Ask HN: Is anyone else genuinely scared that this is the start of WW3?
News and reports today of Russian ICBMs and other nuclear forces being placed on high alert (and moved further towards the west of the country) [1] frankly scares me. While some observers think that this is "overplaying" his hand [2] I know that all of this is deeply concerning. The world does _not_ need another cuban missile crisis; it also does _not_ need to vanish in a pile of radioactive smoke.
I live in Europe. My father sent me a message to essentially ask if I'd had a thought about where my nearest "shelter" would be -- and I had. My partner's family have too. It feels awful, but I can't concentrate effectively -- I'm glued to the news and I need to put it down, convince myself that the world won't end tomorrow, and get back to work.
Am I the only person affected similarly by events? How else have you been coping with it all?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin-puts-russia-nuclear-deterrence-forces-on-high-alert-ukraine
[2] https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/02/25/is-putin-overplaying-his-hand-by-moving-icbms-into-western-russia/
360 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadIt took several years before there was a serious attempt at Hitler. On the other hand, those closer to him may have seen it coming for longer than we have.
if he has some skin in the game then he will hesitate to play mumblty-peg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumblety-peg
“Damn it, they’re supposed to be on the hook next to the fridge - I told you never to move those!”
“Did you check the junk drawer honey? What about in the garage with your fishing stuff?”
The USSR, post-Stalin, tried to avoid giving the Premier unlimited power. They'd had that with Stalin, and it didn't end well. That may not have persisted into the Putin era.
I wish I could see reasons to think like that. All I can see is a psychopathic megalomaniac.
i am assuming he is motivated to not die; im assuming that he must feel as if others believe he is powerful.
i am assuming that if he cant actualize these motivations, or enjoy the spoils of his efforts, he will lash out irrationally.
I don't believe you need to convince yourself of anything other than one should not stress over things they can not control. If ICBM's are the eventuality then survivors will all have to adapt, improvise and overcome as best they can. That would affect everyone and you would not be alone.
In my opinion people should only concern themselves with that which they can control like building up a supply of water, food, hygiene products, medical supplies, armaments, portable battery/solar backup, sleeping bags, blankets, fuel, cash, LED lighting and some good books. Help your family do the same. Create contingency plans with your family ahead of time and store important documents and family heirlooms somewhere safe. That can keep the mind occupied doing something useful and create a feeling of accomplishment.
Anxiety is not a rational thing but I understand a rational response to expressed anxiety.
My partner is not from Germany and we are considering leaving the EU for now to sit this one out. At least go to a country where you can drive away and look for shelter in case of a radioactive blast.
It's difficult, since the few who forsee things stay alive, but if you actually prepare and nothing happens, you look dumb as fuck. I don't know what to do. If you don't have family and the means, look for a smaller EU island or maybe even the US or Canada for 6 months and work from there. At least there, you can find natural resources and water to survive.
Keep the MOEX tab open and see how hard Russia is getting hit in a few hours or all next week: https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/stock-market
With these sanctions, Putin might actually have nothing left but send a warning shot. He can't go back to his country, trying and maybe failed to invade a neighbour, just to return empty handed and with the stock market close to 0, inflation and the Rubel basically worthless.
EDIT: I think this goes into the wrong direction: https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/27/ukraine-is-one-of-us-and...
So Putin is so angry and feels threatend that he wants to overthrough Ukraine, and the answer is to make them a member of the EU? This screams like more aggressives answers from Putin. I personally expect a smaller nuclear warning shot over the ocean from Putin next week.
That said, I think it's extremely unlikely this will escalate to a nuclear exchange. Nobody wants that, and I think it's likelier that Putin is deposed before he (successfully) orders a nuclear launch. The rumor is that Putin has given the order to take Kyiv by the end of Monday, and that's going to involve use of artillery and rockets indiscriminately against an urban environment, resulting in tons of civilian deaths. The nuclear readiness alert is to signal to the west not to interfere even amidst the carnage.
Tail risk is real. No one thought Trump would be president. No one saw the pandemic changing the world. No one thought there’d be conventional land war in Europe again. I hope nothing happens but I’ll withhold assigning likelihood for now.
