• Chaos@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    It took two nukes for Japan to wave the white flag. Do we really need 5,000+ nukes for anything? France has 290 and UK has 225. Thats enough to wipe one or multiple countries clean off of the map without any form of surrender.

    • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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      14 hours ago

      Yes, antimissile systems will shoot down most of your missile volley, so you need to launch enough that they become overwhelmed and the few that make it through accomplish your goal.

      We don’t know exactly how much “most” is, but its enough that the powers that be consider our current level of armament to be necessary.

      • Chaos@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        This is where I think there is a misunderstanding. You don’t just fire only nukes at a country. You fire a multi pronged attack with regular bombardment aswell.

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Shooting down a nuclear icbm doesn’t really help as much as you think, if it catches it.

        Not to mention the atmosphere lighting up wouldn’t be much better

          • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            Doesn’t that depend on how they’re set up? I’d imagine in the 50+ years since they’ve been invented they would have designed it so it could, specifically because modern anti missile defenses exist.

            I mean, I know world governments can be dumb, but I would imagine they’re not that dumb as to bother maintaining a key super weapon just to not upgrade it / design it so that it won’t work if used.