
Anti-nuclear weapons group ICAN wins Nobel Peace Prize - kartikkumar
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41524583
======
Tepix
With three or more or less aggressive leaders in control of nuclear weapons,
getting rid of them seems unlikely, yet more important than ever.

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rumcajz
It always surpises me how little people fear nuclear weapons. Given that it
takes to launch only one of them to trigger the cascade and that there are
some 15,000 of them around the world the scenario seems pretty believable.
What's worse, virtually every doomsday scenario ends with nukes burning
everyone alive.

Scared of global warning? Here we go: Icebergs melt, the sea level rises.
Bangladesh is under water. 100M refugees flood India, Pakistan and China.
Recall the political turmoil caused by couple of million refugees in Europe.
How would it go if it happens at much larger scale in the area with three
nuclear powers? Boom! You are fried meat.

Is economic inequality your nightmare? Are you afraid it can lead to similar
outcomes as in 1914? Well, add nuclear weapons to the mix. Inequality causes
political instability, political instabiliy ends up with nuclear weapons in
the hands of weird people. Kaboom! There goes breathable atmosphere.

Nanotechnology eating the world? Antibiotic-resistant supergerms? Out-of-
control artificial intelligence? Whatever your nightmare scenario is it always
ends the same way. Catastrophe leads to chaos. Chaos leads to loss of control
of nukes. One is lauched. All other follow automatically. Adieu, cruel world.

Now, this is a genuine question: How come that people, even intelligent
people, like those on HN, are not scared shitless?

~~~
Tepix
I'm not convinced that nowadays the launch of a nuke by a rogue party will
lead to a chain reaction.

~~~
rumcajz
Why so? AFAIK the campaigns to move nuclear weapons away from the hair trigger
mode were unsuccessful so far.

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JoeDaDude
Serious , but somewhat rhetorical question. I don't expect an answer,
certainly not a simple answer.

Why just nuclear weapons?

Shouldn't the scope be wider, say all weapons of mass destruction? But even
then, conventional weapons become weapons of mass destruction when used in
massive quantities (e.g.: massive aerial bombing during WWII).

So in a world without nuclear weapons, wouldn't state actors just go back to
doing things nuclear weapons do but with conventional weapons?

~~~
jrimbault
Are there "conventional" weapons capable of leveling cities/regions, buildings
and all ?

~~~
24gttghh
Incendiary bombs used against Germany[0][1] and Japan[2] arguably caused more
death and destruction in single air-raids than the singular nuclear attacks on
Japan; albeit with a use of greater manpower in the attacks themselves.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_Wa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II#Battle_of_Hamburg)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#The_attacks)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Mee...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Meetinghouse)

~~~
jrimbault
How would it compare to modern fission-fusion bombs ?

~~~
24gttghh
We're talking orders of magnitude higher yields in modern nuclear weapons
compared to the first ones which were roughly comparable to entire air
armada's of bombers at the time.

There was a post to HN earlier this year of a site that would estimate damage
and allow you to customize the yields, burst-height, prevailing winds, etc. I
did not bookmark it as the results are too terrifying.

~~~
jrimbault
Found it.
[http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

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SapphireSun
For people wanting really great analysis of nuclear issues, check out Jeff
Lewis's Arms Control Wonk podcast. There's three episodes analyzing the
Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons treaty amongst many other
fascinating topics like missile defense.

[http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/podcast/](http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/podcast/)

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Firebrand
Hope triumphs over expectations.

Reminds me of the award going to Obama.

~~~
boyce
If they follow the example of previous laureates Obama or Aung San Suu Kyi
they'll be enriching their own uranium within the year

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ksherlock
Interesting... just the other day, there was a discussion concerning the
physics prize being giving to three people (which is already bending the
rules) when there are often dozens or hundreds of people involved. The will is
quite specific about "person" for all of them.