Anyone who thought through the whole thing saw it as obvious he was. Republicans were thinking Democrats were going to show up in droves. Democrats thought no one would vote for Trump, so why vote?
I don't think they are desperate enought yet though? Supposedly they argue they are winning.
The most likely use that wouldn't is to employ tactical nukes in Ukraine itself. On the other hand what would that achieve? There's no logistic hub or massed armour formation.
http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf
Basically - you're only toast if you're within the fireball, radiation, and moderate blast damage radius. If you're inside the thermal radiation or light blast damage radius, you should immediately take shelter away from windows and face away from the flash, much as you would in an earthquake. Hiroshima is filled with anecdotes of people being vaporized and casting shadows on the wall behind them, while people in the next room over survived with only minor cuts and burns. You have about 5-20 seconds between seeing the flash and the blast wave getting to you; the thermal pulse itself can last for up to 40 seconds, so the less time you spend in it the less badly you'll be burned.
You can view the blast radius for common warheads on NukeMap:
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Topol ICBMs are 800kt and Bulava SLBMs are 100-150kt; you can expect Russia to use SLBMs on strategic military targets and ICBMs on cities. A hypothetical attack on the Bay Area that targets SFO, OAK, Moffett, Alameda NAS, and the Port of Oakland with Bulavas and downtown San Francisco and San Jose with Topols would leave basically all of the East Bay intact, along with the Sunset/Richmond, San Jose south of 280, and the Peninsula from Mountain View to Hillsborough. It's survivable at the Googleplex, despite being basically in sight of Moffett, as long as you're not near an east-facing window when the blast hits.
In NYC, assuming a Topol on Manhattan and Bulavas on JFK/LGA/EWR, it'd take out most of lower Manhattan but large portions of Queens and virtually all of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island would survive.
You do need to prep for an interruption of utilities, but you should do that anyway for hurricane/earthquake/etc preparedness. If you've got ~3 days of water and ~2 weeks of food and are outside a blast radius, there's a good chance of you being fine. Given the large amounts of suburbia that are not in the blast radius of a likely target, food supply chains likely wouldn't be more damaged than they were in the pandemic, and you could go to a local Walmart for food. Depending on how centralized your local water supply is and whether they have backup generators (the electrical grid is a likely casualty), you may keep municipal water as well.
I think you're incredibly optimistic about the robustness of logistic networks in the aftermath of the complete destruction of all of the major cities in the United States. You think people are going to bother coming into work to stock food on shelves, deliver it, etc in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale nuclear exchange? This isn't even getting into the immediate effects of say, all of the forests in the western US turning into firestorms.
It's not 1945 anymore, when there was a sharp divide between urban areas and rural areas. The majority of the U.S. population lives in suburbs, and many only go into cities for cultural events. The suburbs are already wired into the U.S. logistic network - that's where are Walmarts and Amazon warehouses are - and are decentralized enough that they're not likely to get taken out by an initial strike.
Coronavirus (particularly Omicron) was much more devastating to our logistic network than nuclear war would be, because it affected essentially all truckers and port workers at once.
I'd encourage you to read the pamphlet; it's put out by scientists whose full-time job was to plan for the continuation American society in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
It's terribly scientifically inaccurate, though. Airburst nukes (the type that would generally be used on cities) do not generally spread large amounts of fallout into the atmosphere; they do not generally spread large amounts of fallout at all, because the fireball doesn't reach the ground. We'd likely get the sort of massive urban blast damage from the first half of the movie, but wouldn't get the nuclear winter, collapse of crop harvests, and widespread starvation from the second half of the movie. And we should expect to see local government spring up in areas undamaged by the blast - if the national government falls, state/provincial or local government will step into that void, because power abhors a vacuum.
In the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - he even suggested that hunter gatherers had a far better quality of life compared to someone living in a farming society. Obviously what we have now is far better than either.
Yep, it's called Russia, at least as long as Putin rules it.
As an American in the EU, my entire family has been calling me for days to move back. Personally, I think its unlikely that Russia would nuke anyone in the EU. If anything, they would nuke the US. Plus, it's much more likely to die from some random shooting in the US than by a nuke any day of the week.
That would be an escalation so phenomenal it would completely overshadow everything that has happened in the past week. By a huge margin.
