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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

Questions may be asked but it’s still pointless to ask them. Practical conclusions will be the same. Even if some part of Russian nukes won’t work, even if Russia has problems with execution of a strike due to communication or command issues, it is still: 1. capable of response, 2. capable of first strike, 3. any such strike will render significant part of the planet uninhabitable.

Besides, we can be sure that it does not share its nuclear technology and nobody had stolen it. If there are 4000 nukes or just 500, it doesn’t really matter. Though I’m sure nuclear arsenal in Russia is maintained much better than anything else.

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>Though I’m sure nuclear arsenal in Russia is maintained much better than anything else.

Why?

I've previously mused whether there are any nuclear powers that merely pretend. After all it is a deterrent, when it gets to the point you have to use it you've already lost. The point of a nuke isn't to use it, it's to stop the other guy using theirs. A silo full of cardboard ICBMs is functionally as useful as a silo of actual icbms

> A silo full of cardboard ICBMs is functionally as useful as a silo of actual icbms

The other side still needs to believe that your nuclear weapons are a threat. Those cardboard missiles would need to be very realistic. At least some of them.

Yes. You still need to spend a fair amount in the theatre of it. So no it wouldn't literally be cardboard.

So many countries work hard to gain nuclear capacity, it would be stupid for a country that already has it to not work to keep it.

In my opinion Putin’s Russia isn’t so much a country anymore as a group of individuals working to extract every possible benefit to themselves.

In that context it seems possible that they’d lose the nuclear capacity and not even notice because the tradition of Potemkin villages is so pervasive.

This is incorrect assessment. The bureaucracy there may have sometimes wrong incentives but it still has skill and motivation to execute even very complex projects. If a project is political, stealing may still be acceptable, but not finishing it is a treason. This is why they have built Crimean bridge, Skolkovo and many other thing that other countries fail to deliver in time (see airport in Berlin).

British nuclear subs have a safe with a letter from the prime minister with orders in case there is nuclear war and Comms are lost. It's quite possible that the British nuclear deterrent has default orders not to retaliate in the event of nuclear war. What's the difference between that at the subs ICBM tubes being empty?

You don't need nukes. You just need others to believe you do.

"any such strike will render significant part of the planet uninhabitable"

We used to test nukes all the time, landing one or two would cause a devastating loss of life, but not nuclear winter. If 90% of their nukes don't work, what are the odds they can actually cause true mass scale planetary destruction? Maybe they know which 10% are their best bet to fire, and aim them at the most important targets, but those are also the targets we're most likely to adequately protect.

As I read this thread, it seems to me that it’s not the Russian nukes we need to worry about, but the US nukes that would be launched in response, before the Russian nukes detonate.

If we assume the US nukes are in working order, then if Russia attempts a first strike, we’re doomed - regardless of the efficacy of their weapons.

They don’t need to pick 10%. Nuclear escalation will always end in full scale strike, so even if only 10% will survive and only half of it will hit the target, that will be enough.

> “Though I’m sure nuclear arsenal in Russia is maintained much better than anything else.”

Can we really assume this? This is the section of the military where the middle managers could calculate they’d be most likely to get away with grift and non-delivery simply because nobody between 1992 and 2022 expected the arsenal was likely to be ever deployed.

That kind of short-term self-centered thinking is a hallmark of Putinism. Why wouldn’t they lie to the President about the nuclear capability if they were 99.9% sure they could get away with it during their lifetimes.

> nuclear arsenal in Russia

Probably a minor point of note in the things to worry about column, but Russia has nuclear missile subs (as does the US). In the event that the mainland is wiped out, they exist to exact vengeance, completing the MAD circle.

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