alt.hn

1/14/2025 at 9:59:12 PM

Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

 https://www.theautopian.com/if-you-ever-see-this-speed-sign-youre-probably-going-to-die/

by colinprince

1/14/2025 at 11:10:53 PM

The title and some of the comments assume it would be something like if you take 15 extra minutes you would just die. When in reality it would just be an increase in cancer risk. If it were THAT contaminated they'd use the AREA CLOSED the article mentions anyways.

To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.

by redox99

1/15/2025 at 12:17:39 AM

I'd imagine the concern is the radioactive dust / fallout getting stuck onto the vehicle, clothes, and hair which would increase your exposure time; getting through that zone as quick as possible could limit that dust sticking. But that's just my guess.

by somerandomqaguy

1/15/2025 at 3:05:27 AM

This is the problem. It's not just being in the area, it's inhalation/ingestion and direct exposure to radioactive dust. If you look at [https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Quick%2...], the levels just from increased radiation from a single detonation there are certainly not fatal in a few minutes, but with multiple detonations it's not difficult to get a lethal dose in a few or hours or a day or two. Couple that with the inhalation/contamination issue, and yeah, be afraid.

If I saw that sign I'd be a hell of a lot more concerned than "oh, miniscule cancer risk later in life, meh, I guess I'll just slowboat this one".

by titzer

1/15/2025 at 4:39:18 AM

changing engine and cabin air filters would become an extremely hazardous affair

by jcgrillo

1/15/2025 at 5:40:01 AM

I'd read the title as 'if you see this there's a nuclear war going on and it will escalate and you'll die'

Maybe not what was intended but that's how I see it

by niccl

1/15/2025 at 6:46:47 AM

If there's time to manufacture and place these signs, and there's still a nuclear war going on, I think I've vastly misunderstood MAD doctrine. I wouldn't be surprised if war continued after nuclear strikes, but I'd think you'd use them up pretty soon. And it's gotta take at least 6 months to put up new speed limit signs on a stretch of highway.

by toast0

1/15/2025 at 4:28:18 PM

Everyone makes this mistake -- reducing radioactive fallout harm to just one metric.

In reality, a much larger danger are heavy radioactive isotopes that can be eaten/breathed in. E.g. you can walk in most of the Chernobyl areas, but don't you dare eating anything that grows there.

by deepsun

1/15/2025 at 7:29:11 AM

Well 10mSv per hour is a really small dose rate considering post-SIOP environment. That's what will be there for a threshold of "heavy" (300Sv total dose) fallout areas, in 6 months. Or pretty much everywhere including areas with no hits for hundreds of km away and no visible fallout, for at least a week.

by anovikov

1/15/2025 at 2:12:27 PM

[dead]

by aaron695

1/14/2025 at 11:25:59 PM

Interestingly enough, the Fukushima exclusion zone has roads that pretty much fit the bill. They're the pink lines on this map (PDF), with the exclusion zone in gray:

https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pd...

You are permitted to drive through but not stop or get out of your car. I presume ordinary speed limits apply though, so no exciting post-apocalyptic signage.

by teractiveodular

1/14/2025 at 11:37:03 PM

That's likely because alpha and beta emitters are trivially blocked by common car materials, but getting your skin covered in them or inhaling them does much more damage (this is actually what killed a lot of Chernobyl firefighters: they wore their dust covered coats for hours, and died of sepsis from extensive beta burns. Had they been decontaminated quickly, they would've survived).

by XorNot

1/15/2025 at 12:32:11 AM

I’m not 100% convinced by that as motorcycles are also permitted in some cases?

by bpye

1/15/2025 at 1:48:54 AM

As you'd find if you drove a motorcycle fast enough in the rain, a motorcycle with a fairing and windshield will sweep the rain (or dust) over and past you and you only get wet when you stop at a light. Perhaps that's the case here as well.

by hobobaggins

1/15/2025 at 12:49:08 AM

It's more the dust issue. Like, someone on a motorcycle who doesn't stop isn't going to pick up an appreciable amount from the road way. But if you pull over, get out, stroll around in the dirt in your boots etc.?

by XorNot

1/15/2025 at 12:30:45 AM

> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.

THEY STILL DO!!!!

This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

by killjoywashere

1/15/2025 at 3:43:04 AM

Nationalists are not motivated by reason. Just telling them they're going to start a nuclear war isn't a deterrent. Loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, ethnicity, borders, tradition, etc are their primary motivators today. If they have to end the world with nukes to protect "their" nation, then by golly, that's what they'll do. Self-preservation isn't as important as preservation of the ethos.

Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause.

The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.

by 0xbadcafebee

1/15/2025 at 6:09:37 AM

> Nationalists are not motivated by reason.

It's curious how nationalists, who often claim their stance is grounded in objective truths, almost always champion the nation of their birth.

by olalonde

1/15/2025 at 7:39:26 AM

From what I've gathered trying to talk to reasonable people who have different points of view from me, the main concern is preserving one's way of life. Their culture.

I've heard the phrase "the more of the third world you bring in, the more similar your country will be to the third world".

And be there no mistake - the countries that these people call "third world" don't want European or American culture infiltrating their societies either.

by dotancohen

1/15/2025 at 8:38:20 AM

That was sort of my point: it's not a reasoned stance (e.g. culture X is objectively superior), but an emotional one (e.g. I have an emotional attachment to culture X).

by olalonde

1/15/2025 at 7:03:11 PM

Let's be honest. Would you want to live in a culture where only certain people, based on factors that happened before they were born, can or cannot work? Pay less or more taxes? Can or cannot own land? Where women cannot walk freely outside?

Do you feel that your culture is better than that? Would you consider that an emotional attachment to your culture?

by dotancohen

1/16/2025 at 12:18:14 AM

I would say you could have those preferences and values without being a nationalist. In fact, there are dozens of nations who share those values.

by olalonde

1/15/2025 at 9:42:32 AM

There's this quip (sounds like something Ambrose Bierce would say)

Edit: It was G.B. Shaw!

'Patriotism is the conviction that the country of your birth is superior to others because you were born in it.'

by lb1lf

1/15/2025 at 4:24:03 AM

Well said. I can strongly feel this happening in Finland, which became a racist country in one year.

by tipiirai

1/15/2025 at 4:41:43 AM

Fomenting nativist rage was exactly why Russia created the migrant crisis by destabilizing Syria. Im guessing you have a biased corporate media environment like America, too?

by Abekkus

1/15/2025 at 6:18:43 AM

Probably true for social media bubbles. For traditional media, not really. E.g. the largest newspaper gets regular accusations of taking sides (in their comments section), but the complaints seem to come from all sides equally. Except for the nationalist party, but over 80% of us probably thinks they have earned the critique they get.

by jusssi

1/15/2025 at 6:26:42 AM

The country originally had a program called Henkinen Maanpuolustus. By end of the 1970s influence of MIT & early FUNET had paved a way for the web however. Roughly 15 years later Google + biggest media would economically outcompete all Finnish local & independent media. By 2005 no major competitor for Google had emerged so at least 1995-2005 there only ever was a digital ad monopoly in Finland.

Here is an YLE-news article from as corrected by Claude that caught my eye & touches Syria, from last year:

"December 21, 2024

Works Cited

Visala, Hanna. "Analyysi: Erikoisinta Putinin neljän tunnin showssa oli paljastus, kenen kanssa hän mieluusti joisi teetä." YLE, 19 Dec. 2024, yle.fi/a/74-20132517.

"Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin." President of Russia, 19 Dec. 2024, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75909.

Note on Sources and Methodology This analysis examines two primary sources: Hanna Visala's article published by YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) and the official transcript from the Kremlin website. All translations from Finnish to English are by the author, with original Finnish text provided for verification. In accordance with Journalistin ohjeet (The Guidelines for Journalists), particular attention has been paid to accuracy in source attribution and fact-checking (JSN Guidelines 7, 9, and 10).

Executive Summary This analysis examines YLE's December 19, 2024 coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual year-end press conference against the official transcript. Our investigation reveals significant discrepancies between the reporting and source material, raising important questions about journalistic practices in covering complex geopolitical events.

Methodology Our analysis employs systematic comparison of:

Direct quotations from both sources Context preservation Attribution accuracy Supporting evidence Omission patterns Key Findings 1. Unverified Attribution YLE's most significant claim lacks source verification:

YLE's text:

"Putin myös sanoi, että jos voisi palata ajassa taaksepäin, hän olisi aloittanut sodan jo aiemmin." [Translation: "Putin also said that if he could go back in time, he would have started the war earlier."]