And yes, it's been on all of our minds and we all worry to some extent. But this is the one thing that none of us can preempt with the means of our small lives. There's nowhere to hide from it.
Watch a nice movie and let others worry about it. Oh and welcome to the 80s.
It is recognized loud and clear all over Europe.
There is an option: attack first. If Russian nuclear C&C is taken down, I doubt any of officers in the bunker would dare to launch. Even if they will, these would be uncoordinated launches, and nowhere near the size of a coordinated attack.
Putin lives in another universe, he doesn't live in reality anymore.
He gambled before and won (Georgia, Syria, Chechnya).
If he gains something out of this gamble he will only bet heavier and more dangerously the next time. Gangsters never have enough.
OTOH, if he sees he will loose this gamble he will probably go full ballistic, in a nuke way, because will have nothing to loose.
There's no nice outcome out of this disgrace. The guy is a megalomaniac psychopath.
Also, Ukraine alone wouldn't be sufficient to make Russians feel safe. That would require forcing whole middle third of Europe neutral, the whole swath of land from Belarus down to Yugoslavia with hundred million people, and expecting that to work is very naive. Would be problematic even with both Americans and Russians avoiding any heavy handed moves which is also naive expectation.
What is the bay of pigs? United States tried to invade Cuban overthrow their government in the '60s as well. How did that go? The United States also weighed more extreme options like all out military invasion instead of a tactical invasion. We can thank JFK for not doing that.
I am not trying to defend Putins war or tactics, I am just pushing back on the notion that he is a mad man with no reason behind his actions other than his ego, greed, and glory. This is the simple narrative the American media wants you to believe so you don't notice that they actually wanted this war to happen.
Almost third of Europe is already neutral. Also I never said that, I was just referring to Ukraine, which is clearly of the most geostrategic significance to Russia.
But yeah, I agree that pissing off your neighbors seems like a bad strategy. Though, if you look at recent history when Russia did the same thing to other neighboring countries like chechenya, Georgia, and Ukraine in 2014, Russia handily got away with this kind of aggression, so I don't think it's too unreasonable to think that Russian leaders bet they can do it again.
If Russia weren't obsessed with imperial domination then NATO wouldn't even have a reason to exist. NATO is an expensive enterprise that needs a reason to exist. Russia's repeated violation of other countries sovereignty (Syria, Georgia, Crimea) are not "valid security concerns", they are actually validating NATO's reason to exist.
The West never invited Ukraine into NATO. Russia is the one that gave Ukraine real strong reasons to do so.
> In reality, the American political elite wanted this conflict to happen because it will make Europe dependent on American oil and gas.
And I am "pedestrian"? Please, go lighter on vodka.
Also, the West never explicitly invited Ukraine into NATO but they repeatedly refused to say the door was closed for two decades.
Having soldiers and military bases in foreign countries isn't occupation when their governments invited you.
Just because they said it's over doesn't mean it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_of_US_military_presen...
Same thing for Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_ins...
(Internet Research Agency is the Russian office for spreading misinformation abroad).
As far as I'm concerned, it has reinforced my priorities, altered them slightly too. I think it's a good opportunity to reassess your objectives in life, if anything.
Anyway, off to bed early today, so I have more time to do what matters to me tomorrow. Can't wait to see my favourite muddy poney again :)
So, let that phone down.
No one successfully coping is going to be clicking on a 'WW3' thread in HN's 'new' queue and telling you about how they're successfully coping.
I suspect he's surprised, if not stunned, by the difficulty that his forces are facing. So (while I would prefer he not risk it) I suspect his nukes won't work as expected either. I say that as someone who lives in the Boston suburbs, which I suspect is a high priority target for his subs.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that if it is WW3, it's going to be the world against Russia. Iran may try to help if they feel an obligation; I don't think China will because they're smart enough to see it's a lot cause.
If we assume Putin is mad, there's no reason why he wouldn't throw a nuke. Due to downside being inevitable, WW3 is a logical outcome. Otherwise we are just letting him throw nukes.
But I am kind of poor so I have an excuse for ignoring it. I do think that most people are just in denial. The same way most Ukrainians were about the possibility of a war.
I don't think it'll come to that, because for all of Putin's control, everyone around him knows that nukes will be the end of the world. So those around him can't let it happen.
