The title and some of the comments assume it would be something like if you take 15 extra minutes you would just die. When in reality it would just be an increase in cancer risk. If it were THAT contaminated they'd use the AREA CLOSED the article mentions anyways.
To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.
I'd imagine the concern is the radioactive dust / fallout getting stuck onto the vehicle, clothes, and hair which would increase your exposure time; getting through that zone as quick as possible could limit that dust sticking. But that's just my guess.
This is the problem. It's not just being in the area, it's inhalation/ingestion and direct exposure to radioactive dust. If you look at [https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Quick%2...], the levels just from increased radiation from a single detonation there are certainly not fatal in a few minutes, but with multiple detonations it's not difficult to get a lethal dose in a few or hours or a day or two. Couple that with the inhalation/contamination issue, and yeah, be afraid.
If I saw that sign I'd be a hell of a lot more concerned than "oh, miniscule cancer risk later in life, meh, I guess I'll just slowboat this one".
If there's time to manufacture and place these signs, and there's still a nuclear war going on, I think I've vastly misunderstood MAD doctrine. I wouldn't be surprised if war continued after nuclear strikes, but I'd think you'd use them up pretty soon. And it's gotta take at least 6 months to put up new speed limit signs on a stretch of highway.
Well 10mSv per hour is a really small dose rate considering post-SIOP environment. That's what will be there for a threshold of "heavy" (300Sv total dose) fallout areas, in 6 months. Or pretty much everywhere including areas with no hits for hundreds of km away and no visible fallout, for at least a week.
Everyone makes this mistake -- reducing radioactive fallout harm to just one metric.
In reality, a much larger danger are heavy radioactive isotopes that can be eaten/breathed in. E.g. you can walk in most of the Chernobyl areas, but don't you dare eating anything that grows there.
Interestingly enough, the Fukushima exclusion zone has roads that pretty much fit the bill. They're the pink lines on this map (PDF), with the exclusion zone in gray:
You are permitted to drive through but not stop or get out of your car. I presume ordinary speed limits apply though, so no exciting post-apocalyptic signage.
That's likely because alpha and beta emitters are trivially blocked by common car materials, but getting your skin covered in them or inhaling them does much more damage (this is actually what killed a lot of Chernobyl firefighters: they wore their dust covered coats for hours, and died of sepsis from extensive beta burns. Had they been decontaminated quickly, they would've survived).
> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.
THEY STILL DO!!!!
This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation.
Nationalists are not motivated by reason. Just telling them they're going to start a nuclear war isn't a deterrent. Loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, ethnicity, borders, tradition, etc are their primary motivators today. If they have to end the world with nukes to protect "their" nation, then by golly, that's what they'll do. Self-preservation isn't as important as preservation of the ethos.
Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause.
The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.
>we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII
who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan.
>Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing
yes, and thank God, because Mutually Assured Destruction is what we call that which has kept and keeps the peace. As far as nuclear weapons go, fear of being on the receiving end is what deters their use.
The Russians keep mentioning the use of nuclear weapons; it's important not to back down in the face of that, because if we do, it will only repeat and increase. Iran, well you have to decide if they are just a different ideology, or if they are a death cult. If they're just a different ideology, MAD will work there too; if they are a death cult, you should advocate that we mutually assure their destruction before they get any.
running around like a headless chicken setting the hands on a mythical clock does not achieve anything except scaring people, and people don't do their best thinking when scared.
> you have it all backward
>
> >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII
>
> who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan.
>
There are other people than the citizens oft USA in HN.
Personally I understood "us" in this sentence as global citizen, people from Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa who had their grandfathers living during WWI and WWII.
MAD precludes total wars of national survival ala WW2. It does not at all preclude the sorts of cabinet wars that were fought between the European powers for centuries before Napoleon.
If we crossed the Yalu River today, do you think we'd be alive tomorrow to talk about it? Nuclear deterrence, as part of the taboo, prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power. The only exception I know of is the Yom Kippur War, and if there is ever a person who never received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize, it's Golda Meir.
you can’t have de-escalation from just one side. When one side has embraced facism, invades neighbors and does hybrid attacks against you the only path that does not lead to MAD is when you are so overwhelmingly stronger that they have no choice but back up or die.
