Https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/02/23/taking_nuclear_war_seriously_1013900.html
We warned that the greatest threat to the United States was a nuclear attack in an American city – likely by a terrorist group. We proposed a Department of Homeland Security capable of dealing with three simultaneous nuclear events. That would have been a department with the discipline and training we associate with military organizations or first-class fire departments.
As a sign of how little people understood the danger of nuclear weapons, the department degenerated into a bureaucratic mess of enormous incompetence. Today, it cannot cope with unarmed civilians at the border. It would likely be totally incapable of dealing with one (let alone three simultaneous) nuclear events.
9 comments:
To be the devil's advocate, the best way to prepare for nuclear conflict, is by having some sort of limited nuclear war. We know this from the pandemic, for example which has now prepared us for future pandemics, by exposing the weaknesses of our public health care system -- it also allowed the development of vaccines of course.
The best way to have a limited nuclear war, might be to carry out a surprise first strike on one of the lesser armed nuclear powers such as North Korea. This would rebuild the credibility of our nuclear deterrent, and civil defense measures could be put in place to deal with future nuclear wars.
Over the long term this would save countless lives and help minimize the risks of global conflict.
While having a nuclear war, could be unpopular with much of the American public at first, they would soon rally around our defense helping to support a transition to a wartime economy, to deal with our other geopolitical threats.
11:39. Your narratives are neither thoughtful nor useful. Please refrain from posting the first thing that pops into your head.
12:38 -- this seems thoughtful to me, as it seems to be true. If you have any specific criticism or rebuttal, please make it known, otherwise we can assume you are in agreement.
11:39. Your narratives are neither thoughtful nor useful. Please refrain from posting the first thing that pops into your head.
2/25/2024 12:38 PM
The 11.39 post seems very thoughtful to me. In fact I have seen some other proposals like this in various academic circles so it obviously is not something that just popped into someones head. A very similar proposal was discussed a philosophy group about the ethics of war.
I can just picture a blog post in Aug 2001. " Do you think it is possible for group of
terrorists to hijack a bunch of planes and attack us?" You would reply
"Your narratives are neither thoughtful nor useful."
You see the problem is not with poster but with you lack of imagination or intellect. Ok did that clear it up for you know?
The destruction of the world trade center, was predicted and described in 1974 in this book:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54968
The problem with the prediction, was that it did not involves airplanes but rather a nuclear device.
This highlights the fact, that particular predictions may not be (directly) useful, even if they are (perhaps) thoughtful. It could even be a distraction, preventing someone from addressing an actual outcome. We can agree there.
12:38 -- by the way this may be why there is a perception (true or not) that we are unprepared for a nuclear attack. Just bringing up any scenario where it happens seems to be controversial. There could be other scenarios where someone attacks us first that could be far more likely, I am sure.
This is a severe limit on civil defense, that evidently whatever preparations there are have to be hidden from the general public, rather than widely disseminated, and nuclear weapons have to be described as a carefully constructed mythology rather than in concrete terms.
Bret Weinstein does have a talk by the way which goes into the problems with abandoning existing ideas -- he cites something called the Chesterton Paradox -- which points out a problem with radical or reactionary social change, in favor of moderation:
https://youtu.be/yKWM76weXBc?si=7xDLj9Ct4_AUyhOh
https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
Certainly, the nuclear taboo could be one of those key ideas, the idea namely that any nuclear use is unacceptable and would lead to disaster.
This illustrates of course, another key point: I would rather hear a scientist talk about the humanities, social science, economics, etc rather than many of the people in those fields, he is talking in a concrete fashion about stuff that seems real to me, although perhaps his politics is too far right.
Bret's particular beliefs about COVID, vaccines, or climate change could be incorrect in part, I think by the way. We'd have to look at his other videos and why he feels himself to be a victim of censorship.
To assess the state of preparedness, it might make sense to look at some of the public-facing websites run by the Federal government, and combine that with your observations of previous incident responses:
https://aspr.hhs.gov/Pages/Home.aspx
https://remm.hhs.gov/index.html
https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/fema_esf-15_sop_2019.pdf
https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparedness
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