FWIW, all of the scientists involved in creating the first nuclear weapons immediately after the first detonation began pushing for a ban on further nuclear armament, and since then all wars have been fought with conventional weapons.

I've been reading about the nuclear arms race and it is terrifying how often we came to destroying ourselves. I have possibly never seen greater evidence that there may be a god.

You don't need nuclear weapons to want to avoid war.

Yes, using nukes defensively is less bad than using it to start a war. That doesn’t mean I support the use of nukes.

WWII was unique in starting with no nukes and ending with them. We also didn't yet understand the long-term ramifications of the weapon's use.

Sure, nuclear disarmament wouldn't hurt, but like you said: atomic bombs have only been used against people twice. There's no evidence that their use against people is likely to substantially increase over the next few years, so it's not something that is worth worrying about. Just like terrorism.

EDIT: And certainly it is not worth using the risk of atomic bombs as an excuse to invade the privacy and erode the freedoms of millions of people.

They've been around for quite a while, so the evidence is against that conclusion.

What do you propose as an alternative? Mutual disarmament?

Once you have nuclear weapons, there’s no reason whatsoever to EVER give them up.

Nuclear weapons absolutely are an existential risk.

>By the way does anyone know anything about any launch codes?

I don't have any top secret knowledge about current systems but have read about historical command and control systems and it's a terrifying slice of history. Now there is starting to be talk about integrating AI into those systems, which I find horrifying.

Because the alternative is, "Hey, using just a few nuclear weapons would be okay." Which would (a) cause enormous destruction and (b) likely escalate to all-out nuclear war anyway. You're better off saying, "Don't ever ever _ever_ start this, because you will not live to regret it."

This line of reasoning is really dangerous and I'm flabbergasted that there are people who take this stance. Really unfortunate that not just randoms on HN but likely also people in Washington might believe this BS.

The problem with this approach is that in every future conflict this argument will be in play and so in every future conflict there is no plausible way to finish the conflict other than let the aggressor roll with it.

This might be the first time when a nuclear weapon is used offensively without being fired.

As much as I may dislike it, 4000 nukes say otherwise.

It was never an option that nuclear weapons wouldn't be invented. The only question was who will invent and use it first.

Nuclear armament is progress. Without nuclear weapons, we would have had many more WWII-style large-scale industrial total wars, probably with cumulative causalities in the hundreds of millions. You don't need nuclear weapons to kill lots of people. Nuclear weapons have made large scale total war impractical, which means it doesn't happen anymore. Nuclear disarmament would be a disaster, and wishing for it is naive.

We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov.

> we haven't done the R&D and optimization to lower the cost for mass producing neutron bombs too.

We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them.

Say what you want about humanity, but 70+ years without a nuclear war is impressive, given our history. It became possible through continuous innovation in game theory, spy games, and yes, improving the deterrents. I think nuclear weapons will never be actually used in large-scale future wars, like chemical weapons weren't massively used in WW2.

Progress is good. Wars are part of the progress. Wars themselves are bad, though, so some of the progress is spent to keep wars at bay, to not interfere with the progress.

This is a little dismissive. Nuclear war under any plausible scenario wouldn't be an isolated 1945-type event. It would be a global event that drew in other players and more than likely would conclude in a mass launch by one of the world powers. We're not nuking Paris, Moscow, or DC and walking away. There will be retaliation.

Unlike biotech, these things are here, ready, and primed to hit targets. If there's a tail risk to worry about its human extinction via nuclear arms.

Could we say that nuclear(and other) weapons are responsible for the bringing unprecedented world peace to the world?

This is not true. No nuclear powers should engage in direct wars, I'm not a fan of proxy wars either but they are safer than direct conflicts which can easily escalate.

We have never had a world war between nuclear armed states and we should avoid the potential at all costs.

Five decades is nothing in historical terms, and it was by no means a foregone conclusion that nuclear weapons would not be used in that time period. The reason they have not has been due to extraordinary effort, chance, and non-proliferation efforts. The future decades and centuries look much grimmer unless we can dismantle existing stockpiles and do what we can to enjoin future generations to not create them.

> The Cold War is over.

The Cold War is over, but the Pax Americana enforced by American hegemony will not last forever. If history teaches us anything, it is that all peacetimes eventually end.

> Sounds good enough for me. Fuck cancer, fuck heart disease, fuck diabetes, fuck obesity. Full steam ahead!

If eliminating heart disease means the extinction of human beings, or the death and suffering of billions of others, is that really worthwhile to you? What if heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity can eventually be dealt with through other, safer, means?

Nope. I chose nukes because they were an obvious example of something that we didn't want just anyone to have within arms' reach. I didn't expect it to be subjected to the kind of criticism you're raising.