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[Dunamisdeos]

Simple! We just need to create some kind of awesome, impenetrable anti nuke shield-dome for each city, then they can all devolve into dystopian high tech city states as each one is taken over by a charismatic but ruthless warlord who provides safety at the cost of totalitarianism.

[Egan_BW]

I'd be very happy if we could focus a bit more on making awesome shields than more awesome swords. :v

[misko27]

The problem there is A: That'll just make tactical nukes possible, plausible, and even probable, and B: There'll be a transition period where there are have's-and-have-nots, meaning nuclear war is possible, but only against some countries. On one hand, this will strip power from places like North Korea and bad actors/terrorists, but if US has it vs. Russia or visa-versa, or India vs. Pakistan... we could have problems.

Finally, consider what happens when there is no such thing as a nuclear umbrella. People might decide that the cost of war is no longer higher than the possible profit.

[SaberToothTiger]

If the oranger is granted the nobel they might as well give one to sanders. Colonel sanders, that is. I am impressed by how self-congratulatory tHeWeSt is. Jong-Un I is more sympathethic at this point to me than the oranger or pretty much any western public figure (and he is running fucking gulags come on step it up west).

[Maximum Spin]

If the oranger is granted the nobel they might as well give one to sanders. Colonel sanders, that is. I am impressed by how self-congratulatory tHeWeSt is. Jong-Un I is more sympathethic at this point to me than the oranger or pretty much any western public figure (and he is running fucking gulags come on step it up west).

Sounds more like you might just be kind of an asshole.

[Harry Baldman]

Let's just collectively brace ourselves for two-time US President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Donald Trump, the timeline that not even the Simpsons could predict.

[smjjames]

If the oranger is granted the nobel they might as well give one to sanders. Colonel sanders, that is. I am impressed by how self-congratulatory tHeWeSt is. Jong-Un I is more sympathethic at this point to me than the oranger or pretty much any western public figure (and he is running fucking gulags come on step it up west).

Sounds more like you might just be kind of an asshole.

What’s with the capitalization of every other letter in thewest?

Anyways, it’s not the first nor the last controversial nobel prize for someone who hasn’t actually done enough to actually deserve one.

While the occasion and achievement is certainly Nobel prize worthy, I think everybody is talking about it way too soon. Wouldn’t want to get it and then the whole thing collapse.

[sluissa]

I'd be very happy if we could focus a bit more on making awesome shields than more awesome swords. :v

There's a sort of parallel in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Basically countries felt like they had to continually build bigger and bigger and more and more ships just to keep up with competition. The treaty set a limit on how many and how large of capital ships any given country's navy could be, with some thought put into what would be necessary to patrol a country's given waters. Basically, some countries found the arms race detrimental to their economy and the resources being poured into more and larger ships was a bit of a hole that would never really pay back. A ship would be built with given armor and guns, and then someone else would build one with more armor and guns that could pierce the first's armor and so on and so on.

The treaty was put into place because they realized that the size of guns and the thickness of armor was a race that was ultimately useless, as you could always go bigger up until you ran out of resources.

Now... this was 1922 thinking. The treaty was basically thrown out around WW2 and a lot has changed since then. Not only the development of nukes, but also in conventional weapons. The realization being that no matter how much armor you put on something, a weapon that can pierce or otherwise render that armor useless is going to be significantly cheaper and easier to use.

I have no idea what a "shield" against a nuke would look like, excepting the traditional "a hell of a lot of dirt and rock" or enough empty space that getting the nuke to you would be prohibitive (Mars?), but odds are if you can come up with an armor against a nuke, someone will simply come up with a bigger nuke or some way to pierce that armor that nullifies any sort of advantage it might provide.

There's a reason we've done very little development of our nuclear arsenal since the 80s. We have very strict treaties with Russia that limit what both sides can have and those extend to the defenses we're allowed as well. We've managed to squeeze in the development of a few small scale missile defense systems on the excuse that "rogue states" might acquire a missile and nukes... and that has become true at some point, if not earlier with Iran then at the very least with North Korea. But anything that might hinder a "First strike" from a reasonably developed nuclear country like the US, Russia or China, has been thus far off the table. At least openly. (And in my opinion nothing big enough to hinder such a strike would be able to be hidden for this long nor would it really be worth the destabilizing effects.) Even if one were developed, it would likely be rendered obsolete quickly.

