The Nuclear Football: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

[struggle4progress]

By Tobin Harshaw
September 16, 2017, 10:15 AM EDT

... Blair is perhaps best known as a co-founder of Global Zero, a nonprofit group advocating total abolition of nuclear weapons that has teamed up with not only the expected nonproliferation types but also Republican lions such as former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and James Baker. He was also a longtime senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and served on the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board from 2011 to 2017 ...

Bruce G. Blair: The protocol calls for the president to be connected to about a dozen top military and civilian advisers, either in person (as in the Situation Room beneath the White House) or by secure phone. The main talker is the 4-star head of U.S. Strategic Forces, who explains the available options (e.g. a nuclear strike plan against North Korea hitting 80 aimpoints, mostly nuclear forces and associated facilities) and their consequences. The president may or may not ask others for their advice before picking one. If the conference was prompted by indications of an incoming nuclear attack, then the briefing of the president may not last longer than half a minute, and he may have no more than six minutes to "deliberate." If the question at hand is whether to order a first strike, then the discussions could be drawn out for hours or days ...

The war room’s job is to quickly execute the president’s order. It only has a couple of minutes to send out the “go code.” No one else -- not even the secretary of defense, who is nominally a “national command authority” along with the president -- plays an active role. No one else need approve the order or confirm that it came from the president prior to its dissemination and implementation. Trump’s top advisers may not be in the loop at all. The president decides whom to consult, besides himself.

It’s all over in minutes. Once the launch order is sent, missiles begin flying out of their silos in the Plains states a minute or two later, and missiles leave their tubes on submarines about 15 minutes later. None can be recalled ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-16/trump-and-the-nuclear-football-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

[gordianot]

1. The elimination of nuclear weapons is a worthy goal given the state of humans will not happen

As a species humans have much in common with Lemmings.

[struggle4progress]

2. I do not pretend to know the future nor to know what is possible

My grandmother was born in small town that used oil lamps for light, horses for transportation, and outhouses for sanitation, before the Wright brothers flew. She could not vote until after her first child was born. Penicillin and the polio vaccine were developed during her life time. She died in a modern electric apartment, having driven gasoline automobiles and having flown across the Atlantic in a jet plane. Numerous astronauts had orbited the earth by then

We can only choose what direction we prefer to go, work towards it, and hope for some luck

[gordianot]

3. We live in a very different world when hydrogen devices were tested above ground.

No one today knows for certain the consequences of just one above ground explosion to the electronics we depend.