• SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      57
      ·
      1 year ago

      “well, you see, 99.9% of Russia’s nukes don’t work,. of course all our nukes work, but we don’t consider Russians to be ‘people’ so they aren’t added to the count”

      so-true

    • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      1 year ago

      A single prehistoric nuclear bomb developed by nomads living in the steppes of the North American subcontinent killed over 100,000 people. What are these people on?

      • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        A single prehistoric nuclear bomb developed by nomads living in the steppes of the North American subcontinent

        peltier-laugh

        If I had to guess, they assume all nukes will only hit other silos.

        • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I hate explaining jokes since it’s not funny, but
          \

          spoiler

          Steppe - Hanford site where the nuclear bomb was first created and tested is a steppe.
          Nomad - Scientists traveled from all over the country to the Hanford site and returned back months or years later, which is a nomadic migratory pattern.

          I’m just using words that colonizers use to describe native cultures in a description of the Manhattan Project. Quite accurately, in fact. That’s the joke haha…

  • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    42
    ·
    1 year ago

    Come on, let’s have a nuclear war. It’s not that bad. It’s just the immediate destruction of all major population centres of the developed world and fallout that will haunt survivors for generations. It’s no big deal! Stop being such a chicken about it!

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    1 year ago

    well fuck my ass and call me a rotiserrie, here i thought the one thing i’d be guaranteed in my nuclear apocalypse would be the end of global warming!

    may as well throw all these missiles away if they can’t even cool this place down a bit after killing 8 billion people

  • SootyChimney [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    The reality is: Nobody is sure, any nuclear bombing is species-wide suicide at worst, an insanely pointless gamble at best. The vague consensus seems to be it would take a maximum 100 warheads to irreversibly destroy ecology worldwide, some suggest it would only take a few modern warheads. I suggest we do all we can to not fucking find out.

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’ve studied nuclear weapons. I’m no physicist but I’ve read pretty extensively on the after-effects.

    These people are fucking stupid

    Do they address why they have smaller yields? Because targeting systems are much more advanced. That’s it. That’s the reason. It’s like arguing it’s better to be shot in the heart with a single round rather than blasted with buckshot in the center of the chest. You’re still fucking dead.

  • RoabeArt [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    People have to remember, it’s not so much cities themselves that could be targets in a nuclear war. The first to go would likely be military bases, international airports and seaports (pretty much anything that can launch and support military equipment and personnel), and the hundreds of missile silos that dot Missouri and Montana.

    Secondary targets would be industrial centers like steel mills and chemical plants, and railroad yards. Communication hubs and tech centers might be hit as well.

    Most of these things just happen to be in major cities, but the cities themselves aren’t targets, and people living in suburban and rural areas aren’t necessarily safe.

    (Of course, all this is based on outdated Cold War-era nuclear exchange theories that may or may not have changed. The communication hub thing for example: the Internet was originally created as a means of decentralizing communication in case of a nuclear attack. So take everything I said here with a grain of salt.)

    • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      1 year ago

      See the problem is most east coast and a lot of West Coast cities have major military installations inside of them or very near them. Additionally, military targets are only the first wave of all out nuclear war, major civilian targets are chosen to weaken logistical networks and slow recovery. So if you live in a city with a large port, rail way, interstate, or airport. Than your probably fucked.

      This is all part of unclassified plans from the cold war you can find on the Internet. There’s a million YouTube videos about what an all out nuclear war would look like based off those documents. Given nuclear technology hasn’t seen any major improvements sense these plans were written, it’s probably safe to assume they’re still mostly valid.

    • SootyChimney [any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The two nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Japan were pointedly targeting mass civilian population centres, I don’t think you can rely on them being targeted with any real strategic logic, they are the tools of the genocidal and the deranged.

      he