Australia should consider nuclear weapons

Thanks. MAD works until it doesn't with a big downside IMO but the logic has a ring to it. Some people tell me that if everyone carried a gun that people would be more polite and there would be less violence. I'm skeptical. Ads for mutual funds ads here. int the US are required by law to make this statement ... "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Some truth there.

 

We have the same thing...
Hmmm...you make a decent comparison with the gun carrying analogy...certainly if I didn’t have a gun, i wouldn’t pick on someone I knew carried one. If I DID have a gun too...I might try to shoot the dude if I flew off the handle and rage took over (for whatever reason)...I might if I thought he was going to shoot me first...I might if I thought he was going to shoot a friend or family member...I might if someone gave me enough money to (a hit)...I might if I thought he was a scumbag and he didn’t deserve my oxygen (paedophile, animal torturer)...I might if was extremely high on something...I might if I was homeless and penniless and feeling disenfranchised and haven’t signed any social contract...I might if was a psychopath and you stood in my way...
I could go on...too many reasons to use that gun...

 

Forgot about this....the answer is money. The Government wanted the silos constructed expedite, so they were paying top dollar wages at a time when the US was in a recession. As such, the communities where the silos were being constructed experienced an economic boom(pun intended).

 

They did what ever they want to ensure that the MAD policy remained an effective deterrent. I once visited a chap on his hobby farm where he had moved his young family away from New York City to be safer. I still feel a bit sorry for telling him that the Seneca Army Depot that was over the hill on the other side of the valley contained a large supply of nuke warheads

 

Not always, Reagan gummed up the works with his ill conceived SDI. Looked good on paper, but was never practical, essentially negated by Soviet countermeasures. One of Bill Clinton's rare good moves was to kill the program.

 

I guess the upside of failure is that whatever was spent of the $41b approved for the SDI nukes in space program went to good American workers doing good American jobs in America.

Bulletin of the Atomic Clock - FWIW
Timeline - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

2018 - 2 minutes to Midnight
20116 - 3 to Midnight
1990 - 10 minutes to Midnight
1980 - 7 minutes to Midnight
1972 - 12 minutes to Midnight

 

Actually, all of the various missile interceptors are outgrowths of SDI, including the ICBM interceptors that work in space. That technology has been shared with allied nations like Israel that have used it successfully to save lives. The SDI program itself may have been dropped, but all of the technology has continued to be developed and is in practical use today.

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