SunlitZelkova

So we’re supposed to leave history blank because we don’t have the same level of accuracy as today? Even if the PETM temperature is an estimate, it is an informed estimate, not something they pulled out of nowhere. But anyways, amidst my research for this discussion there is something I have realized. The accuracy of paleoclimatology does not really impact my original statement- the Earth is warming, and that is an undeniable fact. Whether now is the hottest ever or the PETM is, is just something nice to know, but not vital in knowing that the Earth is warming now. So I retract my statement about the Holocene. This may very well be the hottest year ever on Earth. They have reason to be confident, and they are not “overconfident”- in fact, for the most part they have pretty much been right. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right.amp The paper mentioned in the NASA article if you want to see the direct source- https://eps.harvard.edu/files/eps/files/hausfather_2020_evaluating_historical_gmst_projections.pdf I’ll say it again- climate change denial is a symptom of broader science denial, not anything pertaining to climate change itself.

But can you see how a source would help you? Exoscientist vs. SpaceX and NASA, tater vs. actual paleoclimatologists. I’d say it is like Exoscientist. SpaceX and NASA say HLS can get humans to the Moon fast. They have presented their reasons for this and they are sound. Exoscientist says it would be faster to use a single launch SLS based architecture. He has no evidence this is true. Paleoclimatologists say it was 73 degrees F during the PETM. They have presented their reasons for this and they are sound. You say they are inaccurate and we will never know the actual temperature. You have no evidence this is true (so far, I’m still waiting on a link if you can find one). So what you are saying is that the paleoclimatologists are shams, and pulled that 73 degree temp out of nowhere because they are trolls? Without evidence that exact numbers are nonsense, that is kind of what it seems like you are saying. They have already presented their evidence… it’s what their job is all about. By doing paleoclimatology? https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Paleoclimatology_Evidence https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/ecological-footprints/ice-cores.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/ecological-footprints/dendrochronology.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/ecological-footprints/proxy-data-geomorphic-landforms.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/ecological-footprints/olimate-proxies.html I think it is a symptom of broader science denialism rather than “overconfident” claims. Saying “we’re only 99% sure the Earth is round” is not going to make flat earthers go away. It will just reinforce their claims. Same for climate.

Nah, five problems- 1. It only affects a couple nations. You still have huge regions (namely India and in the case of a U.S.-Russia war, China) producing CO2 2. You’re destroying a lot of the production apparatus necessary for converting the world to green energy 3. You’re destroying the US and maybe Europe, which plays a big role in pushing for climate change action. Without them it would be very easy to drum up a few denialists and go back to fossil fuels entirely on the part of less developed nations who can’t afford green energy 4. Oil nations, particularly in the Middle East, still exist and will lobby for faster reconstruction with fossil fuels instead of messing with green energy 5. Nuclear winter is a sham, and won’t bring a decline in temperatures, at least not for the periods long enough to stop climate change. If anything it could trap more heat in the atmosphere and make it worse, although it is a sham so we don’t need to worry about that.

So it’s a no then. I did a little googling to try and find some voices similar to yours, but all I found was an answer on Stack Exchange, very similar in wording, with three downvotes and people asking for evidence of his claims. The one above it had 16 upvotes and talked about how the use of multiple sources of data (tree rings, ice cores, etc.) makes it accurate. I have found no sources saying ancient temperatures have any uncertainty to the extent it would make them useless in studying climate change (I.e. the uncertainty is so bad the Paleocene-Eocene Maximum may not exist). This is the climatology version of Exoscientist proposing his SLS single launch architecture to replace Starship HLS. This wouldn’t work btw. A species called palaeeudyptes klekowskii lived in Antarctica during the Eocene, and was similar to an Emperor Penguin- except it was 2 meters tall. But Antarctica didn’t look like it did today at that time. It had lush green forests and was similar to the Pacific Northwest in the summer. Unless we have this hyper arbitrary “ignore that species, the climate must have been for the types of animals like these” we are never going to have an accurate climate reading under your proposal. This comes off as very similar to the SpaceX naysayers. You are assuming paleoclimatology is inaccurate, but not providing any evidence that it is beyond conjecture. Just as I trust SpaceX is designing a functioning rocket and not something with a fatal design flaw described by Exoscientist, I think I will stick with the work being done by actual climate scientists. If you can produce a reputable source that shares your concerns, I’ll reconsider, of course. Do you think the paleoclimatologists would actually release their findings without mentioning any uncertainties, despite being trained scientists and having a responsibility to do so? Or would climatologists use it in models without checking for such uncertainties? Every single climatologist on Earth would do the same thing, but with no one raising any concern at all? A reputable source sharing your concerns would eliminate the need for these two questions, and I could take your claim more seriously.

Do you have any sources from climatologists (real climatologists, not the likes of William Happer) who raise these concerns about the way we gather data?

I think it depends on the size of the ship. Voyager 2 or USS Enterprise sized?

