So, with the rather recent collapse of the Soviet Union in human history and with it the threat of mutually assured destruction, are we in a better situation today to enjoy a safe future? — Question

Are you kidding? The nuclear weapons, instead of being amassed by just a few super powers, are now in many different hands. The great fear of annihilation which we had in the sixties and seventies has just been replaced by complacency, because it hasn't happened.

So, with the rather recent collapse of the Soviet Union in human history and with it the threat of mutually assured destruction, are we in a better situation today to enjoy a safe future? — Question

Russia didn't junk the Soviet Union nuclear weapons, and we didn't junk ours. The numbers of bombs may have been reduced, but we were grossly over-supplied, so a modest reduction doesn't amount to much. Further, the delivery systems are still in place. I don't think B52s are still flying around waiting for orders to fly over the USSR, but the silos are mostly still there, and so are the nuclear subs.

The UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them -- one way or another. North Korea could just about catapult one from its side of the DMV and wipe Seoul out. It doesn't need an ICBM to do that. (Of course I don't mean NK could literally catapult a nuclear weapon anywhere.)

So... according to the doomsday clock subcommittee of the Union of Concerned Scientists, we're about as close to doomsday now as we have ever been (3 or 4 minutes before midnight -- doomsday.)

I don't let doomsday bother me; does it bother you?


Destruction Eve

Are you kidding? The nuclear weapons, instead of being amassed by just a few super powers, are now in many different hands. The great fear of annihilation which we had in the sixties and seventies has just been replaced by complacency, because it hasn't happened.
--Metaphysician Undercover

I more or less agree, but believe the threat isn't really about just nuclear weapons but the overall other threats in general. For example, just a few years ago there was a massive Ebola outbreak in Africa (with I believe a 50%-90% fatality rate) that was luckily contained, but would have happen if terrorist had used it to spread the disease to as many people in the industrialized world as possible?

There is a scene in the movie Dr. Strange Love where he talks about how any country (I believe he is referring to one of the more powerful industrialized nations) can build a doomsday weapon ; which in the movie was supposedly a massive nuclear weapon filled with radioactive Cobalt which "supposedly" could render much of the earth unlivable for tens to hundreds of years.

Little did people know that this "doomsday weapon" in the movie was based an ACTUAL weapon being consider by the USSR at the time. It was never built because the primer at the time thought it was too crazy which is kind of funny since he was know for taking off his shoe and beating his desk with it to get attention while at the UN.

All you need is a rogue country and/or a very powerful/resourceful organization that can use some kind of NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) weapon or something the equivalent of them and whatever developed country or countries it is pointed at has a problem on their hand. That on top, there is also the problem of how defunct our own CIA and other intelligence agencies are (ie. such as the head of counter-intelligence worked as a spy for Russia for many years before finally getting caught), I believe there is some reason for people to be a little nervous paranoid.

The most dangerous time period is always the current period.

Hope that helps.

There was a time where human population had dropped to as low as 10k-30k. We might have qualified as an endangered species by today's standards.

Which coincided with the last time that massive volcano under yellowstone (which at the time was more under Russia, I believe) went off. The volcano is so fucking huge, that when it goes, it will be like setting off 200,000 nuclear weapons all at once. You'll hear it go off everywhere on earth, for a week.

I've been fascinated by the Cold War.

I find it incredible that the U.S. and the USSR essentially played a zero sum game and maintain a bluff of potential absolute annihilation with each other over almost 50 years. Brilliant minds like John von Neumann and many other unmentioned names designed a situation that assured the consequences of war too costly to undertake. The amount of, I don't know what to call it, steel nerve required to maintain composure during such tense and volatile times astonishes me. What's even more astonishing is that we purposely stalled progress on ABM technology to maintain the precarious balance of power during that time, which I see as a cause for the anxiety of rogue states acquiring nuclear payload deliverability. It's another topic but had we advanced ABM technology, I don't think we would have seen as large of a threat as we see today with countries like Iran and North Korea developing ICBM deliverable nuclear payloads.

So, with the rather recent collapse of the Soviet Union in human history and with it the threat of mutually assured destruction, are we in a better situation today to enjoy a safe future? — Question

When you're in the MAD club and you notice one of your counter-parts is building anti-missile tech, it might start to make you nervous that should they be successful, they will be invulnerable and hence your own protection granted by mutually assured destruction would be gone...

That said, I think that in some ways we have a safer future and in some ways we have a less safe one.

The threat of total and global nuclear winter was a larger existential threat to mankind than anything we face today because it would have killed a majority of humans and potentially set us back thousands of years (if we would have survived).

Now-a-days though the threats we face aren't entirely existential, but because of our growing population the stakes continue to rise and the apparent risk of massive loss of life continues to grow.

If global warming occurs too rapidly, billions could starve. If a new super-bug/infection/disease comes along it would wipe out a massive chunk of earth's population. With the end of oil looming near, unless we manage to find economical replacement technology then the progress of our civilization could halt and begin to reverse (in terms of how much energy/food/wealth we can produce)...

which at the time was more under Russia, I believe — Wosret

I think it was Indonesia. I think I'd rather live during the cold war than a 10 year long volcanic winter.

Lol, me too man. Me too.

which at the time was more under Russia, I believe — Wosret

I think it was Indonesia. — Reformed Nihilist

What?

The Yellowstone hot spot was NEVER under Russia or Indonesia.

"Yellowstone has had at least three such eruptions: The three eruptions, 2.1 million years ago, 1.2 million years ago and 640,000 years ago, were about 6,000, 700 and 2,500 times larger than the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State."

Clearly, a 'not to miss' event.

I don't know anything about Yellowstone, but I was talking about the Toba supervolcano theory.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory?wprov=sfla1

I qualified that i thought that, implying less than certainty... ass was covered there. :D

I actually wasnt aware of the theory that linked them, muahahaha. I just knew that both events took place around the same time, so it wasnt much of a hope skip and a jump.

Fascinating. Thanks for the information.

The lowest estimates have the population as low as 100 breeding pairs.

Are you kidding? The nuclear weapons, instead of being amassed by just a few super powers, are now in many different hands. The great fear of annihilation which we had in the sixties and seventies has just been replaced by complacency, because it hasn't happened. — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems to be a common sentiment. I don't think any nation is amassing nuclear weapons and actively pointing them at other nations as per the cold war. Correct me if I'm wrong; but, nuclear deterrence is widely considered as a detrimental policy nowadays. If anything it seems to be a shortcut to bankrupting a nation.

There is a scene in the movie Dr. Strange Love where he talks about how any country (I believe he is referring to one of the more powerful industrialized nations) can build a doomsday weapon ; which in the movie was supposedly a massive nuclear weapon filled with radioactive Cobalt which "supposedly" could render much of the earth unlivable for tens to hundreds of years.

Little did people know that this "doomsday weapon" in the movie was based an ACTUAL weapon being consider by the USSR at the time. It was never built because the primer at the time thought it was too crazy which is kind of funny since he was know for taking off his shoe and beating his desk with it to get attention while at the UN. — dclements

The doomsday weapon was proposed as a sort of reductio ad absurdum by Herman Kahn. Strategists never took the idea seriously.

If you'll allow me to make a guess, I think the we're still not out of the woods yet.

The obvious proliferation of weapons from AK-47's to Hydrogen bombs, resurgent and emerging diseases, environmental degradation, religious fanatcism and the moral vacuum of atheism, and last but not the least, the stray mega-ton asteroid that could be on a collision course with the earth, all seem to spell doom for life on Earth.

Put otherwise, it's not just weapons that can cause the apocalypse. Simply driving your car may be writing the last chapter of human civilization.