Nuke - Good or Bad?

Hey, this might sound like a very stubid question, and the answer seems obvious. But ive been thinking. Has the invention of the nucleaur bomb prevented many large scale wars, that might of happened, if it wasnt for the fear of a nucleaur war?

Example - Did the threat of a nucleaur war make China and US think twice about attacking eachother? Would they have gone at each other, if there was no nukes, and it was a war of convential weapon.

Could the invention of nukes....in some twisted and weird way, made the world more peaceful to an extent?

Chensta

to quote Thomas Crowne from another thread

Nuclear

"It's New-Clear, not New-Kew-Lar!"

And what situation between China and the Usa?

I hope you mean Russia and the Usa.

And i do believe

"Peace is our Profession"
Air Force's Strategic Air Command motto

say`s it all.

I think there are a lot of advantages of having them and have the intimidation effect people have intended.

And i may be stupid thanks to armageddon and deep inpact but if they could be used to stop comets maybe we should keep them but hand them over to an international body.

If i was in charge just because i was at war with a goverment wouldent mean i would want to nuke the country and damage the civilians and the planet

If anything, our nuclear capabilities would have given us an edge had we ever decided to attack China - before they grabbed our economic belt buckle.

The first weapons to be dropped saved many thousands more than they took. Since then, the threat of nuclear warfare has prevented one, if not more, largescale and bloody wars. What fun is warfare if you blow up all the spoils you could plunder and the women you could...plunder?

Originally posted by chensta
Hey, this might sound like a very stubid question, and the answer seems obvious. But ive been thinking. Has the invention of the nucleaur bomb prevented many large scale wars, that might of happened, if it wasnt for the fear of a nucleaur war?

Example - Did the threat of a nucleaur war make China and US think twice about attacking eachother? Would they have gone at each other, if there was no nukes, and it was a war of convential weapon.

Could the invention of nukes....in some twisted and weird way, made the world more peaceful to an extent?

Chensta

Nulear Weapons have clearly made war much more improbable. Simply put, they make warfare too expensive for anyone to seriously consider it.

Originally posted by chensta
Example - Did the threat of a nucleaur war make China and US think twice about attacking eachother?

Well, forget about china and the US, look at the SU and the US. The Soviets had control of half of europe and both sides were building armies to invade/defend against the other side, even tho WWII was just finished. Before the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, it was understood by many that it could come to war over europe, and perhaps the world itself. Nuke prevented it, narrowly. However, it could've gone very bad. A global thermonuclear war is certainly worse than any war that it might prevent.

However, perhaps nuke detterence will prevent say, india and pakistan from going to war with one another.

Also, think about the US NK situation. North Korea can't initiate or respond in -global- thermonuclear war, they can vaporize some american cities, but its not the same as the SU US exchange. Even still, there is a detterence effect there, NK knows it can't win, the US knows its not worth it, as long as they can make sure NK nukes don't go abroad and get used anyway. This prevents something like the old korean war from occuring, which would be disasterous.

On the other hand, the threat of enemy nations gaining nukes can precipitate war. The Iraq War demonstrates this, nukes were part of the concern. And the comming Iran War also demonstrates this.

IMHO since WWII nukes are the next best thing to peace after Mahatma Gandhi!!!

Originally posted by Daedalus3
IMHO since WWII nukes are the next best thing to peace after Mahatma Gandhi!!!

For some strange reason I agree with you.

Gandhi + Nuclear= Ganclear

lol, ganclear, good one

Example - Did the threat of a nucleaur war make China and US think twice about attacking eachother? Would they have gone at each other, if there was no nukes, and it was a war of convential weapon.

You mean in the Korean War? No interest on directly confronting them...

We would absolutely decimate china today with nukes. Most, if not all of their ~17 highly inaccurate ICBMs capable of only reaching the West Coast are pointed at Russia.
The have subs but they stay off of chinas coast. Japan and the U.S. ASW forces would easily destroy any chinese subs if they got 'funky'.

If anything, our nuclear capabilities would have given us an edge had we ever decided to attack China - before they grabbed our economic belt buckle.

We'd destroy china... They wouldn�t be our economic mutt anymore... Russia would probably (and happily) take chinas position...

Missile shield+ Agies off chinsese/Japanese coast+PAC-3 in South Korea/Japan+ ABL in South Korea/Japan/USA+ American orbital dominance=absolute American dominance in the nuclear field before our own weapons dust crosses the ocean in clouds and gets us sick...

