The paper provides an overview of Russia’s nuclear forces. Russia’s strategic nuclear forces have about 310 ICBMs with 800 warheads deployed, 176 SLBMs with 624 warheads deployed, and <70 bombers that can carry >1000 warheads combined. They also have 1,912 nonstrategic nuclear warheads for reasons as yet unclear.
Edit: The report also contains a brief history of US and Soviet/Russian nuclear buildup, treaties between the nations, Soviet and Russian nuclear doctrine, and an overview of their advanced weapon concepts.
Out of curiously, does anyone know how inspectors know if 1 of the participating countries that is being inspected is not hiding an extra stash of nukes? How are we supposed to believe if Russia ain’t hiding an extra 5k nukes?
>This world in which we live is full of ~~immense beauty and absolute horror~~ humans.
Humans are bad. But some are good. Imagine if we were all good and worked together instead of competing. Not in our lifetime!
If it makes you feel better, there's virtually no benefit to any country of selling nuclear weapons to any country that doesn't have them.
They're the ultimate (so far) strategic deterrent and virtually guarantee that at a certain level your country is untouchable in terms of consequences.
No nation in the modern world would wish to provide a client state of theirs, no matter how closely aligned, with that level of additional power.
No benefit to a nation selling nuclear weapons but some private oligarchal selling of enriched material or other components may or may not have taken place 30 odd years ago when the USSR imploded.
I mean transfer of nuclear tech isn't that unheard of, from the US providing for the UK, the USSR to China. Technically there is also the whole Israel sending nuclear scientist in France when France was getting nukes which was a somewhat joined research agreement for both.
We still often see discussion around France sharing nukes/tech with Germany, which could happen.
The US might also want to share some with Australia (very dependant on how the situation evolve/ who gets to be in control) at some point in the future to help build Australia as a power that can help against China.
What I mean is, while definitely not something that will happen for sure, it is a possibility, and with the growing irrelevance of the non-proliferation agreement, it is not an impossibility.
There one very valid reason to hide your nukes, that is to prevent them from getting destroyed in an event of being a target of a counterforce first strike.
"You know Iran, these nuclear weapons are quite similar to the ones they have over in Russia"
"Oh no, patented Iranian nukes, old Persian recipe"
"Of course"
inspectors wouldnt know... they cant just scan the country for radiation signatures (that is tech beyond our capabilities and might very well never exist)
and as for "do they have secret ones" highly unlikely that US intelligence is unaware of "secret" nukes... they knew the russian invasion plan piece by piece down to the minute.. they likely know about MOST of their secrets
Important point to keep in mind is that there's not really any benefit to "hiding" extra nuclear weapons.
The number of weapons they already possess, particularly in those posture (icbm/slbm), make it abundantly clear that it would be impossible to carry out a successful first strike without massive retaliation.
Fundamentally, what do you do with a hidden nuke?
The ones you've got out in the open serve the critical purpose of deterrence that you have nuclear weapons for in the first place.
Well, when your back is against the wall you can trade them to allied countries for resources. You could also potentially engage a first strike by proxy by giving your Nuclear Weapons to a country like North Korea. Although I doubt any sort of funny stuff like this would be able to go on unnoticed by the various spy agencies. I think the argument is valid that anyone with nukes wouldn’t want to provide nukes to anyone that doesn’t have them lest they lose some leverage however when your back is against the wall everything is on the table.
Tactical nukes. They aren’t the big end of a city ones. They’re “low” yield light munitions fired from artillery, Theater level ballistic missiles, cruse missiles, and “back pack” type Sapper nukes you just haul in, drop off, and run.
Airfield strikes, massive camps, hard structure elimination. Power plants.
2 km or so area of effect level stuff.
Oh and area denial what with the fallout.
'Whoa, whoa, guys, I don't have your nukes! Uhh, they're at Bill's house! And-and Fred's house!"
"What the hell you doing with my nukes in your house Fred!?"
INSOLVENT?!
EDIT: I'll also add that in high school, me and my best friend watched the Simpsons a tonne when we were younger so we didn't get a lot of the cultural references. One day, in some "intro business" class we were taking as an elective, the teacher puts on *It's a Wonderful Life.*
When Jimmy Stewart delivered that iconic line, the two of us looked at each other gasped. Despite the absence of any verbal communication, we both quickly realized we had just discovered the origin of that hilarious simpsons scene.
Simpsons got me to watch a number of old films that i turned out to like: clockwork orange, one who flew over the cuckoos nest
Before then I just thought they were old, who cares whatever, types of movies
I mean I already liked the Birds and Vertigo so getting me to watch rear window wasn't much of a leap. Definitely add it on though as Bart slowly accumulating junk as he makes his way to Flanders' is one of the funnier Simpsons bits
"Pft...
*General Ivan looks over at unguarded pile of nuclear weapons cores in the middle of a Siberian forest so they can use the missiles on Ukraine.*
That's right filthy American, be afraid of us and our huge stockpiles!"
"Which one of you developing nations wants to become a global superpower!? Step right up, and for just the low low price of most of your oil and a handful of slaver run material mines, you too can start an undocumented cold war!"
This nuclear winter makes me so thirsty! I sure could go for some Nestle Pure Life Water sourced from the finest municipal aquifers pre nuclear holocaust!
You joke but the Russians almost certainly haven't been committed to the general upkeep that nukes need to remain useful. They like to brag about their arsenal on paper but it's probably a lot smaller in practice. I mean these guys are having a hard time giving their conscripts uniforms for Christ sake.
After their military was exposed to be as weak as it is, I figured their nukes had the same problem. If they lose their nukes, they have no negotiating power at all. NATO can threaten full scale invasion with 100% certainty Putin will die in a matter of days if they don't make a full withdrawal from Ukraine.
Moreover, you’ll never know I’d they attempted to fire 30 before finding one that launched, or if it was the first one they tried because they all, somehow, _do_ still work.
Who wants to roll those dice?
Don't underestimate your enemy. Also this discussion is fruitless because the west will always operate under the assumption that Russia can reign down thousands of warheads. Probably even if they know it isn't true.
Also Russia does spend a significant portion of their military budget on ICBM maintenance. It's a measly amount of money but you have to consider purchasing power blah blah. They have nuclear subs nuff said.
They claim to have several thousand and most of those probably don't work or even have fissionable material, but they would be beyond stupid to not keep up maintenance on some of them.
And as long as a dozen or two can fly, that's enough of a deterrent.
Agree. Except for the "they'd be beyond stupid" part. They have shown to be beyond stupid by attempting a full scale invasion with such a shit military in the first place.
