GRAPHS: how many nukes do we have compared to any potential threatening country?

[yurbud]

These are the nuclear arsenals of most of the countries in the world. Damn! They could do us some damage couldn't they?



But it looks a little different when you add us and Russia into the picture:



And if you throw in the extra nukes we and the Russians have in mothballs:




You probably already knew this, but you can send it to your righty friends as Rush, O'Reilly et al get their knickers in a knot about the threat from Iran.

Every world leader knows that not only do we have enough nukes to destroy the whole world several times over, we are the only country who has ever used them. They know that it would be suicidal to nuke us or give a nuke to terrorists to nuke us. That's why the Soviets never attacked us even when they had roughly as many or slightly more nukes than us.

[Double T]

1. Looks like there are plenty of nukes to destroy the ENTIRE WORLD........

several times over, so when the nuclear volley begins 'WE' can be assured there will be very little left living and there will be little or nothing to live for.

[yurbud]

2. my main point is that unlike Mutually Assured Destruction with Russia...

some country that is little more than a zit on our ass militarily is no meaningful threat to us since attacking us would be suicidal several times over.

[Double T]

3. Agreed. So why the hell are 'WE' spending over a trillion dollars........

and countless lives to deal with 'several' zits on our ass, specially when 'rubbing' a little diplomacy on THEM could go along way to resolving all the nuclear issues and make THEM go away.

[yurbud]

4. because nukes aren't the issue, they're the excuse.

Which is also my point.

[uppityperson]

5. k&r for graphic graphics

MAD indeed

[The Straight Story]

6. I think the real issue is terrorism and nukes (and why we don't want Iran to have em)

In the old days few countries had nukes. If the soviets attacked we could detect their launch, same if we attacked them.

If was a non-detectable event (ie, under radar, snuck in to country, etc) we pretty damned well knew who it was and could retaliate en masse.

Say Iran gets some nukes. A nuke is smuggled into the US and set off. We don't know 100% for sure who brought it in (unless we have a close relationship with them and they can and will account for their nukes). Who would back using our nukes against them without a ton more evidence?

The more countries that have them and the more they are spread out the greater the chance someone will use them in a covert way against another country (Like Israel, UK, Turkey, etc).

Mutual Assured Destruction only works when you can pinpoint the enemy and rapidly respond.

But even worse for Iran - It may well be their death knell - they get nukes, we use one on ourself covertly, blame them, nuke em back before they cannot prove they did not do it, and pnac gets finished.

[yurbud]

7. If you read the kind of instructions the Bushies have sent Pentagon, they don't have to trace it

If a nuke goes off here, it will be blamed on Iran or whoever we want to kick.

If a nuke went off here, it would give us a pass with the rest of the world to retaliate, and most Americans would be asking even fewer questions.

Your last line is the most likely scenario since no nation in history has intentionally commited suicide.

[krispos42]

8. You are forgetting the reason we have so many nukes

One word: Redundancy.

During World War Two we produced over 44 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition. .30-06, .30 carbine, .45 ACP, and .50 BMG, and probably some .303 British for the UK.

There were a little more than two billion people on the planet at the time.

Basically, you make so many nuclear weapons because you don't know how any potential war will play out. How many nuclear subs will be sunk before being able to fire their missiles? How many bombers will be destroyed in a sneak attack before they can take off? How many bombers will be shot down on the way to their targets? How many ICBM fields will be hit before they can launch? How many ICBMs will fail in flight? And how many nuclear bombs will be down for maintenance at any one time?

Also, please note that nukes come in a variety of sizes and types. A B-52 is not going to drop an 8" nuclear artillery shell, nor is an ICBM going to attack with a nuclear gravity bomb.

We have a hell of a lot of nukes. We also have a hell of a lot of different methods of dropping them on people, and each method requires its own particular modification to work on the platform.

http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/01/us-military-ammo-plant-cant-keep-up.html

[yurbud]

9. yeah, I was in CAP in high school, so I know all about the triad. Any one leg can be knocked out...

and we can still retaliate with the other two.

Since we can take out most countries with one Trident sub, at some point, redundancy becomes overkill.

Also, since a country acquiring a handful of nukes would deter us from invading them, exactly how many do we need?

[krispos42]

10. Well, they are already built

We've already made them decades ago. All we need to do now is is maintain them and stockpile them. The cost of doing that is nominal, it would seem to me, and dismantling and reprocessing them would offer no real financial savings or strategic benefit.

We were originally intending to have to destroy huge numbers of targets in a huge country, and we needed redundency in that attack, so that's why we needed so many warheads.

Once you buy a gun and the ammo for it, it doesn't cost anything extra to keep the box on the shelf or the gun in the closet.

[yurbud]

13. now we got the redundancy to heat most countries to a million degrees, then dig a hole where it used

to be.

[redqueen]

11. www.originalchildbomb.com

www.originalchildbomb.com

[Rex]

12. Easily wipeout the human race, the question is do we have the maturity

as a race to NOT destroy ourselves? History says no, but I will be more optimistic then history.