[Loud Whispers]

That and naval doctrine emphasized that armour was ultimately detrimental to the ability for ships to defend against subs, planes and missiles. More armour means less speed, more speed is more likely to ensure relative safety than getting hit at all.

[smjjames]

Not just the development of nukes and other more conventional weapons, new tactics such as the use of aircraft carriers ended the glory days of battleships.

As for a shield against nukes, short of some kind of high tech deflector shield like you’d see in science fiction, or being under a mountain, I don’t think there is one.

[SaberToothTiger]

If the oranger is granted the nobel they might as well give one to sanders. Colonel sanders, that is. I am impressed by how self-congratulatory tHeWeSt is. Jong-Un I is more sympathethic at this point to me than the oranger or pretty much any western public figure (and he is running fucking gulags come on step it up west).

Sounds more like you might just be kind of an asshole.

What’s with the capitalization of every other letter in thewest?

Anyways, it’s not the first nor the last controversial nobel prize for someone who hasn’t actually done enough to actually deserve one.

While the occasion and achievement is certainly Nobel prize worthy, I think everybody is talking about it way too soon. Wouldn’t want to get it and then the whole thing collapse.

Yeah, I know that this Nobel prize would be nothing special but it is just that little bit frustrating to me that any progress in a far-away section of the world is immediately considered a success of America and Friends. Especially since Kim Jong-Un was basically forced to backtrack on the aggresion since his nuclear programme got fuckin shrekt. This means that not only is the peace only a diplomatic facade, but it is a facade that is used to bolster the prestige of parties that had little to nothing to do with it.

It was supposed to look like the mocking spongebob meme.

If the oranger is granted the nobel they might as well give one to sanders. Colonel sanders, that is. I am impressed by how self-congratulatory tHeWeSt is. Jong-Un I is more sympathethic at this point to me than the oranger or pretty much any western public figure (and he is running fucking gulags come on step it up west).

Sounds more like you might just be kind of an asshole.

Sounds more like you might just be kind of a cunt. ;::::DDDDDD

Is this how I make an argument? I insult people for posting their opinion and then whine collectively about why I and the group of people I assosciate with are perceived as self-congratulatory?

[Kagus]

One thing is dealing with the missile and its (my phone automatically changes every its into an it's, which is amazingly irritating) explosive shockwave, along with the massive amount of heat, but it's another thing entirely to try and render the resulting EMP harmless to all those lovely little electrical systems people tend to have lying around.

[Loud Whispers]

Yo peeps tone down the irony & sharpness, no need to go insulting over miscommunications

[Telgin]

Not just the development of nukes and other more conventional weapons, new tactics such as the use of aircraft carriers ended the glory days of battleships.

As for a shield against nukes, short of some kind of high tech deflector shield like you’d see in science fiction, or being under a mountain, I don’t think there is one.

A more metaphorical shield comprised of interceptor missiles or lasers is a good bit more plausible to the point of being almost possible with modern tech.  I do wonder what might change if the technology became sophisticated enough to significantly mitigate the nuclear threat of, say, Russia, before they were able to do the same against us.

Then again, I don't know how feasible that really is.  I've seen maps of a "5,000 warhead scenario" which implies that Russia has or at least once had the capability of launching a truly ludicrous number of ICBMs (or at least MIRVs) simultaneously to the point that even a laser defense system might not be realistically able to counter them all.

[misko27]

The question, though is whether it is a plausible problem. The doctrines of nuclear warfare have been predicated on the idea that it was impossible, even in theory, to stop a non-trivial nuclear attack after it has been launched. If that goes out the window, our entire decision-making process for nuclear weapons will follow; it doesn't matter whether or not it is currently possible to stop an attack, because that will fall under the of the arms race (ever-better nuclear interceptors fighting ever better nuclear missiles). My point is that to even arrive at that situation, where the ability to launch a successful strike depends on the particulars of the current balance-of-power between offense and defense, will require a radical rethinking of nuclear theory and its implications for peace. No one ever started WW3... but if you said that it was possible that your side might have no casualties at all, would all of those decision-makers remained peaceful? Might not one have been tempted...?

I hate to say it, but this is a situation where an international treaty might do a lot of good. Anti-nuclear tech isn't a bad thing in theory... but it needs to be kept dramatically limited in scope and scale. Just enough to defend against rogue actors (the North Koreas of the world) while not enough to appreciably change the game between the nuclear powers.