Can we rid the world of nukes?

[observer]

Obama has pulled off a deal with the Russians to cut their nuclear weapons by 30%; but will this laudable initiative impact on the aspirations of Iran, N/Korea or Israel?

[Evil Sid]

yes it is simple to rid the world of nukes. one press of a button and boom all out nuclear war, every nuke used up in minutes. mind you we would not survive to see what was left but there is a flaw in most plans

[harry hayes]

You can now only try to control nuclear weapons. The old strory - you cannot re-invent the wheel.

 

happy days

[observer]

They could be used to break up any earth bound asteroids?!

[Sue Durnim]

Since the invention of nuclear warheads/nukes and using them as deterrents to prevent conflicts between nations, how many wars have we had to date and how many times have such weapons been used in anger?

 

Apparently on a TV programme the other day, the US, Russia have lost quite a few nulear war heads and to date are still searching for them, while still trying to salvage unexploded bombs and munitions from WW2 from the Baltic and other seas.

 

Wars are not what they used to be, when one country had a different coloured uniform so the friend or foe could be distinguished, now the enemy wears a rucksack filled with explosives and walks through the streets of the towns and cities of the world and could be anyone, any age or any gender to cause untold killing, pain and suffering, seems the enemy are very difficult to identify.

[LymmParent]

Get rid of all the nukes except one and you've elected a world leader. So no, there will always have to be enough dotted around the place to ensure a balance of mutual threat. People aren't very nice, really. We'll only see the backof nukes when someone invents something worse instead.

[observer]

There are already "worse" things, but perhaps too volatile and unpredictable to use at the moment.

[LymmParent]

There are already "worse" things, but perhaps too volatile and unpredictable to use at the moment.

 

Oh, people would use them. They're just not widely available yet and everyone else would nuke you if you did. Unfortunately, the only way to make some people play nicely is to make sure they know what'll happen to them personally if they don't. Human nature again.

[observer]

The stuff I was thinking off, can be delivered in such a low key way, that the recipient wouldn't even realise they'd been attacked, until folk started dropping like flies!

[LymmParent]

Yup. Then it blows all over the globe, gets into the water supply and returns to its maker...... who will be sitting in solitary splendour, wearing a biohazard suit and looking forward to a life that will end with his supply of fresh water, because he's killed everyone else, contaminated all the soil and effectively rendered the planet uninhabitable by anything except cockroaches.

[observer]

Not quite LP; bio-weaponary has been under research since the cold war, with some rumoured to have a 24 hour clear up cycle. The problem for national use would be if you wanted to vaccinate your population prior to using it on another country, which might alert an enemy; something terrorists wouldn't need to do, in fact they'd probably have volunteer martyrs to deliver the virus. Any bio-attack would find cases of possible immunity and thus some survival; no collateral damage would be caused. unlike nukes, which would flatten cities. The risk from using nukes, would depend on the scale of use, as a nuclear winter could see us all off, if we didn't take some plants and animals underground for a couple of years. However, the point is, that bio-weaponary is much cheaper, easier to deliver without detection, and avoids the risk of immediate retalitatory action.

[LymmParent]

The mutation rate of viruses etc makes that an incredibly risky idea. They are working on germs that kill and go, but as the man in Jurassic Park says "life will find a way". There's every chance that one of these clean germs will find a non-susceptible host and survive long enough to mutate the tiny amount that's needed to remain deadly but render the antidote to its parent useless. Even our most committed global nutters pause there. For now, anyway.

[observer]

There hasn't been a type of weapon invented that hasn't been used in anger. Niether is there any such thing as a "safe" weapon. However, for economy and stealth, some forms of WMDs can be more effective than others.

[LymmParent]

There hasn't been a type of weapon invented that hasn't been used in anger.

 

How do you know that?

[observer]

From history: bio weapons - used throughout from ancient times/middle ages - corpses of plague victims catapulted into beseiged towns. chemical - WW1 gas. nuclear - Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

[LymmParent]

Obs. If a weapon has been invented but not used, how would anyone know about it?

 

I agree that human beings tend to use whatever they can lay hands on, but logically, none of us can be sure what's been developed under wraps, can we?

[observer]

Thing I purposely used the term "type" of weapon, which in WMD terms are Nuclear/Biological/Chemical. Now all new inovations on that theme are obviously kept secret, hence we employ spies to find out what the other side have, so we can develope a counter, and so it goes on and on!