I mentioned the Holocene because average global temperatures have been way hotter than now in the past. Average global temperature in the 20th century was 57 degrees F, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, it was 73 degrees F. Therefore the statement that the average global temperature is “the hottest ever” would be incorrect. That article says that data isn’t even necessarily an accurate indicator of the average intelligence of Americans. From the article- “It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples,” she said in a press release. “It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.” I find it funny the emphasis on STEM may have decreased abstract reasoning though. NASA has a system that does this called GISTEMP. It takes into account heat islands too. https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3071/the-raw-truth-on-global-temperature-records/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/history/ In the second link we see that even as inaccurate readings have been weeded out, the trend remains the same. Whether this is translating into more extreme weather events or not may be up for debate, but the fact that the world is warming is not.

I think @JNSQFan is confusing “heatwaves” with global average temperature, which is indeed the hottest on record (in the Holocene, since record keeping began).

I changed mine. It’s Lego Indiana Jones from the new Temple of the Golden Idol set.

Out of curiosity, has this happened before? Or is it specifically this extreme heat that is causing it?

It's funny. If you go through my post history, you will find that several months ago I was arguing the exact opposite of my present belief: that humans are unthinking animals, consciousness is an illusion, and humans are doomed to destroy themselves just as any other overpopulating species is and go extinct by 3000. Oh well. I guess we are going to do this until the mods shut us down. Let's go! I understand it. What I am saying is that no WWIII =/= peace. Wars happen elsewhere. And nuclear weapons have enabled wars, and therefore do not maintain "peace" (TM). Peace (TM) is the supposed reason why scientists would still propose nukes in a peaceful world. I argue later in the post this is not the case at all, and therefore scientists would not propose nukes. Therefore nukes wouldn't be built, and nukes are not inevitable. Individuals are violent. Not "populations". If you answer me, resolving my conundrum I mentioned below- Then I can answer you, but I'm not going to answer if you are just creating this arbitrary requirement that a social phenomena has to have happened in the past to be possible in the present. Explain to me why peace is not possible now (whether "now" be 1918 or 2023) unless it has happened before. As I will say at the end of the post, things do not need a "prelude" to be possible in the present. Are you suggesting rules are worthless and thus not worth creating? That is, society would see no change whatsoever if murder was legal? Or if chemical weapons were legal? Rules do matter. Even if someone breaks them, it doesn't make it ok for everyone else to do it. In the counterfactual with peace, and when fission is discovered there is a treaty to prevent the weaponization of it, rather than a violation causing everyone to build nuclear weapons, the nuclear builder would just be invaded and their nuclear project stopped before bombs could be assembled***. Thus still no nuclear weapons. This is literally what would be happening in the world with both nukes and chemical weapons if it wasn't for geopolitics getting in the way. Nations building chemical weapons isn't going to make them legal again, and nations building nuclear weapons is totally preventable even if the concept of an atom bomb is widely known. I'll note this is the basis of the nuclear ban and nuclear disarmament proposals... which in my opinion are very logical and very feasible once you get everyone together (i.e. even if everyone disarms, there is no threat of someone in the future creating bombs again and then suddenly having sway over the world). ***As to why this didn't happen in our world, nobody wanted war period- they wanted peace. See below for more detail. My oh so very plausible counterfactual posits a world without expansionist regimes. No expansionist regimes = no nuclear weapons. Therefore they were not inevitable. See below for further details on this. The US has literally been at war near continuously since 1950, ironically the year after the USSR detonated its first atomic bomb. The only years in which the US was not involved in a conflict somewhere were 1976-1979, and 1985. Except... ya know... not wanting war? If the only reason the great powers haven't gone to war was because of nuclear weapons, why didn't the USSR invade Western Europe in 1945 when it possessed a conventional advantage, and its economy was geared for supporting a large scale war? And the US nuclear arsenal was dinky and consisted of only small bombs anyways? (nothing capable of obliterating mass tank formations as theorized, just as a tactical nuclear strike was deemed unfeasible in Korea) Why didn't the US bomb Chinese positions in Manchuria in 1950, when the Soviet Union only had 3 atomic bombs- and dinky 15 kiloton ones at that? Because they desired peace for themselves. But Stalin wouldn't have approved Kim Il-Sung's invasion if he knew there was a high chance of the Americans attacking the USSR and China (which there would have been without Soviet nuclear weapons) and North Vietnam wouldn't have launched its war of reunification if it knew there was a high chance of an American invasion (which there would have been without Soviet nuclear weapons***). Nuclear weapons don't prevent great powers from going to war. Unless we are exploring a counterfactual where Germany and Japan won WWII, none of the great powers want global war today. They are deterred, or would be deterred, by that alone. What nuclear weapons have done is enable wars. War is feasible for great powers, because their enemies automatically can't get involved because of the fear of nuclear weapons. ***In fact I'd say the reasoning that you propose, where one nation would wish to become the sole nuclear power, would not prevent peace, it would create demand for a war to destroy the other great powers before they could build their own nuclear weapons. That isn't "maintaining peace", it enables war! Therefore "maintaining peace" is not a good reason that a scientist would adopt for wanting to build nuclear weapons in a peaceful world. Going back to the topic of the thread, that means I have yet to see a good reason why nuclear weapons would even be proposed in a peaceful world, and therefore nuclear weapons are not inevitable. Ok, but even if a scientist wants to, in the absence of international tensions, no government is going to spend precious money on that. Scientists don't just automatically build what they want to. If that was the case, Project Orion would have taken us to Mars by now. In that sentence I was referring to my oh so very plausible world where conflicts were resolved and peace reigned after WWI We are not talking about people killing each other in general, we are talking about war. War can be prevented. It is not inevitable. War can be eliminated. You don't need to end all warlike people. You educate, make warlike views taboo, and even the craftiest of sociopaths will never get elected or come to power: thus no war. Every individual is capable of making good decisions. In the Vietnam War, the government, a group of warlike people, tried to get American society warlike too, but it didn't work (at least not on a majority). This is possible everywhere. Just as WWII was not inevitable, WWIII is not inevitable without nuclear weapons either. It certainly wouldn't be in the 1950s (as I mentioned earlier in this post, no one wanted conventional war as a matter of course), and I imagine without nuclear weapons, the progressive attitudes of the 60s- reciprocated in the USSR in the 1980s- would have led to a general acceptance that war is bad, except without the sickening illusion that we need nuclear weapons to keep that peace. It doesn't prevent all wars- some were already precipitated by colonization/de-colonization, but in both the counterfactuals without WWII and without nuclear weapons in a post-WWII world, numerous wars are prevented, while the theoretical "Big War" remains nothing more than a thought exercise as well. During the Cold War we didn't go "welp, I wish I could attack the other guy but those nukes are in the way!" Both the USSR and US actively wished to avoid war with each other, nukes were a means to an end, not the cause. In fact I would only say it was because each side had this desire for peace that they built nuclear weapons. This desire for peace would exist with or without nuclear weapons, and therefore WWIII was not inevitable, and if anything it was actually highly unlikely (even in a world without nuclear weapons). Even in my counterfactual with no WWII, certain wars were still going to happen because of colonization. But those wars aren't going to drive nuclear development. France isn't going to start building nuclear weapons just because the Vietnamese are gearing up for revolution... So here we encounter another theme: it takes a great power conflict to generate a fear of nuclear weapons, not the generic threat of war alone. As I said above, the threat of war =/= cause for nuclear development. At the very least, militaristic great power competition is. This is eliminated in my counterfactual where WWII does not occur, therefore there will be no nuclear weapons. I'd argue peace is even more likely with wars having occurred in recent memory. Someone who knows violence is more likely to prevent it, versus someone who has no knowledge of it at all. I might be going out on a tangent here but: It has been theorized the reason the Japanese Army lacked a modern mechanized army was because of their lack of participation in WWI. I'll bet if Japan had gone through grueling trench warfare lasting four years and lost millions of men on a similar scale to Britain or France, their leaders would have been more reluctant to go to war in 1941. Part of the reason they did so then was because they optimistically believed they could start a short, fast conflict similar to the Russo-Japanese War with the Western powers. But if they had had a hand in a real great power war 27 years earlier, they might be more skeptical of the feasibility of doing so. They might not have even launched the second invasion of China in 1937. Britain and France more or less had this mentality, which is why they appeased Germany. Even the USSR avoided open warfare until it was absolutely necessary. Roosevelt obviously desired peace and kept the negotiations going up until the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Going back to a word you mentioned earlier, the Japanese government was... stupid. And in Germany and Italy, sociopaths came to power. But their rise was not inevitable. It depended on people, people who had a choice to make better decisions. The Japanese government also had the ability to make better decisions, as did people in the army. The economic collapse in Germany did not make people elect you know who. The ideology of the Meiji Restoration did not make Japan attack. People in the present (of 1933 and 1941) did these things. The possibility for them to have made a better decision exists. They could have made it. As I said earlier, they also could have not made it, as they did in reality. I am not saying nuclear weapons were impossible, just that they were not inevitable. If I step outside and decide to cut down my neighbor's precious tree, do you think that is inevitable because of some underlying historical reason, or did I have a choice not to? Prisons exist because people have choices, and sometimes they make bad ones. If things were inevitable, we wouldn't have prisons, we would have mass therapy centers. Because it wouldn't be the prisoners fault for their crime, it would be out of their control. But things are in our control. We are different from the other animals. We are conscious. We have the ability to reason, to make good decisions. I'm sorry but I can't prove humanity is good with facts and statistics anymore than I can prove murder is bad with facts and statistics. It is solely a matter of faith, just as there is no logic to the prevention of murder. If I was being purely robotic I would go back to my aforementioned previous views that humanity is not different from any other animal, that consciousness is an illusion, our destruction is inevitable. Statistics will prove that. But I am not a robot. I am not preprogrammed, like a guinea pig or cat. I can reason and make decisions for myself about how I view the world, rather than surrendering my mind to the false reality of hard observation. I have faith in people. I see the bright side of things, and I believe the bright side will prevail and eliminate the dark side one day. It isn't scientific, it is ethical, philosophical, and maybe even religious*** (although I won't go into that side because of forum rules). Reality does not explain everything. Our thoughts our beyond reality- they don't physically exist- and look what they have done for the world. They put a man on the Moon. Unthinking animals don't do that. Cold, instinctual creatures don't do that. Beings capable of taking their biological love for fellow tribespeople, mates, and offspring and expanding it to cover the entire Earth are who do that. And that's what we are. It's a work in progress, but one day it will be complete. The dark side will disappear. ***Note for mods: while I believe belief in the good nature of humanity is to some extent an idea religious in nature, it is also largely secular, and therefore it doesn't violate human rules. Religion is not something required for it, so this discussion can continue without violating forum rules. It is purely an ethics and philosophy discussion. Uh... we have interplanetary peace, that's for sure. Largely because no one lives on any of the other planets. The solar system isn't the world though. Civil wars, which are obviously inside nations, would count as something that violate world peace. But... ...don't. That's not war. We are using the definition of world peace as "no war". Murders and riots and hate crimes are still occurring in the hypotheticals we discuss. Those will take way longer to eliminate and it won't be achieved in one generation, as world peace might be. We are talking about reasons nuclear weapons were built, and why they might not have been built. Therefore the context revolves around war- the things nukes are used for- not literally every single human conflict. That has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. If anything, the prelude tater is looking for is warring groups coming together to form a nation and then staying that way. If war can be eliminated among the divided Japanese shogunates, it can be eliminated among the divided nations of the world. Still, I don't believe a prelude is necessary. If a prelude is necessary why did the Chinese rocket chair come into existence? There was no prelude.

^ these memes are the best

Eh, I'd caution against this view. The best way to go to Mars is to just go there. LEO plays a role in preparation for Mars- long ISS stays might as well be time in experimental MTVs- but to take another often used example, the Moon does not play much of a role in getting to Mars either. Reading the justifications for a Moon base prior to a Mars trip in the SEI and Constellation program is kind of comical. I'd rather see a Mars mission in 2039 preceded by rigorous Starship-based Artemis Base Camp ops than this asteroid thing interrupting the schedule and pushing it into the 2040s.

Passport to Magonia is an excellent book going over the overlap between the fairies and elves of folklore and the tales of aliens and flying saucers. I think these phenomena actually exist in some cases (fakes exist too), but they fall under the realm of anthropology, psychology, and possibly even religious studies in terms of how they should be researched. The Kings and Councils of yore did not hold hearings on the reports fairies and demons. Neither should our government on UFOs.

Do you believe Japan will one day create nuclear weapons just because it has nuclear reactors? Development of a reactor or the discovery of fission does not mean bombs become an automatic continuation. But we were discussing why a scientist would want to propose nuclear weapons if there was no fear an expansionist regime building them. You said "to maintain peace", but nuclear weapons do not maintain peace and often enable war. People thought the same about a peaceful ending to the Cold War, and yet here we are. Nuclear weapons played little to no role in this. I recommend you read The Nuclear Taboo by Nina Tannenwald for a better idea of why the US didn't use nuclear weapons during the Cold War. What do you mean by "fewer of us"? Populations don't start wars, leaders do. Humans did not adopt peace because they chose not to. But they had the choice to. While the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons exists because of their use, treaties that simply limited development of nuclear weapons were mainly created out of a concern for strategic stability, and would have existed with or without their use so long as nukes were built in the thousands. Actual attempts at preventing nuclear war lie in documents like the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War and other political agreements- weapons don't make war magically go away. What are you insinuating in mentioning the use of chemical weapons since the ban of that warfare? Nuclear arsenals are a non-attempt at trying to prevent war. It says "prevention of death only applies to me, not to you". That "random nonsense" is the rational that produces nuclear weapons. The rational comes first, then the actual thing. We wanted to cross distances fast, then we built the steam train, not "I'll make this thing because it's physically possible even if I don't need it". But if there is peace, there is no rational for nuclear weapons and they don't get built. Peace is always possible. I don't understand your fixation on a past era of peace being necessary for a present one. Humans are innovating like crazy today, yet it took hundreds of years before- there was no prior age of innovation measured in years or decades necessary for our current time to be possible. But the point is, why would scientists want to build them in the absence of international tensions? Nuclear weapons don't create peace, both the USSR and US fought wars throughout the Cold War. To say that they would have anyway without nuclear weapons is to give them a free pass at murder in our present reality. War is wrong. Period. I do not believe the scientists of the Manhattan Project were Herman Kahn-like in their projections of what constituted peace, or "no war". Proposing nuclear weapons in the 1930s and 1940s of my counterfactual would only be for reasons of warmongering. I'd like to think these brilliant physicists were not warmongers, but if they were and wished to see their country triumphant in the world no matter what- even if peace was at hand- then yes, the development of nuclear weapons was inevitable. Groups of humans have little difference except in name. If a small number of groups of humans can cease conflict, so can a big number (or all) of the groups. If nations can't help themselves and conflict is "inevitable", by that logic it should scale down to smaller groups of humans too, yet there are numerous places in the world that have not seen conflict for at least a hundred years and have no sign of doing so again. Therefore it is also feasible to end war on a global scale too. This is Kahnist thinking. All battle deaths are wrong, not just the high numbers of them. Nuclear weapons have enabled the remaining battle deaths to take place (or at least, a large number of them, specifically in conflicts that involved nuclear powers) and thus don't bring peace. To connect this back to the subject of the conversation, I believe this situation is quite obvious if you are trying to think of reasons to build a nuclear weapon in the absence of a threat from a militaristic regime, and therefore nuclear weapons will not be built on the grounds of keeping the peace. Without any other plausible reason for building nuclear weapons having been presented, I therefore believe the development of nuclear weapons is not inevitable. As I said, even if the idea is developed that does not necessarily mean it will be pursued. Which have people inside. EDIT- I think we might have exhausted our argumentative possibilities and have hit the wall of simply differing political and societal views. It might be time to agree to disagree and call it for this convo.

Human behavior cannot be reduced to statistics. But wars did... if the goal is to prevent war among great powers, that works, but nuclear weapons won't prevent conflict around the globe. Uh, no, I'm sure if I spent time on it I could find other scenarios where war is generally eliminated. And as you say, while it might have been worse, it also might have been better. I never said the development of nuclear weapons or the continuation of war was impossible, just that it was not inevitable. Because those regimes were militaristic and expansionist. The British started due to indications Germany might be making a nuclear weapon too. I was referring to the US. But the real reason they did was because of the possibility of war. Remove that and even if the idea is developed, it is not pursued. There could have been a treaty preventing the use of new technologies for weapons in my counterfactual. If that's the case why don't we aim some of our nuclear weapons at Britain and France? People always start wars as you say, no need to take into account logicality or the reality of the situation. I'll bet their plan involves developing their own nuclear weapons and then attacking anyways. Even in our world the Soviet General Staff argued throughout the 1970s for a full scale nuclear first strike in the event of a conflagration with NATO. If their military was not deterred, it's safe to say the much more aggressive Japanese military would not be either. The Soviets had civilian politicians firmly in control of their military, Japan? Not so much. Humanity is love, acceptance, and cooperation. Mistrust, greed, and other flaws are the antithesis of humanity. Crimes against humanity tend to be ones against the peaceful people after all lol. Why would world peace be present in the past and go away? I'm suggesting world peace is the final stage in the evolution of humanity, but that it could have come "earlier" (now, if it was the year 1918). Humans in 1918 were just as capable of making good decisions as you and I are in 2023. Any enemy- from the common murderer to the genocidal politician- tends to be characterized as "evil". But you could use the word stupid to describe them too, I suppose. So... shipment of supplies unmolested is "peace"? Even with 40,000 civilians dead? We were talking about peace, right? Not "limiting escalation", which albeit is something nuclear weapons do do. Limiting escalation is a pretty odd goal for scientists to want to achieve though, especially when it involves risking the fate of humanity. My point is that the South only existed because the Western powers demanded it to be. The Viet Minh held control of all of Vietnam prior to that, IIRC. Nuclear weapons literally have no other utility than killing lots of people. There is no war though. These are issues that will be resolved through reform, not disintegration of the state, just as what happened with blacks in the US. Even at the height of Jim Crow, blacks considered themselves Americans and wished to partake in a better version of the country. Note that even in Russia, a state composed of conquered regions much more ethnically and culturally different than Chinese and their minorities are, there is no wish to break up the state*, and the minorities wish to solve the issues within their country without independence. War was eliminated in Japan in 1603 when the Tokugawa shogunate seized control of the entire country. By tater's logic it should have broken up again, and yet it survived the Bakumatsu intact because the people did not desire to be separated- they felt a sense of unity and wanted to live together, despite clan differences. The Meiji Restoration was a political revolution within Japan, not a war between two sects inside Japan- at least no more than the US considered the South to have been a legitimate country during the Civil War. The Republic of Ezo, an attempt to turn Hokkaido into its own country by the remnants of the Tokugawa, did not have popular support and failed. Internal strife =/= war. The goal is peace in this conversation. Even during the Civil Rights Movement, peace prevailed throughout the nation, despite temptation to give in to violence. Yet more evidence people can solve their issues without turning to war.

What’s up with N.A. Kozyrev’s theories of time? It seems they are rejected in the west but study continues at various Russian institutions.

And a personal goal is so “on a whim” that it is equally likely that nuclear weapons may never be built by the private industry, when compared with the idea you posit. No, we were talking about peace in general. Or at least that was my interpretation when you said “keeping the peace”. Neighbors was metaphorical. The US invaded North Korea as part of the intervention in the Korean War, and that too represented a crisis where nuclear weapons made offensive strikes against Chinese bases very attractive to American generals. It was only Truman and Eisenhower’s desire to contain the conflict and prevent war that stopped them- but for humanitarian reasons, not “the other guy has nukes too”. So nuclear weapons do not help maintain peace among the world powers. Why? Why is that so implausible? From the point of view of a world without the world wars, ours is equally preposterous (by your standards) To get our reality we need- 1. A President to decide not to run again on a whim 2. A driver to take a wrong turn 3. A foreign minister to send a telegram 4. A provisional government to make stupid decisions that result in a more radical revolution 5. German soldiers who fought loyally for years to suddenly rise up against the Kaiser 6. A wannabe artist veteran gets angry at this 7. A President makes dumb decisions and appoints a dictator to power 8. A guy wobbles on a chair while trying to assassinate a president-elect and misses 9. Military officials concoct a James Bond like evil plan to start a war in Manchuria, despite obeying the government for the last 60 years 10. A soldier goes missing and that somehow starts a full scale invasion of China 11. An Emperor decides to end a war on whim despite having condoned it for 8 years 12. Allies turn against each other despite having worked together during the war 13. A President happens to be horrified by his decision to level two cities with two bombs despite leveling tens of other cities with hundreds of bombs 14. A leader stays up too late every night and dies at 70, and somehow a fat dude who wants to liberalize comes to power despite the totalitarian system being to his total benefit as a dictator 15. A guy gets just a few thousand votes and wins an election 16. Missiles somehow wind up in Cuba despite intelligence constantly monitoring the island 17. A dude decides not to launch a nuclear torpedo despite being under heavy psychological pressure to do so And it could go on… Except that it wasn’t an irrational fear, it was supported by intelligence. If there is no intelligence, that fear is not enough to start a program. Physics says a country could put nuclear weapons on satellites and wreak havoc on low Earth orbit… and yet we don’t fear it because it isn’t supported by intelligence. Technology is only developed if it has a use. Nuclear weapons were used. H-bombs were intended to be used if necessary, not built for no reason. If there is no use for nuclear weapons because of a better international situation, they won’t be built. Do you think nuclear weapons will be placed on the Moon one day because “it’s possible”? The combined might of the Allies crushed much more resource rich Germany… and Germany failed to crush Allied morale… and yet somehow they thought they could win in 1941 after years of economic expansion (despite the Great Depression) and advancement in technology. Japan had also conducted studies detailing how disastrously large the economic gap between the two countries was. Deciding to attack the United States was just as implausible as an attack on the collapsing USSR and yet it happened anyway. Incorrect, military purposes exist because mistrust and greed exist. China and Japan were once not unified states, and war was prominent throughout the land. Yet today, these formerly separated peoples are united and do not “knock their neighbors over the head”. In the modern era, superstition must be supported by intelligence to be acted on. Believing politicians have evil schemes with no evidence would be just as bad as believing they tell the truth. Nothing as costly as developing a nuclear weapon has been undertaken on hearsay alone. South Vietnam literally only existed because of foreign intervention. Even if it wasn’t invaded, North Vietnam suffered heavy air attacks. Nuclear weapons did not protect it.

I don't believe it would come to fruition if "city on Mars" did not come with "lower launch costs and fly more times thus make more money". In fact now that I am thinking about it, in any case, Starship is not being built for fun, it is being built to build a city on Mars and save humanity by making life multiplanetary (TM). Nukes don't come with such an appeal. For the countries that have them. And as I said, they enable wars too. But nuclear countries invade non-nuclear neighbors. I presented a counterfactual as requested... People were entirely capable of making better decisions. It is just as plausible as people making the bad decisions they historically did. But nuclear weapons weren't built "because physics". They were built for specific reasons unique to the situation of the time. Military takes control of the technology and it is classified. No private version is ever developed. It took the very miraculous KAL 007 incident to get GPS declassified. There is unlikely to ever be such an incident that would make the internet seem necessary for public use. Possibility =/= inevitability. By that logic, nuclear war is inevitable. It's a miracle it worked. If LeMay had convinced Kennedy... or maybe, let's say an alternate Nixon presidency, given how close that election was... it could have easily escalated into war. When Angels Wept is a very interesting counterfactual history where the Cuban Missile Crisis went hot. It is written in the style of a history book from that world. The author concludes by stating he doesn't have enough faith in humanity to believe an alternate world where the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully is plausible. The ideology dated to there, but the decision did not. The Japanese government was clearly capable of not going to war if it wanted to, because when presented with the opportunity to attack a weakened Soviet Union in 1941, they chose not to, despite army studies indicating an invasion would be feasible. There is a similar debate over America's military misadventures. Did the decision to make a full scale deployment in Vietnam come from the Johnson administration? Or Wilson's ideology of interventionism? What I'm saying is that it was for military purposes. Not just "let's set stuff on fire". If those military purposes didn't exist, there would be no flamethrowers too. Beyond my belief that people are capable of making better decisions, however, I don't have enough knowledge of that era to posit any sort of detailed counterfactual over how that might happen. It was added after the mission. These B-29s continued in service for awhile after the war. https://www.historynet.com/from-risque-pinups-to-bombers-named-after-mothers-wwii-nose-art-became-an-expression-unto-itself/boeing-b-29-bockscar-2/ By fission I was referring to the use of it in bombs.

