I think that this analysis is based on idea that nuclear war will be “conventional nuclear war”, like it was envisioned in the middle of 20 century: that is, a nuclear exchange between two super powers via nuclear missiles. However, unconventional nuclear war is also possible because of changes in strategy and-or technology.
The main technological changes:
Very large and salted weapons. Teller worked on 10 Gigatonn bomb. Khan wrote about stationary very large nuclear weapon which is covered with cobalt and intended to produce large radioactivity around the world—doomsday weapon—as a mean of universal defence. Russians created now nuclear torpedo with cobalt-salted warhead (Poseidon). Nukes also could be used against nuclear power stations which will create very large amount of radioactivity in the air. To evaporate a nuclear power plant, 1 Mt bomb is need.
Very cheap weapons. If cold fusion works, home made fusion bombs could become a possibility. If any terrorsit can create them, there will be much more nuclear explosions in case of global guerilla.
Unconventional use of nuclear weapons to affect weather. There is an often discussed idea to use nukes to trigger supervolcano, eg, Yellowstone—and US adversaries may try to target the caldera with multiple warheads.
Strategy changes:
Nuclear blackmail via Doomsday weapons
Nuclear guerrilla—many small states use nukes often.
Geophysical attacks—attempts to cause natural disaster via nuclear weapons: supervolcanos, asteroids deflection to Earth, forrest fires.
Yeah, you’re right I’m making an assumption that a “nuclear war” refers to a nuclear war scenario with current arsenals or those in the near future.
1) Future nuclear weapons, especially if they’re designed to kill everyone, could greatly increase the risk. Poseidon / Status-6 aside, I don’t think states are likely to invest in omnicide capabilities, for several reasons. One is that it’s a really hard optimization problem, and it’s easier to be able to just crush your enemy with standard hydrogen bombs. So why pay far more for something that doesn’t provide much additional deterrence capability? The other is that it’s staggeringly unethical, in such an obvious way that people in most cultures are going to shy away from it. I can see how someone could justify standard nuclear deterrence. But a doomsday device would be bargaining away literally the entire world and future for one’s own country, and even then it’s a poor bargain. There are some who would contemplate this, but I think their number is relatively small. The fact that such ideas have so far not caught on in a serious way in any nuclear power that we’re aware of is a good sign.
2) Very cheap weapons would be bad, agreed. I still think it would be hard to kill everyone with them, but it would at least increase the risk. And if they were continuously build and used, I could imagine longterm effects building up to greater systemic extinction risk.
3) Yeah, these seem like under-explored risks as well, though they don’t appear to have much deterrence value so I don’t expect military establishments to take them very seriously.
Thanks for your reply. One thing which is in play here is that Doomsday and geophysical weapons is the last resort of weakest side. If a stronger side has effective anti-missle tech and-or first strike capability, than having nuclear misseles becomes useless. This is a situation for Russia now. This is the reason why they are building Poseidon.
Giving the mindset, a county like North Korea may invest in Doomsday weapon, but not a western country. Russia and China also could do it.
Not even the right order of magnitude. Yellowstone magma chamber is 5km beneath the surface. If you had a nuke large enough to set off a supervolcano, you wouldn’t need to set off a supervolcano. Not to mention Yellowstone isn’t ready to blow anyway.
Humankind has long known how to produce very large nukes: the largest bomb ever tested (Tsar Bomba, 50 megatons) was tested in 1961. Why then is the maximum yield of every nuke currently in the US inventory under about .5 megatons? Because explosions bigger than that do not produce more destruction on the ground: after about .5 megatons, as the size (energy) of the explosion increases, it just lifts more and more of the Earth’s atmosphere into space (but not enough to cause any danger to life on Earth).
Large bomb of gigaton scale could be useful if one wants disperse large amount of radioactivity over whole surface of the planet. In that case, lifting large amount of exhaust in the upper atmosphere will help radioactive elements to be dispersed over all surface of the Earth. This is needed for doomsday bomb, envisioned by Khan. Such bomb is ultimate defence weapon: no one will dare to attack country if it has one.
Also, Russian Poseidon nuclear torpedo was said to be equipped with 100 MT bombs, intended to create tsunami.
Such a weapon would actually be completely useless for deterrence. Imagine a nuclear attack were launched against your country killing half the population (immediately and through fallout). The survivors are then going to activate their doomsday weapon, ensuring they all die as well, just so they can get revenge? I find that incredibly implausible.
Using conventional nuclear weapons as a deterrent posts many of the same challenges due to the threat of retaliation. For example, say some foreign nation attacks NYC with non-nuclear weapons, or perhaps hits it with a single nuclear weapon, and threatens nuclear destruction of the entire US if the US retaliates in any way. Then what happens?
I think the idea that constructing weapons of mass destruction makes us safer is quite a dangerous one and I’m worried that someone might come away from reading a post like this with the impression that there’s nothing to worry about since we’d only manage to kill perhaps 95% or 99% of the world’s population and not 100%. Building and stockpiling thousands of hydrogen bombs should seem just as abhorrent to people as building a doomsday weapon that serves no functional purpose other than to enable us to kill all life on Earth.
The idea of the Doomsday weapon as it was envision by Kahn is that it will be activated automatically and can’t be turned off by survivors—and it is well known fact for all players.
I think that this analysis is based on idea that nuclear war will be “conventional nuclear war”, like it was envisioned in the middle of 20 century: that is, a nuclear exchange between two super powers via nuclear missiles. However, unconventional nuclear war is also possible because of changes in strategy and-or technology.
