The Top 10 Reasons to Reduce the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War - by Max Tegmark
The Top 10 Reasons to Reduce the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War
02/26/2016 04:00 pm ET | Updated 13 hours ago
Max Tegmark
MIT physicist, author of "Our Mathematical Universe"
What's the number one military threat to the U.S.?
1.Terrorism
2.A deliberate nuclear attack
3.Accidental nuclear war with Russia
Based on the recent political debates, you'd think it would be 1 or 2, but if you do the numbers, 3 wins hands down. Here's why. Let's compare the expected number of Americans killed during the year ahead, i.e., the number of Americans who'd get killed if the threat comes true times the probability of this happening during the coming year. For terrorism, one of the worst-case scenarios is a nuclear explosion in downtown New York killing millions of people. If we very pessimistically multiply this by a 10% chance of happening in 2016 (it's probably much less likely), the expected number of casualties is a few hundred thousand per year.
For an all-out nuclear war with Russia, there's a huge uncertainty in casualties. If nuclear winter is as severe as some modern forecasts and ruins global food production with freezing summers for years, then it's plausible that over 5 billion of the 7.4 people on Earth will perish. If for some poorly understood reason there's no nuclear winter at all, we can use a 1979 report by the U.S. Government from before nuclear winter was discovered, estimating that 28%-88% of Americans and 22%-50% of Soviets (150-450 million people with today's populations) would die.
What's the chance of this happening during the year ahead? Before answering, please check out this timeline of near-misses when it almost happened by mistake (highlights below). John F. Kennedy estimated the probability of the Cuban Missile Crisis escalating to nuclear war between 33% and 50%, and near-misses keep occurring regularly. Even if the risk of accidental nuclear war is as low at 1% per year, the expected deaths are 1.5-50 million people per year depending on your nuclear winter assumptions, way more than for terrorism. It's likely that the chance of a deliberate unprovoked all-out nuclear attack by the U.S. or Russia is much smaller than 1%, given that this entails national suicide with over 7,000 nuclear weapons on the opposing side, many on hair-trigger alert.
A robust defense against terrorism and belligerent adversaries is clearly crucial, but U.S. military strategy can't afford to be soft against the greatest threat of all: accidental nuclear war. When you hear about the U.S. plan to spend about $1 trillion modernizing and upgrading our nuclear arsenal, it at first sounds like a step in the right direction, reducing this risk. Unfortunately, looking at what the money is actually for reveals that it instead increases the risk. Please check out the disturbing incidents below: Which of these risks would be reduced by the planned more accurate missile targeting, improving first-strike incentive? By the new nuclear-tipped cruise missile? By the new gravity bomb? None! We're spending money to make ourselves less safe by fueling a destabilizing arms race. We'll be safer if those 1 trillion dollars were spent on non-nuclear parts of the U.S. military and on strengthening our society in other ways.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Tegmark is not one of my favorite physicists; he can be a little "out there". However, I always find him interesting to read and there are always some thoughtful premises in his writings.
I am not sure if he is correct on his socio-political predictions. However, between the utter lunatics running for president in the GOP, and the idiot Democrats who would throw any advantage away over party purity (thus handing it all over to the lunatics), I wonder if the good guys (Democrats) are going to make it this time around.
Too damned many people here do not see the forest through the trees. They would sacrifice it all because of being butt hurt over their Democratic candidate not being nominated. "I won't vote for <candidate> if they get the Democratic Party nomination!!!!" That is not, in any way, a rational choice under today's GOP clown car situation.
In the meantime, I hope Tegmark is wrong. Viewing DU the past few months, I am not so sure. I shudder to think of the outcome of one of these GOP clowns getting into the Oval Office.
Apparently, too few Democrats here see it that way. They see it as all about validation of their personal opinions and not about what is the best for our country, our world.
I defer to the latter in these decisions.
That is why I will vote for Bernie Sanders in the upcoming MI primary and will support and vote for the Democratic presidential nominee in November.
I encourage other DUers to do the same, especially my fellow Bernie supporters, lest Max Tegmark's prognostications come true.
My best to you all.