The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.
You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.
The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.
On other hand world where everyone does not have nuclear weapon has been absolutely proven to be utter total failure. We should try one with everyone having nuclear weapons to see if it prevents more wars. Maybe fear of death in the aggressor nations would prevent their evils.
>Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs.
Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
The Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO.
This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
> North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US.
Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep.
They also need to be able to hit a location accurately.
And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it.
Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
The whole idea that regional nuclear exchange can be avoided is bonkers. The very machine designed to keep humans progressive and peacefull ,to keep the hothouse of "peacefulness delusion " alive at full blast is the very same driving up the stakes of it happen sooner then later. Thats peters dilemma. Thats why we have to crash the trolly before it can pick up more speed after clicking mineffortmaxreward. we had 15 years of prep.
When top officials and other generally influential people transparently behave like self-centered sociopaths or psychopaths, it is difficult to see them too worried about survival and prosperity of citizens. Themselves those people are not going to have trouble surviving a nuclear winter (a thought experiment is needed to determine whether they will even suffer from it all that much on a personal level, compared to ordinary people many of whom would just perish).
Especially with MAD, but with modern technology in general, caring about survival and prosperity of your own citizens means caring about peaceful coexistence with other countries.
In this context, a degree of nationalism is not bad and may in fact be important (if another country is being hostile and you do nothing, that is not a peaceful coexistence); it’s isolationism that is actually worrying: having every mature participant depend on each other is a great way to make them usually not want to eliminate each other.
The only MAD-able nation states in the 1980s were the United States and the Soviet Union.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian successor state has been unable to adequately maintain its military.
I have seen ample evidence that the entire Russian military apparatus is a fraud and no evidence that it is not. The examples are too many to list in total so here are some highlights:
1. A string of ballistic missile test failures.
2. Photographic evidence of the poor conditions of their ballistic missile submarine bases and the submarines themselves including submarines that are considered "active" but haven't left port in many years.
3. The halving in the last 30 years of the number of Rocket Armies and the reduction of Rocket Divisions within the Rocket Armies.
4. The reassignment of Rocket Army personnel, supposedly the highest-priority and most stringently-selected personnel in the Russian Armed Forces, for duty in Ukraine where they have very quickly been killed.
5. Obsolete equipment rendering their strategic bombing forces ineffective in the face of Ukrainian air defense systems to the point that no strategic bombers enter Ukrainian airspace, instead lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine from outside the air defense envelope due to numerous airframes being lost to, quite frankly, an inadequate and patchwork Ukrainian air defense network.
I find any military that claims to have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch but cannot feed or clothe its infantryman to be, as the kids put it, "sus".
Finally, they seem to have shifted their rhetoric to absurd doomsday weapons because they know we know that their nukes are shit so they have to come up with "nuclear tsunami torpedoes" and "nuclear doomsday cruise missiles" which are, I'm telling you as an engineer not a poly-sci major who grew up on Cold War fetishism and is now an "analyst", impossible fantasies.
So you have the nuclear triad: submarines, bombers, and land-based ballistic missiles.
Their subs are rusting hulks that rarely leave port, and those that do are at Kursk/Moskva levels of readiness.
Their bombers can't even operate over Ukraine, a nation subsisting on single-digit percentages of obsolete NATO equipment.
Their land-based ballistic missiles keep blowing up on the ground. Even their saber-rattling launch before Biden's trip to Ukraine, something that they would want to get right, exploded on the launchpad.
Let's be very clear: they still have nuclear weapons.
But MAD is MAD. Annihilation. Extinction. Not "fuck this is bad", but "fuck we're all doomed, permanently, forever".
MAD doesn't mean NYC gets nuked, MAD means all human life on earth ends for all practical purposes with only scattered bands of irradiated survivors in the southern latitudes.
I'm pretty sure people who grew up under feudalism with no loyalty to a national state still saw their child as their child and not a compatriot. What a weird take.
WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.
WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes.
Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.
> WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad
So bad that germany was the strongest economy in interwar Europe under ten years later? If anything, the allies was nowhere near harsh enough on Germany; the state should have been systemically dismantled and remade as an inoffensive rump state.
