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"Mr President we're about to get blown up. What are your orders?"
"Well I don't know about you but I'll be in my bunk(er)."
Please charge my phone before the power goes out
And delete my browsing history
But you're gonna need that in the apocalypse. The last thing you need is too forget your password during an apocalypse cuz customer service will be gone
Secret Service ought to know you can clear browser history and saved passwords separately. Assuming they're into being incognito and all that
And don't worry about paying off those hookers anymore.
Tell my wife I said ‘hello’.
Yes, Your Beigeness!
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were they just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Filthy Neutrals. With enemies you know where you stand, but Neutrals, who knows?
I always felt this was one of the extremely rare times I can actually understand and even somewhat agree with Zapp. I can plan around enemies and expect them to be my opposition, but how do you plan around a neutral party that may or may not join either side at any moment?
All I know is that my heart says maybe
Quick, cut open the guy with the launch codes!
(This wasn't an actually thing that happened obviously but it was a suggestion made at one point. They would keep the launch codes surgically implanted in a person in a way where they'd have to be killed to get them out. Kind of one last "are you certain about this" thing)
It was suggested be an ethicist, but wasn't ever really seriously considered. I believe it was more so just a "thought experiment" (for lack of a better word) type of thing to illustrate the gravity of such a decision. In reality, it simply wouldn't be practical. You'd have to essentially keep that person(s) next to the president at all times, and cut them open without any anesthetic, and who knows if they'll suddenly decide to put up a fight in what would be an extremely time critical situation.
(Not that you suggested it was seriously considered, just adding context. Also, the idea made an appearance in the excellent HBO show "The Leftovers")
This wasn't a consideration in the ethical argument, which is that the person needs to die to get access to the code, as that's how grievous the situation is. They'd put a bullet in him before cutting the code out.
That's literally the point - if you feel the impact of the murder personally, you'll be more capable of rationalizing that firing the nuke is murdering millions perhaps billions. Any rational person would hesitate to kill a perfectly healthy human being, but being a military commander in a bunker or on a plane, thousands of miles away from danger... you're divorced from the decision and the gravity of its impact. Putting the murder in the room with you makes the gravity more real.
Just stick it in the presidents stomach. Then he can say the real solution was inside all along!
"Mr President, Russia and China have launched..."
mashes red button repeatedly on the US global nuke launch console
"... a new design of solar powered cars, you numbnuts! now we're all fucked."
Spoiler alert. In the movie "The Bedford Incident" a NATO destroyer is harassing a Russian submarine that it stumbled across. It is peacetime, but tensions are high after the Cuban Missile crisis. What could possibly go wrong?
This is a Firefly reference, right?
Take me, sir. Take me hard.
Were I unwed, I’d take you in a manly fashion.
Because I'm pretty?
I got my butt wiped!!!
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They've got almost every scenario like that figured out already. The president already knows his choice for a lot of scenarios especially that one.
Right. It's more like a really sad "who wants to be a millionaire" question.
It's not like they sit down and do the big think by themselves.
Could see 45 picking Ask The Audience and having a Twitter poll
He’d side with Russia.
“Atomize me Daddy Putler” -DJT
glances at missile silo while pressing launch button
“You’re fired.”
I wonder if they just drill different scenarios as wargame exercises w/presidents, so they automatically know their possible choices immediately.
They probably do. That's exactly what was shown in the film "The sum of all fears", and Tom Clancy was famously accurate in his depictions of military procedures.
Tom Clancy was in good enough standing/ friends with a number of high-ranking military officials (and their secretaries) with whom he would discuss his books as he was writing them, to the degree that he would sometimes stop by their offices without an appointment to see if they were free to "catch up" or go out to lunch.
He also got some classified information spookily right in his novels, and was questioned by the FBI over it. He always claimed that he made deductions based on non-classifed material and they couldn't prove anything.
I'm currently reading this book The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War and it claims that when Carter took office he was the first president to actually take part in wargame exercises related to nuclear response.
Here's the book
Right so any attack would be carefully staged to include some curveballs or counter signals to try to add even seconds of delay.
But does Russia? The US has six minutes for acting against North Korea too. Those US misslies will have to fly across Russian territory to reach Korea (unless there's a sub already there). There's no time for a call.
Russia detection system notices lot's of missiles coming their way. Will they launch against the US?
North-Korea does not warn for tests and mistakes are easy to make between North-Korea, US and Russia. Just a fun scenario to end most of the world.
The USA’s official policy is to nuke the nuclear capable allies of any country that nukes us. Officially of North Korea launching a nuke at the USA, we would nuke China and Russia in response.
Yea - i remember from a Dan Carlin pod, that he mentioned that during the cold war (not sure if it’s still the same) that every nuclear country had published retaliations in the event of being attacked etc. The bit that stuck out was the French, in the event of ANY nuclear launch (whether at them or otherwise) would nuke every nuclear capable countries’ capital (even allies). It’s scary, but also really ramps up the deterrent
Wait wtf. Why the allies? God damn can't trust the french, even after a 1000 years.
