British Politics Thread.

[YorkNecromancer]

They thought both those might happen with the detonation of the first one didn't they? and still did it anyway...

Yup.

These f**kers are abjectly terrifying.

[Psychosplodge]

Scientists or nukes?

[Mr Mystery]

Both.

[Kirsten]

the paranoia needed to spend hundreds of billions on something we don't really need, and won't make a blind bit of difference anyway.

yup

[CoffeeGrunt]

How would you propose we prove that nukes aren't a deterrent? It's like removing a country's armed forces, it's a vulnerability that can be exploited. Despite what James Bond movies would have us believe, no-one wants to get nuked. Anyone who fires one off has the certainty of retribution hanging over their heads, however futile it may be. It doesn't necessarily follow that every nuke in existence would be fired, as for example the US only has a part of its payload operational at any one time. The aftermath would most definitely kill Mankind if it went full global thermonuclear war.

Sure, it's lovely having the moral high ground if the country gets glassed. I'm sure we'll be remembered fondly as the valiant martyrs who never fired back lest we cause even more damage. That's precisely the mentality of war after all, right? ^_^

[Wolfshade]

The thing is with a lot of these very expensive public spending programmes it isn't really about the end result. Consider the James Webb Telescope, 8.7 Bn $US. Yet, NASA aren't blasting that money into space, in reality, the cost of the materials is a mere fraction of the budget. The costs go into the economy and surely employing people is better than just spending it on aid/social security.

[Morgrim]

The scientist in me wishes to point out several key fallicies noticed in this thread:

1) No nuclear weapon currently in existence, nor reasonably likely to exist at any point in the future, is capable of igniting the atmosphere. This was a query raised before the first test, yes. They were also quite convinced it wouldn't before they went ahead. We are now definitively sure, there is no mechanism to make it work. No, fusion bombs won't either. Even really big ones. Nitrogen is just that good at dampening things.

2) Even if the entire sum of the world's nuclear weapons were detonated in the most carefully calculated locations the planet will survive. Humans are utterly incapable of generating the energies required to break a planet. Even a little one.

3) We can't use nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth. We can cause the equvilient of a reasonably sized asteroid impact, or worse lots of smaller asteroid fragments hitting, but that'll cause a mass extinction at most. The radiation curve from uranium or plutonium fission (or hydrogen fusion) weapons has a very steep curve; it's ferocious in the immediate aftermath but tapers off quickly. The worst of it is out of the area within a few months. That's a pittance on geological timescales. Even if the weapons were carefully layered across land there will be plenty of areas life will survive.

Now, wiping out humans is a lot easier. THAT is possible. Although it'll mostly be knock-on effects from stuff like supply chains being destroyed and key farming regions having their harvests collapse for a decade or so. That said, humans will probably survive; there are a lot of more isolated areas with strong sustenance farming traditions in place like Africa or parts of South East Asia that are sufficiently far from any place interesting to dodge a direct hit, and sufficiently insulated from potential nuclear winter to allow cropping. But blasting surviving humanity back to about Roman levels of technology is quite doable.


I now return you to your previously scheduled politics thread.

[Mr Mystery]

How would you propose we prove that nukes aren't a deterrent? It's like removing a country's armed forces, it's a vulnerability that can be exploited. Despite what James Bond movies would have us believe, no-one wants to get nuked. Anyone who fires one off has the certainty of retribution hanging over their heads, however futile it may be. It doesn't necessarily follow that every nuke in existence would be fired, as for example the US only has a part of its payload operational at any one time. The aftermath would most definitely kill Mankind if it went full global thermonuclear war.

Sure, it's lovely having the moral high ground if the country gets glassed. I'm sure we'll be remembered fondly as the valiant martyrs who never fired back lest we cause even more damage. That's precisely the mentality of war after all, right? ^_^

Yet we'll all be dead, with the off chance of being radiation mutants, so the whole point is moot.

There is no point to Britain maintaining Trident. It's a needless, and ongoing expense.

Wolfie - you act as if the billions upon billions earmarked for Trident can only be spent on Trident. There's plenty other civil projects it could be ploughed into.

[Wolfshade]

What is wrong with ring fenced spending?

[Mr Mystery]

Depends upon the intent.

Ciggie Tax ring fenced for the NHS? All fine with me.

Trident? I'm so far from convinced we even need it, absolutely it's not cool. Not when the Treasury are swinging the scythe at things we, you know, kind of do need. Like Schools, Police, NHS etc.

But no. We need to keep our Big Shiney Penis, don't we. You never know when another country might threaten us with theirs, even when it's pretty clear that we can wave what we've got all we want, and we're still gonna get Tallywhacked.