The main technological changes:
Very large and salted weapons. Teller worked on 10 Gigatonn bomb. Khan wrote about stationary very large nuclear weapon which is covered with cobalt and intended to produce large radioactivity around the world—doomsday weapon—as a mean of universal defence. Russians created now nuclear torpedo with cobalt-salted warhead (Poseidon). Nukes also could be used against nuclear power stations which will create very large amount of radioactivity in the air. To evaporate a nuclear power plant, 1 Mt bomb is need.
Very cheap weapons. If cold fusion works, home made fusion bombs could become a possibility. If any terrorsit can create them, there will be much more nuclear explosions in case of global guerilla.
Unconventional use of nuclear weapons to affect weather. There is an often discussed idea to use nukes to trigger supervolcano, eg, Yellowstone—and US adversaries may try to target the caldera with multiple warheads.
Strategy changes:
Nuclear blackmail via Doomsday weapons
Nuclear guerrilla—many small states use nukes often.
Geophysical attacks—attempts to cause natural disaster via nuclear weapons: supervolcanos, asteroids deflection to Earth, forrest fires.
Yeah, you’re right I’m making an assumption that a “nuclear war” refers to a nuclear war scenario with current arsenals or those in the near future.
1) Future nuclear weapons, especially if they’re designed to kill everyone, could greatly increase the risk. Poseidon / Status-6 aside, I don’t think states are likely to invest in omnicide capabilities, for several reasons. One is that it’s a really hard optimization problem, and it’s easier to be able to just crush your enemy with standard hydrogen bombs. So why pay far more for something that doesn’t provide much additional deterrence capability? The other is that it’s staggeringly unethical, in such an obvious way that people in most cultures are going to shy away from it. I can see how someone could justify standard nuclear deterrence. But a doomsday device would be bargaining away literally the entire world and future for one’s own country, and even then it’s a poor bargain. There are some who would contemplate this, but I think their number is relatively small. The fact that such ideas have so far not caught on in a serious way in any nuclear power that we’re aware of is a good sign.
2) Very cheap weapons would be bad, agreed. I still think it would be hard to kill everyone with them, but it would at least increase the risk. And if they were continuously build and used, I could imagine longterm effects building up to greater systemic extinction risk.
3) Yeah, these seem like under-explored risks as well, though they don’t appear to have much deterrence value so I don’t expect military establishments to take them very seriously.
Thanks for your reply. One thing which is in play here is that Doomsday and geophysical weapons is the last resort of weakest side. If a stronger side has effective anti-missle tech and-or first strike capability, than having nuclear misseles becomes useless. This is a situation for Russia now. This is the reason why they are building Poseidon.
Giving the mindset, a county like North Korea may invest in Doomsday weapon, but not a western country. Russia and China also could do it.
There is no scientific basis for 2 and 3
There are two scientifically proven ways to cheaper nukes: proliferation via laser isotope separation and the use of reactor plutonium for nukes.
The use of nukes for artificial nuclear winter via nuclear explosions in taiga was also discussed (can’t find the link now).
Can you clarify why the volcano triggering scheme in 3 would not be effective? It’s not obvious. The scheme sounds rather lethal.
Not even the right order of magnitude. Yellowstone magma chamber is 5km beneath the surface. If you had a nuke large enough to set off a supervolcano, you wouldn’t need to set off a supervolcano. Not to mention Yellowstone isn’t ready to blow anyway.
Thanks! Useful info.
Humankind has long known how to produce very large nukes: the largest bomb ever tested (Tsar Bomba, 50 megatons) was tested in 1961. Why then is the maximum yield of every nuke currently in the US inventory under about .5 megatons? Because explosions bigger than that do not produce more destruction on the ground: after about .5 megatons, as the size (energy) of the explosion increases, it just lifts more and more of the Earth’s atmosphere into space (but not enough to cause any danger to life on Earth).
Large bomb of gigaton scale could be useful if one wants disperse large amount of radioactivity over whole surface of the planet. In that case, lifting large amount of exhaust in the upper atmosphere will help radioactive elements to be dispersed over all surface of the Earth. This is needed for doomsday bomb, envisioned by Khan. Such bomb is ultimate defence weapon: no one will dare to attack country if it has one.
Also, Russian Poseidon nuclear torpedo was said to be equipped with 100 MT bombs, intended to create tsunami.
Such a weapon would actually be completely useless for deterrence. Imagine a nuclear attack were launched against your country killing half the population (immediately and through fallout). The survivors are then going to activate their doomsday weapon, ensuring they all die as well, just so they can get revenge? I find that incredibly implausible.
Using conventional nuclear weapons as a deterrent posts many of the same challenges due to the threat of retaliation. For example, say some foreign nation attacks NYC with non-nuclear weapons, or perhaps hits it with a single nuclear weapon, and threatens nuclear destruction of the entire US if the US retaliates in any way. Then what happens?
I think the idea that constructing weapons of mass destruction makes us safer is quite a dangerous one and I’m worried that someone might come away from reading a post like this with the impression that there’s nothing to worry about since we’d only manage to kill perhaps 95% or 99% of the world’s population and not 100%. Building and stockpiling thousands of hydrogen bombs should seem just as abhorrent to people as building a doomsday weapon that serves no functional purpose other than to enable us to kill all life on Earth.
The idea of the Doomsday weapon as it was envision by Kahn is that it will be activated automatically and can’t be turned off by survivors—and it is well known fact for all players.