This statement appears nowhere in the official transcript, raising serious concerns about attribution standards.

2. The Kursk Situation YLE's portrayal:

"Kysymys siitä, milloin Kurskin alue 'vapautetaan Ukrainan joukoista', sai Putinin rykimään hermostuneesti. Putin vastasi, että 'potkimme heidät varmasti ulos', mutta ei sanonut tarkkoja päivämääriä." [Translation: "Question about when the Kursk area would be 'liberated from Ukrainian forces' made Putin cough nervously. Putin answered that 'we will definitely kick them out' but didn't give exact dates."]

Official Transcript:

"We will undoubtedly drive them out. There is no alternative. Concerning a precise date – I am afraid I cannot specify one at this moment. I have an understanding of the plans, which are regularly reported to me. However, it is not possible to declare a specific date. The troops can hear me now; if I were to specify a date, they would go to great lengths to meet it, potentially disregarding casualties. We cannot allow that."

The transcript reveals a strategic explanation for withholding dates, contrasting with YLE's interpretation of nervousness.

3. Economic Coverage YLE's coverage largely omits substantial economic discussions present in the transcript.

Official Transcript's Economic Data:

"Last year Russia increased its GDP by 3.6 percent, and this year the economy is expected to grow by 3.9 percent, or possibly even four percent... What this means is that our economy will have grown by eight percent over the past two years... Unemployment is at its all-time low of 2.3 percent. We have not experienced anything like this before."

This omission significantly affects readers' understanding of the complete context.

4. North Korea Claims YLE's assertion:

"Venäjän joukkojen rinnalla taistelevista Pohjois-Korean joukoista Putin ei maininnut sanaakaan. Ukrainan hyökkäys Kurskiin ja Pohjois-Korean joukkoihin tukeutuminen olivat selvästi odottamaton takaisku Putinin suunnitelmassa." [Translation: "Putin didn't say a word about North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces. Ukraine's attack on Kursk and reliance on North Korean troops were clearly an unexpected setback in Putin's plan."]

The transcript shows no context requiring discussion of foreign troops, instead detailing specific Russian units:

"Fighting alongside them are the 810th Marine Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet, the 76th and 106th divisions of the Airborne Troops, and motorised infantry of the Sever Group."

5. Syria Coverage YLE's characterization:

"Toinen kiusallinen aihe Putinille oli selvästi Syyria. Hän joutui vastaamaan yhdysvaltalaisen NBC-tv-kanavan kysymykseen Syyriassa 12 vuotta sitten kadonneen amerikkalaisen toimittajan kohtalosta. Putin yski kysymyksen päälle ja pyysi esittämään sen uudelleen." [Translation: "Another uncomfortable topic for Putin was clearly Syria. He had to answer NBC's question about the fate of an American journalist who disappeared in Syria 12 years ago. Putin coughed over the question and asked for it to be repeated."]

Official Transcript:

"Frankly, I have not met with President Bashar al-Assad after his arrival in Moscow. But I plan to do it and will certainly talk to him... I promise that I will definitely ask him this question just like we can forward this question to the people who are controlling the situation on the ground in Syria today."

6. Military Situation Assessment YLE's brief characterization:

"Putin näytti hyväkuntoiselta ja esiintyi varmasti vuosittaisessa tv-spektaakkelissaan. Hän kehui Venäjän taloutta – kuten aina – ja ylisti joukkojensa voittoja Ukrainassa." [Translation: "Putin appeared healthy and confident in his annual TV spectacle. He praised Russia's economy - as always - and praised his troops' victories in Ukraine."]

Official Transcript's detailed military assessment:

"The combat readiness of the Russian Armed Forces is the highest in the world today. I assure you it is the highest... As far as I know, the number of armoured vehicles destroyed in the Kursk Region has now exceeded the number of vehicles destroyed on the entire line of contact last year – in any case, these are comparable figures."

Systematic Issues Identified Attribution Problems:

Unverified quotes Interpretation presented as direct statement Absence of source verification for key claims Contextual Omissions:

Economic data Policy discussions Strategic context Qualifying statements Narrative Framing:

Emphasis on perceived weakness Selective quote usage Interpretative statements presented as fact Balance Issues:

Limited perspective presentation Omission of contradictory information Selective context application Recommendations for Improved Coverage Source Verification:

Direct quote verification Clear attribution standards Primary source consultation Context Preservation:

Complete quote inclusion Relevant background maintenance Balanced perspective presentation Interpretative Clarity:

Clear separation of fact and analysis Multiple perspective consideration Transparent reasoning for interpretations Conclusion This analysis reveals significant divergences between YLE's coverage and the primary source material. While editorial choices are necessary in news coverage, the extent of these divergences raises concerns about accurate public information dissemination. The findings suggest a need for more rigorous adherence to journalistic standards in complex geopolitical coverage.

Methodology Note: This analysis compared the complete Finnish language YLE article (Visala, YLE, 19.12.2024) with the official English language transcript from the Kremlin website (President of Russia, 19.12.2024). All translations of Finnish text were verified by native speakers. The analysis focused on verifiable content comparison rather than subjective interpretation."

Claude was given the transcript from Kremlin's site. YLE news is funded by Finland & supposed to not to be heavily biased, officially speaking.

by dp88

1/15/2025 at 6:52:27 AM

I mean how long does it take to radicalise 20 odd people.

by protocolture

1/15/2025 at 10:53:27 PM

Oh no I have been downvoted by the population of finland

by protocolture

1/15/2025 at 6:38:32 AM

you have it all backward

>we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII

who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan.

>Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing

yes, and thank God, because Mutually Assured Destruction is what we call that which has kept and keeps the peace. As far as nuclear weapons go, fear of being on the receiving end is what deters their use.

The Russians keep mentioning the use of nuclear weapons; it's important not to back down in the face of that, because if we do, it will only repeat and increase. Iran, well you have to decide if they are just a different ideology, or if they are a death cult. If they're just a different ideology, MAD will work there too; if they are a death cult, you should advocate that we mutually assure their destruction before they get any.

running around like a headless chicken setting the hands on a mythical clock does not achieve anything except scaring people, and people don't do their best thinking when scared.

by fsckboy

1/15/2025 at 7:19:44 AM

> you have it all backward > > >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII > > who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan. > There are other people than the citizens oft USA in HN.

Personally I understood "us" in this sentence as global citizen, people from Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa who had their grandfathers living during WWI and WWII.

by hommelix

1/15/2025 at 1:07:02 AM

MAD precludes total wars of national survival ala WW2. It does not at all preclude the sorts of cabinet wars that were fought between the European powers for centuries before Napoleon.

by ls612

1/15/2025 at 1:21:01 AM

If we crossed the Yalu River today, do you think we'd be alive tomorrow to talk about it? Nuclear deterrence, as part of the taboo, prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power. The only exception I know of is the Yom Kippur War, and if there is ever a person who never received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize, it's Golda Meir.

by killjoywashere

1/15/2025 at 3:34:31 AM

Ukraine crossed the Russian frontier. The Russians escalated by importing cannon fodder from North Korea.

I think the better question would be if China crossed the Yalu River today and joined the North Koreans to assault South Korea, what would the response of the US, South Korea, and Japan be? The latter two can trivially develop nuclear weapons if the US security situation degrades.

I think wielding nuclear weapons requires a baseline level of competence to exploit.

by Spooky23

1/15/2025 at 1:26:25 AM

Yes? North Korea's own nuclear capability is very limited, and China doesn't care enough about North Korea to use its own arsenal and risk nuclear annihilation.

I still wouldn't want to be in Seoul or Tokyo if that happens though, and yes, there's a non-zero risk somebody somewhere gets trigger happy and things spiral out of control.

by teractiveodular

1/15/2025 at 1:29:21 AM

The Yalu River separates China and North Korea. General MacArthur sent US troops across the Yalu, which is what caused the Chinese to enter the Korean War, and led to most of the US casualties. Truman fired MacArthur for disobeying his order to stay on the Korean side of the Yalu. That was before the Chinese had nuclear weapons. The Korean peninsula has been under an armistice and not at peace for 70 years in large part because MacArthur invaded China in I would characterize as a Cabinet war mentality. Go to the MacArthur museum in Norfolk, Virginia. MacArthur was from an extraordinarily wealthy family and clearly saw himself as an aristocrat with warrant to act unilaterally while deployed far afield.

