U.S. dick measuring

VirusType2

VirusType2

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The U.S. nuclear arsenal consists of 5,113 active and inactive warheads, a Pentagon official said, revealing the size of the nation’s stockpile for the first time.

The current total of warheads is down from 22,217 in late 1989, the official told reporters at the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama aims to set an example of U.S. transparency and willingness to pare its nuclear arsenal in hopes of compelling other nations to follow suit.
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http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...senal-of-5-113-nuclear-warheads-update1-.html
 
How is it dick measuring if our arsenal went down.
 
Politics is the only environment in which the phrase "it's not the size of the waves, it's the motion of the ocean" can actually be true.
 
Come on, whip it out. Show us what you're packing, Russia.
 
Russia has more than us. in a recent estimate I believe their meat was larger by about 15-25% more.

also its all hearsay until WW3 get launched, we secretly could be making thousands more and no one would know.
 
I wonder if we could make Earth explode if we detonated all the nuclear warheads at once.

"Little Boy", the bomb that rocked Hiroshima, was equivalent to about 16 kilotons of TNT

"Fat Man" was a little bigger, about 21 kilotons. (photo) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasakibomb.jpg

50,000 kilotons: Russia's "Tsar Bomba". It was originally intended to be twice that size.
 
Yeah, I was blown away by that too. I actually got the number from wikipedia, a different page obviously. OK, I see, it was listing kT (thousand tons, not millions)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield

My mistake, not an error on Wikipedia

Thank you for that important correction. I will fix the original post.
 
I wish I could find this great graph of comparative power, they have the Czar bomb as the biggest with the MOAB needing a magnifying glass to see compared to the other big bombs.
 
Maestro said:
I wish I could find this great graph of comparative power, they have the Czar bomb as the biggest with the MOAB needing a magnifying glass to see compared to the other big bombs.
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its non nuclear though. thats the best thing about it. people can live in the area probably a few weeks after the explosion, whereas the nuke can ruin an area for thousands of years
 
Warped said:
[snip]
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Ok, that's not true. FOAB is actually estimated at about 0.044KT of TNT.

MOAB slightly smaller than that.




And the world doesn't need nukes. Conventional weapons are the way to go; nukes take all the fun out of war.

Unless we have first contact with aliens. Then we'll need shitloads of nukes in the megaton range. Thermonuclear glory for all.
 
So where did the rest of the warheads go? D:
 
15357 said:
And the world doesn't need nukes. Conventional weapons are the way to go; nukes take all the fun out of war.

Unless we have first contact with aliens. Then we'll need shitloads of nukes in the megaton range. Thermonuclear glory for all.
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But nukes end boring conventional warfare which we've done for ages now and replaces it with constant fear of total annihilation and cold politics between two nations that could obliterate eachother if things went bad.

It moves the wars into the board rooms and executive branch and focuses more on special operations.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
But nukes end boring conventional warfare which we've done for ages now and replaces it with constant fear of total annihilation and cold politics between two nations that could obliterate eachother if things went bad.

It moves the wars into the board rooms and executive branch and focuses more on special operations.
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I'd rather have constant boring conventional warfare than a delusion of a peace maintained by a precarious balance of arms that stays the hand of mankind's final war.
 
15357 said:
I'd rather have constant boring conventional warfare than a delusion of a peace maintained by a precarious balance of arms that stays the hand of mankind's final war.
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South Korea and North Korea?
 
Acepilotf14 said:
South Korea and North Korea?
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Well, yeah, I guess.

Each seeks to ensure that the other shall not invade by maintaining enough arms to make sure that:

South) The cost of such a war will be so immense that one shall not attack first.

North) Victory is simply unviable. At best, a bloodbath of a standstill.

Because of this fact, the North has tried to tip the balance with sheer manpower, or sometimes unconventional weapons - chemical shells have been produced since the 1970s. The South counters by maintaining superior armaments and also developing chemical weapons of its own. Nuclear weapons however, tip the balance in favor of the North, which cannot be tolerated, largely because the US doesn't want the South playing with nuclear fire (they stopped our program in the late 70s), nor long-range ballistic missiles for that matter, and therefore a strategic nuclear detterence is unviable for the South. The South can only counter the northern nuclear threat with passive defensive measures, such as PAC-2s and PAC-3s for missile defense.

Indeed, until the 21st century, MAD was ensured through conventional arms, but with the unilateral introduction of nuclear weapons, it doesn't look very good now.
 
Speaking of Korea... does anybody know the official US position as to what would happen if N. Korea crossed the DMZ?
 
5,113?

Why the hell do you need that many nukes when 50 will get the job done?

I'm pretty sure the money they spent making 1000 nukes will be enough to fix up several neighborhoods.
 
flamingdts said:
5,113?