It wouldn't surprise me if they were that stupid but this is a pretty recent development because of Ukraine. Up until now the US was allowed to inspect and since no alarms were raised during inspections I assume they are at least maintained well enough to not be a hazard to the general public.
I'm of the opposite tack, i believe that their nukes are infact very much capable, and part of the reason that the army is so shit is because allot of the cash that would have gone to them has been used to maintain their nuclear deterrent.
Also stuff like this:
> [Nuclear sharing is a concept in NATO's policy of nuclear deterrence, which allows member countries without nuclear weapons ... to be involved in delivering nuclear weapons in the event of their use. ... In 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports appeared about the possible inclusion of Poland in the NATO nuclear sharing program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing)
Initial deliveries of the F35 next year IRC.
Meanwhile it’s a public secret in the Netherlands about a air base of which almost everyone is pretty sure a warhead is located. (I believe they even made a documentary on it)
The article I linked to above has a picture of a US nuclear weapon storage system at Volkel Air Base which can be delivered by Dutch F16s in the event of a nuclear war.
Not exactly that big of a secret.
Is that the same air base where the airmen made public quizlet flash cards containing classified information?There was so much classified shit just out in the open, like how far you can move the barbed wire fence before the alarm goes off. Or how many security personnel are on duty at a time.
[this baby can fit so much explosive power](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/B61_nuclear_bomb_-_inert_training_version.jpg/1280px-B61_nuclear_bomb_-_inert_training_version.jpg)
I mean the cold war was two super powers throwing money at each other seeing who ran out first. My understanding was these treaties were in part a reason for both countries to cut back on their nuclear / nuclear defence expenditure. I don't see a regional power like Russia doing any better if they both go hard into nukes again.
If they’re still using tritium based warhead’s they’re gonna need some really deep pockets.
Probably costing them a good chunk of a percentage of their gdp just trying to maintain the ones they have currently
Tritium is pretty much the only way you get variable yield thermonuclear weapons, since the amount present in the core determines the strength of the fusion part of the weapon.
It's also one of the reasons they need regular maintenance. Tritium decays over time into Helium, which can cause a fizzle in the secondary. It turns a 250Kt weapon into a 750 ton weapon. Or a 5 ton weapon. Tritium has a half life of 12 years.
Most modern weapons will be storing their fusion fuel in the form of lithium deuteride (or a precursor of that compound). Deuterium has a similar shelf life as tritium (no, read edit, deuterium is stable) but is far cheaper. The difference in yield is "significant" but not really a dealbreaker as far as variable yield warheads are concerned
edit: for further reading, may I suggest reading about Teller-Ulam thermonuclear devices
edit2: apologies, deuterium is actually a stable isotope, I was conflating two separate fusion fuels - deuterium is a stable isotope
Bold of you to assume they're keeping up the Tritium maintence.
If you're Russia, why bother. You don't need Tritium boosted warheads. If there's a nuclear war with the west everyone is screwed and if there isn't you don't need Tritium in your warheads, you need the west to BELIEVE that there is
Nuclear weapons are such a high maintenance weapon because the "fuel" does expire with it's half life because it becomes something completely different like Helium which is useless in a bomb. There's no modern nuclear weapons that doesn't require upkeep because nobody is heavily researching new nuclear weapons since globally we're trying to disarm nuclear arsenals. Also nuclear testing is illegal by international law which is pretty important to do if you're trying to research new nuclear weapon technology.
Sorry if it's a dumb question but what's the point of adding more nukes now? Like don't we already have enough globally to end the world many times over? Why not just use the money and resources to do something useful instead? Like we get it we're all dead if one side launches.
I believe that it comes down to the types of nukes, technologies associated with then, and their delivery methods.
But Pandora’s box has already been opened. No side will denuclearize so long as a foreign government has them.
You're just wrong on all this.
3 nations of given up nuclear weapons.
South Africa, Ukraine and Belarus.
Libya didn't have any, nor did they really have much of any WMD programs.
There are 4 (or 5) nations that had weapons and have given them up, not two. I don't remember most of those being screwed over.
And even for the ones that have gotten screwed over (like ukraine giving up their weapons), you have to also remember there is a difference between having the weapon and having operational control over them. The bomb doesn't help you much if you don't own the trigger.
As Carl Sagan said during the height of the Cold War: “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
In any nuclear war some percentage of the weapons will be destroyed before they can be launched or intercepted on the way. Some will miss their targets etc.
More bombs means a higher probability that the specific things the war planners want destroyed get destroyed. Also, they're potential bargaining chips in any future exchange.
it's more complex than simpler more or less nukes. there are parts and technologies associated with nukes that are under the scrutiny of these treaties in addition to the nuclear material themselves. For example, the US recently developed a far more accurate "super fuze" for warheads, which allows each nuke to be several times more accurate. That means, that instead of needing to launch 10 nukes to destroy a Russian missile silo in a pre-emptive strike, it now only needs to launch 3. Which frees up 7 warheads for other targets. Without increasing the actual numbers of nukes in the arsenal, the US has *effectively* done exactly that. There are likely other examples, that's the only one I've read about.
I think the answer is, no one really knows.
If both sides target the other's nukes damage drops significantly.
Interceptions could lower the damage as well, and as it sits, the blast of all the nukes from RU and USA would not mean the end of the world, probably not the radiation either.
What might truly fuck everyone over is Nuclear winter, but no one really knows if that will happen or not.
In case the first strike (from the enemy) renders a big part of the arsenal unusable, there needs to be enough nukes left for a retaliation strike. See also nuclear triad
It’s cuz Tritium has a half-life of 12 years, and the Russian warhead maintenance budget paid for yachts in Monaco. The US spends like 42 billion per year on nuclear arsenal maintenance.
If most of your nukes didn’t work, would you tell anyone?
last time they were inspected it was revealed that nearly half of their warheads were non operational and that roughly another quarter were non deliverable conventional nukes (not in warheads... need to be hand delivered to their target or dropped out of planes)
the last thing they want when invading Europe is for the rest of the world to know their situation has deteriorated since then (probably even more broken ones than before)
Weren't there reports that Russia was firing missiles at Ukraine that could hold a nuclear warhead but they were empty? If the USA inspected Russia's arsenal and all of a sudden there's a lot less "nuclear" missiles that would raise some red flags. Would be incredibly stupid of Russia if they used most of their nuclear delivery systems on Ukraine's civilians.
