You just used a seminal black comedy / satire film by Stanley Kubrick as a reference for something real?

XD Okay yeah that looks bad, allow me to explain, PLEASE! XD

That movie is almost a shot for shot parody of "Fail Safe" and I referenced only because (while heavy on the black humor and sarcasm) does deal with an air crew sent to deliver a nuclear payload. Also the added touch of the Captain (Slim Pickens) riding the rocket down (while not realistic could have technically been done by that plane's captain) is always a nice touch to mention.

You know that satire is serious social commentary hidden as humor? Right? Doctor Strangelove is one of the best example of the genre. "A Clockwork Orange" (from the Burgess novel) also by Kubrick is another.

There are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in existence. Even if you intercept 99% of all incoming warheads, there's still more than enough to wipe out every major metropolitan area three or four times over.

Well Detroit is already there so they really don't need a nuke for that. *rimshot*

Perhaps... But I think I've read somewhere that we have the ability to destroy the earth many times over. Only a few ones need to hit ;)

Also, they don't even need to hit their targets to cause damage, even if it is intercepted you have to imagine the radioactive fallout!

But personally, I think nuclear weapons sort of makes us safer, no one's ever going to use them again - not even the nutjobs because if they were they'd be:

A) Isolated... completely and utterly
or
B) Destroyed

I think intercepting massive ICBM attacks is still in the realm of science-fiction. But even if the U.S. and Russia were to annihilate each other I do believe the human race would survive a nuclear winter even if it would relegate it to prehistoric times.

That's one of the reason why I want human exploration of space in addition to remote controlled "robots", we need human colonies out there now!

Yeah, I was brought up in a painfully literary household. I'm aware of the role of satire. But well done satire (not the over-the-top, hamfisted stuff) has to resemble reality closely enough that you understand what's going on, but deviate enough that it shows the topic as farcical. Thus, it's terribly unwise to use satire as a reference since it actually thrives on taking the slippery slope, locking up the brakes, and skidding sideways through the safety railing.

Whew. Didn't think I was going to be able to swing a car metaphor there for a minute.
You don't have to explain, Tiny. I'm just going to give you crap because for any number of reasons, you deserve it. ^_^

"Nukes don't kill people, people kill people" - therefore the public have a constitutional right to own them <sarcasm>

The Ukraine issue is escalating at an alarming rate and it's become a key location being sandwiched between East and West. China has yet to take a strong and decisive stance and their relative silence is a little unnerving.

I've always feared any nuclear progress whether it's weaponry or to provide domestic fuel. The waste can take hundreds (thousands?) of years to dissipate and factors such as natural disasters, tactical targets and irresponsibility can have devastating results.

Nuclear winter is a terrible term for what would happen. Even if all the nukes were fired back in the Cold War at specific points for maximum effect, it could only cause a maximum of a week or 2 of blotting out the sun.

I figured and yes....I deserve it. XD

That fear is precisely what makes nuclear power so safe, happily. Even including nuclear attacks, it's pretty certain that more people have died in coal mining accidents than from (refined) nuclear exposure. Excluding them makes the gap widen to a veritable chasm.

While there have been some real nasty both in living memory and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster]downright recently, they have been in old reactors (almost 45 years old for the Fukushima 1) using engineering we understand to be unsafe. We've got quite a few promising reactor technologies that address almost all of the problems which allowed these meltdowns to happen (probably the best known of these is the technology that essentially makes meltdown states impossible - though probably not the best of the options from a real-world safety perspective). And while there's no denying that handling spent radioactives is a problem, it's not - thanks in part to the renewed interest in breeder reactors - a problem of millenia but rather decades.

Honestly, the wiser thing to fear is the unchecked proliferation of armed and active penises and vaginas. That's a mess we *still* haven't gotten our minds around.

+1

The Fukushima disaster made me change side on Nuclear power, It's a worst side scenario so much better than any I imagined that I now prefer nuclear power to fossil fuel power of any kind. Fossil fuel has killed more people than nuclear power ever did, and that's including nuclear weapons and excluding fossil fuel weapons like napalm.

I must admit that I live in Quebec, the world Mecca of safe and renewable energy.

Somehow i doubt either of those come into play for those thinking about using nukes....

Poutine?

EDIT: I kid, I kid. I've learned the three things not to mess with Canadians about: hockey, Tim Horton's, and poutine. Because if you do, they may very well have a calm and rational discussion about it. >.>