The nationalist spirit is founded on imperial ambitions, and the pieces were in place for WWI partly due to empires and pretenders who would claim the title of "empire" both increasingly desperate to cement their legitimacy through power projection.
Driving in montana before the state implemented a max speed, I'd have my cruise control set at 100 mph. I remember seeing limos pass me like I was sitting still.
Reasonable and prudent is objectively the best speed limit.
Going 110 on a dry empty highway? Carry on.
Going 110 on I-90 right outside of Billings? Pull over young man, its time for the highway patrol to have a philosophical discussion with you on the side of the road.
110 MPH is never a safe speed for a car on a highway. Crash rate increases exponentially with speed. At 110 MPH you are placing your life and the lives of other road users at risk for no real good reason.
I never really got to enjoy those days. The path I'd typically take through Montana had a speed limit: 90 was about as fast as I could go and still get good enough MPG to make it to the next gas station...
What a perfect invitation to get on one of my favorite soapboxes. Spoiler: I'm a big fan of Brock Yates.
Speed limits are an imperfect tool for an important problem. They were generally much higher, or nonexistent, on US highways before the 1973 oil crisis [0]. They were intended to save fuel, but weren't very effective. Nowadays, most people discuss them as a safety tool.
They aren't great for that, either. Speed disparity is the best way to cause an accident, with those going at least 5MPH under or 15MPH over the 85th percentile speed being the most dangerous drivers on the road. Limits force people to choose between going a comfortable speed and following the rules. When the difference between comfortable and legal speed is too high, you get situations where raising the limit can reduce the rate of accidents (citation discusses stats, my suggested reasoning is more speculative) [1]. There are still of course many cases where setting a slower speed limit has reduced accidents [2], but that effect is not universal. Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Consider long, straight, flat roads with 2+ lanes on each side, a median, no sidewalks, infrequent turn and/or merge lanes, with ample room to speed up or slow down, and speed limits of 50 MPH or lower. There are several near me. They are painful to drive, because they breed traffic tickets, tailgating, and accidents. Hell, the people on either side of the "go a comfortable speed" and "go a legal speed" even fight each other, making rolling roadblocks to slow traffic, or giving way to road rage.
Either raise the limit, or add curves, trees, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc to convince people to slow down. I tend more towards the "I can't drive 55" side [3] because I think it's generally better for the economy when people and goods can move faster. Edit: For a specific example, from Kansas City, the 9+ hour drive to Colorado Springs or Denver (at 70MPH) makes it nearly impossible to go there. There's very little traffic on I70 past Topeka. Without a speed limit, I could easily do the trip in a little over 4 hours in my C350. That would be FANTASTIC for the economies on either side of that stretch (not to mention along it).
If you're not familiar with Brock Yates and his influence, check out [4, 5, 6].
> Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Obviously this is true, and especially important at low speeds, but I wonder how much difference there is between 70 and 80 — I would have assumed they are both typically fatal
Weird. I wonder how those signs were supposed to be installed. So dangerous you need to blow through at 120mph, but safe enough for a worker to stand there for awhile installing a new sign.
It's worth considering that a lot of places aren't safe for the general public while being perfectly safe for trained workers.
Radioactive contamination is mostly dangerous from the alpha/beta emitting dust, not the gamma rays. The dust is only dangerous if you get it on you or stir it up and breathe it.
Trained crews with proper procedures and gear can manage a risk like that, your average citizen can't. And since there is a hazard, you're obligated to give correct advice - i.e. leave as soon as possible.
Military. Acceptable working conditions are significantly lower than for civilian workers. Particularly in the scenario where these signs would be installed.
What do you mean crashed cars from people who didn't make it? The sign is basically a "minimum speed 40 mph" sign routinely seen on the interstates but with a bit more teeth. The sides of highways aren't usually lined with crashed cars (except occasionally when winter gets feisty).
[...] they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation.
It can be supervised at entry/exit points, which is what I infer from the text. A bit like the highway across East Germany to West Berlin during the Cold War.
There were many volunteers at Chernobyl, like the three engineers who went underwater to close the valves, many people fully understood the risks associated and still worked on it voluntarily. Lets not belittle their sacrifices by snide political commentary
Depends on the pothole, but for some, driving at a higher speed is actually better than lower speed (short and deep ones) - the wheels just don't have enough time to fall significantly.
I believe the wheels still fall the same amount (the springs are pushing them down) but the suspension works faster/more efficiently. Once the wheel either bottoms out in the pothole or hits the trailing edge, the spring sends the wheel up faster due to the energy from the impact. The shock is thus pushed up faster, and upon reaching its full contraction, settles back down into position to level the suspension on the road. The car ends up moving less in space and the suspension regains its position faster. If the car were moving slower, gravity, momentum and the inefficient suspension would end up moving the car itself more which has a larger impact on the ride.
Wouldn't a higher speed turn up more dust and make things worse in general if your aim is to prevent the effects of radiation, given that inhaling alpha/beta is worse than the effects of gamma?
To save you a click on this clickbait: the sign is "Maintain Top Safe Speed", and the intent is to tell you to spend minimum time on this road to get out of this area as soon as you can because of nuclear contamination.
Similar signs were installed near highly contaminated parts of Russia, specifically Chelyabinsk near lake Karachay, one of the most contaminated places on earth.
Hey, publisher here. We tend to look at our competition and do half or less the number of ads. That means there's an ad unit every sixth node, not every two paragraphs (so three paragraphs, two images an embed or five paragraphs or whatever). The video player doesn't stick if you're a member, because we are partially member-supported. If you'd like to see fewer ads you can become a member!
Thanks for taking time to reply. Taking another look at your website - it does behave differently compared to websites that abuse ads. I’ve spent too much time with abusive pages which triggered the overreaction.
Judging by active discussion in comments and loyal followers, the website is a loved one. Kudos for keeping good community alive.
Not only autoplaying, but I've got my browser settings so screwed with and tuned that I haven't had a video autoplay on me in at least a year, and this one broke right through.
They should be proud. It's probably the most invasive ad on the web.
It shouldn't be playing sound, so I hope that didn't happen. Also, we use one of the three biggest off-the-shelf video players. We're a very small independent publisher so it's not like we tuned it specially. In fact, we put more restrictions on the video player than most of our competitors (and make less money because of it).
The title and some of the comments assume it would be something like if you take 15 extra minutes you would just die. When in reality it would just be an increase in cancer risk. If it were THAT contaminated they'd use the AREA CLOSED the article mentions anyways.
To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.
I'd imagine the concern is the radioactive dust / fallout getting stuck onto the vehicle, clothes, and hair which would increase your exposure time; getting through that zone as quick as possible could limit that dust sticking. But that's just my guess.
This is the problem. It's not just being in the area, it's inhalation/ingestion and direct exposure to radioactive dust. If you look at [https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Quick%2...], the levels just from increased radiation from a single detonation there are certainly not fatal in a few minutes, but with multiple detonations it's not difficult to get a lethal dose in a few or hours or a day or two. Couple that with the inhalation/contamination issue, and yeah, be afraid.
If I saw that sign I'd be a hell of a lot more concerned than "oh, miniscule cancer risk later in life, meh, I guess I'll just slowboat this one".
changing engine and cabin air filters would become an extremely hazardous affair
I'd read the title as 'if you see this there's a nuclear war going on and it will escalate and you'll die'
Maybe not what was intended but that's how I see it
If there's time to manufacture and place these signs, and there's still a nuclear war going on, I think I've vastly misunderstood MAD doctrine. I wouldn't be surprised if war continued after nuclear strikes, but I'd think you'd use them up pretty soon. And it's gotta take at least 6 months to put up new speed limit signs on a stretch of highway.
Some Chernobyl radiation levels recorded in 2009, were not this high. (They were higher in the blast, though.)
https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiatio...
Well 10mSv per hour is a really small dose rate considering post-SIOP environment. That's what will be there for a threshold of "heavy" (300Sv total dose) fallout areas, in 6 months. Or pretty much everywhere including areas with no hits for hundreds of km away and no visible fallout, for at least a week.
Everyone makes this mistake -- reducing radioactive fallout harm to just one metric.
In reality, a much larger danger are heavy radioactive isotopes that can be eaten/breathed in. E.g. you can walk in most of the Chernobyl areas, but don't you dare eating anything that grows there.
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Interestingly enough, the Fukushima exclusion zone has roads that pretty much fit the bill. They're the pink lines on this map (PDF), with the exclusion zone in gray:
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pd...
