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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure he's talking about the potential for Russia dropping nuclear bombs on every major city on Earth.

Pretty sure he is referring to climate change. This kind of quasi-riddle is how the climate change message is usually delivered, for whatever reason.

Besides, a nuclear attack would already be covered under the much larger war mentioned, which is something that was deemed less concerning.

Given the state of their military hardware on display in Ukraine, I wonder just how many of those nuclear weapons are actually in a workable state.

I've thought the same. Unfortunately, even 10% actually working is probably enough to destroy civilization as we know it.

I’m not sure that is true. The nuclear winter idea hasn’t really stood up.

The direct damage would be massive but not civilization-destroying.

True. So true...

It might be greater than 0% but is he really saying there is a “fairly large chance” Russia nukes every major city on Earth?

Russia can't refuel trucks 30 miles across their own border, but I'm supposed to believe that their nuclear arsenal / command and control infrastructure is still oh so dangerous?

In what world does incompetence make someone possessing nuclear weapons less dangerous? Europe is pretty densely populated - an accidental launch in western europe's general direction would do terrible damage and potentially start a chain reaction of reprisals that would be catastrophic.

Also, Russia's rockets still seem to be working pretty well as evidenced by the fact that they were used to send American astronauts to space for the last 10 years[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family)#ISS_crew...

I'd say that's vanishingly unlikely unless Putin gets absolutely sure he and his family are in imminent danger.

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