Or we could just bash �em to death with our Rods from God�


[edit on 4-1-2005 by ChrisRT]

You guys have to be kidding me. Nukes are good eh? Killing hundreds of thousands of people in a single blast is good? What kind of twisted mentality justifies destruction in the name of peace? Preventing war? LOL. I see, so we are going to go to war with Iran to keep them from developing preventive and blessed nuclear capability? Good God, war mongering has reached a new level for sure. No, hell no, the development of nuclear weapons was the absolute worst case scenario. Oppenheimer summed it up, "I am become a destroyer of worlds." Saying nuclear capability is a deterrent is probably accurate, but I guess that depends on which end of the missle you happen to be on eh? Are you guys going to be singing the praises of these terrible weapons when somebody gets their hand on one and pops it over a modern western city? It is now, sadly a matter of inevitability IMO, and you guys are talking about how great they are for peace while we prepare to invade other countries for even trying to develop the technology. They can't have the same deterents we have?
No weapon has ever been made in the name of peace. When the crossbow was developed, it was said of them, "Here surely is a weapon to end all War". It wasn't then, and it isn't now. Weapons for peace... that my friends is the most twisted up crap I have ever heard.
And just a little FYI about Japan, they tried to surrender weeks before we dropped the atomic bombs, but in our eagerness to test this new technology we bombed them anyway.

^^^^ Cool it Capt.! They where trying to say that nukes used to (and probably still do) assure that MAD will stop any sane person from firing nukes... No nuke firing =less deaths then a conventional war. And you would bet your ars that we would have been all over Russia in the Cold War is nukes didn�t exist. They prevent nuclear wars from happening and in many cases prevent conventional wars from happening.

Originally posted by twitchy
You guys have to be kidding me. Nukes are good eh? Killing hundreds of thousands of people in a single blast is good?

As opposed to millions dying in trenches, tanks, ships and planes?

Preventing war? LOL.

Despite whatever humour you find in the situation its widely acknowledged that the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union acted as a detterence to prevent a US-Russian war.

but I guess that depends on which end of the missle you happen to be on eh?

Thats the idea, if the other guy has 'em, you daren't attack 'im.

Are you guys going to be singing the praises of these terrible weapons when somebody gets their hand on one and pops it over a modern western city? It is now, sadly a matter of inevitability IMO, and you guys are talking about how great they are for peace while we prepare to invade other countries for even trying to develop the technology. They can't have the same deterents we have? Mutually Assured Destruction.

No weapon has ever been made in the name of peace.

Of course it wasn't. When the US invented nukes it used them to kill. MAD wasn't planned, it was an unintended consequece.

Neither party can win a global thermonuclear war, so as long as one side wants to win, neither will engage in war, at least not directly. Now, if one side doesn't care about causing a nuclear holocaust in which they themselves are destroyed, then it can happen.

Or if neither side can annihilate the other, just inflict terrible damage, they still might. But do you think musharraf will launch pak nukes against delhi knowing that islamabad will be vapourized in return? Don't you think that both sides will not escalate their wars above the level of border conflict?

You guys are talking about superpowers here, world leaders. We created the worst weapon known to man, the most destructive force ever devised, capable of destroying planet earth completely. You asked me what was better, a few hundred thousand dying or millions in trenches, but in asking that question I think you are mitigating the potential of a nuclear exchange. There won't be one or two bombs dropped. Mankind as a species is a violent and irresponsible animal, we have no business posessing this technology and then using to develop weaponry. None. Mutual assured destruction, you guys think of this as some kind of insurance policy, well it isn't, its a death warrant. We the responsible superpowers, leaders of the world, we developed this technology knowing good and damn well it wasn't going to stay a secret. We knew the third world would eventually have the means and the know how, and we did it without even pausing a moment to consider the long term ramifications. Not only did we do it, we PROLIFERATED the damn things. Sold them to other countries, passed the technology on to favored few, expecting them to what? Use them to insure their own MAD insurance policies?
Either I missed the point of the thread, or you guys did, as I thought this was about if nukes themselves were good or bad. If this is about Nuclear Policy, then I apologise, and you guys can go back to your war games. But hell no, Nuclear Weapons are not a 'good' thing. They never were and they never will be. The use of this weaponry is not a matter of mutual assurance, they are a matter of inevitability. Somebody, somewhere, at somepoint is going to push the proverbial button what will follow will dwarf all the millions of guys in trenches. Mankind is not responsible enough to implement nuclear technology, modern society has been operating under a false sense of morality and a false sense of security given to them by grandoise delusions of superiority to ancestral cultures. War is the norm.

Originally posted by twitchy
You guys are talking about superpowers here, world leaders. We created the worst weapon known to man, the most destructive force ever devised, capable of destroying planet earth completely. You asked me what was better, a few hundred thousand dying or millions in trenches, but in asking that question I think you are mitigating the potential of a nuclear exchange. There won't be one or two bombs dropped. Mankind as a species is a violent and irresponsible animal, we have no business posessing this technology and then using to develop weaponry. None. Mutual assured destruction, you guys think of this as some kind of insurance policy, well it isn't, its a death warrant. We the responsible superpowers, leaders of the world, we developed this technology knowing good and damn well it wasn't going to stay a secret. We knew the third world would eventually have the means and the know how, and we did it without even pausing a moment to consider the long term ramifications. Not only did we do it, we PROLIFERATED the damn things. Sold them to other countries, passed the technology on to favored few, expecting them to what? Use them to insure their own MAD insurance policies?
Either I missed the point of the thread, or you guys did, as I thought this was about if nukes themselves were good or bad. If this is about Nuclear Policy, then I apologise, and you guys can go back to your war games. But hell no, Nuclear Weapons are not a 'good' thing. They never were and they never will be. The use of this weaponry is not a matter of mutual assurance, they are a matter of inevitability. Somebody, somewhere, at somepoint is going to push the proverbial button what will follow will dwarf all the millions of guys in trenches. Mankind is not responsible enough to implement nuclear technology, modern society has been operating under a false sense of morality and a false sense of security given to them by grandoise delusions of superiority to ancestral cultures. War is the norm.

Were all alive to post in this forum, so they must have been somewhat succesfull over the last 60 years. Can you name one war since 1945 between two nuclear armed countries? Thought so.

[edit on 5-1-2005 by Starwars51]

Ganclear!!!
Have some respect guys!!

Also since this is a site for the UFO fanatics I shall make another point..nukes are the most powerful weaps known to man as of now.They are our only protection in case some lunatic war mongering alien race comes around and starts invading us!!
Also they're the best way to destroy crazzy-a$$ asteroids heading for good ol' mother earth!!

Originally posted by Starwars51
Were all alive to post in this forum, so they must have been somewhat succesfull over the last 60 years. Can you name one war since 1945 between two nuclear armed countries? Thought so.

That is why I said Potential of a nuclear exchange. Here let me help you out with a concept...
dictionary.reference.com...

nuclear war heads are bad things why they could'nt they have invented a more eco-friendly bomb ?

Originally posted by twitchy

Originally posted by Starwars51
Were all alive to post in this forum, so they must have been somewhat succesfull over the last 60 years. Can you name one war since 1945 between two nuclear armed countries? Thought so.

That is why I said Potential of a nuclear exchange. Here let me help you out with a concept...
dictionary.reference.com...

Did you by any chance look up "likelyhood" or "deterrent" while looking in the dictionary for that weak attempt at an insult? Those might help you understand the concept that works, not the concept to be afraid of.

Originally posted by twitchy
You guys are talking about superpowers here, world leaders. We created the worst weapon known to man, the most destructive force ever devised, capable of destroying planet earth completely.

Nuke arsenals are powerful but they can't wipe out the planet.


You asked me what was better, a few hundred thousand dying or millions in trenches, but in asking that question I think you are mitigating the potential of a nuclear exchange. There won't be one or two bombs dropped.
Outside of the US and former Soviets, no one has enough of a nuke arsenal to be the kind of threat you are thinking of.

Mankind as a species is a violent and irresponsible animal, we have no business posessing this technology and then using to develop weaponry. None. Mutual assured destruction, you guys think of this as some kind of insurance policy, well it isn't, its a death warrant.
MAD only applies to nations that have a huge nuke arsenal, not countries like North Korea which might have a few nukes or pakistand or israel which might have several.

we did it without even pausing a moment to consider the long term ramifications.

Which would've been better? For the US to not develop the bomb, and continue to fight a bloody war against japan and allow the soviets to develop it? Nukes are a product of science, everyone can figure out science. It was only a matter of time before nukes could be made by 'third world' countries. Better that the first world did it and fleshed out the real dangers of it first.

Either I missed the point of the thread, or you guys did, as I thought this was about if nukes themselves were good or bad. If this is about Nuclear Policy, then I apologise, and you guys can go back to your war games.

If the question is merely 'is a nuke bomb a bad thing' then the answer is no, its a heap of metal and material, it can't be good or bad. The policies underwhich they are used and not used are what are good and bad.

But hell no, Nuclear Weapons are not a 'good' thing. They never were and they never will be. The use of this weaponry is not a matter of mutual assurance, they are a matter of inevitability.
I agree, but the use of a nuke doesn't mean that everyone dies. If pakistan nukes india, why would the US respond with a first strike on the the russians and ukranians? Without exchange between the US and Russia, or two similarly armed regimes, there is no 'global' danger from nukes. The US and Russia can destroy most of modern civilization with their arsenals. france, north korea, england, india, can't.

Mankind is not responsible enough to implement nuclear technology

Then everyone will die and that will be the end of it