You are permitted to drive through but not stop or get out of your car. I presume ordinary speed limits apply though, so no exciting post-apocalyptic signage.
That's likely because alpha and beta emitters are trivially blocked by common car materials, but getting your skin covered in them or inhaling them does much more damage (this is actually what killed a lot of Chernobyl firefighters: they wore their dust covered coats for hours, and died of sepsis from extensive beta burns. Had they been decontaminated quickly, they would've survived).
I’m not 100% convinced by that as motorcycles are also permitted in some cases?
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> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.
THEY STILL DO!!!!
This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism
Nationalists are not motivated by reason. Just telling them they're going to start a nuclear war isn't a deterrent. Loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, ethnicity, borders, tradition, etc are their primary motivators today. If they have to end the world with nukes to protect "their" nation, then by golly, that's what they'll do. Self-preservation isn't as important as preservation of the ethos.
Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause.
The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.
> Nationalists are not motivated by reason.
It's curious how nationalists, who often claim their stance is grounded in objective truths, almost always champion the nation of their birth.
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Well said. I can strongly feel this happening in Finland, which became a racist country in one year.
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you have it all backward
>we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII
who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan.
>Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing
yes, and thank God, because Mutually Assured Destruction is what we call that which has kept and keeps the peace. As far as nuclear weapons go, fear of being on the receiving end is what deters their use.
The Russians keep mentioning the use of nuclear weapons; it's important not to back down in the face of that, because if we do, it will only repeat and increase. Iran, well you have to decide if they are just a different ideology, or if they are a death cult. If they're just a different ideology, MAD will work there too; if they are a death cult, you should advocate that we mutually assure their destruction before they get any.
running around like a headless chicken setting the hands on a mythical clock does not achieve anything except scaring people, and people don't do their best thinking when scared.
> you have it all backward > > >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII > > who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan. > There are other people than the citizens oft USA in HN.
Personally I understood "us" in this sentence as global citizen, people from Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa who had their grandfathers living during WWI and WWII.
MAD precludes total wars of national survival ala WW2. It does not at all preclude the sorts of cabinet wars that were fought between the European powers for centuries before Napoleon.
If we crossed the Yalu River today, do you think we'd be alive tomorrow to talk about it? Nuclear deterrence, as part of the taboo, prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power. The only exception I know of is the Yom Kippur War, and if there is ever a person who never received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize, it's Golda Meir.
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you can’t have de-escalation from just one side. When one side has embraced facism, invades neighbors and does hybrid attacks against you the only path that does not lead to MAD is when you are so overwhelmingly stronger that they have no choice but back up or die.
The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.
You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.
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The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.
If the US goes untrustworthy, every non-poor country on earth will have to start a program
On other hand world where everyone does not have nuclear weapon has been absolutely proven to be utter total failure. We should try one with everyone having nuclear weapons to see if it prevents more wars. Maybe fear of death in the aggressor nations would prevent their evils.
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>Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs.
Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
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The Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO.
This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
Hong Kong was very different than Taiwan would be. Taiwan will be a bloodbath as an armed, diehard anti-communist population fights to the death.
And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.
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> North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US.
Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep.
They also need to be able to hit a location accurately.
And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it.
Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
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The whole idea that regional nuclear exchange can be avoided is bonkers. The very machine designed to keep humans progressive and peacefull ,to keep the hothouse of "peacefulness delusion " alive at full blast is the very same driving up the stakes of it happen sooner then later. Thats peters dilemma. Thats why we have to crash the trolly before it can pick up more speed after clicking mineffortmaxreward. we had 15 years of prep.
When top officials and other generally influential people transparently behave like self-centered sociopaths or psychopaths, it is difficult to see them too worried about survival and prosperity of citizens. Themselves those people are not going to have trouble surviving a nuclear winter (a thought experiment is needed to determine whether they will even suffer from it all that much on a personal level, compared to ordinary people many of whom would just perish).
Especially with MAD, but with modern technology in general, caring about survival and prosperity of your own citizens means caring about peaceful coexistence with other countries.
In this context, a degree of nationalism is not bad and may in fact be important (if another country is being hostile and you do nothing, that is not a peaceful coexistence); it’s isolationism that is actually worrying: having every mature participant depend on each other is a great way to make them usually not want to eliminate each other.
> Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing.
My assessment is that it isn't.
The only MAD-able nation states in the 1980s were the United States and the Soviet Union.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian successor state has been unable to adequately maintain its military.
I have seen ample evidence that the entire Russian military apparatus is a fraud and no evidence that it is not. The examples are too many to list in total so here are some highlights:
1. A string of ballistic missile test failures.
2. Photographic evidence of the poor conditions of their ballistic missile submarine bases and the submarines themselves including submarines that are considered "active" but haven't left port in many years.
3. The halving in the last 30 years of the number of Rocket Armies and the reduction of Rocket Divisions within the Rocket Armies.
4. The reassignment of Rocket Army personnel, supposedly the highest-priority and most stringently-selected personnel in the Russian Armed Forces, for duty in Ukraine where they have very quickly been killed.
5. Obsolete equipment rendering their strategic bombing forces ineffective in the face of Ukrainian air defense systems to the point that no strategic bombers enter Ukrainian airspace, instead lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine from outside the air defense envelope due to numerous airframes being lost to, quite frankly, an inadequate and patchwork Ukrainian air defense network.
I find any military that claims to have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch but cannot feed or clothe its infantryman to be, as the kids put it, "sus".
Finally, they seem to have shifted their rhetoric to absurd doomsday weapons because they know we know that their nukes are shit so they have to come up with "nuclear tsunami torpedoes" and "nuclear doomsday cruise missiles" which are, I'm telling you as an engineer not a poly-sci major who grew up on Cold War fetishism and is now an "analyst", impossible fantasies.
So you have the nuclear triad: submarines, bombers, and land-based ballistic missiles.
Their subs are rusting hulks that rarely leave port, and those that do are at Kursk/Moskva levels of readiness.
Their bombers can't even operate over Ukraine, a nation subsisting on single-digit percentages of obsolete NATO equipment.
Their land-based ballistic missiles keep blowing up on the ground. Even their saber-rattling launch before Biden's trip to Ukraine, something that they would want to get right, exploded on the launchpad.
Let's be very clear: they still have nuclear weapons.
But MAD is MAD. Annihilation. Extinction. Not "fuck this is bad", but "fuck we're all doomed, permanently, forever".
MAD doesn't mean NYC gets nuked, MAD means all human life on earth ends for all practical purposes with only scattered bands of irradiated survivors in the southern latitudes.
Russia is almost certainly incapable of MAD.
Is "almost certainly" a risk we should be willing to take? And even if Russia is not capable of MAD, what does that change?
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The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history.
O, no someone claims things are failing. Look people have been saying that for thousands of years it doesn’t actually mean it’s true.
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What a strange argument. Nationalism is only around around 200 years old, because it's one of the basic ideas that formed the modern era.
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I'm pretty sure people who grew up under feudalism with no loyalty to a national state still saw their child as their child and not a compatriot. What a weird take.
The virulent anti-nationalists are, themselves, often a very pro-war faction.
Can you give an example? Honestly don’t know who this is supposed to be.
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>nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII.
WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.
WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes.
Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.
> WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.
The murderer Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist, who committed the murder for nationalist reasons.
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> WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad
So bad that germany was the strongest economy in interwar Europe under ten years later? If anything, the allies was nowhere near harsh enough on Germany; the state should have been systemically dismantled and remade as an inoffensive rump state.
The nationalist spirit is founded on imperial ambitions, and the pieces were in place for WWI partly due to empires and pretenders who would claim the title of "empire" both increasingly desperate to cement their legitimacy through power projection.
Driving in montana before the state implemented a max speed, I'd have my cruise control set at 100 mph. I remember seeing limos pass me like I was sitting still.
I miss those days.
Reasonable and prudent is objectively the best speed limit.
Going 110 on a dry empty highway? Carry on.
Going 110 on I-90 right outside of Billings? Pull over young man, its time for the highway patrol to have a philosophical discussion with you on the side of the road.
The problem is that it's literally subjectively the best speed limit, at least from the standpoint of that young man outside of Billings.
110 MPH is never a safe speed for a car on a highway. Crash rate increases exponentially with speed. At 110 MPH you are placing your life and the lives of other road users at risk for no real good reason.
