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
Pakistan for sure out of my top four candidates of USA, Israel, India and Pakistan...

and the rest of my reasoning here
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...03#post5274503

I am interested to know why the US would "only holocaust the nation which does not have the capability to strike US" when clearly the US could accomplish the same thing through conventional means and without nearly the political storm.

[Alinestra Covelia]

You could bury a load of Cobalt-Thorium-G underground and link it up to a computer that would automatically detonate it if a) an attempt was made to deactivate the computer, or b) a nuclear bomb went off on your territory.

This would absolve you of all affirmative moral choice in the matter and would earn you high-horse moralizing rights after the dust settles.

[Krill]

Or first choice on which brains you wanted to eat.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by PLATO


I am interested to know why the US would "only holocaust the nation which does not have the capability to strike US" when clearly the US could accomplish the same thing through conventional means and without nearly the political storm.

Because you just did that and it's not working out... and Iran is a prime target for US "holocausting" them preemptively in case that there really will ever be an invasion of Iran, so to soften them up, given the current GW admin trigger happiness...

As for political storm, Bush has proven that with enough fear anything passes with US public, which with current state of affairs is all US admin cares for anyhow... so hopefully it will never happen again, but I'd say that out of the rest of nuke capable world only US has tendencies for military interventions over next 20-30 years... combined with another "trigger happy" admin as this one makes them to be one of my top 4 choices...

I hope there will be no such war of course, but this is what I think of "US holocausting" someone else... Second prime target IMO would be North Korea if it ever came up on the menu of "liberation" but it most likely will never get there due to the proximity of China.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by PLATO
Anyone that we would nuke would be someone who would not be able to massively retaliate (unless a true doomsday scenario unfolds). If a country is unable to massively retaliate against the US, then they probably can't stop the US Air Force eithier. If they can't stop the USAF, then the US will probably conventionally bomb the **** out of them as opposed to nuking them.

Actually, once the US is confident enough in its anti-missile capabilities, it can be emboldened into thinking attacking a major military power becomes a viable strategy (as such a scenario takes place in the future, I'm mostly thinking about China, Russia, possibly India).

However, the US won't nearly have the same conventional superiority against a major military power than it had against Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan... A conventional war would look quite bad. But a swift nuclear attack would be able to prune the enemy military, without fear of retaliation.

Obviously, the prez won't push push on the red button just for laughs, but only in the case of an acute crisis (be it objective or fantasized).
The American society has a serious warlike streak to it, and quite an unidimensional view of foreign countries: I find it definitely possible that, at some point, you guys consider nukes as a solution.

[Patroklos]

Again, what goal do we achieve through nuking someone we couldn't through conventional bombing.

[Krill]

Neutering a potential rival before they attempt to attack you?