Bugs Bunny Cartoon<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Bugs was on an assembly line, testing cannon shells.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The shells came by on a conveyor belt, and Bugs took a hammer and banged on the top.\u00a0\u00a0If they didn\u2019t explode, he chalked \u201cDUD\u201d on the side.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cJust think\u201d, he said, \u201cIn thirty years I can retire!!!\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It was funny \u2013 but not so much in a world entangled by the Cold War, with nuclear destruction hanging over all our heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo, I envision a gloomy Air Force enlisted man, climbing a ladder to the top of a Minuteman III missile in a\u00a0\u00a0Nebraska silo, hammer in one hand, chalk in the other.\u00a0\u00a0Then it dawned on me.\u00a0\u00a0Trump didn\u2019t want to check the missiles.\u00a0\u00a0He wants to blow one up!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thirty-Three Years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The United States hasn\u2019t exploded a nuclear weapon since 1992, thirty-three years ago.\u00a0\u00a0George HW Bush was President (Dad, not Son).\u00a0\u00a0It was an underground test in the Nevada desert, where the only sign of detonation was the dust rising from the vibrating surface.\u00a0\u00a0We stopped nuclear testing after that, for several reasons.\u00a0\u00a0First, underground, underwater, or airburst on the surface, nuclear testing was horrible for the environment.\u00a0\u00a0Second, by taking \u201ctesting\u201d off the table, it gave the US an advantage in nuclear weapon limitation talks.\u00a0\u00a0Third, we already had enough \u201ctest data\u201d to know what worked, and what didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And finally, by 1993 computers progressed far enough that we could \u201cmodel\u201d the impacts of differing nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00a0We no longer needed to actually set one off; the computers could give us all the information we needed to determine what changes to make on the \u201cnext generation\u201d of weaponry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Computational science has come a long way since 1993, the year I bought my first Apple PowerBook.\u00a0\u00a0That was a slow, gray-screened, limited tool.\u00a0\u00a0But it was a \u201claptop\u201d!!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I expect that nuclear modeling has advanced as well, making environment altering detonations totally unnecessary.\u00a0\u00a0So why, almost out of the blue, did President Trump ordered testing to resume?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flexing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump is nothing if not predictable.\u00a0\u00a0The United States is \u201cflexing\u201d our military muscle all over the world.\u00a0\u00a0We are blowing up boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, ostensibly because they are smuggling drugs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dozens of people, maybe drug runners, maybe innocent fisherman, are dead.\u00a0\u00a0Trump is using the military in the streets of American cities, a \u201cshow of force\u201d against crime, that\u2019s a lot more show than force.\u00a0\u00a0And finally, Defense Secretary Hegseth is all \u201cshow\u201d, demanding his Department be called \u201cTHE WAR DEPARTMENT\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s more worried about the \u201cWarriors with Abs\u201d then with real military preparedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it should be no surprise that a President fixated on demonstrating strength, would want to use the ultimate weapons.\u00a0\u00a0He already dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan ( Massive Ordinance Air Black Bomb or colloquially, Mother of All Bombs) costing millions of dollars.\u00a0\u00a0This past year, he\u2019s used several of the GBU-57 \u201cbunker buster bombs\u201d on Iran, at $3.5 million apiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0But Trump has access to the most powerful arsenal in the world. \u00a0How could he NOT want to set a few off, just to let the world know that he has the biggest \u2013 missiles.\u00a0\u00a0Besides, it fits his normal foreign policy position:\u00a0\u00a0unknowable, erratic, Quixotic, arbitrary.\u00a0\u00a0What goes for one Nation, say Israel, is completely different than another, like Ukraine.\u00a0\u00a0Trump intentionally wants to keep the world off balance with untenable positions:\u00a0threatening China with 100% tariffs for example.\u00a0\u00a0So how could he not use the ultimate \u201cTrump Card\u201d, or at least let the world see that they still work?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cost<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There is the obvious environmental cost of setting off a nuclear weapon.\u00a0\u00a0And there is the danger of \u201cnormalizing\u201d nuclear weapons, reversing American policy of the last three decades.\u00a0\u00a0Recently, only North Korea has detonated nuclear weapons, and that was eight years ago.\u00a0\u00a0But if the United States opens the door, there\u2019s no doubt that Russia, China, and perhaps other nuclear powers will feel required to join in .\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not good for the world. \u00a0Other than outlaw states like North Korea, the world has stepped back from the nuclear edge at the height of the Cold War in the 1980\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0Now, Donald Trump wants us to \u201cstep up\u201d to the edge again, all for his Presidential vanity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe we should give him the chalk and hammer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Headline I just read the headline, \u201cTrump authorizes immediate nuclear missile tests\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first thing that came to mind was the old 1953\u00a0Bugs Bunny Cartoon.\u00a0\u00a0Bugs was on an assembly line, testing cannon shells.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The shells came by on a conveyor belt, and Bugs took a hammer and banged on the top.\u00a0\u00a0If they didn\u2019t explode, he chalked \u201cDUD\u201d … Continue reading “Bombs Away”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBombs Away : Our America - 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