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Driving through Montana is how I discovered my current car won't let me set the cruise control higher than 90 mph.
Probably for the best, they do have 80 mph speed limits now, but lots of drivers there still drive like there's no speed limit.
Visit Germany. The right stretch of Autobahn at the right time and you can still experience this. I just did two days ago.
Note insurance companies can not pay out if you drive too fast even if there’s no limit.
It depends where in Germany. Many parts of Autobahn have local speed regulations.
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I never really got to enjoy those days. The path I'd typically take through Montana had a speed limit: 90 was about as fast as I could go and still get good enough MPG to make it to the next gas station...
What a perfect invitation to get on one of my favorite soapboxes. Spoiler: I'm a big fan of Brock Yates.
Speed limits are an imperfect tool for an important problem. They were generally much higher, or nonexistent, on US highways before the 1973 oil crisis [0]. They were intended to save fuel, but weren't very effective. Nowadays, most people discuss them as a safety tool.
They aren't great for that, either. Speed disparity is the best way to cause an accident, with those going at least 5MPH under or 15MPH over the 85th percentile speed being the most dangerous drivers on the road. Limits force people to choose between going a comfortable speed and following the rules. When the difference between comfortable and legal speed is too high, you get situations where raising the limit can reduce the rate of accidents (citation discusses stats, my suggested reasoning is more speculative) [1]. There are still of course many cases where setting a slower speed limit has reduced accidents [2], but that effect is not universal. Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Consider long, straight, flat roads with 2+ lanes on each side, a median, no sidewalks, infrequent turn and/or merge lanes, with ample room to speed up or slow down, and speed limits of 50 MPH or lower. There are several near me. They are painful to drive, because they breed traffic tickets, tailgating, and accidents. Hell, the people on either side of the "go a comfortable speed" and "go a legal speed" even fight each other, making rolling roadblocks to slow traffic, or giving way to road rage.
Either raise the limit, or add curves, trees, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc to convince people to slow down. I tend more towards the "I can't drive 55" side [3] because I think it's generally better for the economy when people and goods can move faster. Edit: For a specific example, from Kansas City, the 9+ hour drive to Colorado Springs or Denver (at 70MPH) makes it nearly impossible to go there. There's very little traffic on I70 past Topeka. Without a speed limit, I could easily do the trip in a little over 4 hours in my C350. That would be FANTASTIC for the economies on either side of that stretch (not to mention along it).
If you're not familiar with Brock Yates and his influence, check out [4, 5, 6].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
[1]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212135021.h...
[2]: https://jalopnik.com/iihs-finds-that-lowering-speed-limits-a...
[3]: https://youtu.be/RvV3nn_de2k?si=mLYQIkwlHCDPr6ec
[4]: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/a15143608/the-...
[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9fZI3wBA1o
[6]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTT1_JZp2Sg
> Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Obviously this is true, and especially important at low speeds, but I wonder how much difference there is between 70 and 80 — I would have assumed they are both typically fatal
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Weird. I wonder how those signs were supposed to be installed. So dangerous you need to blow through at 120mph, but safe enough for a worker to stand there for awhile installing a new sign.
It's worth considering that a lot of places aren't safe for the general public while being perfectly safe for trained workers.
Radioactive contamination is mostly dangerous from the alpha/beta emitting dust, not the gamma rays. The dust is only dangerous if you get it on you or stir it up and breathe it.
Trained crews with proper procedures and gear can manage a risk like that, your average citizen can't. And since there is a hazard, you're obligated to give correct advice - i.e. leave as soon as possible.
Military. Acceptable working conditions are significantly lower than for civilian workers. Particularly in the scenario where these signs would be installed.
Worse, they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation.
Also, how fast is "safe" when seemingly you'll regularly be encountering crashed cars from people who didn't make it?
What do you mean crashed cars from people who didn't make it? The sign is basically a "minimum speed 40 mph" sign routinely seen on the interstates but with a bit more teeth. The sides of highways aren't usually lined with crashed cars (except occasionally when winter gets feisty).
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[...] they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation.
It can be supervised at entry/exit points, which is what I infer from the text. A bit like the highway across East Germany to West Berlin during the Cold War.
