- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The big effect on accidental nuclear wars is this:
As Herman Kahn pointed out in his 1960 work On Thermonuclear War, which is dry and large but which I think is important for anyone who really wants to understand nuclear war theory because it makes some interesting and counterintuitive points, a true "bolt from the blue" nuclear first strike without provocation is very unlikely.
After all, we can certainly imagine fictional nations that would welcome apocalyptic nuclear war that devastated them for the sake of destroying an enemy (the Hearts of Iron mod 'The New Order,' fairly well known around here, has a couple). But notably, such nations are unfailingly governed by ultra-fanatics, by ideologically committed madmen whose obsession with the destruction of their perceived enemies is as great and dire as any such fanaticism in human history, and perhaps greater.
In practice, the "bolt from the blue" first strike is nearly unimaginable except when perpetrated by a nation that has absolutely nothing to live for except the destruction of its ideological enemies, and which places no value on human life and cares for nothing except that destruction. And vaguely normal nations aren't like that.
Many in America during the Cold War told each other constantly that communism had turned the USSR and Maoist China into exactly such mad super-fanatical states. And the fact that they told each other this had a great deal to do with why Americans took the idea of the nuclear first strike as a realistic threat seriously.
When that fanaticism seems less plausible, and both sides know the other as an actual collection of humans rather than as an obsessive clique of deranged maniacs who exist only in the fantasies of their own side's propagandists, both sides are less likely to expect or believe that a nuclear attack could be launched without provocation and without warning.
As Herman Kahn pointed out in his 1960 work On Thermonuclear War, which is dry and large but which I think is important for anyone who really wants to understand nuclear war theory because it makes some interesting and counterintuitive points, a true "bolt from the blue" nuclear first strike without provocation is very unlikely.
After all, we can certainly imagine fictional nations that would welcome apocalyptic nuclear war that devastated them for the sake of destroying an enemy (the Hearts of Iron mod 'The New Order,' fairly well known around here, has a couple). But notably, such nations are unfailingly governed by ultra-fanatics, by ideologically committed madmen whose obsession with the destruction of their perceived enemies is as great and dire as any such fanaticism in human history, and perhaps greater.
In practice, the "bolt from the blue" first strike is nearly unimaginable except when perpetrated by a nation that has absolutely nothing to live for except the destruction of its ideological enemies, and which places no value on human life and cares for nothing except that destruction. And vaguely normal nations aren't like that.
Many in America during the Cold War told each other constantly that communism had turned the USSR and Maoist China into exactly such mad super-fanatical states. And the fact that they told each other this had a great deal to do with why Americans took the idea of the nuclear first strike as a realistic threat seriously.
When that fanaticism seems less plausible, and both sides know the other as an actual collection of humans rather than as an obsessive clique of deranged maniacs who exist only in the fantasies of their own side's propagandists, both sides are less likely to expect or believe that a nuclear attack could be launched without provocation and without warning.