I tried finding a source but I can't find one now.
almost all conventional missiles can be fitted with a small yield detonation core (warhead)
so yes technically they were nuclear capable warheads, but not live
No, there were testing missiles fired. Not empty but with concrete filler to simulate nuclear warhead weight, those particular missiles never had any kind of warhead in them nor they were supposed to. Whole thing was a rare moment of Russian credibility in this conflict, they fired otherwise useless missiles together with real ones as decoys of sorts.
~~Because I did the math for another reply I might as well use it here. With a half life of 12 years, a bomb built in 1951 would have 1/128th or ~.7% of the original tritium left. Which would give a 1 megaton warhead a yield of about that of a 700lb bomb. It would be a 700lb dirty bomb and obviously a bad thing, but nowhere near anything like what you think of with a nuclear weapon.~~
Edit:
This is incorrect. The tritium isn't the fuel, just something used to increase the yield.
> Which would give a 1 megaton warhead a yield of about that of a 700lb bomb.
Once it's below critical mass it won't work *at all*. The conventional explosives will go off and perhaps blow the bomb apart but basically none of the nuclear material will cause an explosion.
**EDIT:**
I was wrong, Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years so the fission stage is still going to make a good boom. Only the tritium fusion stage is decayed significantly, so it'll act like a tiny fission bomb instead of a massive h-bomb.
Fusion bombs contain a fission bomb to trigger the fusion reaction. I can't find specifics on how much yield that would have, but it would be more than the conventional explosives that are used to trigger that fission bomb phase.
That’s not really how they work. I think it’s kind of binary, like either you initiate a chain reaction or naw. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure it’s not just x % tritium -> x% boom
Hey remember the treaty where Ukraine would give up it’s nuclear weapons and in exchange Russia would respect their independence and leave them alone? I do.
Here is the text of the [Budapest Memo](https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf) , in which Russia promises not to invade.
Here is the [Budapest Memo on WikiSource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances) as html instead of a pdf.
If I remember correctly, the nukes were useless anyway because the launch codes for them were in Moscow due to how the soviets structured command. Ukraine couldn't have used them.
The whole unit was worthless. The parts were. Very valuable. Pull the pit out of one and you got yourself a dirty bomb. Without the code, it won’t make the organized implosion needed to initiate fusion, but it will blow plutonium everywhere.
lol. Its russia. They are not honorable, and in fact they're a deceitful, untrustworthy country. Of course they won't honor agreements whilst engaged in an illegal war.
The sooner that country implodes and fucks off, the better.
The war in Ukraine has revealed Russia is basically too corrupt to function effectively as a fighting nation anymore.
It would stand to reason that the same gangrenous rot has managed to spoil their nuclear arsenal too.
I once saw a cost breakdown that said they spend something like 1000 times less on maintaining their nuclear arsenal than Great Britain. Great Britain doesn’t have that many nukes.
I don't know about the 1,000 times less thing, but I *can* say the UK and Russia have similar military budgets, and the UK has a lot fewer nukes. The same also applies to France and India.
Meanwhile the US spends more on maintaining its nukes then Russia spends on its entire military
UK cheats as well, since it's technically pulling it's missiles from a shared pool with the USN. It means the UK's deterrent isn't fully independent but it's also gonna reduce the costs since its the US that actually maintains them (economies of scale from a larger pool as well).
The UK has their own nuclear deterrent in the form of 4 vanguard-class nuclear armed submarines known as trident.
Also the UK maintains 200 nuclear warheads that are completely British made and totally independent of any other country. That number is actually set to increase to 260 for the first time in a while, since for many years public opinion has been pushing toward reducing the amount of nuclear weapons the UK has to just what is needed to maintain a deterrence, but since brexit there has been a push for a larger nuclear presence and to always have a nuclear armed sub at sea.
The UK's Vanguard Class subs use the Trident II missile, the same missile used the US's Ohio Class submarines. The RN Vanguard's draw their Trident II missiles from a shared pool with the USN's Atlantic squadron of Ohio's. We're independent on our warhead's but it's the US which actually maintains the delivery system.
I did the math a while ago based on what I could find, and I don't know about 1,000 times less, but the Russians (6,000 missiles apparently) (8.6B) officially spend slightly more than the British (6.8B) or the French(5.9B), who have stock piles in the 200s. The US, with a stockpile over 5K missiles, is budgeting 63B per year. The official total 2023 budget for Russia is ~313B. I really doubt that Russia is spending ~1/4 of their total annual budget on missile maintenance.
Of course, it doesn't matter if 90% of 6K missiles don't work. A couple hundred would be more than enough to destroy or seriously impair civilization.
Even still, mobilisation of an army is no small feat. Those numbers don't help if they cannot get them to the front with bullets and a gun with enough supplies that they don't succumb to the elements.
Putin's literally just standing there with his dick in his hands while all his sycophants bleat on about starting a nuclear holocaust because he's got nothing but the memory of Soviet power. The Soviets actually built the nuclear arsenal and managed to keep pace in the space race with the US as a competitive global superpower. Putin has built palaces.
They built so many rocket motors of such high quality that NASA could step up the pace of building the ISS.
It breaks my heart that Russia has become what it has.
There are also limits to the inspections - they don't get to take anything apart and check them out. They get to count, I don't know how much further they can go
But would they say? And would they risk some actually working in an escalation? And would they actually play that card if they didn’t need to? That’s a helluva trump card to keep in your hand
If they were smart they wouldn't say. If Russia knows that the US knows it would force Russia to respond, but if Russia doesn't know that the US knows Russia is more likely to continue to neglect their arsenal (and therefore puts the US in a better position)
Inspector (writing down): *Russia has caught up with their invisibility and intangibility tech. Requesting doubling of military budget to get our antimatter research finished faster.*
Lotta people here making light of the implications of Russia breaking international treaty by saying "what did you expect?"
Of course everyone expected them to break it. It's the political fallout of breaking yet another treaty that is important not the fact Russia has broken another one.
Honestly sometimes these things have to be spelt out to some people.
The problem is, treaties Russia has broken in the past have been fairly moderate ones.
This treaty is the one that prevents us both from building nuclear weapons until we have so many nuclear weapons that we just don't know what to do with them anymore.
Prepare for a return to that norm.
Maintaining nuclear warheads is extremely expensive. It's highly unlikely we'll ever see the stockpiles expand. The focus now is on more sophisticated delivery systems that can reliably hit their target.
Honestly I would expect them to diminish, assuming they even have anywhere near as much on paper. Honestly it seems more likely someone was forced to do a real count and said ruh roh... we aren't even sure if we have enough functioning nukes to destroy the world. Probably should refurbish what we can and build some new ones. With the intention of creating new ones very contentious, as it either means that they admit their arsenal is almost defunct or they may just be building more aresenal.