Probably put the signs up at the outer limits of the zone and/or using safety gear. Worker in Hazmat suit at the periphery is probably fine.
You put the sign far enough outside the zone, you wear ppe, and you decontaminate afterwards.
There were volunteers even in Chernobyl. (Not-really volunteers as well)
> (Not-really volunteers as well)
There were many volunteers at Chernobyl, like the three engineers who went underwater to close the valves, many people fully understood the risks associated and still worked on it voluntarily. Lets not belittle their sacrifices by snide political commentary
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The sign could be installed using appropriate safety gear no?
This sign is still available per the 11th edition of the MUTCD but under a different designation, EM2-3. Section 2N.06
Who would be willing to take the risk to do road maintenance in a radiation zone? Hitting a pothole at 120 mph would be devastating.
Depends on the pothole, but for some, driving at a higher speed is actually better than lower speed (short and deep ones) - the wheels just don't have enough time to fall significantly.
I believe the wheels still fall the same amount (the springs are pushing them down) but the suspension works faster/more efficiently. Once the wheel either bottoms out in the pothole or hits the trailing edge, the spring sends the wheel up faster due to the energy from the impact. The shock is thus pushed up faster, and upon reaching its full contraction, settles back down into position to level the suspension on the road. The car ends up moving less in space and the suspension regains its position faster. If the car were moving slower, gravity, momentum and the inefficient suspension would end up moving the car itself more which has a larger impact on the ride.
Wouldn't a higher speed turn up more dust and make things worse in general if your aim is to prevent the effects of radiation, given that inhaling alpha/beta is worse than the effects of gamma?
Everyone who doesn't see this sign is also going to die
probably
So far so good
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
I am Jack's irradiated spleen.
Pages like this are completely unusable on mobile without adblock, and Google recently killed my ad blocker. Time to break this company up.
To save you a click on this clickbait: the sign is "Maintain Top Safe Speed", and the intent is to tell you to spend minimum time on this road to get out of this area as soon as you can because of nuclear contamination.
As clickbait goes it's not even that bad. It's quite informative/entertaining.
I appreciate saving me from having to read that awful website.
Interstitial autoplay videos is wild.
Anyone know where there any installations of these signs?
The events leading to their installation never happened, so I'd assume nowhere.
I remember seeing FALLOUT SHELTER signs around as a kid.
I still see them on some old buildings with thick stone or brick exteriors like town halls and post offices.
Similar signs were installed near highly contaminated parts of Russia, specifically Chelyabinsk near lake Karachay, one of the most contaminated places on earth.
https://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contam...
The "evacuation route" and crossbars guiding you through can be seen (at least last time I looked) in Umatilla, OR.
US Army chemical weapons depot...they are disposing of some nasty stuff there. If there is a leak they shut down certain roads apparently.
My mind kept reading the sign as "Mountain Top", which would have likely caused me to pull over for a looksee.
I'd be the guy that reads, "This place is not a place of honor..." and think, good enough place to dig an outhouse as any then.
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Hey, publisher here. We tend to look at our competition and do half or less the number of ads. That means there's an ad unit every sixth node, not every two paragraphs (so three paragraphs, two images an embed or five paragraphs or whatever). The video player doesn't stick if you're a member, because we are partially member-supported. If you'd like to see fewer ads you can become a member!
I appreciate the comment. FWIW, I understand you need to survive and I also think it's not the worst I've seen.
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Or use reader mode and/or an adblocker
Thanks for taking time to reply. Taking another look at your website - it does behave differently compared to websites that abuse ads. I’ve spent too much time with abusive pages which triggered the overreaction.
Judging by active discussion in comments and loyal followers, the website is a loved one. Kudos for keeping good community alive.
Apologies for inappropriate comment.
> Autoplaying sticky video
Not only autoplaying, but I've got my browser settings so screwed with and tuned that I haven't had a video autoplay on me in at least a year, and this one broke right through.
They should be proud. It's probably the most invasive ad on the web.
It shouldn't be playing sound, so I hope that didn't happen. Also, we use one of the three biggest off-the-shelf video players. We're a very small independent publisher so it's not like we tuned it specially. In fact, we put more restrictions on the video player than most of our competitors (and make less money because of it).