If the US sent its own troops to invade China today, do you think we be here to talk about it tomorrow? That would be no Cabinet war.

by killjoywashere

1/15/2025 at 2:23:53 AM

Do you have a source for MacArthur actually crossing the Yalu? I can't seem to find one.

by Kim_Bruning

1/15/2025 at 3:43:47 AM

You are right. MacArthur surrounded himself with sycophants and completely mismanaged the situation due to the disconnect with reality. He may have wanted to provoke a wider war with China, including nuclear weapons and supporting a nationalist invasion of China.

His mother was like a modern PR machine, and is the reason he has a mostly positive reputation. He left alot of dead Americans in the tracks of his journey to glory.

by Spooky23

1/15/2025 at 3:46:41 AM

There isn't one because it didn't happen.

by getnormality

1/15/2025 at 1:59:23 AM

> Truman fired MacArthur for disobeying his order to stay on the Korean side of the Yalu.

Crazy to think that we might have had a world with a unified democratic Korea and no North Korea had this not happened.

MacArthur was too cocky.

by echelon

1/15/2025 at 2:20:23 AM

> MacArthur was too cocky.

To say the least.

The statement was silent, of course, on the secret testimony of Marshall, Bradley, Vandenberg and Collins. MacArthur thereby escaped the injury the testimony would have done his reputation, but the secrets badly eroded his support among those who should have been loudest on his behalf. Alexander Wiley, Styles Bridges and the other Republicans were compelled by the revelations about America’s vulnerability to rethink their endorsement of MacArthur and the belligerent course he favored. They didn’t recant in public; they wouldn’t give Truman that satisfaction. But they no longer looked to MacArthur as a credible alternative to Truman on military strategy or in politics. They eased away from the general, and because the testimony was sealed, they never said why.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fu...

by nl

1/15/2025 at 2:04:41 AM

[dead]

by jaco6

1/15/2025 at 6:58:43 AM

>prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power.

Is Ukraine still sitting on a bunch of russian land?

by protocolture

1/15/2025 at 3:02:53 AM

China has a no first strike policy for now, so yes. Doesn't mean we'd have a good time though.

by waveBidder

1/15/2025 at 2:51:13 AM

you can’t have de-escalation from just one side. When one side has embraced facism, invades neighbors and does hybrid attacks against you the only path that does not lead to MAD is when you are so overwhelmingly stronger that they have no choice but back up or die.

The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.

by option

1/15/2025 at 2:59:53 AM

You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.

by waveBidder

1/15/2025 at 3:02:24 AM

What do you do when those lines are crossed? Like they have been repeatedly.

by option

1/15/2025 at 3:49:49 AM

What do you think maintains those no-go lines? The threat of recklessly gambling mass death if those lines are crossed

by aardvarkr

1/15/2025 at 8:22:32 AM

There is a wikipedia page with a list of NATO "red lines" crossed by putin, look it up

It's a catch-22 anyway. NATO still really wants to de-escalate, but by allowing Putin to cross these red lines they show weakness to a person who values strength. However if they react violently to a crossed red line, they might trigger EU-wide or worldwide war (not necessarily nuclear).

I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of NATO leaders right now

by jaapz

1/15/2025 at 12:37:57 AM

The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.

by matthewdgreen

1/15/2025 at 6:01:45 AM

If the US goes untrustworthy, every non-poor country on earth will have to start a program

by boredatoms

1/15/2025 at 7:03:05 AM

On other hand world where everyone does not have nuclear weapon has been absolutely proven to be utter total failure. We should try one with everyone having nuclear weapons to see if it prevents more wars. Maybe fear of death in the aggressor nations would prevent their evils.

by Ekaros

1/15/2025 at 6:52:52 PM

Failure where everyone does not have nuclear weapons looks very different from failure where everyone does. A scenario where everyone has nuclear weapons can only ever fail one time, because after that humanity will not survive to try anything else to "see if it prevents more wars".

It depends on how you define success I guess. The very fact that we're alive to have the option of giving everyone nukes just to see what happens means we've already found a measure of success. If everyone has nukes and they use them it means no more humans, which means no more wars, which I guess can also be seen as a success. World peace at last.

by autoexec

1/15/2025 at 1:05:35 AM

>Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs.

Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.

by Dalewyn

1/15/2025 at 2:31:53 AM

So that just means that if they ever make the political decision to pursue nuclear armament, they’ll call it the Japan Strategic Self-Defense Force.

As it is, Japan probably already has nukes that are all-but-assembled. Even if they don’t, they’re at most a handful of months away from taking whatever steps remain for a highly advanced industrial economy with existing nuclear infrastructure to finish building a bomb or two.

by nocoiner

1/15/2025 at 1:28:24 AM

That would absolutely happen if China invaded Taiwan and the US stood by twiddling its fingers.

Remember, Sweden and Finland were staunchly against NATO membership until Russia invaded Ukraine.

by teractiveodular

1/15/2025 at 1:32:22 AM

National attitudes have a remarkable ability to shift in response to neighbors getting invaded, as we learned a couple of years ago.

by naniwaduni

1/15/2025 at 2:08:45 AM

Japan could of course do it in secret, like others have.

by BurningFrog

1/15/2025 at 2:33:01 AM

In a complete disregard for the rule of law? Which other democratic countries with anti-nuclear constitution had a secret nuclear program?

by zaik

1/15/2025 at 2:55:47 AM

Japan, among many other countries, subscribes to the idea that the milder law prevails. If an action was illegal but it was made legal after the fact, then it was legal. Similarly, an unconstitutional action can be made constitutional after the fact.

Constitutions are not supposed to be absolute constraints. They are not supposed to prevent a country from doing what is reasonable or necessary, as long as people are willing to accept that it was reasonable and necessary.

by jltsiren

1/15/2025 at 5:29:18 AM

Military breaks constitution all the times, including in US. I believe most constitutions have anti torture stance, but most military have torture camp.

by YetAnotherNick

1/15/2025 at 2:53:51 AM

Israel, though I don't think they have it in their constitution (they don't have a constitution).

by tehjoker

1/15/2025 at 2:54:08 AM

The Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO.

This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin

by option

1/15/2025 at 12:49:00 AM

Hong Kong was very different than Taiwan would be. Taiwan will be a bloodbath as an armed, diehard anti-communist population fights to the death.

And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.

by monero-xmr

1/15/2025 at 12:53:25 AM

That notion didn't stop Russia from scorching Ukraine, can't see why it would stop China.

by actionfromafar

1/15/2025 at 1:02:04 AM

The issue Russia does have with Ukraine is it has to keep it's ships and planes away from Ukrainian areas or they get shot down. That'd be a problem for invading Taiwan.

by tim333

1/15/2025 at 3:14:43 AM

There have been wargames where it has been simulated with China using its entire commercial fishing fleet as the amphibious assault force. It wouldn't be easily stoppable.

by cma

1/15/2025 at 3:42:28 AM

Why and how would a fishing fleet be unstoppable? Why is that better than actual landing vehicles?

by aardvarkr

1/15/2025 at 4:18:09 AM

It's not better. But if China is willing to take enormous losses, then they can push a lot of troops across the Taiwan Strait in requisitioned civilian boats. Essentially the maritime equivalent of a human wave assault.

by nradov

1/15/2025 at 10:39:09 AM

I'm guessing Taiwan would only have so many anti-ship missiles so if you have more ships than that you wouldn't be able to get them all.

by tim333

1/15/2025 at 3:57:49 AM

Not being connected by land, thus having to force a naval invasion, is a big deterrent.

by Apocryphon

1/15/2025 at 3:29:47 AM

Russia isn’t as smart as China.

by mensetmanusman

1/15/2025 at 4:19:23 AM

Unless its existence and defiance of China was a sore point. Then an uninhabited ruin might be appealing.

by HWR_14

1/15/2025 at 1:12:23 AM

I doubt there would be any meaningful resistance, TBH.

by markus_zhang

1/15/2025 at 1:17:31 AM

I could not disagree harder. I know a decent number of Taiwanese people and their hatred of communists is like my ex-Soviet friends: very very deep

by monero-xmr

1/15/2025 at 12:50:05 PM

I know many who work in the mainland. I don't really think there is going to be a war though, maybe a super short one. It is mostly the consequences that puts CCP on check. But maybe in a few years they won't care anymore.

by markus_zhang

1/15/2025 at 2:12:21 AM

Taiwan is mostly the descendants of refugees from the 1949 Communist takeover!

by BurningFrog

1/15/2025 at 5:42:12 AM

No, most are descended from Taiwanese who were there before the mainlanders arrived.

by dougfelt

1/15/2025 at 2:07:53 AM

[dead]

by jaco6

1/15/2025 at 2:44:29 AM

[flagged]

by elzbardico

1/15/2025 at 3:34:59 AM

Huh? What did the current administration do to force Russia to invade a sovereign nation? How did this administration topple Assad? Laughable that you think it’s ISIS running the show. How did the current administration convince Hamas to launch a war against Israel? Gtfo with your “liberal Pearl clutching” lmao you’re a joke

by aardvarkr

1/15/2025 at 4:24:31 AM

[dead]

by gnkyfrg

1/15/2025 at 3:43:09 AM

[flagged]

by elzbardico

1/15/2025 at 3:52:53 AM

> Everyone who is not drunk on Propaganda

> people like you are unable of critical thinking.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by defrost

1/15/2025 at 5:22:41 AM

>...Minsky agreements...