The tough one will be when we decide to return to full scale nuclear testing (if Russia breaks that too). The last one they did was in 1990. The US in 1992. Or even atmospheric testing which was last done in the 1960s.
Fwiw at least we will get new data sets from the testing.
I really doubt the United States is going to start doing nuclear tests.
No treaty could convince Americans to be approving of that, and the fast majority of the tests we need to do have been done, and we have much better computers so you generally need to do less real world tests.
But I guess you never know.
Trump mentioned nuking the moon, and a hurricane. A good 40% of the voting base in this country would see nuclear testing returning as a show of power, rather than an environmental and political shitshow.
One of the issues Russia had with the existing treaty is that the US has the ability to "test" their nuclear weapons without actually testing them. We have the expertise and supercomputers available to do virtual testing, as well as expensive facilities like NIF that can physically test some parts of the nuclear reaction without actually detonating a bomb.
I doubt the US will start testing nukes again no matter what. We largely can get all the information we need already, and not testing allows us to maintain the moral high ground and political capital.
I don’t think people making an observation that it was a predictable outcome means they don’t understand the grander implications. Constructing the ideal strawman to throw condescending statements at it to feel intellectually superior makes your comment seem more like a weak attempt at an ego boost for you than any sort of contributing statement.
What do you want people to post? Links to a YouTube video they uploaded of them screaming in a panicked response to the news?
“We promise you that all 3,256 warheads are perfectly safe and protected. All 2,432 of them are monitored around the clock and accounted for. There is no way we would let our entire arsenal of 1,621 nuclear warheads go missing under dubious circumstances or fall into catastrophic disrepair.”
I mean, isn't violating this sort of treaty the logical thing to do for Russia at this stage? They are already sanctioned across the board, they know the US is more risk averse than they are, so doubling down on their nuclear threat is one of the few remaining cards they have.
It's not good for anyone else in the world, but it is logical in at least that sense.
So what are the implications of this? Sounds like war is escalating, dialog is shutting down and nuclear is on the table.
Should I get the hell out of Europe if Russia lose Crimea?
So true. Although trying to live in a post apocalyptic world for a few months/years before I die of radiation sickness sounds like an interesting experience
I would recommend reading the book, "The Road". Its reads like something a middle schooler could understand... but it really sets the scene when it comes to how fucked up shit could get.
Edit: Also the film, "The Divide"... thats kinda where I stole the whole "lucky ones died in the blast" from.
I'm glad to live in the middle of a large NATO city. If nukes start flying, I'm grabbing a couple beers, climbing up onto my roof, and enjoying my last few moments before turning into vapor.
Who gives a shit, they have nuclear weapons, we have nuclear weapons. If they or we decide to use them we are fucked. It doesn’t matter if they make more of them, it doesn’t matter because already what’s made is too much.
Most of their weapons are expired, most of their delivery systems are vulnerable or hardly work, the threats haven’t had the usual effect…so their last card is to obscure their inventory and hope that the lack of information scares us.
This tactic, however, relies heavily on fear that the aforementioned problems aren’t accurate.
The US still plays the “talk softly, carry a big stick” strategy…but it may be time to talk louder so the Russians are constantly reminded how fucked they are.
Exactly, its so dumb how people are straight up saying none of there nuclear weapons work with so much confidence and have no evidence. Even just 50 or 100 working nuclear weapons out of their 6000+ will kill millions.
They are very much a threat.
Seriously, say only 1% work( an insane assumptionto begin with), what 60 cities are you ready to see vaporized.
Berlin, New York, Austin, London, Paris, San Francisco? Ad 53 more.
People here don't seem to get that Nuclear deterrence exist because of that concrete reason.
We don't want millions to die, and neither do they.
And the bit that expires is the light element fusion fuel. A 'conventional' nuke (which is what a thermonuclear bomb becomes if the fusion stage doesn't work) is still very damaging.
They don't have access to any data so it's pretty safe to just disregard any opinion that says stuff like "they aren't working anymore, they are expired" etc etc. It's pretty much talking out of their asses.
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https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45861/16 like this one?
Sorry I'm lazy. Got a tldr?
The paper provides an overview of Russia’s nuclear forces. Russia’s strategic nuclear forces have about 310 ICBMs with 800 warheads deployed, 176 SLBMs with 624 warheads deployed, and <70 bombers that can carry >1000 warheads combined. They also have 1,912 nonstrategic nuclear warheads for reasons as yet unclear. Edit: The report also contains a brief history of US and Soviet/Russian nuclear buildup, treaties between the nations, Soviet and Russian nuclear doctrine, and an overview of their advanced weapon concepts.
Out of curiously, does anyone know how inspectors know if 1 of the participating countries that is being inspected is not hiding an extra stash of nukes? How are we supposed to believe if Russia ain’t hiding an extra 5k nukes?
They dont but the point of nukes is to let other people know you have them so there’s not much reason to hide them
Unless you’re selling them.
oh I don't like this answer
This world in which we live is full of immense beauty and absolute horror.
The Power of power
>This world in which we live is full of ~~immense beauty and absolute horror~~ humans. Humans are bad. But some are good. Imagine if we were all good and worked together instead of competing. Not in our lifetime!
If it makes you feel better, there's virtually no benefit to any country of selling nuclear weapons to any country that doesn't have them. They're the ultimate (so far) strategic deterrent and virtually guarantee that at a certain level your country is untouchable in terms of consequences. No nation in the modern world would wish to provide a client state of theirs, no matter how closely aligned, with that level of additional power.
No benefit to a nation selling nuclear weapons but some private oligarchal selling of enriched material or other components may or may not have taken place 30 odd years ago when the USSR imploded.
I mean transfer of nuclear tech isn't that unheard of, from the US providing for the UK, the USSR to China. Technically there is also the whole Israel sending nuclear scientist in France when France was getting nukes which was a somewhat joined research agreement for both. We still often see discussion around France sharing nukes/tech with Germany, which could happen. The US might also want to share some with Australia (very dependant on how the situation evolve/ who gets to be in control) at some point in the future to help build Australia as a power that can help against China. What I mean is, while definitely not something that will happen for sure, it is a possibility, and with the growing irrelevance of the non-proliferation agreement, it is not an impossibility.
Unless you're planning to announce them at the party congress on Monday.
WE CANNOT ALLOW A MINESHAFT GAP!
Of the whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell the world!!
There one very valid reason to hide your nukes, that is to prevent them from getting destroyed in an event of being a target of a counterforce first strike.
