The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[hammerofglass]

Basically, we ain't just London

And there are radically different accents for different parts of London, I'm told. Supposedly they are eroding in the modern world, so that it's no longer possible to identify what street someone grew up on from their speech, but some broad categories remain.

That's absurd to Americans, like saying that people from different parts of New York City should be mutually unintelligible. But it seems to be the truth.

Any other American city I'd say that's true, but not New York. Brooklyn and The Bronx especially have distinct accents separate from the main NYC accent.

[Frustration]

They seem much more similar than Cockney and Estuary are, to my mind, particularly since several entire sounds have been lost or are elided in those.

[hammerofglass]

Fair point.

[Draco Dracul]

No, they'd be dealing with millions of people slowly dying, and contaminated croplands, for generations afterwards.

So would the people directly involved with the conflict while also having their infrastructure destroyed

[McAvoy]

No, they'd be dealing with millions of people slowly dying, and contaminated croplands, for generations afterwards.

So would the people directly involved with the conflict while also having their infrastructure destroyed

Infrastructure destroyed, land irradiated, people with radiation poisoning.

It all depends on the nukes and how many though. It's not like Japan right now is like Mad Max due to the two nukes dropped on them 80 years ago. I mean that sounds bad as we are still talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.

But a straight up nuke throwing contest for WW3? Yeah that will probably cause a complete collapse of modern civilization.

Though places like Australia, South America and Africa probably won't be nearly as affected. Short term at least.

[Madner Kami]

RAND Corporation: Nuclear War, Climate, & Pandemics - Do We Overstate the Big Threats?

Make of it, what you will. Global thermonuclear isn't a fun prospect by any stretch of the imagination either way, but I am not buying into the global-radiation death and nuclear winter Doomsday Scenarios.

As for whether Russia will: A single bomb isn't going to solve their problems. A city will loose it's center, or a small city will vanish. Instead of 44.13m angry Ukrainians, he'll now have to deal with 44m even angrier Ukrainians and a world being very opinionated on the use of of nuclear weapons. That is not a winning scenario for Russia. Their alternative is a large strike, to disrupt the West's ability to support Ukraine. Such a scenario ends with a lot of destroyed cities and every single US carrier strike group bearing down on Russia, Germany stopping to discuss whether we should be sending tanks to Ukraine or not and instead driving right up into Poland and joining in on their and the Baltic State's Barbarossa 2.0 into a Russia that had to suffer the retaliatory nuclear strikes from the US, Great Britain and France. Not a winning scenario for Russia either.

All in all, the direct military value of nukes is rather limited. Their big potential is the threat of the use. It's a terror-weapon against civilians. The moment you use them, they loose their threat-potential and every single victorious nation of World War II and Germany itself can attest: Erradicating cities, isn't going to stop a war. Guernica didn't stop the Spanish Civil War. Stalingrad did not stop the Soviet Union. Dresden, Hamburg, Bremen and a few more select cities going down in a literal firestorm didn't stop Germany. Instead they all doubled down and fought even harder.

[Riedquat]

RAND Corporation: Nuclear War, Climate, & Pandemics - Do We Overstate the Big Threats?

Make of it, what you will. Global thermonuclear isn't a fun prospect by any stretch of the imagination either way, but I am not buying into the global-radiation death and nuclear winter Doomsday Scenarios.

As for whether Russia will: A single bomb isn't going to solve their problems. A city will loose it's center, or a small city will vanish. Instead of 44.13m angry Ukrainians, he'll not have to deal with 44m even angrier Ukrainians and a world being very opinionated on the use of of nuclear weapons. That is not a winning scenario for Russia. Their alternative is a large strike, to disrupt the West's ability to support Ukraine. Such a scenario ends with a lot of destroyed cities and every single US carrier strike group bearing down on Russia, Germany stopping to discuss whether we should be sending tanks to Ukraine and instead driving right up into Poland and join in their and the Baltic State's Barbarossa 2.0 into a Russia that had to suffer the retaliartory nuclear strike from the US, Great Britain and France. Not a winning scenario for Russia either.

Problem for Putin though is that the only thing he's got left (other than doing the decent thing, and no chance of that) is to effectively hold the entire world hostage - "let me win or we all die." And that doomsday scenario is what he has the capability of producing. It's the stupidity of the "tough guy" mentality, someone convinced that he's stronger than anyone else and that they're not strong so will eventually back down if he threatens enough.

Generally speaking I think we DO overstate the big threats (and saying that isn't the same as pretending they're no threat), but not this one, and I'm pretty scared about how it could end up. Being a pessimist doesn't help.

[clearspira]

All of this assumes that Putin's men will let him fire nukes when the time comes - at least, I am hoping that Russia isn't set up like Voyager where Putin can destroy the world on a whim because someone is late with his coffee and Marlboro's.
''Putin Pie.''

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

All of this assumes that Putin's men will let him fire nukes when the time comes - at least, I am hoping that Russia isn't set up like Voyager where Putin can destroy the world on a whim because someone is late with his coffee and Marlboro's.
''Putin Pie.''

As far as I’ve heard about him it seems like he can do whatever he wishes. I would personally assert that he’s rather conscious of global affairs and the ramifications of the state’s actions. All of this despite the forward assertions of running this war and his own state as a genuine pretext, which none of the world is really buying.

[Frustration]

If you've been paying attention over the past decade, you'll have encountered confirmed stories of how close the world came to having WW3 by accident which were classified and only aged out recently.

I wouldn't assume that we can keep rolling the dice and assuming everything will keep working itself out; eventually we'll roll snake eyes.