He must be a manfunctioning AI bot. ;)

by DonHopkins

1/15/2025 at 1:06:09 AM

[flagged]

by whatsupdog

1/15/2025 at 2:14:39 AM

Blatantly untrue. Russia got all it wanted: Ukraine seeked NATO membership in 2008, Russia threw a temper tantrum, the US, France and Germany bailed out of the invitation, and Russia invaded Ukraine a few years later without having to risk with getting hit with NATO nukes in retaliation.

by mopsi

1/15/2025 at 2:19:04 AM

The only ones normalising war are the ones carrying water for Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with rampant conspiracism fed by a healthy dose of Russian propoganda.

Even Putin doesn't parrot the Russian propoganda, the only ones still eating that out of the trough are Americans. Putin when interviewed by Tucker just talked of the history of the Soviet Union, and the strength and cultural ties of that block.

NATO expansionism as a justification for Russia's annexation of Ukraine is an excuse reserved only for those dumb enough to believe Russian propoganda.

by TOMDM

1/15/2025 at 2:30:11 AM

> North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US.

Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep.

They also need to be able to hit a location accurately.

And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it.

Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.

by lamontcg

1/15/2025 at 2:47:55 AM

North Korea has successfully tested multiple missile launches on a lofted trajectory that demonstrated an intercontinental range. I believe both the hwasong 17 and 18 are capable of hitting the continental United States. Rentry vehicles have been demonstrated multiple times. Accuracy is a bit more of a concern, but with a thermonuclear weapon missing a city by 10 miles is still more than enough to cause millions of casualties.

The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.

by openasocket

1/15/2025 at 6:15:08 AM

DPRK does not seem too have the hydrogen bomb. Fission bombs on the kiloton range are too heavy to be mounted on ICBMs. I will not lose much sleep until there is credible information that DPRK has mastered the fusion bomb.

by dh2022

1/15/2025 at 1:05:04 PM

No, their last nuclear test was estimated at around 250 kilotons, which is indicative of a thermonuclear bomb. That was in 2017

by openasocket

1/15/2025 at 3:22:01 AM

Jesus, I hadn't realized they had come so far. Apparently NK gained the ability to hit the entire continental US with Hwasong 15. The latest iterations are suspected of being designed to contain MRVs or MIRVs, which would completely overwhelm US missile defenses. It is insane that we let them go down this road.

by matthewdgreen

1/15/2025 at 3:28:56 AM

Even they know that if one launched from their end they would all cease to exist within minutes.

by mensetmanusman

1/15/2025 at 1:50:00 PM

This is a deterrent until Kim Jong Un loses his marbles or receives a terminal diagnosis, or until some military commander makes a serious mistake. Now multiply this same risk times fifty or sixty and you’ll see why the major project of the 20th century was limiting the number of countries with nukes.

by matthewdgreen

1/15/2025 at 3:27:38 PM

There’s a good chance they fail since our intelligence services are essentially watching everything they do internally in real time.

And a proper failure gives an opportunity to disappear them.

by mensetmanusman

1/15/2025 at 2:49:12 AM

> Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.

Indeed, so hard that it took until 1957 for the US to master them....

Not trivialize the effort of making such rockets and reentry vehicles, but the North Koreans only have 6-10 countries to follow, at least two of which are semi-friendly to them and two more that they could crib tech from. Oh, and they have computers and it's not the 1950s anymore.

by titzer

1/15/2025 at 6:28:28 AM

The whole idea that regional nuclear exchange can be avoided is bonkers. The very machine designed to keep humans progressive and peacefull ,to keep the hothouse of "peacefulness delusion " alive at full blast is the very same driving up the stakes of it happen sooner then later. Thats peters dilemma. Thats why we have to crash the trolly before it can pick up more speed after clicking mineffortmaxreward. we had 15 years of prep.

by ashoeafoot

1/15/2025 at 6:48:51 AM

When top officials and other generally influential people transparently behave like self-centered sociopaths or psychopaths, it is difficult to see them too worried about survival and prosperity of citizens. Themselves those people are not going to have trouble surviving a nuclear winter (a thought experiment is needed to determine whether they will even suffer from it all that much on a personal level, compared to ordinary people many of whom would just perish).

Especially with MAD, but with modern technology in general, caring about survival and prosperity of your own citizens means caring about peaceful coexistence with other countries.

In this context, a degree of nationalism is not bad and may in fact be important (if another country is being hostile and you do nothing, that is not a peaceful coexistence); it’s isolationism that is actually worrying: having every mature participant depend on each other is a great way to make them usually not want to eliminate each other.

by strogonoff

1/15/2025 at 10:01:57 AM

> Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing.

My assessment is that it isn't.

The only MAD-able nation states in the 1980s were the United States and the Soviet Union.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian successor state has been unable to adequately maintain its military.

I have seen ample evidence that the entire Russian military apparatus is a fraud and no evidence that it is not. The examples are too many to list in total so here are some highlights:

1. A string of ballistic missile test failures.

2. Photographic evidence of the poor conditions of their ballistic missile submarine bases and the submarines themselves including submarines that are considered "active" but haven't left port in many years.

3. The halving in the last 30 years of the number of Rocket Armies and the reduction of Rocket Divisions within the Rocket Armies.

4. The reassignment of Rocket Army personnel, supposedly the highest-priority and most stringently-selected personnel in the Russian Armed Forces, for duty in Ukraine where they have very quickly been killed.

5. Obsolete equipment rendering their strategic bombing forces ineffective in the face of Ukrainian air defense systems to the point that no strategic bombers enter Ukrainian airspace, instead lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine from outside the air defense envelope due to numerous airframes being lost to, quite frankly, an inadequate and patchwork Ukrainian air defense network.

I find any military that claims to have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch but cannot feed or clothe its infantryman to be, as the kids put it, "sus".

Finally, they seem to have shifted their rhetoric to absurd doomsday weapons because they know we know that their nukes are shit so they have to come up with "nuclear tsunami torpedoes" and "nuclear doomsday cruise missiles" which are, I'm telling you as an engineer not a poly-sci major who grew up on Cold War fetishism and is now an "analyst", impossible fantasies.

So you have the nuclear triad: submarines, bombers, and land-based ballistic missiles.

Their subs are rusting hulks that rarely leave port, and those that do are at Kursk/Moskva levels of readiness.

Their bombers can't even operate over Ukraine, a nation subsisting on single-digit percentages of obsolete NATO equipment.

Their land-based ballistic missiles keep blowing up on the ground. Even their saber-rattling launch before Biden's trip to Ukraine, something that they would want to get right, exploded on the launchpad.

Let's be very clear: they still have nuclear weapons.

But MAD is MAD. Annihilation. Extinction. Not "fuck this is bad", but "fuck we're all doomed, permanently, forever".

MAD doesn't mean NYC gets nuked, MAD means all human life on earth ends for all practical purposes with only scattered bands of irradiated survivors in the southern latitudes.

Russia is almost certainly incapable of MAD.

by snakeyjake

1/15/2025 at 11:46:57 AM

Is "almost certainly" a risk we should be willing to take? And even if Russia is not capable of MAD, what does that change?

by jaapz

1/15/2025 at 12:03:20 PM

>And even if Russia is not capable of MAD, what does that change?

