Genghis didn’t have access to thousands of poorly assembled Humvee knockoffs and millions of poorly trained mechanics to make them somewhat functional. I’m sure some of them could survive the drive.

You know, it would be a horribly evil plan to try and start WW3 while the new president is being confirmed.

Hell, given today’s modern technology, a leader may be able to plan the opening shots for a few minutes before or after the transition of power, essentially starting a war while the US is asleep. A traditional war may not be really affected by a transition of power, as all of the US military leadership is still able to make limited decisions about how to respond to being fired at.

However, use of nuclear weapons could be severely limited by a presidential transition. The US nuclear arsenal can only be used at the sole discretion of the acting president. The president is the only one with physical access to the launch codes, and the only one that has the authority to order a launch. So what would happen if say, North Korea or Russia launched an ICBM or dropped a nuclear bomb from a traditional bomber, or worse, launched a sub launched ballistic missile that can hit its target in under 20 minutes. MAD dictates that any use of nuclear weapons requires an immediate and proportional response. But with the president having just been confirmed, how long would it take to get them to a secure location, get the codes, order a launch, and have it be carried out? Probably too long. In the case of an ICBM, it only takes about 30 minutes to get from the launch location to anywhere in America.

Now NATO does have some nuclear bombs, but I am fairly sure most of them are provided by the United States and still require US presidential orders to launch. Britain and France have their own nuclear weapons, but far less than the US possesses. Maybe there is enough of a difference where taking the US out of the picture could allow an attacking nuclear country to not be totally glassed.

I could see how an absolutely insane leader might want to try something like that. There’s no way to win a nuclear war, but there may be a way to crawl away alive from one in the form of decapitating your enemy while they’re busy figuring out who can actually launch the damn bombs. Maybe enough of your government can survive the exchange to rebuild an 18th century style empire. The empire will have holes in it like Swiss cheese because of the cities that are now unusable wastelands, but it’s still technically an empire. And of course, the course of human history will now be irreparably altered, setting the species back by centuries of technological and industrial innovation due to all of the EMPs and human knowledge that got turned into carbon dust.

Could be insane enough to work. But I’m sure there’s some ultra classified, so top secret you get shot for seeing the folder, type plan that magically fixes this by giving the Strategic Commander sole launch authority for one day while the president transitions. I mean, the government wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave a glaring hole in nuclear security for decades, right? They fixed the issue with all ICBMs having to fly over Russia to get to Korea, right? Oh wait. Well at least we have anti ballistic missile platforms all along the coast, right? Oh those are all in other countries. At least the Exo-Atmospheric kill vehicles work 50% of the time in the simulations. And we’ve got like 40 of those, so I’m sure that’s enough to deal with hundreds of warheads.

One of those fancy plasma lighters, sure. But butane lighters have been around for decades

Man this three day special military operation has kind of gotten out of hand.

The files are in the computer?

AMD is a lot cooler than NVIDIA

The US did it.

We were invading the Middle East since before I was born, and I almost signed up to get free school when I wanted to be a doctor. I would have likely treated soldiers that were still being wounded in the Middle East.

Can they wait until Saturday to drop the nukes?

I want to sleep in before I get turned to dust

Oh they definitely did.

Before the pandemic, I’d see one or 2 highly questionable moves in a drive.

Now it’s like a dozen.

I see people making lefts on red, cutting off semi trucks, weaving in and out of traffic, driving with absolutely no lights at night, and my god the speeding.

A few years ago it was normal to see people doing like 5 miles an hour over the limit, now it feels like half the people want to do 10 or 15, even on surface streets.

I wonder if it’s that most people drove less during the pandemic, the fact that cops around here were told to only pull people over if they were a direct threat to the public, or if the social isolation just made some people way more self centered. But driving has definitely gotten worse since the pandemic.

The manhattan project originally start as a way to defeat Germany, it just wasn’t ready in time.

There have been several incidents where warning systems glitched out, and only the quick thinking of a handful of individuals stopped an actual launch from happening.

I live right next to one of the largest airports in the world.

I see 5-10 parallel lines in the sky multiple times a day.

I also live next to one of the largest airports in the world, which is a few miles from a national guard base located right outside one of the largest cities in America.

I’m probably in the fireball radius of a nuke, assuming the Russians haven’t been embezzling their government money and are still fueling their hydrogen bombs, so if the big red button gets pushed, I’ll just get vaporized about half an hour later.

Don’t shoot yourself just because you see lines in the sky. You’re either close enough to civilization for planes to make lines in the sky, in which case the bombs will probably get you anyway, or you’re so far out in the sticks that you’ll have plenty of time to make a decision.

MIRVs have been a thing for like 50 years.

The US even took them out of submarine launched missiles, because they made the soviets so nervous we had to promise that we couldn’t delete half of their country in 15 minutes.

But don’t worry, nuclear war happens so fast, and diplomatic channels are so slow, if anyone launches anything, everyone is practically forced to launch everything or risk losing it. So even if Russia did just launch one to destroy 10-15 cities, all of the cities everywhere would be destroyed anyway.

I just thought it was flavored with rain water and depression

MAD is like 2 men standing in a lake of gasoline, one man has 3 matches, the other has 5, both threaten to use their matches if the other uses his.

Russia is saying they’ll use their matches if the other guy throws a rock at him. The fucking situation is stupid and I hope that my ashes get blasted to a different planet when the bombs go off. I don’t want to even be a part of this stupid planets carbon cycle anymore.

How bad is school where teenagers are jumping off buildings to avoid starting the school year.

So, WWIII by January?

…no

Do you not understand how an army works?

Unfortunately, the US has a launch on warning policy.

So even if every warhead Russia has is a dud, or doesn’t even re-enter the atmosphere, they’ll still be nuked into a fine mist of concrete and carbonized human dust about 20 minutes after we realize their bombs don’t work.

And then the rest of us get to live through nuclear winter.

As long as no one’s nuclear trigger fingers get itchy, I’ll be happy.