Nuclear weapons, where do you stand?

Have any two nuclear powers ever declared war against each other? Not as far as I am aware

no, they just invade countries that don’t have them. basically, we’ve no chance of getting along with each other, ffs we can’t even get along with our next door neighbors

Yeah, those bloody Scots. Still we’ll be able to nuke them if they go it alone 🙂

Take a look at 1945 – the year that nuclear weapons were used and when they forced Japan to the peace table. They saved an estimated 2 million lives – those that would have perished had an invasion of Japan been necessary.

This one pops up all the time – eg Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war in the Pacific and saved x million lives (on both sides of course)

The truth is the Japanese had already had most of their cities levelled by early incendiary bomb attacks so two more small cities levelled was not a show stopper for the Japanese.

What actually ended the war was the Russians invading Manchuria.

Anyway nuclear weapons are horrible things. It would be really good if we could un-invent them but we can’t. I’m not sure how I feel about Britain’s nuclear arsenal, I understand why we feel the need to have them I’m just not sure the benefits outweigh the risk and costs

Yeah, those bloody Scots. Still we’ll be able to nuke them if they go it alone

You’ll have to get them off us first 😉

I’m pretty sure Big Al has said that he wants them out. He’ll rue that 😉

When a country dismantles its nuclear weaponry, inspections are carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that the programme has been entirely dismantled so that the country in question can then accede to the NPT.

This paper on the IAEA Report is quite boring, because it is quite long. It gives some flavour of the methodical nature of the IAEA’s work, and of the difficulty and complexity of the business of NPT verification and of counter-proliferation generally.

As far as I’m concerned, the idea that Mark Thatcher ran off with a significant proportion of RSA’s nuclear arsenal in a shipping container (while the IAEA completely missed this or was successfully nobbled by David Cameron when he was but a callow youth) is an extraordinary claim, one that would usually require extraordinary proof to be accepted. The proof offered is a youtube documentary. 😐

Also, the 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan took place after both countries had successfully conducted nuclear tests (although Musharraf later claimed the Pakistanis’ delivery systems were not operational).

The Pakistanis made some ambiguous threats suggestive of an intention to use nuclear weapons if the war (which they had started) escalated.

This was a limited, conventional war, started by the Pakistanis in full knowledge that they and the Indians had some nuclear capability (albeit probably not enough to assure mutual destruction).

Given flashpoints like India/Pakistan, KSA/Iran, India/China I wouldn’t have the slightest confidence that nuclear weapons will not be used. Past behaviour of established military powers is not a good guide to future behaviour of rising powers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W_lLhBt8Vg

time-lapse of nuclear explosions worldwide.

I think they are quite cuddly.

The Tsar Bomba is beautiful: