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  • @SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    8•1 day ago

    Is there a protocol for using nukes? Like does it have to be voted on or something? Or is it just a handful of people who can make the decision to launch it?

    • ☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺
      7•1 day ago

      In the US, my source my cousin who used to work in the nuclear command chain in the US. The president gives the order and it goes through a few military people who either relay his order or carry it out. So in the US it is functionaly just the president choses to

      • @SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
        4•1 day ago

        Well then that’s fucked. Though you always hope that the person who has to press the actual buttons just refuses. Imagine having to press the buttons to nuke a country, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

        • ICBMEnglish
          5•1 day ago

          I think there should be a guy who’s only job is to immediately shoot the president after the order is given.

          • davel [he/him]English
            4•1 day ago

            Proposal: keep the nuclear launch codes in an innocent volunteer’s chest-cavity

            In 1981, Harvard law professor Roger Fisher, director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, published a thought experiment in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: what if the codes to launch nuclear war were kept inside the chest-cavity of a young volunteer, and the President would have to hack them out of this young man’s chest before he could commence armageddon?

            There is a young man, probably a Navy officer, who accompanies the President. This young man has a black attaché case which contains the codes that are needed to fire nuclear weapons. I could see the President at a staff meeting considering nuclear war as an abstract question. He might conclude: “On SIOP Plan One, the decision is affirmative, Communicate the Alpha line XYZ.” Such jargon holds what is involved at a distance.

            My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.

            When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President’s judgment. He might never push the button.”

        • ☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺
          5•1 day ago

          I would hope so, but the US Military justice law does allow for “I was following orders” as a defence, but not to follow orders you need to show that you knew beyond reasonable doubt the order was illegal, so my guess is the president would get no resistance for that nuke

    • davel [he/him]English
      6•1 day ago

      I don’t know, and I doubt it matters. If Trump decides to drop a tactical nuke on the Fordow nuclear facility, I have little faith that procedure would stand in the way.