[MarkusWandel]

Worldwide, the sort of divisions where one's own side is all good and the other side is unspeakably evil, are on the upswing again. Having lived through a full cycle of this (old style cold war/thaw/current situation) I try to remind people that we're all humans, and about 99% everywhere have the same instincts to survive and get along. Not everyone listens.

[GiorgioG]

> about 99% everywhere have the same instincts to survive and get along

I just finished listening to The Doomsday Machine audiobook (https://www.amazon.com/The-Doomsday-Machine-audiobook/dp/B07...) and it's had a profound effect on how I see our military leadership's nuclear strategy. While the book delves primarily into the 1950s-80s, as far as the author is concerned (he worked as a consultant on nuclear strategy,) the policies have not materially changed since then. Some examples of some things that were eye-opening to me:

- The military deliberately hid their nuclear war strategy from the secretary of defense (and thus the president, etc.) for years.

- US Presidents often invoke the threat of nuclear attack to force nations to bend to its will - to this day, democrats and republicans alike.

- The gov't has done a good job of selling that only the president can order a nuclear strike, but in practice there's a lot more people involved that can launch a nuclear attack without requiring clearance (in years past, this was due to potential communication issues, but even to this day these remain in order to counter potential 'decapitation' attacks. This delegation system means we're one person's mistake (or mental illness) from starting a world-ending cascade of nuclear strikes as other nations respond in kind.

I'm under no delusion that the world can do away with nuclear weapons, but maybe we should stop threatening to use it first like it's no big deal. It seems that our military leadership historically isn't exactly in that 99% group of folks who want to live and get along.

[tharkun__]

We've been very very close (probably more than once).

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stan...

In short: Russian early warning system operator sees 5 minuteman ICBMs coming towards them. He does not have time to go check with someone. If they are to retaliate, he has to just launch now. No such thing as "waiting for the president to decide to launch". He didn't. Turned out reflections of the sunlight off clouds set off their sensors.

[GiorgioG]

It’s worse than that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

Beyond that, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the US warships harassed Russian subs that (unbeknownst to them) had nuclear torpedos. These subs thought the US ships were trying to sink them, and as a result they nearly launched their nukes as a last resort.

[zaik]

The logic behind this was that a first strike is unplausible to be only 5 missiles. Stanislav Petrov knew a first strike would have involved hundreds of missiles launched at the same time.

[tim333]

Humans also seem to mostly have less pleasant instincts. The theme of "The Better Angels of our Nature" is kind of the promotion of 'get along' and the minimisation of 'smite your enemies.'