“We are sleepwalking down a road that leads to Armageddon.”

And Senile Biden is Cavalier About It...

Nuclear War: It’s Time to Have “The Talk

War. What is it good for?

Apparently something!

For whatever reason, our political maestros can’t seem to stay away from it. It’s one of the Universe’s great mysteries. As a moth gravitates inexplicably toward a bug zapper, politicians remain perpetually mesmerized by the prospect of other people blowing other people up.

It’s shocking to think about, but America’s been at war 93% of its existence, enjoying only 20 years of peace since 1776.

Of course, past performance doesn’t guarantee future results… but that kind of historical precedent isn’t exactly chicken soup for the soul.

A mass marketing email that wound up in my spam box today included the following that I quote below. It’s actually excellent:

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We Need To Talk About Nuclear War

-Jim Rickards

It’s unfortunate I have to write that title.

It’s something I never contemplated except to the extent I might be writing a historical account.

I began studying nuclear war fighting in the late 1960s and continued my studies through the depths of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s.

The topic of nuclear war fighting is too large to cover in depth in this article. Many dismiss the topic as too theoretical because “there has never been a nuclear war.”

That’s not true.

The United States conducted the first and only nuclear war from August 6 to August 9, 1945, when we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The bombs killed about 200,000 people (the exact number is not known). Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, soon after the bombings. There was nothing theoretical about it.

The basics of nuclear war fighting include counter-force (aiming at military targets), counter-value (aiming at civilian targets and infrastructure), first-strike capability, second-strike capability (ability to strike back after you have been hit first), and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, “MAD,” which refers to the condition where both sides have second-strike capacity and neither side will strike first because they know they will be hit in return and both sides will be destroyed.

Two Scorpions in a Bottle

MAD is sometimes compared to two scorpions in a bottle.

It’s accurate to say that in the absence of actual nuclear war since 1945 and in the absence of testing, much of the strategy of nuclear war fighting relies on game-theoretic approaches and scenario analysis.

Despite the many theoretical contributors and evolution of strategies over the decades, all experts on nuclear war agreed on one thing – don’t go there.

By this, I mean that with the possible exception of a crazed dictator, no leader would ever launch a nuclear war out of the blue or at the beginning of a conflict. If a nuclear war ever happened, it would be the result of escalation.

A conflict that started with conventional weapons could end up as a nuclear war if the belligerents were nuclear powers and the two sides escalated to the point where one side felt cornered and had no options except to use nuclear weapons.

Ironically, in that situation, the non-cornered party might use nuclear weapons first in anticipation of a strike by the cornered party in order to avoid relying on its second-strike capability. So it goes in the world of game theory.

The key to avoiding nuclear war is simple – avoid escalation.

New World War?

This brings us to the situation in Ukraine today.

The overall prospect is one of a new world war.

All nuclear war experts warned that such a war would emerge from lesser events that took on an escalatory dynamic. Herman Kahn developed a 44-step escalation ladder to illustrate the point and to guide policymakers away from escalation.

Here are some of Kahn’s key points (using his original numbering sequence):

1. Ostensible Crisis

2. Political, Economic and Diplomatic Gestures

4. Hardening of Positions – Confrontation of Wills

6. Significant Mobilization

7. “Legal” Harassment - Retortions

9. Dramatic Military Confrontations

12. Large Conventional War (or Actions)

13. Large Compound Escalation

14. Declaration of Limited Conventional War

15. Barely Nuclear War

16. Nuclear "Ultimatums"

17. Limited Evacuations (20%)

18. Spectacular Show or Demonstration of Force

19. "Justifiable" Counterforce Attack

20. "Peaceful" World-Wide Embargo or Blockade

21. Local Nuclear War – Exemplary

22. Declaration of Limited Nuclear War

23. Local Nuclear War – Military

Kahn’s checklist contains much more including step #44, which is a full-scale global nuclear war.