UFOs have been reported worldwide. For example, there was a huge number of sightings in France in 1954. The average ufologist just doesn't have the brain power necessary to perform a coherent investigation and search outside of his own country.

I mainly use this term because of the possibility some might interpret 1991-2001~ as "world peace" and then use that as an example of how war can return. 1991-2001 was not actual world peace and therefore wouldn't count. Western civilization is literally built on a system composed of ambition, envy, and greed, and yet Western Europe is peaceful and cooperative. There is no reason why this can't be expanded to the world. I'm talking about the internet, not modern computers per se. Falcon 9 and Starship were built to generate profit from satellite launches. If you don't have a great power you want to burn down, what advantage is there to nuclear weapons worth billions of dollars? Ok, I'll admit nuclear weapons keep peace for the country that has them, but... ...that's only if another country has them. Nuclear weapons cannot guarantee peace if you don't know if the other side is going to build them or not. Unless there is some sort of science cabal that is going to plot to develop nuclear weapons in both the US and Russia or Japan, no logical scientist will propose nuclear weapons on the basis of keeping the peace. The idea that people just went "welp! The Great War wasn't that bad, let's do it again!" is a meme. WWII occurred for very specific reasons that could have been prevented, as I have explained. Humans are not machines. They don't run in patterns or on programs. They have choices to make. As I said earlier, I am not saying nuclear weapons coming into existence without WWII is impossible, just that it is not inevitable. They could just as easily not come into existence. I'm talking about the internet, not modern computers. And I am not suggesting it doesn't come into existence, just that it remains under military control. Uh, I'm not sure where we had a communication breakdown, but I did not say we would somehow have brought about world peace by fighting WWIII in 1962. I just mentioned a war in 1962 as a possible example of a situation in which the internet, and thus social media, does not come into existence. Whether that is a positive or negative is up to the individual. I personally don't see social media as nearly as world threatening as nuclear weapons. Rational concerns require rational responses. Having a rational concern =/= your response is automatically rational too. In response to Tsar Bomba, some people proposed a 1,000 megaton nuclear device. SAC regularly advocated nuking the entire Communist Bloc in the event of the slightest provocation. These people were not normal. Apologies, I meant the whole of China. No, I am not suggesting that the First Sino-Japanese War needs to be eliminated for my counterfactual. There were 37 years between the First Sino-Japanese War and the Mukden Incident. Do you think the Soviets were plotting to invade Afghanistan... in 1942? Japan's expansionism of the 1930s was a very different beast from the days of the Meiji Era, and was not inevitable either. Oh ye of little faith. That's not how flamethrowers came into existence. There was a rational need to overcome fortifications or masses of enemy troops in war, which led to the use of fire as a weapon. And yet Project Orion remains paper...

How hard is it to keep a scientific discovery secret? I am writing a story where Imperial Germany survives WWI, and a second European war had erupted by the time fission is discovered in 1938. Would the Germans be able to keep it secret or would it get leaked to other countries? I'm currently assuming they could keep it secret, but scientists working on the project leak it to other nations purposely in an attempt to preserve the balance of power.

I'm unaware of any billion dollar projects being undertaken solely for fun. The point is the peace was not kept. If anything, nuclear weapons enabled further wars. Only once enough nations had them (and only among the great powers at that). You can't propose nuclear weapons to keep the peace if you have no idea if your enemies are going to do the same thing. Once something in society is eliminated, it tends to stay that way. Do you believe witch trials are going to come back some day? Once true world peace is achieved, it is unlikely to go away, barring a major change in the environment. If climate change doesn't get addressed in our alternate world and resources begin to become scarce, I will give you that- nuclear weapons will definitely be built some day. But again, I don't think ignorance toward it is inevitable, and it could be changed too. Nuclear bombs don't get built by one or two people. It takes an entire nation. Not only were nuclear weapons built due to the world condition of the time, they were built because of a general consensus that it was necessary. Even if Crazy Oppy wants to make a big boom boom, in a peaceful world he won't have the backing of the state to do so- nuclear weapons, with no enemies to use them on, would be akin to Project Orion in terms of necessity, and we know how that turned out. WWI ends because America enters faster and provides the tipping of the balance necessary to bring things in the Allies favor. Thus would end it faster. The original revolution (February I think?) predated Lenin by only a few months. If the Germans are being beat back thanks to American power by 1916, 1917 does not see the dire situation that brought about the revolution. Lenin might still try, but he won't have public support necessary to win. But the point is execution. The Americans thought it would work and thus poured billions into it- billions that perhaps could have gone towards logistics or faster force modernization. The Japanese (government) didn't think it would work, or at least did not believe to the extent the Americans did. They chose to spend their money on conventional weapons instead, and thus got no results from their nuclear program. I'm talking about a point of divergence in the 1950s or 1960s. Not someone suddenly cutting off internet access in the late 80s or 90s. I'm just skeptical any money would go towards technology when the real need is stabilizing the food supply and building housing, along with a general repair of the economy. Computers would not have an obvious role to play in that, or certainly not one worth the cost of development. FYI, the Soviets had around 20~ functioning ICBMs, but the main killer would be in Europe, where the Soviets did indeed have hundreds of MRBMs and IRBMs. Note that just because I say it is not inevitable, I am not saying it is impossible. The northern hemisphere could be ravaged in 1962 and maybe we would still end up with basic computers for research purposes by the 1990s. But it could easily go the other way too. Germany in WWII and the USSR ostensibly needed the support of their people (heck, it was in Soviet ideology on paper that it was required) and yet were hardly efficient. The... most sociopathic of scientists during the Cold War that I have heard of tended to only be enabled that way because they had the fear of communism to ride off of. Without that, these people will remain loons. This particular revolution was mainly brought about by the losses in 1917 and continued war. If 1916 and 1917 see victories, conditions will be better and the war may not occur. Or, if a revolution does occur, it won't have public support. I won't discount the February Revolution succeeding. But the October Revolution would definitely fail. Japan did not have a desire to march south until the late 1930s. Russia was humbled in 1905 and did not pose a threat in the same way the resurgent USSR was. Japan desired to build a sphere of influence in Asia and thus fought there. But China was never in the sights of the Japanese government. Hot headed army officers were responsible for that. If the world is more peaceful, Japan doesn't need to invade other places because it is still doing trade with the other nations. I think you underestimate what leveling 10-20 cities does to a nation's economy. And R-12/14 were in the hundreds at the time. My scenario mainly applied to Europe.