Or I'm wrong, and they can. We'll find out.
I have a mirror of one of Ben Marking's WW3 videos. I should reupload it. It pretty much predicted all of this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/8mlori/what_happen...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508078
They're gone now though.
I recommend waiting till nighttime and turning up the volume for extra effect.
/me proceeds to tell literally everyone about it
Maybe turn off the news for a few days to relax? It may seem like Very Important Things are happening right now, but honestly, as someone who does watch the news pretty obsessively, you can construe basically anything into being Very Important.
All of the most likely outcomes for what's happening in Ukraine are not impactful to you in any real way. The very unlikely outcomes are more impactful, but specifically the odds of a nuclear war is vanishingly small. Not zero, and meaningfully larger than a week ago, but still infinitesimally small.
Take a walk outside, pet your dog/cat, hug a loved one, watch a funny movie. That's what I do when I get really wrapped up in the news cycle. :)
We're all going to die in 40-60 years anyway, hardly any of this matters.
If Cavemen were nihilists, we'd never have figured out fire.
Which is fine, otherwise you spend a lot of time wondering what a table is, why do anything, etc, but stripping back your beliefs to as close to nothing as you can is an experience worth going through at least once in your life - there's no way to viscerally understand axioms except to think about why they are there, and why they can't be different.
Yes, nihilism can prompt personal crisis or even suicide. But the experience is fundamental even if we don't name it, so the idea provides utility to society because it gives us a vocabulary and a framework for processing the experience of rejecting and understanding meaning itself. You can't have true agency without understanding that meaning itself is a construct. A culture which recognises crisis of meaning is a deeper culture than one which perhaps recognises that some situations are "sad" or that sometimes things are tactically difficult ,or that some people might have conflicting interests (looking at you Disney).
Personally I think nihilism is a key stage in moral development "for people who think real hard about stuff". Yes, everyone doing this at the same time would have bad outcomes.
The (shared) social utility of nihilism is a kind of "looking in the eyes" of people who are experiencing the absurdity of life, seeing through the words and looking at what is there. The currency of the idea promotes an acceptance of that and therefore I believe that a vigorous society should embrace the experience of nihilism for those people that are ready for it.
Point is, absolute certainty in anything, even the end of the universe, is always misguided.
If not, then there is not only just about zero you can do about the current situation, but worrying about it is actively interfering with the now in that life - and obsessively following the news will likely destroy every now while you do.
https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-...
If anything, this is a return to historical tension levels between the West and Russia.
If poster feels tension, do something to prepare. Whatever that means to them, and whatever gives them comfort.
There is only one outcome here: Ukraine becomes a Russian client state.
Russia then decouples from the West. Other African and Asian countries start thinking in similar terms. You cannot have the US and Europe determine your national security interests by using the threat of sanctions as a Damocles sword all the time.
Russia controls the second most powerful military on the planet. Any suggestion that they will be defeated in Ukraine is wishful thinking.
The US is not Russia and Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden is not Putin. While no one can predict what he is thinking, the Second Chechen War could be a template if the Ukrainian leadership does not yield.
I, too, can needlessly zoom in to try and refute any comparisons to other situations.
If anything, not being applicable to Afghanistan is even worse for Russia, considering how little international support Afghanistan received, and how much worse at urban warfare the Russian military is compared to the US military.
It is not about random comparisons but the will to follow through on what must be done. The US had no real stake in Afghanistan. Russia did in Chechnya and it does in Ukraine.
We will know in a few weeks what his plan is as it is executed on the ground.
And no, we won't have any clue about what "his" plan was, because it's already failed. Now we will see how Russia's military reacts to initial failure.
You don't win insurgencies, especially when people are defending their homes and money and material is coming from outside.
Who are they going to sell their oil and gas to, then?
The world is full of countries who want oil and gas. Even the US and Europe have left open a big hole in their sanctions for oil/gas supplies because they need Russian fossil fuels.
So they’re going to replace “selling to the highest bidder” with “selling to the 10th highest bidder”. That’ll do wonders for Russia’s economy, I’m sure.
There are never any true "winners" of a war, it will costs millions, the Russian people have greatly suffered (and will continue to for years as a result of this), many Ukrainians have equally suffered and lost their lives.