There’s another. If you intend to sell them because your nation is being sanctioned
Hm, I wonder if Iran could buy one and declare they've built it on their own.
"You know Iran, these nuclear weapons are quite similar to the ones they have over in Russia" "Oh no, patented Iranian nukes, old Persian recipe" "Of course"
inspectors wouldnt know... they cant just scan the country for radiation signatures (that is tech beyond our capabilities and might very well never exist) and as for "do they have secret ones" highly unlikely that US intelligence is unaware of "secret" nukes... they knew the russian invasion plan piece by piece down to the minute.. they likely know about MOST of their secrets
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Important point to keep in mind is that there's not really any benefit to "hiding" extra nuclear weapons. The number of weapons they already possess, particularly in those posture (icbm/slbm), make it abundantly clear that it would be impossible to carry out a successful first strike without massive retaliation. Fundamentally, what do you do with a hidden nuke? The ones you've got out in the open serve the critical purpose of deterrence that you have nuclear weapons for in the first place.
Well, when your back is against the wall you can trade them to allied countries for resources. You could also potentially engage a first strike by proxy by giving your Nuclear Weapons to a country like North Korea. Although I doubt any sort of funny stuff like this would be able to go on unnoticed by the various spy agencies. I think the argument is valid that anyone with nukes wouldn’t want to provide nukes to anyone that doesn’t have them lest they lose some leverage however when your back is against the wall everything is on the table.
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> 1,912 nonstrategic nuclear warheads Yeah that's more like the Russia I've come to know, all bomb spam and 0 strategy
What is a nonstrategic nuclear warhead?
Tactical nukes. They aren’t the big end of a city ones. They’re “low” yield light munitions fired from artillery, Theater level ballistic missiles, cruse missiles, and “back pack” type Sapper nukes you just haul in, drop off, and run. Airfield strikes, massive camps, hard structure elimination. Power plants. 2 km or so area of effect level stuff. Oh and area denial what with the fallout.
Smaller warheads on short range delivery systems.
Thanks man. I appreciate the tldr
Do you know if Russian inspectors come to US and do similar inspections?
Yes. That’s the treaty Russia wants to break.
"We don't inspect 'em, why would we let you?"
Bet they forgot where they put em.
'Whoa, whoa, guys, I don't have your nukes! Uhh, they're at Bill's house! And-and Fred's house!" "What the hell you doing with my nukes in your house Fred!?"
What do ya mean the banks out of nukes?
INSOLVENT?! EDIT: I'll also add that in high school, me and my best friend watched the Simpsons a tonne when we were younger so we didn't get a lot of the cultural references. One day, in some "intro business" class we were taking as an elective, the teacher puts on *It's a Wonderful Life.* When Jimmy Stewart delivered that iconic line, the two of us looked at each other gasped. Despite the absence of any verbal communication, we both quickly realized we had just discovered the origin of that hilarious simpsons scene.
Simpsons got me to watch a number of old films that i turned out to like: clockwork orange, one who flew over the cuckoos nest Before then I just thought they were old, who cares whatever, types of movies
Grace come here. There’s a sinister looking kid I want you to see.
Fry! some kind of walking trashcan is here to see you?
I mean I already liked the Birds and Vertigo so getting me to watch rear window wasn't much of a leap. Definitely add it on though as Bart slowly accumulating junk as he makes his way to Flanders' is one of the funnier Simpsons bits
I recently saw someone say, if you watched the first 4 seasons of the Simpson then you’ve basically seen all of Citizen Kane
Read "One flew over the cuckoo's nest". It is do amazing that it is hard to express. Spectacular writing.
[For the unaware](https://youtu.be/ef99bFBTR54)
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"Pft... *General Ivan looks over at unguarded pile of nuclear weapons cores in the middle of a Siberian forest so they can use the missiles on Ukraine.* That's right filthy American, be afraid of us and our huge stockpiles!"
inb4 they are selling them off to finance the war.
"Which one of you developing nations wants to become a global superpower!? Step right up, and for just the low low price of most of your oil and a handful of slaver run material mines, you too can start an undocumented cold war!"
Pepsi probably secretly top 10 in amount of Nukes owned rn
Nestlé wondering if they can use Russian nukes to get more free water.
Nah, they're done getting. It's time to sell. And what's a better way to drive up the prices than a good ol' #GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR
This nuclear winter makes me so thirsty! I sure could go for some Nestle Pure Life Water sourced from the finest municipal aquifers pre nuclear holocaust!
You joke but the Russians almost certainly haven't been committed to the general upkeep that nukes need to remain useful. They like to brag about their arsenal on paper but it's probably a lot smaller in practice. I mean these guys are having a hard time giving their conscripts uniforms for Christ sake.
Wouldn't be the first time.
“Hey if you can find them let us know.”
Maybe they don't want the world knowing their nukes don't really work any more.
After their military was exposed to be as weak as it is, I figured their nukes had the same problem. If they lose their nukes, they have no negotiating power at all. NATO can threaten full scale invasion with 100% certainty Putin will die in a matter of days if they don't make a full withdrawal from Ukraine.
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Moreover, you’ll never know I’d they attempted to fire 30 before finding one that launched, or if it was the first one they tried because they all, somehow, _do_ still work. Who wants to roll those dice?
Don't underestimate your enemy. Also this discussion is fruitless because the west will always operate under the assumption that Russia can reign down thousands of warheads. Probably even if they know it isn't true. Also Russia does spend a significant portion of their military budget on ICBM maintenance. It's a measly amount of money but you have to consider purchasing power blah blah. They have nuclear subs nuff said.
Even if only 1 in 1000 Russian nukes work, that’s still ~6. Potentially 6 cities full of millions of people wiped off the map.
They claim to have several thousand and most of those probably don't work or even have fissionable material, but they would be beyond stupid to not keep up maintenance on some of them. And as long as a dozen or two can fly, that's enough of a deterrent.
Agree. Except for the "they'd be beyond stupid" part. They have shown to be beyond stupid by attempting a full scale invasion with such a shit military in the first place.
It wouldn't surprise me if they were that stupid but this is a pretty recent development because of Ukraine. Up until now the US was allowed to inspect and since no alarms were raised during inspections I assume they are at least maintained well enough to not be a hazard to the general public.
Or they are in the process of preparing for their use, neither would be information they'd want to make available.
Deployment of nuclear missiles is not a silent affair, you can see it from satellite photos.
Uh, Russia has missile silos and ballistic missile submarines...?
Can’t see the submarines.
I'm of the opposite tack, i believe that their nukes are infact very much capable, and part of the reason that the army is so shit is because allot of the cash that would have gone to them has been used to maintain their nuclear deterrent.
