Three minutes, a football and a biscuit. These are all a president of the United States needs to start nuclear war. During a 1974 meeting with lawmakers, President Richard M. Nixon reportedly stated: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” He was correct. And since then, despite the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, little has changed.
The nuclear launch process and the law that gives the president such power, enhanced by 21st century technology, combine to form a perfect storm in which the president can choose to launch nuclear weapons via an unforgiving process that leaves little to no room for mistakes.
World population has more than doubled since 1974, so I bet the president can kill a whole lot more than 70 million people in 25 minutes nowadays. That’s not great given how much stupider and crazier our current president is than even Nixon was.
I’m guessing that was the Soviet bloc population. What he should have said is that everyone in the world would be dead. There’s no way there isn’t retaliation from any of the nuclear armed opponents. He’ll, id consider it if I were in charge of UK/France and the US did that. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like that level of radiation in the atmosphere would destroy human life anyway.
I mean, fuck, even it is survivable, who wants to actually survive something like that.