They should be thought of and treated like North Korea with oil, not the Soviet Union 2.0.

by snakeyjake

1/15/2025 at 1:08:56 AM

[flagged]

by Gvaskas

1/15/2025 at 1:12:45 AM

The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history.

O, no someone claims things are failing. Look people have been saying that for thousands of years it doesn’t actually mean it’s true.

by Retric

1/15/2025 at 1:18:44 AM

>The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history.

I would argue the West was at its peak in the mid to late 20th century when we were so awesome we conquered the god damn Moon, made transcontinental, transoceanic and even space travel quick and mundane, invented the microprocessor, and then finally invented a communication system that connected the entire world.

Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline.

The world becomes more tumultuous every year, the East is clearly catching up and has in some aspects already surpassed the West, the Middle East is a bigger tinderbox than humanity has ever known, and liberal values like free speech and equal opportunity have become decisively unpopular.

A paradigm shift is coming, probably this century within most of our lifetimes, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to smell that.

by Dalewyn

1/15/2025 at 1:51:00 AM

Air travel has really only become commonplace fairly recently. Decade over decade growth has pushed the domain of the wealthiest, then well off, down to just about anyone.

> space travel quick and mundane

Space travel was rare and extremely expensive until very recently when we’ve made huge strides. And this isn’t just a singular SpaceX thing the from ion engines to basics like solar panels things have been steadily improving.

IMO the Apollo program was less impressive than many recent missions like DART. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te...

You want to push new boundaries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe

As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia.

But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same.

> Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline.

Again we’re better off economically, militarily, and technologically in 2025 than 2000, 1980, 1960 let alone any point before then. The diseases of the rich have become commonplace and we view that as a failure rather than the underlying progress that it is.

by Retric

1/15/2025 at 5:44:59 AM

>Air travel has really only become commonplace fairly recently.

Air travel has been mundane for at least the better part of a century now. Just to remind us all how old we are: The Boeing 747 first flew in 1969 and went into initial service with Pan Am in 1970, that's 55 years ago.

>Space travel was rare and extremely expensive

I said quick and mundane which the Space Shuttle accomplished in spades. Nobody talks about going to space anymore unless something is particularly novel.

>As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia.

Russia was never considered Western: Politically they have been considered east of Eastern Europe since ye olde days and "Second World" post-WW2. Religiously they were always the Russian Orthodoxy and the various Orthodox Churches all have eastern-to-Europe vibes.

>But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same.

And arguably not cautious enough, including to this very day.

>we’re better off economically,

The stock market is having the time of its life, but that isn't entirely reflective of the real economy.

Remember that Harris lost this election ultimately because of the bad (or at least perceived as bad) economy.

>militarily

A lot of Western military still uses hardware from 50 years ago, and even the so-called latest is 20-ish years old on average.

I also question the real efficacy of Western militaries when placed in an actual peer war. We talk big, but the US has also lost practically every single war in the modern era against inferior enemies.

>technologically

Nearly all of the bleeding edge technology is manufactured in the East. Even if the West produces the ideas on paper, it's the East which actually turns them into practical and tangible reality.

Also, new isn't necessarily better. Russia and Ukraine are both demonstrating quite viciously that dumb-and-cheap might be better. Ukraine has already called out the M-1 Abrams as useless in today's battlefields without certain modifications, which the US military and industrial complex are refusing to entertain.

by Dalewyn

1/15/2025 at 11:35:12 AM

Mundane != commonplace, in 1969 when the very first 747 entered service there was exactly 1 of them in service. It took a long time to build up an actual fleet of them.

Aircraft are a durable good, 20 year old aircraft are in regular service even today.

> quick and mundane which the Space Shuttle accomplished in spades.

Again perception not reality, from 1981 to 2011 each shuttle averaged roughly 1 flight per year. The program was paused twice for multiple years after each failure.

It was very much still an experimental program where they where they constantly tweaked things not a mundane just do everything the same every time kind of thing. “Shuttle main engines 104 percent” because the RS 25 went through a series of upgrades. FMOF, Phase I, Phase II (RS-25A), Block I (RS-25B), Block IA (RS-25B), Block IIA (RS-25C), Block II (RS-25D): First flown on STS-104.

> Russia was never considered Western

So rather than falling, that suggests an overall trend of political ascendancy of the west through at least the fall of the USSR in 1991.

> perceived as bad) economy

Perception has become wildly devoid of reality. The US economy handled COVID amazingly well, but we’ve become so used to success we don’t even understand what it means to suffer minimal issues. We’ve had such long term success we’ve forgotten what failure looks like, that’s about the opposite of failure.

by Retric

1/15/2025 at 11:56:19 AM

>in 1969 when the very first 747 entered service there was exactly 1 of them in service.

Yeah, and also in 1969 air travel was already mundane.

>that suggests an overall trend of political ascendancy of the west through at least the fall of the USSR in 1991.

I did argue the peak of the West was in the mid to late 20th century.

>We’ve had such long term success we’ve forgotten what failure looks like.

The 2008 Great Recession was the latest significant failure, though even that was actually pretty mild as failures go.

Nonetheless the economy today is bad, because Main Street says it's bad. Complaints of inflation, stagnant wages, rising costs of living, among others are all real.

I suppose if there's any consolation, at least a head of cabbage doesn't cost around $7 dollars here (yet?) unlike in Japan.[1]

[1]: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15582870

by Dalewyn

1/15/2025 at 12:03:09 PM

> 2008 Great Recession

Recessions are benchmarked relative to the years around it not overall economy by historic standards. At the peak of 2008’s recession things were still doing quite well. 10.0% unemployment and 5.1% drop in GDP from the peak is tiny.

It doesn’t even qualify in the top 10 US recessions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...

by Retric

1/15/2025 at 1:35:11 AM

That's an artifact of the prevalence of modernism at that time rather than an objective truth. The "vibe", as it were, was that things were getting better and better until the gaps of modernism sowed the seeds for its own destruction. Pointing them out led to the rise of post-modernism which felt like a fall, sure, but I'm not convinced it actually was any more than modernism was an actual rise.

by kelseyfrog

1/15/2025 at 2:47:20 AM

The west can't even make enough artillery shells in one year to overcome Russia's monthly production. Fucking Russia for God's sake.

by elzbardico

1/15/2025 at 5:58:27 AM

You really believe that?

by IAmGraydon

1/17/2025 at 11:59:23 PM

Several reputable European media vehicles said that. On the UK, the Royal United Services Institute said the same. It is not a secret, unless someone keeps a media diet of MSNBC and CNN only.

by elzbardico

1/18/2025 at 12:16:04 AM

The United States Army current artillery shell production capacity is about half that of Russia's .. not less than a tenth.

There are other producers in "the West".

What the RUSI report(s) stated was that Russia is hitting the limits of production and will be bound by material input constraints (chromium, etc) and is ripe for supply disruption, whereas "the West" is ramping up production capaicty and can easily exceed that of Russia.

by defrost

1/15/2025 at 1:17:30 AM

What a strange argument. Nationalism is only around around 200 years old, because it's one of the basic ideas that formed the modern era.

by AlotOfReading

1/15/2025 at 2:38:47 AM

We might have only given it a name 200 years ago. It was the default state for all of human history, and still is in the animal kingdom.

A population of people of shared blood and history sharing a homeland in pursuit of common values and ambitions, violently defending it from foreigners whenever necessary.

Not a soulless economic zone where foreigners are treated like royalty by traitors and treasonous authorities.

by Gvaskas

1/15/2025 at 2:25:49 AM

I'm pretty sure people who grew up under feudalism with no loyalty to a national state still saw their child as their child and not a compatriot. What a weird take.

by d_e_solomon

1/15/2025 at 3:54:42 AM

The virulent anti-nationalists are, themselves, often a very pro-war faction.

by Over2Chars

1/15/2025 at 4:02:09 AM

Can you give an example? Honestly don’t know who this is supposed to be.

by vlz

1/15/2025 at 4:22:14 AM

Virulent anti-nationalists are generally marxist leninist communists.

The rhetoric of the anti-nationalists is generally implicitly or explicitly "internationalist". In early Communist organization names they often used the word "international" and I think they even have a toe tappin' song by that name:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4

And if you doubt the second part "are often pro-war" this is the doctrine of divide and conquer, civil war (called "class war") in which the target of their anti-nationalist colonialism is provoked into disorder before the "forces of liberation" can swoop in and expand the mother country.

