Ask and answer stupid questions here! - Page 473

On July 20 2016 00:20 ThomasjServo wrote:

I like the sound of that, feel a bit sorry for the policy holder, but not so sorry.

On July 20 2016 00:04 JimmiC wrote:


I was responding to just the bold part. But yeah you do launch and you have to make it clear to everyone that you would. Because that's MAD the whole point of having nukes is that you are willing to use them, so people don't use theirs on you.

Edit: Or was the Bold part saying that if you obliterate half the planet then the nuclear fallout would create a nuclear winter that would destroy the world anyways? I'm thinking that was the question now, and that is why he was asking for a study on how many nukes to destroy the planet. So in closing I guess I'm useless

On July 20 2016 00:29 KwarK wrote:

Make it clear that you would to who? Nobody is left.

I wrote the original hypothetical but it's basically.
1) Two opposing blocs that include all of humanity between them
2) Each has a weapon capable of wiping out the other and each threatens that if the other attacks then they will use their own weapon in retaliation such that while any attack will be successful the attackers will not live long enough to enjoy it.
3) One bloc attacks anyway using their weapon. At this point the second bloc is utterly doomed. There will be no survivors.
4) The attacked bloc has the choice of whether to counterattack. It cannot change their fate, there is no chance of improving their situation, all they can choose to do is either render humanity extinct to serve as a lesson of the perils of a MAD policy or refuse to do so.

On July 20 2016 00:39 Sent. wrote:
Did all those nuclear tests since ww2 affect the global climate in a significant way?

A reasonable estimate indicates that the total energy released by nuclear explosions in the twentieth century amounts to six hundred megatons TNT equivalent of energy, or 2.5 billion, billion Joules (2.5 x 1018 J). That estimate is larger than the five hundred and thirty megatons TNT equivalent estimated by UNSCEAR (also), so it can be considered a conservative estimate. Divided over the five hundred and ten million, million square meters of the Earth's surface (510 x 1012 m^2), and over the two decades of peak testing, that represents eight millionth of a Watt per square meter (8 x 10-6 W m-2) of power. For comparison, the 1.8 Watts per square meter (1.8 W m-2) of CO2 radiative forcing as of 2011 generates approximately twenty nine billion, trillion Joules of energy (29 x 1021 J) over the Earth's surface in a single year, or more than ten thousand times as much energy in a year that the entire combined nuclear weapons program of the world has generated.

That is not the whole story. Many nuclear tests kick up a lot of dust, which reflects sunlight, thereby cooling the Earth. Indeed, according to Turco et al, 1983, that is the dominant effect of nuclear explosions on climate. The result is that nuclear testing is likely to have reflected more energy from the Sun than they generated. That is, nuclear testing is likely to have been a net cooling factor.

On July 20 2016 00:39 Sent. wrote:
Did all those nuclear tests since ww2 affect the global climate in a significant way?

On July 20 2016 00:33 xM(Z wrote:
so you removed weapon being a nuke; it changes everything. i'd still fire it though, out of principle.

On July 20 2016 01:00 KwarK wrote:

Better that all humanity is destroyed out of spite than my enemy be rewarded with success for killing me. Game theory experiments into the value of spite are pretty interesting but you have to hope that when it comes to the extermination of the only intelligent life we know to exist in the universe people would choose against wiping them out to prove a point to the endless void. Nobody would learn any lesson from it because there would be nobody to learn a lesson from it. After a million years or so it'd be like humanity never existed. To me the whole idea of MAD is utterly insane, the win condition is your enemy being so convinced of your total irrationality that they dare not risk it.

If I were President I'd probably take a madman who was foaming at the mouth to destroy the enemy and put them in charge of pushing the button when the time came. And then I'd give him all the wrong codes.

On July 20 2016 01:21 xM(Z wrote:

lol, that's animal cruelty!.

but there is a lesson here thou(if we have it your way), the lesson the winner teacher to its subjects: anytime you have a weapon that would annihilate your enemy, use it and no harm will come to you.
so they kill you and then they kill each other, by example.

evolution learns!; in some billion years it'll make dolphins the apex predators.

Edit: that logic of yours it's why lefties are losing now and will continue to lose until they get their shit together.

On July 20 2016 02:19 xM(Z wrote:
well aren't you the little romantic that thought he could; the forever hopetimist. i will bomb your block and write no books, there; now you know the future.

but you don't seem to get the ideological here; the premise is that the one bombing your block knows beforehand that the moment he does that, the moment he fires the bomb, he commits suicide. that is the deterrent: him not wanting to kill himself, not him not wanting to kill you (people killing others are a dime a dozen; statistics dude, play the odds).

(your last example looks to randomly picked from a pile of hurt so it get's skipped over)

On July 20 2016 02:19 xM(Z wrote:
well aren't you the little romantic that thought he could; the forever hopetimist. i will bomb your block and write no books, there; now you know the future.

but you don't seem to get the ideological here; the premise is that the one bombing your block knows beforehand that the moment he does that, the moment he fires the bomb, he commits suicide. that is the deterrent: him not wanting to kill himself, not him not wanting to kill you (people killing others are a dime a dozen; statistics dude, play the odds).

(your last example looks to randomly picked from a pile of hurt so it get's skipped over)

Fail-deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy that encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic, and overwhelming response to an attack

the humanity that bombed me is way worse than a future humanity.

On July 20 2016 03:26 xM(Z wrote:
first off, realize your argument is a paradox: MAD exists, but it really doesn't.

second, understand MAD and read up on Fail-deadly and Dead Hand. the nuclear response is automatic, triggered by sensors.

@Kwark, his example bypasses all of the above so, in that straw-man-ish case, you subject yourself to the laws of physics (for every action there's a reaction) and push the god damn button.

(your idea of "a right" is nonsensical/not (yet) properly defined; to your explanation/assumption, i don't see myself as being taken advantage off, i just do my duty; it's righteousness not spite. yin<->yang, light<->dark and all that; you can't have one without the other or, one triggers the response of the other).

@Simberto: some of the above and my position is: the humanity that bombed me is way worse than a future humanity. i think of the children!+ Show Spoiler +.

hmm, if you look at all this discussion, the conclusion is that it seems to depend on what one puts his hopes: today or tomorrow.

If that were the case, he [the Soviet leader] would flip on a system that would send a signal to a deep underground bunker in the shape of a globe where three duty officers sat. If there were real missiles and the Kremlin were hit and the Soviet leadership was wiped out, which is what they feared, those three guys in that deep underground bunker would have to decide whether to launch very small command rockets that would take off, fly across the huge vast territory of the Soviet Union and launch all their remaining missiles.

Now, the Soviets had once thought about creating a fully automatic system. Sort of a machine, a doomsday machine, that would launch without any human action at all. When they drew that blueprint up and looked at it, they thought, you know, this is absolutely crazy.

On July 20 2016 04:32 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
on a lighter subject how is this art?

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId={8751a3c7-1ce6-440f-8784-68135f0d4c19}&oid=689655&pkgids=347&pg=18&rpp=10&pos=176&ft=*