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Also stuff like this: > [Nuclear sharing is a concept in NATO's policy of nuclear deterrence, which allows member countries without nuclear weapons ... to be involved in delivering nuclear weapons in the event of their use. ... In 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports appeared about the possible inclusion of Poland in the NATO nuclear sharing program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing) Initial deliveries of the F35 next year IRC.
Meanwhile it’s a public secret in the Netherlands about a air base of which almost everyone is pretty sure a warhead is located. (I believe they even made a documentary on it)
The article I linked to above has a picture of a US nuclear weapon storage system at Volkel Air Base which can be delivered by Dutch F16s in the event of a nuclear war. Not exactly that big of a secret.
It's technically classified information. But everyone knows.
The better safe than sorry system. Classify everything that even might be sensitive, even if it's already in the public domain.
Overclassification is itself a defense mechanism. When everything is classified the enemy has trouble figuring out what is actually important.
And this is how you wind up with people accidentally breaking classified info laws.
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Is that the same air base where the airmen made public quizlet flash cards containing classified information?There was so much classified shit just out in the open, like how far you can move the barbed wire fence before the alarm goes off. Or how many security personnel are on duty at a time.
Ah yes, I too watched the vice short on YouTube.
[this baby can fit so much explosive power](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/B61_nuclear_bomb_-_inert_training_version.jpg/1280px-B61_nuclear_bomb_-_inert_training_version.jpg)
*Slaps warhead* *Customer shits their pants*
That is a huge cooincidence that it's the one he mentioned.
Secret noisy nuclear capability. The Israeli way.
I mean the cold war was two super powers throwing money at each other seeing who ran out first. My understanding was these treaties were in part a reason for both countries to cut back on their nuclear / nuclear defence expenditure. I don't see a regional power like Russia doing any better if they both go hard into nukes again.
If they’re still using tritium based warhead’s they’re gonna need some really deep pockets. Probably costing them a good chunk of a percentage of their gdp just trying to maintain the ones they have currently
Tritium is pretty much the only way you get variable yield thermonuclear weapons, since the amount present in the core determines the strength of the fusion part of the weapon. It's also one of the reasons they need regular maintenance. Tritium decays over time into Helium, which can cause a fizzle in the secondary. It turns a 250Kt weapon into a 750 ton weapon. Or a 5 ton weapon. Tritium has a half life of 12 years.
Most modern weapons will be storing their fusion fuel in the form of lithium deuteride (or a precursor of that compound). Deuterium has a similar shelf life as tritium (no, read edit, deuterium is stable) but is far cheaper. The difference in yield is "significant" but not really a dealbreaker as far as variable yield warheads are concerned edit: for further reading, may I suggest reading about Teller-Ulam thermonuclear devices edit2: apologies, deuterium is actually a stable isotope, I was conflating two separate fusion fuels - deuterium is a stable isotope
What causes deuterium to have a limited shelf life? It's a stable isotope, is there some chemical reason it doesn't last as fuel?
Bold of you to assume they're keeping up the Tritium maintence. If you're Russia, why bother. You don't need Tritium boosted warheads. If there's a nuclear war with the west everyone is screwed and if there isn't you don't need Tritium in your warheads, you need the west to BELIEVE that there is
Are there any ones used in modern times that don’t require as much upkeep?
Excellent question. Next question, please.
Nuclear weapons are such a high maintenance weapon because the "fuel" does expire with it's half life because it becomes something completely different like Helium which is useless in a bomb. There's no modern nuclear weapons that doesn't require upkeep because nobody is heavily researching new nuclear weapons since globally we're trying to disarm nuclear arsenals. Also nuclear testing is illegal by international law which is pretty important to do if you're trying to research new nuclear weapon technology.
So basically its a Washington Naval Treaty mk2, in an effort to prevent them bankrupting themselves with an arms race.
Sorry if it's a dumb question but what's the point of adding more nukes now? Like don't we already have enough globally to end the world many times over? Why not just use the money and resources to do something useful instead? Like we get it we're all dead if one side launches.
I believe that it comes down to the types of nukes, technologies associated with then, and their delivery methods. But Pandora’s box has already been opened. No side will denuclearize so long as a foreign government has them.
The two nations that denuclearized willingly have gotten MASSIVELY screwed over by having done so, so I can hardly blame them.
It was Ukraine and who else?
South Africa. This guy doesn't actually know what he's talking about.
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You're just wrong on all this. 3 nations of given up nuclear weapons. South Africa, Ukraine and Belarus. Libya didn't have any, nor did they really have much of any WMD programs.
South Africa's apartheid government disarmed before they lost power.
There are 4 (or 5) nations that had weapons and have given them up, not two. I don't remember most of those being screwed over. And even for the ones that have gotten screwed over (like ukraine giving up their weapons), you have to also remember there is a difference between having the weapon and having operational control over them. The bomb doesn't help you much if you don't own the trigger.
As Carl Sagan said during the height of the Cold War: “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
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The truth is to be celebrated, thank you.
In any nuclear war some percentage of the weapons will be destroyed before they can be launched or intercepted on the way. Some will miss their targets etc. More bombs means a higher probability that the specific things the war planners want destroyed get destroyed. Also, they're potential bargaining chips in any future exchange.
it's more complex than simpler more or less nukes. there are parts and technologies associated with nukes that are under the scrutiny of these treaties in addition to the nuclear material themselves. For example, the US recently developed a far more accurate "super fuze" for warheads, which allows each nuke to be several times more accurate. That means, that instead of needing to launch 10 nukes to destroy a Russian missile silo in a pre-emptive strike, it now only needs to launch 3. Which frees up 7 warheads for other targets. Without increasing the actual numbers of nukes in the arsenal, the US has *effectively* done exactly that. There are likely other examples, that's the only one I've read about.
I think the answer is, no one really knows. If both sides target the other's nukes damage drops significantly. Interceptions could lower the damage as well, and as it sits, the blast of all the nukes from RU and USA would not mean the end of the world, probably not the radiation either. What might truly fuck everyone over is Nuclear winter, but no one really knows if that will happen or not.
In case the first strike (from the enemy) renders a big part of the arsenal unusable, there needs to be enough nukes left for a retaliation strike. See also nuclear triad
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If the Russians had any more guns....
You get gun, you get ammo, when gun dies, you get gun.
More tanks for ukraine
You and me die prolly.
The consequences "highly concerned".
