Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Maarten, Netherlands on December 12, 2009:

'Their praise of the wonderful "push-button nuclear missiles" and saying what a shame it was that they were deactivated ("something was missing on the high plains of western South Dakota") was what got me: that's the exact idiotic mentality (on both sides) that caused the Cold War to last as long as it did.'

I think you want to look into the MAD convention (common idea in this context, I don't think it was ever a mutual agreement between the sides), which is the scary and idiotic mentality.

You're confusing it with: "wonderful push-button nuclear missiles and saying what a shame it was that they were deactivated."

Why is that such a shame? Because the deployment of ICBM's brings employment and money to the region, and jobs and prosperity, since if the darned things are ever going to be used, then the hell with it, everybody will be dead anyway. (See MAD)

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I am quite familiar with MAD; I have no idea why you'd presume I am not. No, there was no mutual agreement, but you end up with a Nash equilibrium since the strategy is clearly known by the other side. As far as providing economic prosperity to a region, there's a hell of a lot of better ways to do that than run a cold war. -rc

Posted by Stephen, Birmingham (England) on December 15, 2009:

Denise of NC, and others, may be interested to know that in a number of nation's services the colloquial name for a nuke is a 'Bucket Full of Sunshine'.

The story as a whole, and the reference to the insanity of nuclear war, reminded me of a documentary I saw last weekend. The show was about underground structures, the particular segment this story reminded me of was about an early (pre-ICBM) defense against Soviet bombers. This site sat on the hills above San Francisco and housed 20+ short range but very fast missiles each carrying a 40 kiloton nuclear warhead. The plan was that as the bombers came overhead these missiles would be fired off to climb above the bomber stream then drop back into it where the warhead would detonate. Forty kT is about 3 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb (which was around 13-14 kT). Whilst it would certainly stop any bombers in the vicinity it would, according to the site curator, also kill pretty much everyone in the city not in a deep shelter. Effectively the plan was the sacrifice the city to stop the bombers.

Apparently there were many such sites on both coasts of the US. They were stood down when the ICBM became preeminent as the delivery system for nukes as it was believed that the initial ICBM punch would seriously degrade the ability of these sites to act against the bombers when they arrived.

Posted by Maarten, Netherlands on December 15, 2009:

Randy, Yes of course, I did not mean to condescend, I merely meant to illustrate the madness of it all (How was I to know that you are aware of MAD? Many history professors (!) I studied under are not, and yes, the Nash equilibrium has been proved a valid theorem many times over.)

Do not get me wrong, I'm a child of the 80's born in 1980, I have no concept of what it must feel like to live under nuclear threat, apart from the one everyone's having to deal with now that the cold war is over. Ernest Rutherford's heritage as such is clear. But being born later and as such I have no emotional relation to the fear and the tension, I can now easily say that the perpetrator of the First World War was sheltered by the Netherlands until 1941 and that we would not extradite him because he was kin to us and our royal family. (The subject is still fairly hot in political circles since they have a good collective memory).

To react first to Stephen: I'm very interested in that documentary, could you please post its title?

To react to Randy: 'As far as providing economic prosperity to a region, there's a hell of a lot of better ways to do that than run a cold war.'

Yes, and I could not agree more, however, what's the chance of this happening? The states where ICBM's were positioned were far away from any strategic targets as to make sure they were deployable in case of MAD. But that's all the states were to the strategy makers. It reminds me of a quote, I think I saw it on despair.com: You're eligible for retirement as there's nothing left of you that we can use -- so the states are retired as there's not more threat, not more sense in keeping the nukes, not much sense in keeping the jobs. The most common excuse is that it can't be afforded.

That's the real madness in MAD really, once its threat is over, it's abandoned on a whim, not replaced with anything else but the war on drugs and then terrorism, which will not employ nearly as many people, at least not in the same places.

But this is not a problem limited to the United States, over the last thirty years we have seen NHS in the UK grown out of proportion, we have seen the agricultural subsidies take shape for Germany and France (and explode in magnitude), even though it's denied that there is a causal link. And as such we have seen the rise of the EU, explosive growth in China and more protective strategies in Japan (on an economic level).

It's the world struggling on as it always has, no luxury of forbearing or hindsight, we dodged a few bullets, and a few big firework shows. Let's keep fighting the fights we think we can make a difference in (crooked sentence), like Zero Tolerance and overall Stupidity.