It will also have an impact on the worlds economy (to what extent, I don't know, I'm not an expert).
What a waste.
My prayers goes out to all those suffering.
But that’s what (other) animals do, humans are different, in that they live in the past (memories), in the future (dreaming, planning, preparing, learning), and consuming fiction and playing games (which, honestly, I wouldn’t call “living in the moment,” either). So, what’s left in the moment is eating, having sex, fighting, talking, being afraid, being sick, feeling cold…
Yeah, your future self is going to hate you for this.
I mean you (hopefully) don't smoke and drink everyday, because it feels great at the time, but it will shorten and/or reduce your life in a number of significant ways.
A bit of both is probably the best strategy.
However, I also think that a nuclear exchange is still very unlikely. Putin is also suggesting talks on the Belarus/Ukraine border.
I'm hoping for/dreading one of those cold war fudges we had back in the bad old days. Some horse trading, perhaps a partition of the Ukraine with attendant population sorting and so on. Negotiations about force reductions and all of that.
It took the US/Alliance army of 180 000 plus air cover a month to render the conscript Iraq army non-operational and to gain some tenuous control of Iraq (or at least the major cities) in 2003. Putin must have had a time-scale of weeks in mind for this operation.
I shall be disconnecting from wall to wall news coverage next week as I do have anxiety issues sometimes. At the end of the day none of us here can do much.
The word is that the Russians will suggest that they unconditionally surrender or Kyiv will get the 'Grozny' treatment. I'm pretty sure of the outcome there, but of course anything could happen.
The closer you live to Russia the more this conflict matters. The more your country relies on the globalized economy the more this matters. This war is a big wake-up call to Europe, and many developing nations are in big trouble that Russian oil and Russian and Ukrainian wheat might not make it to market. The United States will have to put up with higher commodity prices and we should step up measures to support the poor and deal with less until the market can adjust.
I try to limit what I read about because of that. If I wouldn't do so, I would fall into an endless tunnel of worrying news around the world.
At the end of the day, Russia isn't this big bad world power that is capable of starting a war on a global scale, they are a declining power that also happens to have a lot of nukes. So realistically the most they can do is limited to what they are doing now, which won't start a world war and will most likely conclude in a way that causes no change to the lives of most people outside of the affected region. On the extremely small chance that they do go nuclear, worrying about it is pointless since it will change society so dramatically that there simply would be no way to prepare for it. Its like how you don't worry about getting hit by a car and becoming a paraplegic in your day to day life.
please enjoy this picture of a much more likely outcome https://i.ibb.co/NCxyWqx/image.png
I'd argue this started with Corona - regardless of how dangerous you consider that virus to be that's where people's fear tolerance was raised to new heights and needs to be matched now or clicks go down.
I was regular consumer of NPR, NYTimes, WaPo, and many others. Now I just don't read or listen to them. I skim a few international providers, I have some subscriptions (i.e. paid subscriptions to news providers that don't depend on ads) and podcasts, and that's it. Covid eliminated nearly all of my "news" consumption habits.
(Please don't make this comment say what it doesn't. What's going on is terrible.)
What relationship do the 2 have? The news talking about WW3 or not talking about it doesn't affect whether Russia will use a nuclear weapon.
[1] https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1497943606962839552
If you were paying close attention and could connect the dots you absolutely had ample warning to get the hell out of dodge. I agree, this is the type of news you should be paying attention to.
I don't read this and think, "He's right!" I just read this and think, "Looks like he fell into the media well and is trying to post-hoc justify it."
Admittedly it's a safe bet on my part, because if I'm wrong, we'll all be dead!
On the bright side, Putin will be dead in 10-20
This too shall pass
There's a tendency for smart people to downplay and underestimate legitimate existential threats. Most of us recognize the clear signs of war, of fascism, of catastrophe only in hindsight.
Perhaps the optimists can sketch out how they think this plays out if Ukraine puts up a more effective and tenacious defense than expected.
If supply lines are cut, if fuel, food and ammunition can't reach the front lines, if Russia is globally isolated, if the ruble collapses, if the wealth of oligarchs held abroad is frozen and seized.
Do the optimists believe Russia will just back down and go home in humiliation, tail between their legs?
