De Facto countries count as a country for the purposes of this question, including unrecognized ones.
Top 100 means about half of all countries.
So many people having their fingers at the triggers. There would be many unreasonable and evil ones among them.
We would have nuclear war every year.
Yeah, I think people need to recognize that this arms Kuwait, Tunisia, Lithuania, Oman, Netherlands, Chad, Yemen, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Rwanda and Cameroon all with nuclear weapons. (Ranks 91-100 if we just go by number of military personnel, active and reserve, an imperfect but very convenient way to measure.)
If I’m not mistaken, two of those countries are currently involved in conflict. (Yemeni Civil War and Rwanda involved in Congo)
We would have nuclear war every year.
I suspect we’d only have it once.
I suggest to read about Hiroshima, and what really happened there, and afterwards.
Here’s a good book: Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki https://a.co/d/8KS4RXC
One bomb kills people in a circle of 10 or 50 km (I forgot), and injures people maybe 100km around. Then it does damage to nature maybe even 1000 km around. I live 2000km from Chernobyl, and we had some warnings regarding vegetables for a year or so.
But the planet has a circumference of 40.000 km. Now let your thoughts run around the planet.
Well, my point was really that, nowadays, a launch by anyone would likely result in other launches, leading to all out war and global catastrophe. I wasn’t getting into the literal size of bomb impact areas vs global surface area.
leading to all out war and global catastrophe.
I doubt it.
Unlike your typical nice bar brawl, not everybody is actually that eager to get involved in an exchange of nukes, and alliances get sometimes weaker when the risks get higher.
I wasn’t getting into the literal size of bomb impact areas vs global surface area.
Of course you are free to build your opinion on whatever speculation you like the most.
Did you know that a good share of all American nukes are mounted on short range missiles that can travel only 100 km or so? Some people were considering funny scenarios there…
We would have nuclear war within a decade, as the odds of a country with nuclear weapons having a coup and some fanatics launching them for a wide variety of reasons is far higher when there are so many. Not to mention the increased odds of a country firing them off when invaded or to protect a friendly country that is invaded.
Historically nukes have served as an effective deterrent to war, ironically. Given that very strong historical pattern, I’d assume the world would, overall, become a more peaceful and cooperative place thanks to mutually-assured destruction.
an effective deterrent to war
Do not fool yourself. Nukes have NOT achieved that on their own.
It has always been humans who were somewhat responsible and willing to communicate (diplomacy) instead of shooting blindly.
Vasily Arkhipov in 1962 and Stanislav Petrov in 1983 are usually credited as single-handedly preventing nuclear launches. If it wasn’t for them, perhaps people wouldn’t think that nuclear weapons are such a strong deterrent.
Perhaps in other timelines, the world ended. Maybe this is the 1% of timelines that survived.
