a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Would Happen If the 20 Biggest US Cities Were Wiped Out With Nukes

Who writes this shit?

- zero understanding of islamic geopolitics

- zero understanding of nuclear blast effects

- zero understanding of nuclear weapons

This is like asking the question "what if the US decided to wage war against Libya but only used 1/7th of their lasers?" It doesn't make fucking sense. On any level.

letsgetthisshitoutoftheway

So for starters, Pakistan has atomic weapons, not nuclear ones. They're probably on the order of 10-15kT. Yeah, more than I'd want to sit on but we're already off by a factor of 5. We'll also mention that they have less than a hundred, so we're not talking about "twenty rogue nukes" we're talking about somewhere between a fifth and a half of Pakistan's entire nuclear arsenal walking out the door. I mean, Ian Fleming didn't get that preposterous and he wrote Moonraker.

They're also not sophisticated as weapons go. Yeah, we aren't testing that carefully for fissile material but we're now talking about full-fledged non-clandestine pits wandering through customs. To expect none to get found is pure folly.

We'll also mention in passing that no attempt at geography or weather. Set off a 10kt in Long Beach and Downtown LA doesn't give a shit. Fuck, set off a 1MT in Long Beach and Downtown LA sees fireworks. Oddly enough, though, not even this goofy little map tells you much because Palos Verdes, for example, does some shielding of the airport, does some reflection against the harbor, etc.

But it doesn't even matter because nobody wants to use nukes. Nobody. Think about it: we had 50 years of some truly scary confrontations between the US and the USSR and nobody wanted to play. Chechen rebels have been playing around former Soviet missile silos for two decades and nobody wants to play. Georgia and Russia both had nukes in the war in South Ossetia and nobody wanted to play. There's this vision of the lone madman with a deathwish striking down the Infidel in the name of Allah that drives most Hollywood movies but guess what? Lone madmen don't acquire nukes, let alone set them off, let alone smuggle 20 of them into the US to blow up in a synchronized fashion.

This is already too much effort to spend on a Quora post by way of Gawker but fuckadoodledo, man, have some credulity. On the scale of relevant questions, this one is below all of them below:





camarillobrillo  ·  3478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Your efforts were not in vain. Total shitpost but it was fun watching you rip it apart.

kleinbl00  ·  3478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

something something Gawker grr

user-inactivated  ·  3478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What are your thoughts on Quora, Klein?

I hate it and I have a general idea but I need you to smith this bronze dagger into platinum, naw'mean.

kleinbl00  ·  3478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Every time I look at it it asks me to log in, starting with f'ing Facebook. Then in little tiny letters I can make an account. Then to make an account it wants a real identity, and that's about where I say "fuck this shit, I'm not giving you my identity so you can prove you aren't Yahoo! Answers.

user-inactivated  ·  3478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Okay yeah that's a start.

But then you open it and the questions themselves are just...

Here's the first couple I see right off the bat:

What can adults learn from children?

Do I have a natural writing talent?

Can I get into [X] University with [Y] GPA?

Where should I start my start-up?

They're either self-affirmative pats on the back or Silicon Valley culture bullshit. Which, by the way, if you haven't been watching Silicon Valley, check it out. Starts off slow, but it definitely picks up by the end.

kleinbl00  ·  3478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Made it through the first 3 episodes and then chased a squirrel. Maybe when I'm not working 70hrs a week I'll pick it back up.