Now he's calling for the West to shoot down Russian planes, and his government is handing out tens of thousands of Kalashnikov rifles to untrained bakers and school teachers.
If he always believed Russia would invade, surely it would have been better to start a bit earlier with the no-fly zone and training school teachers with weapons and sabotage.
2) They are handling rifles out because they just now arrived from the multiple countries that are helping Ukraine. Before that, they trained with wooden rifles.
That said I think the new development of belarus passing a referendum, updating its constitution to allow Russian nukes, and also join the war against Ukraine is serious.
Im not saying this is WW3, but I would feel better it Putin had just overtaken Ukraine quickly.
Who knows what the reality is, but if youre following western media it seems like Russia is losing.
This leaves Putin few options,
1. Continue conventional warfare and hope things get better, while sanctions bleed Russia out economically, and Ukraine receives more weapons and overall support.
2. Back out with his tail between his legs. This was supposed to be a show of force and military might, so it's going to be a tough pill to swallow for his ego.
3. make something up, like nato is supporting Ukraine too much and he has no choice but to use the nukes...
If Russia nukes the West and China remains neutral avoiding an attack, then they would almost certainly take the US's place as the global superpower. Russia would obviously be nuked in retaliation, but Putin himself likely wouldn't die in the attack and could probably strike a deal with Xi to rebuild Russia and Russia's empire with China's aid.
Obviously it wouldn't be good news for China if all their main trading partners suddenly got wiped of the face of the Earth, but they'd get through it after several years and would no longer need to worry about the West.
My concern is what if nuclear war actually benefits Xi & Putin at this moment in time? During the cold war the USSR was a super power -- they had everything to lose. Now they have very little and we have a lot... The calculation is completely different today. The cost of nuclear war for Russia is dramatically lower than it ever was for the USSR.
I would be worried about Ukraine. I'm not really worried about this spreading to the rest of the world.
When Russia gets kicked out of UN, they won’t.
Plus right now the US is making a show of strength against invasions by authoritarian dictators, and Biden has stated that we have "obligations" to Taiwan, although he was intentionally vague he basically said the silent part out loud. It would be political suicide to not respond to a Chinese invasion, and we could respond quite decisively from a military perspective.
China will wait for a more opportune moment.
Then you have Republicans, right now they're deriding Biden for going soft on Putin and blaming him for this crisis (not sure how many are buying it outside of Trump's base, but that's the line). So going soft on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would play right into that message. No way Biden could do it for that reason alone, let alone the myriad of other motivations.
As an aside, I'm really very glad this didn't happen a couple years ago when we had our own mad-man with the launch codes.
> As an aside, I'm really very glad this didn't happen a couple years ago when we had our own mad-man with the launch codes.
Weirdly enough: the risk of spillover would be lower, the danger to Ukraine much higher. But that is also why we are where we are today: without Trump undermining the whole situation in Ukraine would be quite different and Putin would not have embarked on this thing in the first place.
What are you talking about?
There was the controversy about his talk with Zelenski of course, but the end result is described here:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-admin-approves-sale-an...
And delay in sending weapons to Ukraine is not unknown for the Biden administration:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/18/white-house-ukraine...
So maybe your point is that sending weapons to Ukraine was a bad idea that just annoyed Putin, and that's why it's Trump's fault?
Looking at broader economic issues, how could you possibly think that Trump's support for energy development in the West helped Russia, which relies on high oil prices to support its economy, as compared to Biden's shutting down of energy development?
In 2017, the first Congressional Delegation to Russia (all Republicans) had a private meeting with Putin on July 4th - Independence Day!
Trump recently praised Putin and called his tactic “genius” and just today Tom Cotton(R) refused to denounce Trumps support of Putin.
Ad nausem…
Trumps indirect support of Putin and Kim Jong Un was also particularly unnerving.
This statement seems detached from reality, unless by "foreign" you mean "Canadian".
If the opposite side believes you completely rational, it limits the actions they believe you'll take. On the other hand, if they believe you're impulsive, there are fewer limits on what they believe you'd do.
... Unfortunately, if they believe you're too irrational, it ends badly.
Completely agree. It would have been a nightmare.
Would they, though? And even if we take it as given that they would, do we believe that he believes that? The West, and especially USA, has made a number of empty threats over the past couple of decades it's not hard to see why he may not consider this one credible.
