One Hundred Opinions on Nuclear War (Ladish, 2019)

Link post

Linkposting and tagging to various topic pages related to nuclear weapons risk, in accord with ‘Should pretty much all content that’s EA-relevant and/or created by EAs be (link)posted to the Forum?’.

I think the following opinions are particularly useful (where I’m using ‘useful’ as shorthand for some combination of x-risk relevant, novel/insightful, and close-to-the-truth; I’ve ranked them with most useful, in my opinion, at the top):

1) Nuclear War is unlikely to cause human extinction. Working on a post about this now.
(link to post added)
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29) Civilization would recover after an all-out nuclear war. It may or may not happen quickly. There may be a civilizational collapse where whole technologies & supply chains are lost. Eventually they will be rebuilt.
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26) Global zero, as in complete nuclear disarmament, isn’t a stable equilibrium so long as great powers are engaged in military rivalry. However, with sufficiently protected second strike weapons, states could agree to reduce their arsenals to small # of hundreds
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12) The US and Russia are going through serious (nuclear) relationship issues. The US left the INF treaty this year, and the most significant treaty, NewSTART, expires in 2021. This is in danger of not getting renewed, which would be the worst nuclear treaty lapse ever.
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31) Nuclear terrorism is possible but far less risky than nuclear conflict between states. If any terrorists are capable of stealing & using nuclear material, they will have to be exceptionally well organized and resourced.
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13) When it comes to ICBMs, missile defense is super difficult, and very unlikely to be effective against countries with serious nuclear programs. Because it’s hard to test under realistic conditions, it’s very hard to know exactly how ineffective they would be.
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32) It’s hard to intuit how much more powerful modern nuclear weapons are compared to those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The kiloton to megaton advance happened quickly. 1945 Hiroshima = 15 kilotons. 1954 “Castle Brave” test = 15 megatons
1000x in 9 years
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10) Radiological weapons are really nasty, but it would not be easy to construct a “Doomsday Device” that spread long-lived radiation around the world. Normal hydrogen bombs are deadly radiological weapons if used as ground bursts, but their fallout is short-lived.
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42) Nuclear power plants and spent nuclear fuel sites are vulnerable targets in nuclear conflicts. Long-lived radiological weapons are difficult because it’s hard to move so much material on a warhead. However, it’s relatively easy to hit a spent fuel site with an ICBM.
43) Nuclear powers should negotiate about which which targets that should be avoided in a nuclear war. Nuclear power plants & fuel sites, dams, etc. should be hit under no circumstances.
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7) Nuclear EMP weapons have the potential to disrupt society in significant ways. They’re slightly easier to build than a standard ICBM–it takes getting a nuclear warhead to space, but does not require re-entry shielding required–something NK could do
8) While 7) is true, we don’t know how significant a nuclear EMP attack would be. It would disrupt power and destroy a lot of electronics, but I have seen no careful estimates of damage to GDP–not even rough order of magnitude estimates.
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14) It’s dangerous when nuclear weapons get faster or stealthier. Both increase the feasibility of a first strike that takes out much of an adversary’s nuclear capability, and this weakens deterrence.
15) Although stealth capability that improves viability of a first strike is destabilizing, stealth that improves survivability of nukes to a first strike is stabilizing. It’s very good for the world if nuclear submarines continue to be hard to detect and track.
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37) Communication between the leadership of nuclear powers is very important to defuse crisis situations, but this is often when leaders face the worst political pressure to “look tough” and “not compromise”.
38) There should be a hotline between every nuclear power for use during emergencies. This currently exists between the US and Russia, and sort of exists between Pakistan and India. Every other nuclear power should follow suit.
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41) The proliferation risk from nuclear power is more significant than the environmental and health risks from nuclear waste.
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11) India and Pakistan, both with nuclear weapons… Not a good situation. They share a border and have a history of conflict. There is a long history of political instability and factionalism. Yikes.
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5) While there are only 9 nuclear powers, there are at least that many that don’t have nuclear weapons but easily could. They build their own nuclear reactors, train nuclear engineers, and could build nuclear weapons within a few years if they decided to.
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20) Nuclear non-proliferation efforts have been surprisingly successful! Most serious thinkers in the 1940s & 50s, such as Herman Kahn, thought there would be 20+ nuclear powers by now.
21) Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn both made great contributions to our understanding of nuclear competition dynamics. They’re often portrayed as disagreeing on most things, but they agreed on many non-obvious points.