One, there would be a hole about half the size of half of North Korea (scattered of course) before that missile got halfway(most of the response to a DPK launch is MUCH CLOSER to them) and even a hint of movement from DPK allies without faster calls on the Hotlines, would trigger not just an American response, but also a NATO article 5 response. My bet is both China and Russia would be already on the line to the White House. Rumor is anyway that every launch site in the DPK is mapped and tagged anyway.
I wouldn’t be surprised if when the DPRK does ICBM and nuclear testing they notify China and Russia and have them notify the USA and our allies. As much as every country loves to posture, no one wants a nuclear exchange.
You're smoking rock if you think someone like Donald Trump has spent one iota of serious thought on this. This guy suggested to inject bleach at a press conference on covid.
We'd all me totally fucked if we had to rely on his "leadership" to act decisively and correctly in 5 minutes.
Trump would give a rambling, incoherent five minute speech which would result in the US somehow nuking itself and Liechtenstein
Lichtenstein out here catching strays
Liechtenstein: Ach! Du freakin’ LIEBER!!
Out of curiosity, I used Nukemap to calculate an airburst over Lichtenstein using the strongest nuclear warhead the US currently owns.
And...it does not end well for Lichtenstein. Some of the surrounding countries would also see blast damage and fallout.
United States Strategic Command works closely with every president, including trump, trump has gone over our nuclear strike plans.
There is a funny interview of trump after his first meeting with USSTRATCOM and trump is basically stressed out and in a semi-panic, he says at one point in the interview “you don’t know the things I know”. The stress is likely from the USA nuclear strike plan death tolls, which result in around 1 billion casualties from the first round of nuclear exchange.
Mmm you'd be wrong unfortunately. I've been reading Annie Jacobsens' new book Nuclear War and the President typically isn't drilled on this kind of thing. Now that's not to say they don't think about it in their personal time, but the POTUS has A LOT on their plate, and the unlikely scenario of nuclear war doesn't tend to make it to the top of their priority list when it comes to strategizing responses based on the country of origin from where a nuclear attack is inbound.
The DOD and intelligence community run these simulations, but the POTUS is typically doing their own thing.
I was elected to lead, not to read.
I’m here to learn, everybody! Not to make out with you, get on with the Borophyll! Heheh
Numba 3!!
Is this a simpsons reference to the movie? It seems so familiar
Yes, Rainier Wolfcastle.
Came here for this
Hardcore History Addendum podcast recently did an episode on US nuclear weapon policy and response with Annie Jacobsen. Great listening.
I bought that book. It was a harrowing read. My take away is that we would all be totally screwed from one madman's decision. Launch on warning seems like a bad idea.
With Nuclear missiles, If you wait until the missiles land, you will not have the ability to respond anymore. If you see ballistic missiles in the air flying towards you, your options are pretty much ‘roll over and die’ or ‘throw back your biggest haymaker before you die’.
The whole point of mutually assured destruction is to make sure everyone knows the haymaker would be coming so that they are as disincentivized as possible from throwing the first punch.
submarines
The subs already have their codes and will go radio silent.
There are several examples on the Soviet side during the Cold War where their systems falsely detected incoming launches and the decision to not retaliate was made by a single person in the heat of the moment.
Crazy that the world has been that close to the brink and no one but a small group of people knew about it. Retaliating would have indeed been a bad idea in these situations.
That's the plot of "le chant du loup" a french movie about two submarine. Terrorist faked an Intel Wich lead the president to launch a nuclear submarines, the submarine agree the mission and go radio silent. Later the president learn the truth, but the submarine is already launched and nuclear deterrence protocol require him to stay radio silence, so they send a second submarine to destroy the first one. Great movie.
Well didn’t you just spoil the whole fucking plot lol?
If I could ever finish the revolutions podcast I would finally have time for some of dans newer stuff
Unfortunately he seems to produce a lot more on the addendum side than his normal hardcore history feed. I don't hate the interviews, but I want more content like we used to get.
Blueprint for Armageddon was some of the best listening you'll ever find.
Yea I listed to his original stuff and a few addendums and they were hit and miss so I hoped over to some others since.
The craziest part to me was the fact that if the US nukes NK with ICBMs, Russia will probably fire back because there's no way for them to know that the missiles are going to NK and not Russia.
Not sure if this applies if they launch from the Pacific somewhere.
You could always warn them, but pretty sure they wouldn't trust
'Hey, in about 5 minutes you're gonna see a shitload of missiles. They're all inbound on Pyongyang, trust me.'
We would never nuke North Korea because they are actually not remotely a threat lol.
That part confused me. We can nuke NK just fine with subs, without flying over the North Pole.
However, the point of the book though, is that there really are only a few minutes to decide what to do. Miscommunication, panic, and just plain screw ups do have to be considered. "Limited" nuclear war is probably a fantasy, and I really don't want to test that theory.
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Probably a call to Vlad first would clear that up.
Assuming it’s a ground-based ICBM, yes. If the missiles are submarine-based, then the first indication of danger would likely be nuclear detonations on the coast.
woof. suddenly living in san diego seems less safe.