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Comment by FpUser | Hacker News Reader

I am concerned that should something like this happen nuclear powers might just decide to use "the window of opportunity"

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I wouldn’t be worried about the major nuclear powers personally, since all their capabilities are no doubt properly shielded. Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan, maybe North Korea are worth worrying about, but their main targets would be equally capable of shielding their own nuclear capabilities, and the probability of at least one nuclear facility being properly shielded is non-zero so the cost associated with nuclear retaliation is still infinite.

While nuke launching capacity might stay intact, the discovery / tracking might not. So let's say NK launches 10 nukes that land in Russia and 10 nukes that land in the US.

I’m not an expert on these kinds of devices so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s my understanding that while radar cannot be shielded, sonar can.

Not an expert either so let's hope that something like this never happens.

Satellite based launch detection would likely suffer. Literally one detection method we use is measuring ionospheric disturbances caused by a rocket punching through the atmosphere. I’d imagine a solar storm is going to A) Destroy the satellites that measure this and B) generate enough ionospheric noise to invalidate the monitoring.

To achieve what? Most nuclear powers have a strict "no first strike" policy, not to mention that they'll face the condemnation of the rest of the world.

I sincerely hope that ethics and the indomitable human spirit will emerge triumphant in those circumstances.

Haha yes I was thinking strategically alone in my own response to this anxiety. Assuming nuclear state A is willing to become a pariah state in exchange for destroying nuclear state B, the calculus still doesn’t make sense.

I think you are correct in the additional psychological analyses, no sober minded human would willingly fire a nuclear weapon when not forced to strategically, and the economic costs of becoming a pariah state are far too high for state A to even come to the conclusion that it’s worth it to destroy state B (see Russia becoming a pariah state in early 2022 and quickly becoming shut off from the world economy, even from traditional Allies).

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