[https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-
full.html](https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html)

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njarboe
The ~7,000 warheads that the US and Russia still have are a clear and present
danger to humanity, but I would hesitate to get rid of all of them and have
world scale conventional war return. Maybe a few dozen very well protected and
spread-out nuclear warheads and delivery systems per country would be the
ideal situation.

~~~
mikeash
I'm torn. The post-WWII era has been amazingly peaceful, but at what risk?

If nuclear weapons mean we avoid large-scale total war in exchange for, say, a
one-in-a-million chance per year of annihilation, that might be worthwhile.

If they mean we avoid large-scale total war in exchange for a 1% chance per
year of annihilation, that's so very much not worthwhile.

What are the actual chances? It's impossible to tell. I suspect it's closer to
1% than one-in-a-million but that's really just a guess.

~~~
robert_foss
At times, like during the Cuban missile crisis, we were definitely closer to
annihilation than 1%.

This was of course largely avoidable if president Kennedy had chosen to stand
down as his Russian counterpart was offering[1].

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/cuban-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/cuban-
missile-crisis-russian-roulette)

------
robert_foss
Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN, called Trump a moron the other day.

[https://twitter.com/BeaFihn/status/915598750969712640](https://twitter.com/BeaFihn/status/915598750969712640)

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Based on the Nobel Peace Prize's track record, that alone would have clinched
it.

Honoring an anti-nuclear group at least seems to be in the proper spirit,
compared to some of the more ridiculous awards in recent decades.

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dsfyu404ed
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Nothing has done more to stop large
powerful nations from getting in serious shooting wars than the background
threat of nuclear retaliation.

~~~
megaman22
Without nuclear weapons, I think there's a better than even chance the Red
Army storms through the Fulda Gap at some point 1945-1960. If for no other
reason than that all of the resources devoted to atomic weapons, and the
requisite delivery platforms for them (submarines, ballistic missiles,
intercontinental bombers, etc) would have been diverted elsewhere.

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nradov
At least they probably deserve it more than Yasser Arafat.

~~~
vesinisa
... or Barack Obama.

Or Aung San Suu Kyi, though she was awarded before she became complicit in an
ongoing genocide.

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jbob2000
> But none of the nine known nuclear powers in the world - including the UK
> and the US - endorsed it.

Proving that this group is completely ineffective and their peace prize is a
joke. Just a bunch of bureaucrats who sit around saying "oh yes, nuclear
weapons bad, pass the caviar please".

~~~
nobodyorother
It's unlikely the US military was the part of the government that endorsed it.
The US government is so big, so bureaucratic, that it's less a case of the
right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, and more like the right
300 hands are working in direct opposition to the other 400 left ones.

~~~
SapphireSun
The U.S. representative was hanging out in the hall with a few of our
supporters denouncing the working group while the treaty was being discussed.
We know exactly what we're doing and it would be comical if it weren't so
deadly serious.

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bronzeage
This is disgusting. How do they deserve any reward when north Korea has atomic
weapons, when Iran nearly had atomic weapons, and probably will have it after
10 years when the agreement is over.

Nobel prizes for peace have become "what is the biggest historical ironical
joke we can make this year". Obama getting that prize for worse than nothing,
then this.

~~~
gressquel
When it comes to Obama, you can say that it was a prize that was given to
encourage the president of the most influential country in the world to do the
right things.

It was given early in his presidential term and may have influenced his
decisions later on small and big things.

Obama didnt create war, he infact de-escalated one potential and many other
smaller matters where the US was already engaged.

Personally I think it was fine.

~~~
zeveb
> When it comes to Obama, you can say that it was a prize that was given to
> encourage the president of the most influential country in the world to do
> the right things.

One could, but the real reason that Mr. Obama received it was that he was not
Mr. Bush. One may approve or disapprove of that fact, but it remains a fact
regardless.

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interfixus
This is just plain silly. They might as well award the thing to my old friend
Paul, who styles himself a peace poet, and writes shit poor poems about how we
should all just, you know, not make _war_ on each other anymore. At least he
really needs the money. Nukes don't go away because profiled do-gooders whine
about them.

The litterature prize, btw, really, really, _really_ needs to go to Randall
Munroe one of these years. Yes, I'm dead serious.