Do you have any sources to back this up. Everything I have read indicates the fear of fascism (many of the emigre scientists having experienced it first hand prior to moving to the US) and belief Germany was working on their own bomb drove development. World War III was fought, just not between the great powers. I’m skeptical atomic bombs could come into existence on the justification of keeping peace. The scientists weren’t idiots, and I’m sure they were aware of what happened with the machine gun- another weapon built to “end war”. What I’m saying is the history of nuclear weapons do not line up with the idea that they are “inevitable”. Nuclear weapons were built for three reasons- a) militaristic regimes desiring bigger weapons b) a fear of militaristic regimes that might end up with bigger weapons c) a realization everyone was working on bigger weapons (USSR) These were not inevitable things. Fission didn’t just come into existence out of nowhere. Taft succumbs to stress and does not run for President in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt wins the election, enters the war in 1915. It comes to an end in 1917 with a direct occupation of Germany. Any attempt at revolution in Russia ends in failure due to a lack of public support. Roosevelt’s uninvolvement in the peace negotiations leads to a fairer outcome for Germany. No threat of communism means Mussolini doesn’t come to power, or if he tries his coup he lacks public support and fails. The League of Nations is never formed. Roosevelt had more respect for Japan’s desire to build a sphere of influence in Asia. Without a fear of communism, the Kanto Army may not be driven to invade Manchuria. If it does, Japanese politicians have a spine and reign them in. The US had the highly convince Albert Einstein. Japan did not have this. Hotter Cold War means internet stays military. Vasilt Arkhipov decides to launch the nuclear torpedo and Western civilization is heavily damaged in the ensuing war, with modern computers never being developed.

Why didn’t the US develop a 100 megaton bomb after the Tsar Bomba test? They chose not to out of military-political circumstances, despite the effectiveness (both tactical and political) such a weapon would have on paper. In a more peaceful world, countries are not going to waste billions of dollars on a single weapon when conventional arms provide for defence already. Or are you saying scientists proposed nuclear weapons because they were madmen and warmongers who wished to see millions die? They are not going to propose bombs if there is no political situation that requires them. Superdeterminism has not been proven as an aspect of quantum mechanics. People always have a choice. Basic human principle has existed throughout the entire Common Era. These people are not preprogrammed robots. They could have made different decisions. History does not exist. It is just the former present and future. If history is inevitable, then so is the future, and nothing anyone does matters. I prefer not to believe in such a bleak worldview. Re: Japan, my position is that Japan could have invested more in a nuclear program if they so desired. A plant producing heavy water as a byproduct existed in Korea, and obviously uranium deposits were somewhere on the peninsula given the modern DPRK’s endeavors. They chose not to, and I believe this was due to a lack of faith in the concept. Economic concerns did play a role in the decision not to- BUT, only because of a lack of faith in the weapons. If Japan had truly believed they would work and believed in the concept as the US did, they would have had a full fledged program and maybe produced a weapon prior to the end of the war (which they were going to lose). Think about it. If we didn’t have evidence nuclear weapons worked, do you think North Korea, a country perhaps in a similar economic state as wartime Japan, would be investing in nuclear weapons when they could build numerous, tried and true conventional weapons? There is evidence and North Korea has succeeded in building weapons. If Japan had evidence- a desire- they too could have succeeded, despite the economic circumstances.