Why Doesn't This Lessen the Chances of Nuclear War?

Question

I hear everyone all the time saying WWIII will be a nuclear war and the end of the world.

We have Interceptor missiles...why doesn't this completely abolish the idea of nuclear war?

Am I missing something? Sorry if I am misinformed, I will not tolerate flaming, its a question.

Answer 1

First off - you need to ignore what you 'hear everyone all the time saying.' have you considered just how few of them have any clue as to what they are talking about?

People have been saying this for 60 years and so far there is nothing to indicate that they will be right.

Anti-ballistic missiles will make ICBMs obsolete. What is going to make nuclear weapons obsolete is precision weapons. (Why nuke a city when you can take out your target with a direct hit from a conventional bomb?)

The age of nuclear weapons as a useful tool for governments is passing.

Answer 2

The only problem is that Interceptor missiles aren't 100% effective, and just one Nuke getting through has big consequences. Yeah it's true that if Russia shot 5 nuclear warheads at the US, that the US could block probably all 5. But if Russia shot 100 Nukes at the US, the US interceptors couldn't handle them all at once. Now, Russia or any other country on the planet wouldn't be able to block all of the original 5. So we in the US are the "safest" but still pretty screwed if we live in the pre scheduled nuclear detonations.

Answer 3

Someone said it above, the number of interceptor missiles do not equal the number of nukes that can be launched, especially the SLBMs.

The W.H.O. predicted in 1982 that "1.1 billion people would be killed outright in such a nuclear war, mainly in the US, the Soviet Union, Europe, China and Japan. An additional 1.1 billion people would suffer serious injures and radiation sickness, for which medical help would be unavailable. It thus seems possible that more than 2 billion people-almost half of all the humans on Earth-would be destroyed in the immediate aftermath of a global thermonuclear war. ... would probably be enough to reduce at least the Northern Hemisphere to a state of prolonged agony and barbarism."

Carl Sagan made a case that "a war in which a mere 100 megatons were exploded, less than one percent of the world arsenals, and only in low-yield airbursts over cities. ....would ignite thousands of fires, and the smoke from these fires alone would be enough to generate an epoch of cold and dark almost as severe as in the 5000 megaton case. The threshold for ...The Nuclear Winter is very low."

Answer 4

Technology (ie Interceptor Missles) is never perfect, so nuclear missles will always remain a threat. All it takes is one sucessful nuclear missle and one Interceptor failure to get the ball rolling for the end of the world.

Also, it seems that human pride, national pride and just sheer madness is behind a lot of the rationalle for war, nuclear or otherwise. So, no matter how senseless nuclear war seems to be, the threat will always be with us.

Answer 5

OK, lets say our interceptor missiles worked (there is no reliable evidence that they would be 100% effective) now we fire off our salvo of missiles....and there you have it nuclear war...nuclear winter, world wide economic destruction, and billions will die....perhaps not as immediately devastating if both armies had been successful but if one army gets through the world as we know it is done....

Answer 6

Many of the nuclear countries have more missles than we can shoot down. Many will get through. The size of the newest warheads are so massive that really only a few need to get through to wipe out millions of people.