Do you wonder why fewer and fewer Americans trust their government? The reason is simple: the government is stuffed with idiotic bureaucrats who presume to tell us how to live our lives when they repeatedly demonstrate that they are fools pretending to have expertise and wisdom when all they really have is power to abuse.
Here is one throbbing example: FEMA’s directions on how to survive a nuclear attack. Of primary importance to the Biden Administration: while avoiding death by radiation, don’t forget to take pandemic precautions (last section)…
No, I’m not kidding, and this is not a hoax. Check yourself if you don’t believe me.FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Agency) has long been a dumping ground for clueless political appointees and hacks that have IOU’s from the President and need to be put somewhere they won’t do too much damage. This ridiculous admonition to be worrying about masks while World War III is raging tells us exactly the kind of minds that are running free range in this administration.
Today Donald Trump was getting bashed for saying at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida that the U.S. has become a “stupid country.” “We were a smart country. Now we are a stupid country,” Trump said, naturally asserting that the U.S. was “smart” while he was in charge. I’m not so sure how recently it was that the U.S. was smart, but I am sure that the current government’s obsessions with race, climate change and the pandemic over all else are convincing evidence of deadly incompetence and untrustworthiness.
Ethics Alarms 
Tangentially related to potential nuclear holocausts – I’m really concerned. I’ve been observing the tactics and procedures of both the Russian and the Ukrainian soldiers – I’m beginning to think they aren’t taking COVID precautions very seriously. And to top it all off, are we sure we can root for the Ukrainians? They’re pretty low on minority representation in this whole thing.
Exactly.
jvb
Hmm completely disrobed people wearing masks in the middle of a basement trying to all be in the middle while leaving 6 ft between them.
The mind does boggle.
jvb
I think the incompetence here is giving advice for a nuclear attack, which is an insanity that not even Putin would attempt. Putin “activating” the nuclear alert is pure sabre rattling.
However, warning people to be mindful of disease is necessary. In nearly every war ever fought, disease kills more than direct war activity due to disruptions to healthcare and infrastructure. It is often not possible to even boil water or properly cook food. Being in a confined space with strangers during a pandemic is still a risk, even during a nuclear holocaust. If you did catch covid while sheltering from fallout, you may well be on your own; sick with pneumonia, without adequate food or water, and at best limited medicine.
If you are going to give absurd advice on surviving nuclear fallout during an attack on a small country on the other side of the world, I think you do have an obligation to at least warn people to be mindful of disease. Unlike covid (which apparently shuts out every other illness), war makes all disease worse and avoiding disease should be a top priority second only to surviving the immediate circumstances.
“Putin “activating” the nuclear alert is pure sabre rattling.”
Is it?
We’ve heard for 8 months now that Putin stationing the better part of his military on Ukraine’s border was *just* saber rattling.
I think Putin, will find himself rapidly backed into a corner on Ukraine and I don’t think he wants Ukraine for anything other than a buffer zone – which means he doesn’t care what devastated condition he leaves it in.
There is a really really good chance now that he uses limited tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine as a dual purpose – warning against the west and destroy Ukrainian assets.
I’ve seen some spin masters desperately showing how all of this is Russian quagmire and unification of NATO is somehow miraculous proof that Biden has been playing 4D chess this whole time. Somehow I think the reality is showing that NATO has acted all too late and only out of clear necessity and only because it was extremely clear that common people across the world are uniformly hateful of Putin right now. Reality shows that Biden’s general milquetoast and dementia-addled approach to leadership had only emboldened Putin.
While not greater than 50% and probably not greater than 25%, I do think there’s a more than 5-10% chance of Putin pressing the button in some manner.
Threatening to go nuclear is exactly the kind of thing that will terrify Democrats into submission. There is no strategic value to Putin going nuclear, but plenty for rattling the “Better Red than Dead” crowd; he has plenty of conventional weapons to make his point in Ukraine without provoking a meaningful western response.
If he does use a nuclear missile, there is a far greater chance of Moscow getting the bomb from any of the western powers in retaliation. The mere fact that Putin waited for a Democrat to come to office in the US before taking Ukraine shows he does not view a direct western attack on Russia proper to be an acceptable consequence of his military escapades.
And even if were willing to use the bomb on Ukraine, believing (perhaps correctly) NATO to be completely feckless towards an outsider, the idea he would use it on the United States and invite MAD is absurd. I don’t doubt for a moment, Biden would retaliate on a direct attack on the homeland.
Putin won’t use nukes outside of Ukraine. But I think there’s a greater than ignorable chance that he will use them in Ukraine if things continue on as is.
I’m not sure we can use that threat as a guide to stop supporting Ukraine. We should use that possibility to start anticipating how we should appropriately react to such usage if it occurs in the process of supporting Ukraine.
The west will not use nukes against Russia in retaliation for their use in Ukraine. But we need to be prepared for how we plan to address the new context if they are used by Russia.
At all times, we have 48 Trident C5 missiles patrolling on Ohio-class submarines, undetected, in secret locations in the various seas reachable from each coast. That’s 960 MIRVs that can each be launched minutes after our floating wire picks up the “alert 1” message and condition 1SQ is set. They’re independently targeted to hit within the perimeter of a football field from orbit, in any city on the planet. These things are, for the most part, unstoppable; both by them and us once they’re launched, and any city they hit will be reduced to a glowing parking lot.
Because of these boats, there’s no scenario where mutually-assured destruction isn’t the only outcome. More than a few scholars of the Cold War believe that they’re why we didn’t have a nuclear exchange with them at several points
I’d like to think that he isn’t the only one that can stand down after giving a launch order.
I don’t know if any nuclear weapons owning nation will initiate MAD over a Russian strike on another nation. It would certainly up the ante in an unbelievably dangerous way.
But Russia wouldn’t use a city-leveling nuke. Russia has maintained some tactical level nukes (options we gave up as ultimately impractical for our war doctrine and national values). I could easily see them using them in this situation and I also don’t think other nuclear powers would respond with nukes let alone MAD.
Increasingly cornered Putin, who wants a buffer zone between Russia and NATO doesn’t care what condition he leaves Ukraine in – as long as it is a NATO-less condition.
Also – I’d say, given what surely is Putin’s increasing desperation that there’s a better than 0% chance he, of all evenings, tries something *really* *really* insane.
That being said – it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a large number of Combat Air Patrols occupying DC’s skies tonight and a heck of submarine screen off the coast.
Sounds like overkill – but I’m just sayin’.
Good point about tactical nukes. I don’t understand why we’ve abandoned cold-war nuclear doctrine when our enemies clearly haven’t. Our display of rectitude by doing so was, and is impressive; to nations of like-mind. We have a bad habit of ascribing our adversaries with this quality, and it leaves us with far fewer escalation-of-force options. Russians, Iranians, Chinese and the rest of the Cabal are only emboldened by what they see as weakness and cowardice. Deterrence is the only universally-reliable means of dealing with potential enemies. Democrats seem to be the least-capable of accepting this reality
Jack wrote:
I’m not so sure how recently it was that the U.S. was smart, but I am sure that the current government’s obsessions with race, climate change and the pandemic over all else are convincing evidence of deadly incompetence and untrustworthiness.
It seems these obsessions have one objective — to place everyone into a state of fear. The Left fears the virus, the Russians, Donald Trump, losing the right to kill viable but unborn children, police, any kind of demonstration by the Right.
The Right fears gun confiscation, loss of the right to speak, cancellation, creeping totalitarianism from the government, and the Fourth Estate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of their political opponents.
It’s hard to be any kind of smart when you’re distracted by fear.
It should be pointed out that no fission weapon in a suitcase, while theoretically feasible, but bulkier than a suitcase, has ever been developed by the US, and the existence of Soviet-made ones was reported by a GRU defector, and his accounts are questionable for a number of reasons. The closest we ever got to a man-portable device was one about the size of a large shoulder harness-mounted vacuum cleaner; the Mk-54 SADM. It was never tested or deployed. It used the W54 Davy Crockett warhead, normally fired by a recoilless rifle. This version was tested.
There are enormous technical hurdles to get around, such as enriching a fissile mass (at least 1.3-1.5 critical masses, I believe) of Plutonium-239 small enough to fit in a suitcase, which must also accommodate incredibly precise shaped charges and timing/firing circuits. You’re much more likely to find a dirty-bomb in a suitcase, which is merely conventional high-explosives that scatter radioactive waste like spent reactor fuel and other such garbage. These are unlikely to kill anyone outside of a very small radius, and it’s actually more practical to just use more demo if a body count is desired. They’re even less deadly than COVID.