this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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Russia is a nuclear power, there were even a couple articles like a year or 2 ago talking about how Putler was, at least trying to, remove any safeguards between his button push and the actual nukes.
Thus preventing another occurrence of when that Russian missile operator received orders to fire nukes because radar said there was in inbound missiles but the operator decided to ignore them and it turned out to be a glitch or whatever.
America has an even larger arsenal? With a just as, if not even more, unstable guy in control of the button?
Yes and no, America does have a similar sized arsenal, but the difference is the president isn't in control of the button itself. The "nuclear football" is more like a private key and order transmittal device, basically if the nuke missile silos receive an order from it, they can trust it's legit because the presidents football signed it. The silos firing mechanisms are also all independent. They can still choose to not insert their key and turn it (of which it takes 2)
In Russia, it may very well be that Putler has actual control of the actual button that controls the actual firing mechanisms of the silos themselves.
And I think they're much more likely to want to launch a nuke. Russia is fighting on Russian soil and experiencing some pretty intense economic issues due to the war, whereas the US hasn't fought on US soil since... the Civil War? And that's with fighting in both world wars and a number of other undeclared wars.
Russia could argue they're using them defensively, which might save them from retaliation (probably not), whereas the US has no excuse. I'm much more worried about the cornered animal than apex predator, because you can predict what the predator is going to do.