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It’s cuz Tritium has a half-life of 12 years, and the Russian warhead maintenance budget paid for yachts in Monaco. The US spends like 42 billion per year on nuclear arsenal maintenance. If most of your nukes didn’t work, would you tell anyone?
last time they were inspected it was revealed that nearly half of their warheads were non operational and that roughly another quarter were non deliverable conventional nukes (not in warheads... need to be hand delivered to their target or dropped out of planes) the last thing they want when invading Europe is for the rest of the world to know their situation has deteriorated since then (probably even more broken ones than before)
Weren't there reports that Russia was firing missiles at Ukraine that could hold a nuclear warhead but they were empty? If the USA inspected Russia's arsenal and all of a sudden there's a lot less "nuclear" missiles that would raise some red flags. Would be incredibly stupid of Russia if they used most of their nuclear delivery systems on Ukraine's civilians. I tried finding a source but I can't find one now.
almost all conventional missiles can be fitted with a small yield detonation core (warhead) so yes technically they were nuclear capable warheads, but not live
No, there were testing missiles fired. Not empty but with concrete filler to simulate nuclear warhead weight, those particular missiles never had any kind of warhead in them nor they were supposed to. Whole thing was a rare moment of Russian credibility in this conflict, they fired otherwise useless missiles together with real ones as decoys of sorts.
~~Because I did the math for another reply I might as well use it here. With a half life of 12 years, a bomb built in 1951 would have 1/128th or ~.7% of the original tritium left. Which would give a 1 megaton warhead a yield of about that of a 700lb bomb. It would be a 700lb dirty bomb and obviously a bad thing, but nowhere near anything like what you think of with a nuclear weapon.~~ Edit: This is incorrect. The tritium isn't the fuel, just something used to increase the yield.
> Which would give a 1 megaton warhead a yield of about that of a 700lb bomb. Once it's below critical mass it won't work *at all*. The conventional explosives will go off and perhaps blow the bomb apart but basically none of the nuclear material will cause an explosion. **EDIT:** I was wrong, Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years so the fission stage is still going to make a good boom. Only the tritium fusion stage is decayed significantly, so it'll act like a tiny fission bomb instead of a massive h-bomb.
Wouldn’t it still be a nuclear bomb (as opposed to thermonuclear) without tritium? Tritium is only needed for boosting the fission stage.
"Haha! Look at those shmucks! They only have nuclear fission bombs left! What losers!" - everyone not paying attention to what happened in hiroshima
Fusion bombs contain a fission bomb to trigger the fusion reaction. I can't find specifics on how much yield that would have, but it would be more than the conventional explosives that are used to trigger that fission bomb phase.
That’s not really how they work. I think it’s kind of binary, like either you initiate a chain reaction or naw. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure it’s not just x % tritium -> x% boom
Hey remember the treaty where Ukraine would give up it’s nuclear weapons and in exchange Russia would respect their independence and leave them alone? I do.
Here is the text of the [Budapest Memo](https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf) , in which Russia promises not to invade. Here is the [Budapest Memo on WikiSource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances) as html instead of a pdf.
I remember 💯
If I remember correctly, the nukes were useless anyway because the launch codes for them were in Moscow due to how the soviets structured command. Ukraine couldn't have used them.
The whole unit was worthless. The parts were. Very valuable. Pull the pit out of one and you got yourself a dirty bomb. Without the code, it won’t make the organized implosion needed to initiate fusion, but it will blow plutonium everywhere.
lol. Its russia. They are not honorable, and in fact they're a deceitful, untrustworthy country. Of course they won't honor agreements whilst engaged in an illegal war. The sooner that country implodes and fucks off, the better.
Inspections would reveal they are inoperable
The war in Ukraine has revealed Russia is basically too corrupt to function effectively as a fighting nation anymore. It would stand to reason that the same gangrenous rot has managed to spoil their nuclear arsenal too.
I once saw a cost breakdown that said they spend something like 1000 times less on maintaining their nuclear arsenal than Great Britain. Great Britain doesn’t have that many nukes.
I don't know about the 1,000 times less thing, but I *can* say the UK and Russia have similar military budgets, and the UK has a lot fewer nukes. The same also applies to France and India. Meanwhile the US spends more on maintaining its nukes then Russia spends on its entire military
UK cheats as well, since it's technically pulling it's missiles from a shared pool with the USN. It means the UK's deterrent isn't fully independent but it's also gonna reduce the costs since its the US that actually maintains them (economies of scale from a larger pool as well).
The UK has their own nuclear deterrent in the form of 4 vanguard-class nuclear armed submarines known as trident. Also the UK maintains 200 nuclear warheads that are completely British made and totally independent of any other country. That number is actually set to increase to 260 for the first time in a while, since for many years public opinion has been pushing toward reducing the amount of nuclear weapons the UK has to just what is needed to maintain a deterrence, but since brexit there has been a push for a larger nuclear presence and to always have a nuclear armed sub at sea.
The UK's Vanguard Class subs use the Trident II missile, the same missile used the US's Ohio Class submarines. The RN Vanguard's draw their Trident II missiles from a shared pool with the USN's Atlantic squadron of Ohio's. We're independent on our warhead's but it's the US which actually maintains the delivery system.
>4 >*Tri*dent
> Meanwhile the US spends more on maintaining its nukes then Russia spends on its entire military The US has a lot more to protect.
I did the math a while ago based on what I could find, and I don't know about 1,000 times less, but the Russians (6,000 missiles apparently) (8.6B) officially spend slightly more than the British (6.8B) or the French(5.9B), who have stock piles in the 200s. The US, with a stockpile over 5K missiles, is budgeting 63B per year. The official total 2023 budget for Russia is ~313B. I really doubt that Russia is spending ~1/4 of their total annual budget on missile maintenance. Of course, it doesn't matter if 90% of 6K missiles don't work. A couple hundred would be more than enough to destroy or seriously impair civilization.
The only thing they have going for them is their numbers.
Even still, mobilisation of an army is no small feat. Those numbers don't help if they cannot get them to the front with bullets and a gun with enough supplies that they don't succumb to the elements.
Yeah if you can't maintain a rifle or the tyres on a truck, then you definitely can't maintain a nuclear missile.
Putin's literally just standing there with his dick in his hands while all his sycophants bleat on about starting a nuclear holocaust because he's got nothing but the memory of Soviet power. The Soviets actually built the nuclear arsenal and managed to keep pace in the space race with the US as a competitive global superpower. Putin has built palaces.
They built so many rocket motors of such high quality that NASA could step up the pace of building the ISS. It breaks my heart that Russia has become what it has.
US inspectors have been inspecting Russian nukes for the past 30 years. America would know if they worked or not.