I'm also not convinced that his forces in Ukraine are failing. I hope they are. But it's more likely Russia is only sending in the bare minimum they think will be necessary to minimise losses. They might have underestimated but Russia can win if they're playing the long game.
Getting some flak for my OP. Not sure why, did I say something controversial?
Think 'Jim Jones', not 'Elder statesman with children'.
Putin has given no indication that he's any different from Stalin in this regard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Dzhugashvili
Oh wait!
He's bluffing with separatist regions.
Oh wait!
He's bluffing with invading Ukraine.
Oh wait!
He's bluffing with actual war.
Oh wait!
... TL;DR: Putin thinks a nuclear war is winnable. https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war
NB: do you really think Putin cares how you feel?
The only way he'd entertain it is if he's truly lost his marbles, and if that's the case then this timeline just got a whole lot shittier regardless of whether we capitulate to the madman with the nukes or not. I sincerely doubt western institutions are going to show their bellies because of Putin's nuclear threats, so we'll see if he's bluffing one way or another.
For those that still insist that Putin is rational, there's one way to model his current behaviour: his utility function prioritises "make Russia great again", or at the very least, geopolitical concerns. He's willing to take whatever hit he needs to take, whether economically or in the lives of soldiers and civilians, to achieve this goal.
Then we have nuclear war. Or we let Putin dictate international politics for however long he has left, and tell China/North Korea/every other bad actor that gets nukes for the rest of time that the game is "be serious about launching nukes offensively and you'll get whatever you want". How do you think that'll work long term?
It's that, or Putin at least maintains a shred of rationality. Or his inner circle takes him out before he pushes the button.
> Oh wait!
> He's bluffing with separatist regions.
> Oh wait!
> He's bluffing with invading Ukraine.
> Oh wait!
These are all straw men. I don't know any serious analysts who thought he was bluffing in any of those areas, primarily because they all understood the Western response would be muted.
He knows, as the rest of the world does, that launching nuclear war will require an all-out response from Western powers.
For instance, it talks about Putin's willingness to use "battlefield" nukes rather than "strategic" city-destroying nukes – betting that the West would immediately concede any war where a smaller nuke were deployed in the interest of avoiding escalation.
Biden was quoted as saying the Russian attack had unfolded "largely as predicted". Pretending the invasion was some sort of great shocker is a rewrite of history.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-02-24/biden-...
My guess would be that if he deployed tactical nukes in Ukraine in some capacity NATO would not respond by launching a retaliatory nuclear attack as that would be MAD. Rather they would take the other nuclear option of completely cutting 100% of the banks out of SWIFT and freezing all oil and gas exports in an attempt to completely cripple Russia while eating the pain of those sanctions on their own territories, as I think the people would support it. Secondly I think it would be enough to galvanise millions of Russians to take to the streets and march against Putin to end his reign. This is the scenario I'm currently betting on playing out.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Even though there's a war going on and it's scary and activating, it's possible to discuss the topic without breaking those guidelines. Plenty of other users are demonstrating that in this very thread.
I read this a lot but I also read some historical analysis about the Cuban Missile Crisis that a lot of the escalation stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding about their opponent's strategy. It might be a huge oversimplification but it goes something like this:
Americans are playing poker (with all its specific tactics like bluffing) and are judging their opponents based on that, while Russians are playing chess and therefore assume "the bluff" is in fact their opponent's next escalation move.
That is a serious underestimation.
Why irresponsible? My take on it was that message was aimed at Ukrainians living in the UK who wanted to go and fight. Your average Brit isn't even going to humour that idea.
If Putin is launching nukes, it has nothing to do with Ukraine anymore. The choices are “do we let a madman play with nukes or not?" I think the answer is pretty obvious.
I'm afraid. I'm searching the news for any new information I can and feel overwhelmed. I'm not doing too well through all this and I'm safe and sound in North America!
But. I'm not. At all. Even a tiny bit. Worried that randomly tomorrow I'll wake up and the world has literally ended. There may be war. And there may be bombs. And I may need to find shelter and reevaluate my odds. But. I think there's a much larger chance I'll eat too much due to stress than there will be nukes used. And I can do something about the over eating.