This has been endlessly documented in many places. Probably one of the better ones is George Orwell's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

by Over2Chars

1/15/2025 at 1:03:13 AM

>nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII.

WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.

WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes.

Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.

by Dalewyn

1/15/2025 at 2:07:29 AM

> WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.

The murderer Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist, who committed the murder for nationalist reasons.

by BurningFrog

1/15/2025 at 3:48:20 AM

That was just the excuse everyone used to have a go at eachother. Russia didn't want its pan-slavic ambitions to get embarrassed again (as they were with the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia), France wanted revenge, Austria-Hungary wanted to remind everyone that they were still around and relevant, Germany wanted to establish supremacy on the continent, the UK wanted to curtail German ambitions, and prevent the rise of a rival empire.

Everyone was itching for a fight, all for incredibly stupid, selfish reasons, and unleashed a war that butchered an entire generation of Europe's youth. Three of the five major belligerents had their governments overthrown, and that was two too few.

by vkou

1/15/2025 at 3:16:39 PM

I've seen it described as a powder keg waiting for a match.

To me, the Russian Revolution is The Worst Thing That Ever Happened, and I imagine we'd have a much better world if that match was never lit.

by BurningFrog

1/15/2025 at 6:10:59 PM

> the Russian Revolution is The Worst Thing That Ever Happened,

Worse than the war that spawned it, where 20 million people died over absolutely nothing in four years, and then when it resumed, another 70 million (with an unprecedented attempt at industrial extermination of an entire group of people thrown in for good measure)?

Worse than any of the other globe-spanning empires that plunged their subjects into decades and centuries of slavery and repression?

The Soviet empire, at its worst, only had 400 million people - a mere ten percent of the world's population - in thrall.

The world's history been awash in blood spilled by war, aristocracy and autocracy, imperialism and colonialism. It's rather hard to point at one of the middling empires and go - that one, right there, is definitely the worst thing in history.

by vkou

1/15/2025 at 9:40:51 PM

This is of course not an exact science, and you make good arguments for WW1. The fact that it (maybe) depends on a single shot at a chance encounter makes that extra fun to speculate over.

But I think you underestimate the Russian Revolution. Without the Soviet Union, there is no Cold War, and there is no way China goes communist, stopping a number of genocides. The consequences are huge, and very hard to imagine.

You can even make an argument that without german communists, the Nazis don't take power in Germany, but I admit that's a stretch. And of course, in this alternative world other terrible things would happen.

by BurningFrog

1/15/2025 at 11:35:22 PM

Without a cold war you'd have had some other imperial imbalance. The only reason the Anglosphere and the EU are in alliance is because of a rival superpower. Without the commies to scare the shit out of them, they'd still all be squabbling with each other over colonies, and we'd all probably be working 70 hours a week, as our owners would not feel any pressure to make concessions to labour.

Or, alternatively, there may have well been a communist revolution in the industrialized countries, as opposed to the agrarian backwaters that actually got them.

And China going communist can be blamed as much on things like the Opium wars, or Japan's imperialism, or the international repression of the Boxer rebellion or any of the other things that fueled a reactionary nationalistic fire in it. There's only so long you can keep kicking a country of nearly a billion people before someone gets it in their head to drive out the foreigners, and they usually aren't the type to be winning any peace prizes, if you get my drift.

It's all just a bunch of what-ifs. The only thing that we can know for certain is that the Soviet empire sucked, a lot, especially for its European subjects. Empires tend to. But its existence probably played a major role in decolonization - and wrecking other empires.

by vkou

1/15/2025 at 3:14:44 AM

So you’re saying that if we want to avoid World War 3 we have to get rid of nationalism in Serbia?

by dullcrisp

1/15/2025 at 5:29:31 PM

Actually, that was absolutely correct until 1990 or so.

When I was young and the world was filled with anti-nuclear grimness, my father took me aside and told me I had nothing to worry about... until Josef Tito died. I didn't even know who that was. When he had been stationed in NATO, he'd served as squadron planning officer. He'd read SIOP and all the war plans, which he said were all ridiculous scenarios- except for Tito dying and Yugoslavia disintegrating.

He said NATO and the Warsaw Pact would go to war over the civil war. It would be impossible to stop as refugees and fighting would be everywhere and the Soviets would roll in.

He was absolutely dumbstruck how long Tito's grip from the grave kept the country together. When the Soviet Union fell, he said at least it won't be a nuclear war now.

by hindsightbias

1/15/2025 at 6:37:23 AM

Having met a few Serbian nationalists that's actually not a bad idea.

by akdor1154

1/15/2025 at 7:30:31 AM

This is… not a bad question at all. Serbia is punching above its weight in the current political situation in Europe thanks to being close to Putin and participating in the Chinese new Silk Road and the Serbian Orthodox Church is an amazing hate machine, rivaling their Russian counterparts easily.

While it wouldn’t stop ww3 it would remove one of the hot spots.

by baq

1/15/2025 at 2:25:09 AM

> WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad

So bad that germany was the strongest economy in interwar Europe under ten years later? If anything, the allies was nowhere near harsh enough on Germany; the state should have been systemically dismantled and remade as an inoffensive rump state.

by Starlevel004

1/15/2025 at 1:26:20 AM

The nationalist spirit is founded on imperial ambitions, and the pieces were in place for WWI partly due to empires and pretenders who would claim the title of "empire" both increasingly desperate to cement their legitimacy through power projection.

by barnabyjones

1/14/2025 at 10:06:27 PM

Driving in montana before the state implemented a max speed, I'd have my cruise control set at 100 mph. I remember seeing limos pass me like I was sitting still.

I miss those days.

by IronWolve

1/14/2025 at 11:32:18 PM

Reasonable and prudent is objectively the best speed limit.

Going 110 on a dry empty highway? Carry on.

Going 110 on I-90 right outside of Billings? Pull over young man, its time for the highway patrol to have a philosophical discussion with you on the side of the road.

by AcerbicZero

1/15/2025 at 2:54:46 PM

110 MPH is never a safe speed for a car on a highway. Crash rate increases exponentially with speed. At 110 MPH you are placing your life and the lives of other road users at risk for no real good reason.

by foxyv

1/15/2025 at 11:17:55 PM

The #1 thing for driving safely is being predictable. Too many people seem to think "driving safely" is mechanically being able to control your car on the road, but that's the easy part. The difficulty is there are other people on the road all taking their own independent actions.

On a US highway you can glance in the mirror and see a vehicle, and you can work on the assumption that it's not going (much) more than 65mph. Or see a gap and have a general idea of how long you know it will still be a gap. Having a massive variety in possible speeds harms that.

I think many people seem completely unaware about how fast a car at 110mph (for example) can appear. It's in the order of time it takes to check your blindspot and other mirror - there's a hard limit to how many directions you can be looking at one time after all. No amount of "Personal Driving Skills" or "Being More Aware" can help that if the timing is unlucky.

by kimixa

1/15/2025 at 9:56:09 PM

This is cringe, and I refuse to engage with it further.

by AcerbicZero

1/16/2025 at 3:24:22 PM

Uh, you just did?

by foxyv

1/15/2025 at 1:50:00 AM

The problem is that it's literally subjectively the best speed limit, at least from the standpoint of that young man outside of Billings.

by hobobaggins

1/14/2025 at 11:09:58 PM

Driving through Montana is how I discovered my current car won't let me set the cruise control higher than 90 mph.

Probably for the best, they do have 80 mph speed limits now, but lots of drivers there still drive like there's no speed limit.

by magneticnorth

1/14/2025 at 10:41:50 PM

Visit Germany. The right stretch of Autobahn at the right time and you can still experience this. I just did two days ago.

by ajmurmann

1/15/2025 at 7:32:51 AM

Note insurance companies can not pay out if you drive too fast even if there’s no limit.

by baq

1/14/2025 at 10:47:45 PM

It depends where in Germany. Many parts of Autobahn have local speed regulations.

by timeon

1/15/2025 at 12:12:03 AM

To be exact: Out of 25,758 km Autobahn in Germany 18,115 km have no speed limit (70.4%) and another 1,608 km (6.2 %) have gantries without speed limit under favourable conditions (construction sites not taken into account).[1]

There are also some other roads that are not included in these figures because they are not classified as Autobahn, but Autobahn-like carriageways. Germany has around 3,350 km of them, a few without speed limit.[2]

[1] Source: ADAC report from 2024-04-22 (in German), see https://www.adac.de/verkehr/standpunkte-studien/positionen/t...

