do people today understand what war with Russia would mean?

[paleotn]

16. I think some who should know better have forgotten....

...and many now are far too young to remember those days. I well remember duck and cover drills in school, until the powers that be rightly figured out it wouldn't really matter anyway and ended the practice. They don't know that for many years, SAC kept B-52s armed with nuclear weapons in the air 24 / 7 / 365, awaiting a Soviet attack. The Cuban missile crises is just before my time as I didn't show up until 1964, but unbeknownst to us we did survive Able Archer...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/able-archer-scare/

....accidentally loading a practice tape at NORAD (yes, we used magnetic tape in those days.) A bad computer chip again at NORAD. The Thule B-52 crash.

http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm

And numerous undisclosed accidents, screw ups and close calls on both sides. I remember once believing that nuclear war was inevitable so what the fuck, hope that your killed in initial attack, because you sure as hell don't want to live in what's left. Live for today, for tomorrow we're instantly transformed into nuclear fallout. But then the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed and fragmented. But unfortunately, we're all still sitting on short, intermediate and long range nuclear weapons, enough to end human civilization many times over.

So when I hear anyone advocate any kind of armed conflict with Russia anywhere, that's instinctively an arse tightening of about 10.5! Oh Shit! Have they lost their fucking minds?!! What starts as a conventional intervention in Ukraine, could easily escalate to short range, tactical nukes, just by accident. Many of us know what happens then. The war plans for dealing with a nuclear exchange in Europe are still on file at the Pentagon and the Kremlin. Those plans note that a nuclear exchange of any kind, due to the number of casualties, sheer horror and human instinct to strike back are apt to escalate out of control, thus attempts to slow that progression are built in as much as possible, but are noted as more than likely to fail. So be best course of action has always been to avoid direct confrontation with the Russians if at all possible and the Russians feel exactly the same about open conflict with the US.

So until we have absolute and total nuclear disarmament globally, to even think of ANY level of military conflict with Russia is absolutely and totally nuts. Anyone who even brings that up should be immediately drummed out of office and checked into a good psychiatric hospital.

I think Carl Sagan once again put it best in describing the nuclear situation in the early 80's, but that still exists between the US and Russia..

"Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger."

Lets not go there again, folks. We really don't want to go back to the bad old days.