Why the hell do you need that many nukes when 50 will get the job done?

I'm pretty sure the money they spent making 1000 nukes will be enough to fix up several neighborhoods.
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Basically its because we can. I find nuclear weapons fascinating (not in the diabolical sense) but in their immense power.

I always wondered what would would happen if you detonated two nukes side by side at the same time.
 
flamingdts said:
5,113?

Why the hell do you need that many nukes when 50 will get the job done?

I'm pretty sure the money they spent making 1000 nukes will be enough to fix up several neighborhoods.
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Ever heard of the Cold War?
 
Some would say that 5,113 isn't enough (depends on how good ICBM countermeasures are)

I'm all for peace and NEVER using our nukes but I don't think we should get rid of all of them. That would be foolish.
 
flamingdts said:
Still doesn't justify the ridiculous amount of nukes available now in one country.
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1. ICBM countermeasures
2. MAD
3. Launch failure rate

Do I need to list more? I also might mention that you have no idea how many are actually necessary to do the job, and to assure MAD there would be more than 50 needed to kill all the major cities, not including all the area in between.
 
Noodle said:
Speaking of Korea... does anybody know the official US position as to what would happen if N. Korea crossed the DMZ?
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Kill everything north of the border? I have no idea.

flamingdts said:
5,113?

Why the hell do you need that many nukes when 50 will get the job done?

I'm pretty sure the money they spent making 1000 nukes will be enough to fix up several neighborhoods.
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50 wouldn't have made a dent in the soviet union while at the same time the US would have been destroyed by tens of thousands of nukes.

Escaep said:
Basically its because we can. I find nuclear weapons fascinating (not in the diabolical sense) but in their immense power.
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I do too. Especially things like nuclear artillery. Talk about overkill. This is why mankind is awesome.
 
VirusType2 said:
I wonder if we could make Earth explode if we detonated all the nuclear warheads at once.
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No, the best we could do is scorch the entire surface of the Earth.
However who knows what the future might bring.


"Let's crack a planet!"
 
lord_raken said:
I'm all for peace and NEVER using our nukes but I don't think we should get rid of all of them. That would be foolish.
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Why? You're not going to use them, so why blow milions of taxpayers' money on something utterly pointless?
 
Tagaziel said:
Why? You're not going to use them, so why blow milions of taxpayers' money on something utterly pointless?
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What else are we going to use to destroy killer asteroids?
 
Maestro said:
1. ICBM countermeasures
2. MAD
3. Launch failure rate

Do I need to list more? I also might mention that you have no idea how many are actually necessary to do the job, and to assure MAD there would be more than 50 needed to kill all the major cities, not including all the area in between.
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You don't think the threat of putting a nuke in the ass of each of Russia's 50 largest cities is a sufficient deterrent?
 
The Monkey said:
You don't think the threat of putting a nuke in the ass of Russia's 50 largest cities is a sufficient deterrent?
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Not as much as putting fifty nukes into Russia's fifty largest cities!
 
The Monkey said:
You don't think the threat of putting a nuke in the ass of each of Russia's 50 largest cities is a sufficient deterrent?
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The problem is redundency. The US needs to be sure it can put a nuke in the ass of Russia's 50 largest cities after the Russians have made a concerted effort to destroy every single one of the US' retaliatory systems.

By having many nukes using many delivery systems (ICBMs, SLBMs, ASMs) one minimises the possibility of a sucessful first strike. Thats what the US has - the threat of always being able to put a nuke in the ass of Russia's 50 largest cities, no matter what the Russians do first.
 
Bob_Marley said:
The problem is redundency. The US needs to be sure it can put a nuke in the ass of Russia's 50 largest cities after the Russians have made a concerted effort to destroy every single one of the US' retaliatory systems.

By having many nukes using many delivery systems (ICBMs, SLBMs, ASMs) one minimises the possibility of a sucessful first strike. Thats what the US has - the threat of always being able to put a nuke in the ass of Russia's 50 largest cities, no matter what the Russians do first.
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And thus it is illustrated how sadly similar international politics are to a grade-school playground.

People don't change, from cradle to crypt they will always be dickheads only held in check by the restrictions others impose on them.
 
There's an alternative school of thought to MAD which forsee's each side targetting only military installations and such and leaving large cities (on the whole) untouched, as bargaining chips to play with

Also, the US build up of nuclear arms is probably the reason the Soviet Union eventually collapsed The SU was eventually spending 25% of it's GDP on defense, trying to match the USA's missle system whilst the USA was only spending 2% or something.
 
It was probably 25% of government spending, which isn't 25% of GDP.
GDP is Consumption+Government Spending+Investment+Net Exports
 
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