Hi all, I published my latest newsletter post this morning, focusing on how we can calculate nuclear risks.
It’s a bit more academic, but if you were to choose just one of my posts to read that I have published so far, I’d say it should be this one.
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/nuclear-strategy-and-the-limits-of
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It’s a bit more academic, but if you were to choose just one of my posts to read that I have published so far, I’d say it should be this one.
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/nuclear-strategy-and-the-limits-of
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Comments
There's a chance that some (many?) Russian nukes would fizzle into dirty bombs rather than huge blasts.
Not something you want to play craps with but still real.
If you're working on Ukraine or nuclear strategy, I hope you give it a read.
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Just because they assign them a percentage value?
I'd assume that's just to easily communicate the result to non-experts, including the public.
What I tried to do is to outline that using that method, while providing these types of risk assessments is technically not a valid form for inference.
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What I'm hoping to do here is to provide some context, why we shouldn't attach too much meaning to these numbers.
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So, you do think those are actually used in risk assessment for nuclear threats? Even though, as you mentioned, there is not enough data for it?
But to me it seems like you arguing against something that nobody is doing anyway.
Of course, I do agree that we should not lend too much credence to simple percentages in cases like these.
Which is why such situations would be so dangerous.
Maybe I'm naive, but I would think that security professionals would already include all the mentioned factors.
The big mistake of the Biden admin was not to assign a number on the chance of a Ruzzian nuclear attack, as stupid as this number (50%) was, but the wrong decisions they made based on that number.
Biden had the wrong advisers, sure, but he was a senile old idiot believing them.
The majority of the South has no basements.
They don't survive weather disasters well.
Survival is dependent on critical thinking.
Air and water sources will be contaminated.
Trump voters will perish...for sure.
Nukes are not like other weapons, in other words.