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A comment on Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen From Their Rental Car. Parent comment

Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by Analemma_ on Monday July 16, 2018 @05:08PM (#17545145)
Take a look sometime at the history of storing and transporting nuclear material in the US and see if you ever sleep again. The combination locks set to 000000, the dropped wrenches almost blowing a hole in North Carolina, the senior officers getting drunk in Moscow bars... the list goes on.

Then remember that these are just the declassified stories from the US, and that there’s probably even more hair-raising tales from other countries and/or still classified.

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Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by ryanmercer on Monday July 16, 2018 @08:42PM (#17546408)
I don't care about sloppy combination locks or omg-I-almost-launched-a-retaliation-strike-at-a-flock-of-geese, I care about a commercial rental vehicle being used that you know, I might rent some day and drive.
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Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by wahern on Monday July 16, 2018 @06:14PM (#17545632)
I think the reality of the issue is the biggest counter-argument to M.A.D. Not that the concept of M.A.D. isn't sound, per se, just that it's not a strong retort to concerns about the risk of use of nuclear weapons, or even the outbreak of nuclear war.

M.A.D. is dependent on both a strong rational actor model and as well as a strong and strict state apparatus. In reality, at the end of the day what seems to have kept us away from nuclear war is the simple fact that most people are extremely risk averse and, in the first instance, will behave rather empathetically even against enemies. That's comforting from a humanist perspective, but given the prevalence of traits like psychopathy and other pathologies in the general population not anywhere near the kinds of odds that justify the current number and administration of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade material.

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Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by newnewpdro on Monday July 16, 2018 @05:33PM (#17545345)
Can you recommend any good books on the subject?
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Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by syn_rst on Monday July 16, 2018 @05:40PM (#17545397)
"Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" is pretty good. I read it a while back after seeing it linked here.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G?ref_=k4w_ss_dp_lp

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Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by vasili111 on Monday July 16, 2018 @05:31PM (#17545330)
Can you please give me a link to that stories?
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Re:Government Employees Had Weapons-Grade Plutonium Stolen F... by dmurray on Monday July 16, 2018 @05:34PM (#17545354)
Command and Control is a well regarded book on the subject that has been discussed here before (I haven't read it yet so I can't make a personal recommendation).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)

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