[crossroadsguy]

The only way we will, now that the genie is out of the bottle, not need these weapons is when we will have easy and affordable (for nation states) ways to neuter a nuclear attack which is as likely as the earth being peaceful and filled with bonhomie unlike anytime in history ever.

Besides if (and that’s some “if”) that happens that means the world has already found something more deadly and again some people will suddenly grow very mature insights on this and after destroying few cities they would totally focus on an initiative that ensures only they get to keep those weapons and every other nation should voluntarily sign up for it. And this is the main reason we will never get rid of deadliest of weapons and the endless quest for them.

[XorNot]

Defending against a nuclear attack though isn't a desire for peace, it's a desire for freedom of action without consequence.

In a world with nuclear weapons and limited, unreliable defenses against them, you have to actually fully comprehend what "wanting peace" actually means - i.e. negotiation and diplomacy are the actual kings.

In a world without them, you always have the option of resorting to the barrel of the gun again - as happened to prior to WW2.

[dmbche]

I don't think reliable defenses against nukes can exist can they? Airbursting nukes high enough causes emp events and the irradiated material still floats around - that's without the assymetry in cost in trying to hit 100% of decoys produced by the nuke, stopping a single nuke is at least an order of magnitude more expansive than sending one - I don't think it could really be done!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>I don't think reliable defenses against nukes can exist can they? Airbursting nukes high enough causes emp events and the irradiated material still floats around

With enough anti-missile technology, it's possible (though challenging) to defend against that.

But good luck trying to stop them from smuggling a multi-kiloton device across your border and detonating it at a time calculated to cause the most casualties.

[XorNot]

I'd say that's debatable, but whether its possible isn't really the point: it's important to have both eyes open on the actual ramifications of nuclear weapons not being a reality anymore. Because the idea that that is "the peaceful option" isn't one borne out by history - past or present.

[LorenPechtel]

Disagree. You're assuming nothing upsets the balance. I'm thinking of the Hammer's Slammers books. For those who haven't read them: a reasonable extrapolation of future tech with one big change: Cartridge-based energy guns. They are lightspeed weapons, no leading your target or the like. Center it in the optics and you'll hit it. The skies are nobody's friend, no aircraft, ballistic weapons are generally not of much use. The only combat rockets are ultra high acceleration short range stuff that's based on getting through before it can be tracked and engaged by the defense mounts. While nukes exist they don't get used because they're just going to be picked off. Against missiles you can make your warheads salvage fuse (messes up the tracking against the next missile), but you can't detect a lightspeed weapon until it hits.

[pdonis]

> They are lightspeed weapons, no leading your target or the like.

The speed of light is still finite, so a lightspeed weapon still has to lead its target by some amount.

[LorenPechtel]

Yeah, but we are talking ground combat. Lightspeed lag is not going to matter.

[pdonis]

> we are talking ground combat

I'm not familiar with the books, but I have a very hard time believing that the simple presence of lightspeed weapons would make all forms of combat other than ground combat obsolete.

[energy123]

Nukes come from security competition between nation states. It's the anarchic nature of this security competition that necessitates nukes.

The only way to avoid this is a one world government.

The analogy is: the existence of police is the only reason you don't need to own a gun. Without police, it's anarchy, and therefore you need a gun to survive in that incentive structure.

[BurningFrog]

A single world government that you can't possibly escape from is vastly worse than nuclear weapons.

I expect it would evolve to something like current day China.

[crossroadsguy]

That would be worse than nukes. We already see what UN and UNSC has become. Even hearing the “one world” government gave strong star wars vibes even though I didn’t need to go that far.

We are designed (or destined, if you want to say so) to be fucked and fuck up everything on this earth faster than we thought maybe even just 20-30 years ago.

[hoppp]

The earth will survive humans and we will be nothing but an archeological record. Fucking things up is subjective. The great oxigenation event also really fucked up the planet, subjectively, wiping out millions of species

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>The only way to avoid this is a one world government.

Plainly false. But even if that were true, then the cure's worse than the sickness.

Let's have a planet with 100,000 sovereign governments. Tiny city-states that neither have the mineral resources to build those nor the wealth to attempt it.

[energy123]

> Let's have a planet with 100,000 sovereign governments.

This is an impossible scenario because there is no authority that can enforce this. We had what you wanted in our tribal past, but it was not competitive. Nation states naturally emerged as the technology that allowed nation states (printing press, railroads, etc) emerged. You can't reverse this just by wishing it to be so. A one world government is at least a feasible possible future instead of an impossible one.

[pdonis]

> Nation states naturally emerged as the technology that allowed nation states (printing press, railroads, etc) emerged.

Nation states were around long before railroads or the printing press; they were around before the pyramids were built. Arguably the original technology that made them viable as an alternative to hunter-gatherer tribes was agriculture.

Modern technology has made modern nation states harder to dislodge in some ways, but that doesn't mean they're a good idea.

> A one world government is at least a feasible possible future

Yes, but I disagree that it's the only feasible option. For one thing, technology can also make it harder for nation states to lie to their people about what they're up to (the technology that is allowing us to have this conversation being the prime example). And once mation states lose the ability to do that, their viability becomes much more problematic, since without being able to tell and sustain such lies, the extent to which they make things worse instead of better becomes more and more widely known, and people are less and less willing to put up with that. A single government that was supposed to rule the entire world would have even worse problems in that regard.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>This is an impossible scenario because there is no authority that can enforce this.

No, it's not impossible, it's just not extant. It may be true that there is no path from where we are now to that world, and it is certainly true that if there is a path it's not trivially predictable. But this can be said of the "one world government" thing as well. Knowing that people like myself exist and would sabotage attempts at one world government, how do you propose to make that possible?

>We had what you wanted in our tribal past,

No, we had something even better. We had a zero-world-government. That truly is impossible, at least considering that I'm not a fan of human extinction.

[energy123]

It's impossible in the sense of "this goes against an informed understand of history and human nature", which admittedly is a soft analysis not rooted in verifiable fact, but is one that I nevertheless hold to. The last 10,000 years have been a gradual, unceasing trend of increasing centralization, from isolated hunter gatherer tribes, to EU and UN type bodies today. The unceasing nature of this trend isn't an accident. There are underlying causal factors that generate it. Positing that those causal factors will continue in the future, leading to an increase in the size of EU-like entities, to the point of de facto hemispheric/world government type bodies, isn't so radical, even if it is uncertain.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>It's impossible in the sense of "this goes against an informed understand of history and human nature",

No, that's just your narrative. You even acknowledge that there was a point in history where it was the prevailing condition, so clearly it wasn't against human nature.

> The last 10,000 years have been a gradual, unceasing trend of increasing centralization,

Hardly gradual. Incredibly punctuated. In some places in the world the stateless/tribal paradigm survived until modern times. The progressive's version of "the market only ever goes up!"...

>Positing that those causal factors will continue in the future,

So you're bad at prediction too. No, humanity becomes extinct in the next 2 or 3 centuries, because you've all become sterile worker drones and can't even maintain a stable population. Sometimes I hope that part's just an accident, but then I read words written by people like yourself, and you seem all too enthusiastic about it as if you've discovered some divine secret. Oh well.