![]() One more objection is that small tactical nukes can be replaced by powerful conventional explosives, or drone swarms, or space kinetic weapons. But nuclear weapons has more practical significance than pyramids. Also, it could be argued that the Cold War nuclear arsenals were the “peak”, which will never repeat itself, the same way as Egyptian pyramids appeared on early stages of architecture development, but were never repeated. A new confrontation between the West and China with Russia will fuel more research in nuclear capabilities. Also, the nuclear field was underfunded after Cold War and the global “ban” on tests. Because the field is covered with secrecy, public knowledge may be obsolete for decades about what is actually possible. Also, there is an important article by Gsponer about the “4th generation of nuclear weapons” (Gsponer, 2005). However, while many ideas existed even from the 1950s, like nuclear-powered nuclear torpedoes, they were starting to be implemented only recently. Cold war. Another objection is that we “knew everything” about nuclear energy since the peak of Cold war, and there is not much left to discover in the field.But owning nukes was always seen as a symbol of ultimate military power, as they could be used to finally crush the opponent. One may object that there is no need in nuclear development as drones could inflict similar damage via precision strikes (Turchin & Denkenberger, 2018). I will shortly address these objections first: ![]() There are several objections which immediately appear in mind when we speak about the future of nuclear war, and which generally prevent us from digging deeper into the topic. Objections to the idea of the significant future of nuclear weapons It is reasonable to suggest that assumed exponential growth in AI and nanotech will be reflected in exponential growth in nuclear technologies, but we currently observe such growth only in civilian nuclear applications, like the number of approaches to fusion. However, if we assume that technological progress will continue also in the nuclear field, the same way as it happens in other fields, such a decline in nuclear numbers maybe only a temporary fluke. So, it looks like the scale of possible nuclear war and thus its danger has declined. The highest number of deployed nukes was achieved in the 1980s and declined several times after that. But the discussions about nuclear war assumed that this war will be the same as it was envisioned in the 20th century: a nuclear exchange between two superpowers, which, in the worst case, will cause a “nuclear winter” for several years, which could cause mass starvation of survivors, but not a human extinction. AI will become much stronger, nanobots will appear and biohackers will get access to better manufacturing capabilities. When we speak about global catastrophic risks connected with new technologies, we assume that in the decades from now these technologies will advance by many orders of magnitude. ![]() The third change of the strategy is the use of nukes not against primary military targets but on other objects, which could increase their effects: nuclear power plants, supervolcanos, EMP, tsunamis, taiga fires for global cooling, and even more hypothetical things like asteroid deflection to Earth.Īll these unconventional means and strategies of nuclear war could become available somewhere in the 21st century and may cause or contribute to the civilizational collapse and even human extinction. This will result in disruption of social complexity and global food production shortages because of effects on climate. ![]() Cheaper nukes and a larger number of actors also encourage regional nuclear wars, nuclear terrorism and anonymous or false-flag warfare. Secondly, the cheaper nukes will become available to smaller actors, who may be involved in “worldwide guerilla”. The first strategy change is that Doomsday weapons for blackmail will become attractive for weaker countries which can’t use ICBM to penetrate the anti-missile defense of the enemies. Meanwhile, the nuclear war strategy also has changed as the bipolar world has ended and as new types of weapons are becoming available. Also, advanced nanotechnology will provide the ability to quickly build large nuclear arsenals and AI could be used in designing, manufacturing and nuclear strategy planning.ģ) Specialized nuclear weapons like nuclear-powered space lasers, hafnium bombs and nuclear-powered space ships as kinetic weapons. There are three main directions in which technological progress in nuclear weapons may happen:Ģ) Cheaper nuclear bombs which are based on the use of the reactor-grade plutonium, laser isotope separation or are hypothetical pure fusion weapons. Here I present a view on the future of nuclear war which takes into account the expected technological progress as well as global political changes.
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