I will say that I am more annoyed by the fact that we are being bombarded with a lot of weird stuff lately. From Covid straight to potential War outbreak. This is very taxing on peoples mental health.
These events completely overshadow day to day problems because “look at them, they have it much worse”.
Very, very strange.
Unlike dancing, it only takes one to start a war. To quote the Two Towers:
I do not really care at this point. I live live through my day regardless and whatever happens is way out of my control.
If there is one take-away from this all, it is that we have never had the tools we have today to spread correct information in the battle against the haze of miss-information.
Russia and US both know what their respective red lines are now, and recognize MAD when they see one.
But personally I think there are enough people high up in the russian government that do not want to annihilate the world to save the face of one man to prevent something like that.
So while it is a concern I think that is an unlikely outcome.
Intelligence gathering plays a huge role, and taking out those would probably harm the eyes and ears of Norway and NATO. IF Russia were to start firing ICBMs and similar, they'd at least want some element of surprise.
I also recently read through a Masters thesis on this, from a Colonel at our military academy, and his take was that if Russia were to invade us, then the likely scenario would be to invade East-Finnmark by sea, air, and land. Take control over the military intelligence installations, as well as airports.
Yes, as Australians we’re deeply concerned that Russia may eventually nuke us because they want our country.
If you're near Ukraine and there's a plausible escalation to where you live, maybe work on an evacuation plan. Anywhere else, if you don't have 3-7 days of emergency food and water, now is as good a time as any to set that up (which is basic emergency prep that ideally everyone would have at all times). It sounds like the OP knows where to shelter if needed, which is good to know too.
Bug out bag, copies of all relevant documents sent to your own email address and maybe one or two backups of friends or relatives, have your car fueled up and ready to go, have some cash on hand, make sure that everybody that is coming with you knows exactly what to do if you decide to move and have everything that you plan to take with you (essentials only) in the vehicle you plan to use. Make sure you don't get caught in long lines, better decide to leave early and then to come back later than to decide to leave too late.
Had a long discussion with a friend right on the edge of the conflict last night.
Anything else that might be useful?
You can always change them, but writing down your exit criteria may help in case you have trouble deciding, but I agree that it's most likely better to leave early and come back having not needed to leave than to decide to leave too late and not be able to leave.
Also think about a gas bottle and burner. You need to cook on something.
Sleeping bag? Tent? Basic medical supplies?
Think about it: they're already committed. There's no coming back from what they have started.
I'll caveat my statement: if Putin remains in charge he isn't turning back.
Yes, as if NATO countries literally being nuked somehow isn't world war already.
It is probably also best to limit time following the events. I am struggling with this myself. I think very important with time outdoors, time away from news, and time to enjoy something.
I am very concerned about Putin's state of mind. This does not appear to be a rational course of action so he's either badly miscalculated, or worse, he's living in an alternate reality. Furthermore, because nukes are part of the equation we must make Putin feel that there is a path to de-escalation. If he gets backed into a corner, and feels like he can't retreat, this could become existential for all of us. I think it's a fairly remote possibility but we cannot rule out the use of WMDs. Either battlefield nukes and chemical weapons in Ukraine or, utter worst case, full blown nuclear war against the West if we confront him head on.
I don't want go be alarmist, the last point is pretty unlikely at this point, but there must be an escape hatch for Putin here. However, if he feels that despite whatever ways out we give him he can't back down as it would end his regime, that could be a worst case scenario. We can't control the political situation in Russia. Could he become "all in" at this point?
I think you are not alone in that. But that only serves to illustrate that we tend to collectively forget the lessons from history way too easily. I grew up at a time when this was pretty much a continuous concern and it never left me so I'm a lot less surprised. But around me I see people - younger people, mostly - go around like the bottom just fell out of their whole worldview.
With regards to a wider global conflict, my expectation was that it could happen in the coming decades, possibly as a second order effect of climate change. It just seemed that, right now, the variables in the equation were wrong. We didn't reckon with Putin being this way though. He seemed like a difficult thorn in the side of the west, a belligerent and cunning autocrat, but I never saw him confronting Europe in this way. I think he's actually changed. This might be premeditated but I don't think this was his plan 20 years ago whatever anger he harboured towards the west back then.