[ravi-delia]

It takes literally 0 imagination to avoid nuclear disasters altogether. A handful of people in the entire world need not to do something extremely stupid. They can leave their special keys at home, overwrite the codes with baseball scores in their mind, and no nuclear apocalypse will happen. The fact that this has not happened is not due to a failure of imagination. That doesn't mean the reason is good, obviously, but doesn't the idea that we should be blaming a pdf seem a little silly to you?

The sword of Damocles is indeed hanging over our heads. Morons hung it there, and morons stand around waiting to prevent anyone from taking it down. We should push towards denuclearization, and we shouldn't compromise. But also, we should have better public transportation. Doesn't mean that anyone mentioning seat belts is just a firm believer in the specter of car accidents. If you take the threat of these morons-in-charge and their nukes seriously (as I do), can't you see why someone might want to maximize their and their family's chances of survival? I'll note you haven't presented a solution any single person can work with either- perhaps it is a difficult problem.

Edit: There's an argument to be made that having a fallout shelter would make you more complacent. But I'd expect the average person who is worried enough about nuclear war to dig a bunker is probably more worried with that bunker than the average person is without it. The opposing viewpoints are "nuclear war is potentially possible and very bad" and "nuclear war won't happen". There are probably people who believe in a MAD-style argument for the latter, but my bet is that most of them just don't think through how scared they should be. Things have been fine so far, after all. Nevermind all the warheads just sitting in silos. This silent majority is not thinking about how to survive nuclear war. They, in their heart of hearts, do not think it is a concern.

[mistermann]

> It takes literally 0 imagination to avoid nuclear disasters altogether. A handful of people in the entire world need not to do something extremely stupid. They can leave their special keys at home, overwrite the codes with baseball scores in their mind, and no nuclear apocalypse will happen. The fact that this has not happened is not due to a failure of imagination. That doesn't mean the reason is good, obviously, but doesn't the idea that we should be blaming a pdf seem a little silly to you?

Have you a gameplan to cause this possible series of actions to manifest in physical reality with zero chance of failure?

[ravi-delia]

Absolutely not! Is this because I have failed to imagine a world without a nuclear threat, or because the problem is very hard? Not the former! As proof see counterexample- I can imagine a nukeless world just fine.

[mistermann]

I'm confused - do you know what it takes to avoid nuclear disaster (in fact) or not?

[ravi-delia]

> Absolutely not!

[stareatgoats]

> you haven't presented a solution any single person can work with either- perhaps it is a difficult problem.

Exactly; it's a tough problem. Much as I admire my own intellect [/s], I hardly think I can come up with a solution by myself, no. If we were an "army of millions" who were thinking hard about the problem then we would have sporting chance I think - but we are not that many (which, again, is frankly baffling).

Other than that, for the record I don't believe this is a problem of morons vs intelligent people. Political leaders, leaders of the military, and the others that we might want to point fingers at in this context are probably highly intelligent. It's just that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The initiative likely needs to come from people that are not already mired in the system.

[ravi-delia]

I absolutely agree, but doesn't that precisely undermine your point? There's nothing about trying to prevent nuclear apocalypse that isn't "in vogue", it's just widely seen as a hard problem. And if it's a hard problem, isn't there a place for looking at the far easier one of reading a few papers and noticing that a few steps taken in advance could make a big difference in survival odds (assuming you aren't one of the many people annihilated instantly and pointlessly in the initial blast).

And yeah, I'd like to believe there's a good reason for nuclear proliferation, and today things are pretty locked in by game theory, but there was absolutely a decision made early on! During WWII Germany was nowhere near finishing a nuclear weapon, and the Soviet Union only worked it out with the help of a spy. Seems like there was at least a shot of no one developing nukes if the Manhattan project hadn't happened.