[2] For examples see the German Wikipedia article "Autobahnähnliche Straße" at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn%C3%A4hnliche_Stra%C3%...

by Archelaos

1/15/2025 at 4:14:59 PM

That's actually a much higher percentage without speed limit than I expected. I wonder if the stretches without speed limit are usually order traveled and thus less experienced. Anecdotally I used to drive between Bonn and Paderborn a lot and the speed limit would only go away once out of the densely-populated Ruhr area.

by ajmurmann

1/15/2025 at 1:10:25 AM

I never really got to enjoy those days. The path I'd typically take through Montana had a speed limit: 90 was about as fast as I could go and still get good enough MPG to make it to the next gas station...

by linsomniac

1/14/2025 at 11:53:39 PM

What a perfect invitation to get on one of my favorite soapboxes. Spoiler: I'm a big fan of Brock Yates.

Speed limits are an imperfect tool for an important problem. They were generally much higher, or nonexistent, on US highways before the 1973 oil crisis [0]. They were intended to save fuel, but weren't very effective. Nowadays, most people discuss them as a safety tool.

They aren't great for that, either. Speed disparity is the best way to cause an accident, with those going at least 5MPH under or 15MPH over the 85th percentile speed being the most dangerous drivers on the road. Limits force people to choose between going a comfortable speed and following the rules. When the difference between comfortable and legal speed is too high, you get situations where raising the limit can reduce the rate of accidents (citation discusses stats, my suggested reasoning is more speculative) [1]. There are still of course many cases where setting a slower speed limit has reduced accidents [2], but that effect is not universal. Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.

Consider long, straight, flat roads with 2+ lanes on each side, a median, no sidewalks, infrequent turn and/or merge lanes, with ample room to speed up or slow down, and speed limits of 50 MPH or lower. There are several near me. They are painful to drive, because they breed traffic tickets, tailgating, and accidents. Hell, the people on either side of the "go a comfortable speed" and "go a legal speed" even fight each other, making rolling roadblocks to slow traffic, or giving way to road rage.

Either raise the limit, or add curves, trees, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc to convince people to slow down. I tend more towards the "I can't drive 55" side [3] because I think it's generally better for the economy when people and goods can move faster. Edit: For a specific example, from Kansas City, the 9+ hour drive to Colorado Springs or Denver (at 70MPH) makes it nearly impossible to go there. There's very little traffic on I70 past Topeka. Without a speed limit, I could easily do the trip in a little over 4 hours in my C350. That would be FANTASTIC for the economies on either side of that stretch (not to mention along it).

If you're not familiar with Brock Yates and his influence, check out [4, 5, 6].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law

[1]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212135021.h...

[2]: https://jalopnik.com/iihs-finds-that-lowering-speed-limits-a...

[3]: https://youtu.be/RvV3nn_de2k?si=mLYQIkwlHCDPr6ec

[4]: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/a15143608/the-...

[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9fZI3wBA1o

[6]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTT1_JZp2Sg

by LeftHandPath

1/15/2025 at 3:12:52 AM

> Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.

Obviously this is true, and especially important at low speeds, but I wonder how much difference there is between 70 and 80 — I would have assumed they are both typically fatal

by hhmc

1/15/2025 at 4:17:47 AM

The energy is exponential. It takes 30% farther to stop going 80 than it does going 70.

One of my favorite trivia is the scenario that a car going 50 mph sees an obstruction in front and slams on its brakes and stops just in time just tapping it. A car next to him going 70 mph sees the same object, has faster reflexes, and hits his brakes at the exact same spot of the road. He slams into the object at 50 mph.

Just the difference between 70 and 80 is the energy of going almost 40 mph.

by mminer237

1/15/2025 at 8:12:55 AM

> The energy is exponential.

No, kinetic energy is only quadratic in the velocity, E = ½ mv².

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy

by codethief

1/15/2025 at 11:57:29 PM

You're correct. My wording was off.

by mminer237

1/15/2025 at 5:41:01 AM

Another related pet peeve is when I see cyclists going the wrong way in a bike lane. On a 40 mph road a cyclist has a differential with traffic of 20-25 mph. An accident would be serious by likely non-fatal. When you ride the wrong you you add the speeds and make nearly all collisions fatal.

by Cerium

1/15/2025 at 7:01:16 AM

> The energy is exponential. It takes 30% farther to stop going 80 than it does going 70.

That's when the issue is stopping distance.

The issue on highways is that you have, for example, two cars in the left lane going 55 MPH and a third approaches going 70 MPH. One of the slower cars sees this and moves over but only at the same time as the faster car is changing into the same lane to pass on the right, so now both lanes are blocked, the faster car hits one of them and they're both edged off the road into a stationary object at highway speeds.

Does it matter if they hit the stationary object with significantly more energy? Probably not; dead is dead.

by AnthonyMouse

1/16/2025 at 12:03:43 AM

I guess that's theoretically possible, but even in that rare case, people are going to break if they hit someone. Driving too slow causes some accidents but they rarely lead to deaths. AFAIK, driving too slow is such a minor safety issue that no study has been carried out to ascertain exactly how bad it is though.

by mminer237

1/16/2025 at 7:24:10 AM

The trouble with that one is that it's the one caused by people driving too slow, and isn't rare. When people are driving at significant speed differentials to each other, it causes a lot of lane change maneuvers. Which are dangerous because each one is a chance to move into a lane without realizing there is someone in your blind spot, or that the new lane has an obstruction ten feet in front of you, or focus your attention on what's happening in the lane you're intending to change into and fail to notice an immediate hazard in the lane you're still in. So you get more accidents, and those accidents are still happening at highway speed.

Meanwhile a significant proportion of accidents happen not because you couldn't stop fast enough but because you couldn't stop at all. Another driver side swipes you and rams you off the road and you're now three feet from a head-on collision with a utility pole; if you can even get your foot to the brake before impact it's not going to save you. You're driving on an apparently clear road in winter and come across a patch of black ice; your brakes have no effect and you're hitting whatever's in front of you at full speed. It's night, you're tired and you only realize there is a completely dark disabled vehicle in one of the travel lanes when you smash into it.

In cases like this the difference between 30 MPH and 50 MPH can mean a lot, but the difference between 55 MPH and 80 MPH is basically just "you're still dead".

by AnthonyMouse

1/15/2025 at 10:39:12 AM

Right the energy is exponentially, but I’d claim that fatalities are saturating.

by hhmc

1/15/2025 at 3:32:06 AM

[dead]

by TacticalCoder

1/14/2025 at 10:28:35 PM

Weird. I wonder how those signs were supposed to be installed. So dangerous you need to blow through at 120mph, but safe enough for a worker to stand there for awhile installing a new sign.

by mugwumprk

1/14/2025 at 11:41:31 PM

It's worth considering that a lot of places aren't safe for the general public while being perfectly safe for trained workers.

Radioactive contamination is mostly dangerous from the alpha/beta emitting dust, not the gamma rays. The dust is only dangerous if you get it on you or stir it up and breathe it.

Trained crews with proper procedures and gear can manage a risk like that, your average citizen can't. And since there is a hazard, you're obligated to give correct advice - i.e. leave as soon as possible.

by XorNot

1/15/2025 at 12:47:16 AM

Military. Acceptable working conditions are significantly lower than for civilian workers. Particularly in the scenario where these signs would be installed.

by xboxnolifes

1/14/2025 at 10:35:58 PM

Worse, they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation.

Also, how fast is "safe" when seemingly you'll regularly be encountering crashed cars from people who didn't make it?

by boomboomsubban

1/15/2025 at 12:22:56 AM

What do you mean crashed cars from people who didn't make it? The sign is basically a "minimum speed 40 mph" sign routinely seen on the interstates but with a bit more teeth. The sides of highways aren't usually lined with crashed cars (except occasionally when winter gets feisty).

by thfuran

1/15/2025 at 1:27:19 AM

If I have permission to do 150, you bet I'm going to do 150. Even though I don't exactly have a ton of experience doing it. A fair number of people are going to misjudge, overcontrol, suffer equipment failures, etc.

by myself248

1/15/2025 at 3:35:30 AM

>If I have permission to do 150

Doing ~100 over the speed limit probably isn't considered safe, so I'd guess you don't.

by thfuran

1/15/2025 at 5:21:53 AM

Those signs are all over Georgia and it absolutely wigged out my Toyota’s sensor that scans speed limit signs. For 3 hours the car thought the speed limit was 40mph while I was going 85.

by wincy

1/15/2025 at 4:14:11 AM

I understood it as "this level of radiation could kill you in hours, but this is the only way to a fallout shelter." Reading other posts made after mine I appear to be mistaken.

by boomboomsubban

1/15/2025 at 6:27:03 AM

[...] they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation.

