[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.