[Lrigikithumer]

A lot of people consider nuclear annihilation a big threat but I'm not too worried about tbh. I mean if you think about it, every major player has got a trigger to end all life at any given point, doesn't it seem reasonable that at some point you invest a lot of money into systems that can safeguard and prevent this type of catastrophe. I know a lot of people may consider the governments dangerous and selfish but they aren't stupid, major players have definitely got systems in place to neutralise these threats.

At least they do in my optimistic viewpoint.

[rwallace]

I would like to share your optimism. But then I read about things like the US nuclear launch codes being set to 00000000 for quite a few years, or an incident when survival versus Armageddon depended on the judgment of one man [1], and I have to conclude that human governments should not be in possession of nuclear weapons.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

[has2k1]

Nuclear weapons are hard enough to build that they require a coordination of resources and knowledge, so there is an amount of level headedness among those that build them. A pessimistic view follows that, if some technology in our future is as destructive yet it be simple to build then that is a candidate for a filter. In essence, if it exists then we are just sitting ducks.