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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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You don't need to be able to catch boosters, or anything reusable at all, to do rods from god. As for the yield, it appears the concept is an 11,000 kg rod hitting at 10x the speed of sound, which releases about 31 tons TNT, considerably smaller than a typical tac nuke at a few kilotons. No radiation either. It's about 5 times more powerful than the MOAB daisy-cutter, but it's ground-penetrating rather than an airburst, so different uses.

(Reusability doesn't bring down cost much for "rods from god" because the reason they're expensive is that the payload is heavy, not because you're wasting a rocket every time you launch them)

You need to think about this more deeply, not just reduce it to a single number like a highschool physics problem.

Why are small tactical nukes banned by treaty, while large strategic nukes are allowed? Why is a 1kT nuke more dangerous than a megaton? Because the smaller ones would get used. At least with the larger ones, we have a chance at achieving a balance of terror and never using them. But it's a dangerous, slippery slope to start messing around with the bottom edge of that scale. And like you mentioned "ground-penetrating rather than an airburst" so it's a lot more dangerous than a nuke of the same yield would be.

Think about this from the Russian perspective.

"Marshall, we have a big problem."

"What is it, comrade?"

"Radar shows a huge incoming wave of American missiles coming from outer space! They'll arrive in 10 minutes!"

"What!? Are they nuking us?"

"There's no way to tell! It looks like ICBMs! But they Americans say it's just a conventional weapon."

"Where are they headed?"

"It appears to be targeting all of our underground missile silos."

"Fuck. That's a first strike. ... How long do we have remaining?"

"Five minutes."

"fuck fuck fuck. um. launch."

Why are small tactical nukes banned by treaty, while large strategic nukes are allowed?

Tactical nukes are not banned by treaty.