It can be supervised at entry/exit points, which is what I infer from the text. A bit like the highway across East Germany to West Berlin during the Cold War.

by inejge

1/14/2025 at 11:03:08 PM

Probably put the signs up at the outer limits of the zone and/or using safety gear. Worker in Hazmat suit at the periphery is probably fine.

by ALittleLight

1/15/2025 at 3:06:00 AM

You put the sign far enough outside the zone, you wear ppe, and you decontaminate afterwards.

by waveBidder

1/14/2025 at 10:45:54 PM

There were volunteers even in Chernobyl. (Not-really volunteers as well)

by timeon

1/14/2025 at 11:11:36 PM

> (Not-really volunteers as well)

There were many volunteers at Chernobyl, like the three engineers who went underwater to close the valves, many people fully understood the risks associated and still worked on it voluntarily. Lets not belittle their sacrifices by snide political commentary

by manquer

1/14/2025 at 11:25:46 PM

Let's also not belittle the sacrifice of the unwilling prisoners sent to die

by slackfan

1/15/2025 at 12:34:51 AM

That is the normal state of things in most countries. Yes their efforts should be remembered too.

There are currently 800+ "voluntary" prisoner who are working firefighters battling the wildfires in Southern California for less than $5-10/day risking higher injuries than professionals with limited healthcare.

Every country in times of need uses their prisoners as does Russia today for their war and they don't get treated the same as civilians in terms of rights.

Forced labor in high risk jobs is also true to every draft and conscription in every military ever, not just for soviet union or other oppressive regimes.

This is the social contract between a country and its citizens.

Nobody is dismissing the all firefighters in California as forced labor without choice in their sacrifice because some of them are prisoners who have limited choice as parent post was implying.

I think people who worked in Chernobyl deserve the same courtesy of considering all their sacrifices as voluntary independent of how they got there.

---

On a side note we have the least standing to comment on forced work by prisoner in other countries, Slavery is still legal in the constitution for prisoners, we have the highest incarceration rates anywhere in the world even more than most regimes[1] in the world and for-profit prisons who charge prisoners from phone calls to soap a lot of money and also pay very little for the work they do while incarcerated .

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html

by manquer

1/15/2025 at 5:30:13 AM

I don't think the grandparent comment was misleading, belittling or snide in any way.

by pierrec

1/15/2025 at 3:10:07 AM

The sign could be installed using appropriate safety gear no?

by NoPicklez

1/14/2025 at 10:27:42 PM

This sign is still available per the 11th edition of the MUTCD but under a different designation, EM2-3. Section 2N.06

by takk309

1/14/2025 at 11:08:35 PM

Who would be willing to take the risk to do road maintenance in a radiation zone? Hitting a pothole at 120 mph would be devastating.

by maxwellg

1/14/2025 at 11:57:01 PM

Depends on the pothole, but for some, driving at a higher speed is actually better than lower speed (short and deep ones) - the wheels just don't have enough time to fall significantly.

by karamanolev

1/15/2025 at 4:02:35 AM

I believe the wheels still fall the same amount (the springs are pushing them down) but the suspension works faster/more efficiently. Once the wheel either bottoms out in the pothole or hits the trailing edge, the spring sends the wheel up faster due to the energy from the impact. The shock is thus pushed up faster, and upon reaching its full contraction, settles back down into position to level the suspension on the road. The car ends up moving less in space and the suspension regains its position faster. If the car were moving slower, gravity, momentum and the inefficient suspension would end up moving the car itself more which has a larger impact on the ride.

by 0xbadcafebee

1/15/2025 at 12:33:32 AM

Wouldn't a higher speed turn up more dust and make things worse in general if your aim is to prevent the effects of radiation, given that inhaling alpha/beta is worse than the effects of gamma?

by naming_the_user

1/14/2025 at 10:40:57 PM

Everyone who doesn't see this sign is also going to die

by dangoodmanUT

1/14/2025 at 11:06:05 PM

probably

by danillonunes

1/14/2025 at 11:11:53 PM

So far so good

by qgin

1/15/2025 at 3:16:28 PM

Pages like this are completely unusable on mobile without adblock, and Google recently killed my ad blocker. Time to break this company up.

by matthewmorgan

1/14/2025 at 10:25:26 PM

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

by tantalor

1/14/2025 at 11:58:36 PM

I am Jack's irradiated spleen.

by zzgo

1/14/2025 at 10:24:28 PM

To save you a click on this clickbait: the sign is "Maintain Top Safe Speed", and the intent is to tell you to spend minimum time on this road to get out of this area as soon as you can because of nuclear contamination.

by vikingerik

1/14/2025 at 10:41:48 PM

As clickbait goes it's not even that bad. It's quite informative/entertaining.

by JSTrading

1/14/2025 at 11:34:05 PM

I appreciate saving me from having to read that awful website.

Interstitial autoplay videos is wild.

by maest

1/14/2025 at 10:41:59 PM

Anyone know where there any installations of these signs?

by JSTrading

1/14/2025 at 10:43:50 PM

The events leading to their installation never happened, so I'd assume nowhere.

by boomboomsubban

1/14/2025 at 11:24:42 PM

I remember seeing FALLOUT SHELTER signs around as a kid.

by SoftTalker

1/15/2025 at 2:40:49 AM

I still see them on some old buildings with thick stone or brick exteriors like town halls and post offices.

by theandrewbailey

1/15/2025 at 1:33:37 AM

The "evacuation route" and crossbars guiding you through can be seen (at least last time I looked) in Umatilla, OR.

US Army chemical weapons depot...they are disposing of some nasty stuff there. If there is a leak they shut down certain roads apparently.

by Ccecil

1/15/2025 at 1:53:19 AM

My mind kept reading the sign as "Mountain Top", which would have likely caused me to pull over for a looksee.

I'd be the guy that reads, "This place is not a place of honor..." and think, good enough place to dig an outhouse as any then.

by nanomonkey

1/14/2025 at 11:40:45 PM

[flagged]

by baxtr

1/14/2025 at 11:09:01 PM

[flagged]

by wiseowise

1/14/2025 at 11:17:23 PM

Hey, publisher here. We tend to look at our competition and do half or less the number of ads. That means there's an ad unit every sixth node, not every two paragraphs (so three paragraphs, two images an embed or five paragraphs or whatever). The video player doesn't stick if you're a member, because we are partially member-supported. If you'd like to see fewer ads you can become a member!

by hardibro

1/14/2025 at 11:58:17 PM

I appreciate the comment. FWIW, I understand you need to survive and I also think it's not the worst I've seen.

by karamanolev

1/15/2025 at 12:27:10 AM

Thanks, it's tough being a small publisher. Many of our competitors use a ton of ads, which screws with ad rates, and we use the usual off-the-shelf tools, but people still get mad that we have any ads. It's exciting.

by hardibro

1/14/2025 at 11:33:43 PM

Or use reader mode and/or an adblocker

by batch12

1/15/2025 at 8:00:01 AM

Thanks for taking time to reply. Taking another look at your website - it does behave differently compared to websites that abuse ads. I’ve spent too much time with abusive pages which triggered the overreaction.

Judging by active discussion in comments and loyal followers, the website is a loved one. Kudos for keeping good community alive.

Apologies for inappropriate comment.

by wiseowise

1/15/2025 at 12:13:01 AM

> Autoplaying sticky video

Not only autoplaying, but I've got my browser settings so screwed with and tuned that I haven't had a video autoplay on me in at least a year, and this one broke right through.

They should be proud. It's probably the most invasive ad on the web.

by pessimizer

1/15/2025 at 12:16:13 AM

It shouldn't be playing sound, so I hope that didn't happen. Also, we use one of the three biggest off-the-shelf video players. We're a very small independent publisher so it's not like we tuned it specially. In fact, we put more restrictions on the video player than most of our competitors (and make less money because of it).

by hardibro