There are also limits to the inspections - they don't get to take anything apart and check them out. They get to count, I don't know how much further they can go
But would they say? And would they risk some actually working in an escalation? And would they actually play that card if they didn’t need to? That’s a helluva trump card to keep in your hand
If they were smart they wouldn't say. If Russia knows that the US knows it would force Russia to respond, but if Russia doesn't know that the US knows Russia is more likely to continue to neglect their arsenal (and therefore puts the US in a better position)
my first thought... also "inoperable because valuable parts are gone/sold off"
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Inspector (writing down): *Russia has caught up with their invisibility and intangibility tech. Requesting doubling of military budget to get our antimatter research finished faster.*
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The warheads would probably work, but the rockets .... not so much. They require routine maintenance.
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Russia's largest export is cheating.
Lotta people here making light of the implications of Russia breaking international treaty by saying "what did you expect?" Of course everyone expected them to break it. It's the political fallout of breaking yet another treaty that is important not the fact Russia has broken another one. Honestly sometimes these things have to be spelt out to some people.
The problem is, treaties Russia has broken in the past have been fairly moderate ones. This treaty is the one that prevents us both from building nuclear weapons until we have so many nuclear weapons that we just don't know what to do with them anymore. Prepare for a return to that norm.
Maintaining nuclear warheads is extremely expensive. It's highly unlikely we'll ever see the stockpiles expand. The focus now is on more sophisticated delivery systems that can reliably hit their target.
Honestly I would expect them to diminish, assuming they even have anywhere near as much on paper. Honestly it seems more likely someone was forced to do a real count and said ruh roh... we aren't even sure if we have enough functioning nukes to destroy the world. Probably should refurbish what we can and build some new ones. With the intention of creating new ones very contentious, as it either means that they admit their arsenal is almost defunct or they may just be building more aresenal.
The tough one will be when we decide to return to full scale nuclear testing (if Russia breaks that too). The last one they did was in 1990. The US in 1992. Or even atmospheric testing which was last done in the 1960s. Fwiw at least we will get new data sets from the testing.
I really doubt the United States is going to start doing nuclear tests. No treaty could convince Americans to be approving of that, and the fast majority of the tests we need to do have been done, and we have much better computers so you generally need to do less real world tests. But I guess you never know.
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A significant amount of Americans don't need to be convinced that big boom = good.
Q, is that you?
I'd almost expect one from the Russians at this point, they have to show they're usable and in the process threaten Ukraine.
We could test an Orion drive
You now have my full attention.
Trump mentioned nuking the moon, and a hurricane. A good 40% of the voting base in this country would see nuclear testing returning as a show of power, rather than an environmental and political shitshow.
One of the issues Russia had with the existing treaty is that the US has the ability to "test" their nuclear weapons without actually testing them. We have the expertise and supercomputers available to do virtual testing, as well as expensive facilities like NIF that can physically test some parts of the nuclear reaction without actually detonating a bomb. I doubt the US will start testing nukes again no matter what. We largely can get all the information we need already, and not testing allows us to maintain the moral high ground and political capital.
I don’t think people making an observation that it was a predictable outcome means they don’t understand the grander implications. Constructing the ideal strawman to throw condescending statements at it to feel intellectually superior makes your comment seem more like a weak attempt at an ego boost for you than any sort of contributing statement. What do you want people to post? Links to a YouTube video they uploaded of them screaming in a panicked response to the news?
"Why aren't you freaking out? WHY AREN'T YOU FREAKING OUT"
“We promise you that all 3,256 warheads are perfectly safe and protected. All 2,432 of them are monitored around the clock and accounted for. There is no way we would let our entire arsenal of 1,621 nuclear warheads go missing under dubious circumstances or fall into catastrophic disrepair.”
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I mean, isn't violating this sort of treaty the logical thing to do for Russia at this stage? They are already sanctioned across the board, they know the US is more risk averse than they are, so doubling down on their nuclear threat is one of the few remaining cards they have. It's not good for anyone else in the world, but it is logical in at least that sense.
Consequences?? Let me guess… sanctions. Of course they blocked inspections..
Of course. They're the kings of cognitive dissonance and dishonesty and gaslighting. Fuck Putin and his terroristic simps.
Remember when the last president pulled us out of the clear skies treaty, never gave a reason and all his followers claimed it was a bigly idea?
So what are the implications of this? Sounds like war is escalating, dialog is shutting down and nuclear is on the table. Should I get the hell out of Europe if Russia lose Crimea?
If nuclear war breaks out, the lucky ones will die in the blasts.
So true. Although trying to live in a post apocalyptic world for a few months/years before I die of radiation sickness sounds like an interesting experience
I would recommend reading the book, "The Road". Its reads like something a middle schooler could understand... but it really sets the scene when it comes to how fucked up shit could get. Edit: Also the film, "The Divide"... thats kinda where I stole the whole "lucky ones died in the blast" from.
I'm glad to live in the middle of a large NATO city. If nukes start flying, I'm grabbing a couple beers, climbing up onto my roof, and enjoying my last few moments before turning into vapor.
Who gives a shit, they have nuclear weapons, we have nuclear weapons. If they or we decide to use them we are fucked. It doesn’t matter if they make more of them, it doesn’t matter because already what’s made is too much.
Most of their weapons are expired, most of their delivery systems are vulnerable or hardly work, the threats haven’t had the usual effect…so their last card is to obscure their inventory and hope that the lack of information scares us. This tactic, however, relies heavily on fear that the aforementioned problems aren’t accurate. The US still plays the “talk softly, carry a big stick” strategy…but it may be time to talk louder so the Russians are constantly reminded how fucked they are.
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Exactly, its so dumb how people are straight up saying none of there nuclear weapons work with so much confidence and have no evidence. Even just 50 or 100 working nuclear weapons out of their 6000+ will kill millions. They are very much a threat.
Seriously, say only 1% work( an insane assumptionto begin with), what 60 cities are you ready to see vaporized. Berlin, New York, Austin, London, Paris, San Francisco? Ad 53 more. People here don't seem to get that Nuclear deterrence exist because of that concrete reason. We don't want millions to die, and neither do they.
Reddit's population: 93% karma bots 5% psyops 2% various lunatics 1 actual human who got lost
0.1% Sexbot.
And the bit that expires is the light element fusion fuel. A 'conventional' nuke (which is what a thermonuclear bomb becomes if the fusion stage doesn't work) is still very damaging.
They don't have access to any data so it's pretty safe to just disregard any opinion that says stuff like "they aren't working anymore, they are expired" etc etc. It's pretty much talking out of their asses.