[dagwaging]

>If I had complete authority over a nation's nuclear weapons I would never, under any circumstances, actually use them. In all respects I would act as though I would respond to a nuclear attack in kind without hesitation, but that would be a lie. If I were faced with an overwhelming strategic attack and had the opportunity to respond with an attack of equal magnitude, I would not. Such an act would not change the outcome of my own nation, it would merely inflict the same on my enemy, which since I am not a psycopath has negative utility. At that point the war is already lost, the best one could do is minimise the destruction inflicted on humanity as a whole.

part of me wants to hope that the individuals involved in the creation and deployment of nuclear warheads have actually agreed to silently sabotage them all, rendering them inoperable even if there were an attempt to use them

it would make a good storyline, at any rate

[mikeash]

Have there been nuclear tests where they just pulled a weapon off the proverbial shelf and blew it up without any more preparation than it would get in a real war? I wonder if such a scheme would ever have been detected.