Currently, it seems impossible to stop a nuclear war by the end of 2020.

Trump is likely to drop about 450 50-kiloton nuclear bunker busters from naval F-15 'Sea Eagles' launched from an aircraft carrier on N Korea, to ensure he wins the next election, but if impeachment efforts appear successful, he could press the button sooner. — ernestm

Hardly know where to start on the totally false statements here. Like the F-15 is a land based aircraft used by the USAF, not the USN. And that 450 number is gotten likely from the life-extension program for the old 1906's era B61 bomb that Pentagon has asked for during the Obama years. (Why the US would use the full arsenal on NK I have the faintest idea)

What's the likely outcome? That basically North Korea gets it's ICBM delivery system which makes the US not to engage in a "pre-emptive" strike on the country. Clinton didn't go to war with North Korea. Neither did Bush or Obama. North Korea has sunk a South Korean warship and made an artillery strike on a South Korean town and that hasn't started a war. In earlier decades North Koreans even killed American servicemen on the border and that didn't start a war either.

I'm doubtful of Trump attacking his new friend in North Korea, just to get the focus away from domestic issues. Typically the US can be very belligerent towards countries that don't have nuclear weapons, only those that have so-called potential weapons.

I think the nuclear war issue is a red herring. I agree that a nuclear war could be an apocalyptic event - destroying all life. Yet, it's the so-called conventional weapons that do most of the actual killing.

Also, if you look at history nuclear weapons seem a good way to end a war. Japan surrendered after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I'm not condoning the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese but, arguably, the war would've exacted a greater toll if left to conventional means.

It's very human - this folly; like a smoker who's afraid of immediate fatality, say, in a car accident but continuing to puff on his deathsticks.