Kahn also wrote this in a generalized fashion; any particular confrontation will have its unique elements and sequence. It requires no special training to see the escalatory dynamic in Ukraine tracks Kahn’s scenario closely.

In particular, step #6 above tracks the Russian mobilization, and step #7 tracks the reciprocal economic and financial sanctions including the seizure of bank accounts and property. When the discussion turns to the use of dirty bombs and tactical nuclear weapons (which it has), we are nearing items 15 – 22 on Kahn’s list.

Based on this clinical analysis, a limited nuclear war is a real possibility in the not-distant future.

What are the elites and warmongers in the U.S. saying about this? They’re acting like kids playing in a sandbox instead of serious policymakers.

Their first mistake is a cavalier approach. On October 6, 2022, Joe Biden told a group of billionaires at a fundraiser that, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Did Biden do this in an Oval Office address? In a joint address to Congress? No, he did it casually over drinks at a fundraiser.

Was it the first thing he said? No, he mentioned Armageddon en passant after going down a list of Democratic talking points about abortion and gender transitions.

This was not serious. It was reckless. It was also dangerous.

Now the U.S. elites have started psychological operations (psyops) aimed at Putin with nuclear weapons as the bait. They claim that Putin has threatened to use tactical weapons in Ukraine and possibly other parts of Eastern and Central Europe.

That’s a lie; Putin never said that.

When asked, both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev said that, if attacked, Russia would defend itself by all means necessary, including the possible use of nuclear weapons. That’s not news. That has been Russian or Soviet policy since the early 1950s.

It has also been U.S. policy since then. Neither side has ever renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. Putin’s expected answer to a question posed has been turned into a threat he never made. This is U.S. and UK propaganda at its worst (and most dangerous).

This lie about Putin’s intentions quickly morphed into another psyop about a “false flag” operation. That’s when you stage an attack disguised to look like an attack by your enemy in order to justify your own “retaliation,” which you were planning all along.

Putin Doesn’t Bluff

It’s difficult to know what comes next.

It could be that Russia uses a tactical nuclear weapon. Russia might detonate a dirty bomb and blame Ukraine. The U.S. may use a tactical nuclear weapon if it suspects Russia is about to do so, an example of a first-strike advantage. The U.S. may detonate a dirty bomb and blame Russia in a classic false flag operation.

It’s not difficult to know that we’re on a path to nuclear war. All of the actions of both sides conform to Kahn’s escalation ladder.

We also know that Putin doesn’t bluff. When George W. Bush raised NATO, Putin invaded Georgia. When Obama staged a coup in Kyiv, Putin annexed Crimea. When Biden green-lighted a Ukrainian assault in Donbas, Putin invaded Ukraine.

Putin doesn’t bluff.

It would take a policymaker as blind as Nuland or as senile as Biden to believe otherwise. Still, we are sleepwalking down a road that leads to Armageddon.

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Resources:

—Simulation of US and Russia Nuclear War Nuclear War simulation This realistic, facts-based simulation is divided into 3 stages: Nuclear War, Nuclear Fallout and Nuclear Winter. Watch this video to find out what will happen to the world during each of those stages.

Ahead of the International Day against Nuclear Tests on August 29 2018, we met up with British atomic veterans who were present at test sites in Australia and the Pacific, to find out what it’s like to experience a nuclear bomb explosion up close. While most people know about the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fewer are aware that an additional 2,000 atomic bombs were detonated after World War II and tested on hundreds of thousands of young soldiers to prepare them for nuclear war.

Five Recently Declassified Nuclear Test Videos. (BTW, The Tsar Bomba was absolutely absurd, I dont think people understand just how huge that explosion was. According to the scientists (Sakharov, Zeldovich, and Dovidenko), who did the initial calculations, they showed that the prototype design would have a yield of 150 Mega tonnes. However, there was the ability to 'fairly easily' modify this design and increase the yield to a, mind-blowing, 9, 500 Mega tonnes.)

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