Nukes

[d000hg]

Read the following, and then decide if you wouldn't want to retaliate if an 800 kiloton nuke was detonated over London

So is it just tit for tat?

It seems a bit pointless. If London has been wiped out, how is wiping out Moscow/Pyongyang/wherever going to help in the slightest? I suppose it might stop other cities being wiped out but seriously at that point everything is screwed in a country as geographically small as ours.

[Eirikur]

I'm SO BORED of Jeremy Corbyn said this, Jeremy Corbyn said that....

As long as he's only saying it and not doing it we're ok

[VectraMan]

It seems a bit pointless. If London has been wiped out, how is wiping out Moscow/Pyongyang/wherever going to help in the slightest? I suppose it might stop other cities being wiped out but seriously at that point everything is screwed in a country as geographically small as ours.

Anyone actually launching nuclear weapons is probably well beyond caring about their own people.

If there had been a nuclear war between the US and USSR what the UK did would have been pretty irrelevant. By far the best thing a British Prime Minister could do is declare us neutral and hope everybody leaves us alone.

[vetran]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual...ed_destruction

For the threat to be effective your opponent needs to believe you are prepared to use it. Corbyn has just confirmed he won't.

This is similar to police saying to a suspect "drop the Gun or we will fire" the threat is normally enough to avoid gunfire.

[sal]

So is it just tit for tat? What if it was an accident? What if a terrorist got control of a russian nuclear missile and obliterated London, would you want to obliterate Moscow in retaliation?

I look at it in practical terms, and in practical terms nuclear weapons are entirely useless. The US has had more of them than anyone else, and how has it helped them? Korea was fought to a standstill; they fought communists for 10 years in Vietnam and lost - how much difference did having nuclear weapons have there? Two Gulf wars, Afghanistan, 9/11, The Falklands for us. If the argument is that having nuclear weapons keeps the peace through making your enemies too afraid to attack you history proves beyond all doubt that it doesn't work. And yes WW2 is questionable too.

Britain having nuclear weapons is all about old fuddy duddies wanting to think Britain is still a major player on the world stage like in the days of empire. We could replace them all with fakes and just say we had nuclear weapons and it would be no different from now.

I read that Corbyn wanted to mention this in his speech but was blocked by the unions fearing that it would cost jobs. So it's another example of the tax payer funding pointless public sector jobs in order to say the unemployment figures are lower than they really are. I thought righties were against that sort of thing.

I agree, on a side note US was inches away from mass nuking N.Korea during the war: U.S. Planned To A-Bomb N. Korea In 1950 War - Page 1

[AtW]

Pretty sure there is a General who'd press the button if necessary

[gables]

So is it just tit for tat? What if it was an accident? What if a terrorist got control of a russian nuclear missile and obliterated London, would you want to obliterate Moscow in retaliation?

I look at it in practical terms, and in practical terms nuclear weapons are entirely useless. The US has had more of them than anyone else, and how has it helped them? Korea was fought to a standstill; they fought communists for 10 years in Vietnam and lost - how much difference did having nuclear weapons have there? Two Gulf wars, Afghanistan, 9/11, The Falklands for us. If the argument is that having nuclear weapons keeps the peace through making your enemies too afraid to attack you history proves beyond all doubt that it doesn't work. And yes WW2 is questionable too.

Britain having nuclear weapons is all about old fuddy duddies wanting to think Britain is still a major player on the world stage like in the days of empire. We could replace them all with fakes and just say we had nuclear weapons and it would be no different from now.

I read that Corbyn wanted to mention this in his speech but was blocked by the unions fearing that it would cost jobs. So it's another example of the tax payer funding pointless public sector jobs in order to say the unemployment figures are lower than they really are. I thought righties were against that sort of thing.

I agree. The money spent on nukes, if it's to be spent on defence, would be better spent on defence measures that would actually make us safer, not that I feel particularly unsafe.

[BrilloPad]

We need to get rid of all our overseas military forces and just leave those needed to defend the UK.

With a few nukes just in case.

Can I be the one to press the button please? Or maybe we could award the button pressing to a lottery winner?

[d000hg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual...ed_destruction

For the threat to be effective your opponent needs to believe you are prepared to use it. Corbyn has just confirmed he won't.

That's just fine if he plans to scrap the project entirely.

Seems to me the only reason anyone would want to nuke an insignificant nation like the UK is because we have nukes and might be a threat. Chuck them out!

[EternalOptimist]

Anyone actually launching nuclear weapons is probably well beyond caring about their own people.

If there had been a nuclear war between the US and USSR what the UK did would have been pretty irrelevant. By far the best thing a British Prime Minister could do is declare us neutral and hope everybody leaves us alone.

You have to realise, there has already been a nuclear war. It happened in 1945 when one side had the bomb and the other side did not. The side with the bomb decided, after some agonising, that better to nuke a city than lose a lot of citizen soldiers.
The only point of the deterrent is to make sure we are not on the receiving end of a similar decision.
If the japs had the bomb, and a means of delivering it, the yanks would never had dropped it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki