Morbius
Science Advisor
Dearly Missed
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LennoxLewis;LennoxLewis said:Okay, you don't want other countries to have them, but let's look at the reality of the situation: there are nearly 10 countries/states that have them, and several others that share them. So your analogy is off and unrealistic.
As for your article, great, but what if someone with nothing to lose launches a nuclear weapon and basically ends mankind because of the retaliation?
Yes - some number of states have them - but there has been no nuclear war.
However, there also hasn't been a conventional war. As historian Rhodes has pointed out;
that if the world were to completely eliminate nuclear weapons - then that would just make
the world safe for large scale global conventional conflict. Nuclear weapons deter large
conflicts like World War I and World War II.
Additionally, I think the world also needs some nations to have nuclear weapons as a defense
against impacts by asteroids and comets. You do NOT want to blow up an asteroid or comet.
You want to ALTER its orbit. If the asteroid or comet is big enough to cause a mass extinction,
as has happened in the past; then in order to alter the orbit; WE have to provide the energy to
go into the other orbit. How do we get a LOT of energy in a package light enough for us to
transport into space. The answer to that is a nuclear weapon.
Suppose the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet instead of impacting Jupiter back in the '90s was on a
different trajectory that would have impacted Earth. With such a comet you don't get enough
warning to use gravity tractors, or solar sails, or rockets...which takes decades of nudging to
change the orbit. The orbit of the comet has to be changed on THIS orbit.
The only hope in such a case may be a nuclear weapon.
Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist