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Nukes

Tuesday 24th of March 2026

Nukes “always, never” Phrase used to describe nuclear weapons that will always explode when they should and never when they shouldn't © 2024 Kwiple.com
Nukes America is building a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane. It will be able to travel 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single shot. … The US Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Nukes As in most insurance situations, the wider the coverage required, the higher the premium.  Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes As late as possible, as early as necessary. NATO's strategy in case of an attack by Warsaw Pact countries as summarized by an unnamed participant in its Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) Quoted by Michael Quinlan in Thinking About Nuclear Weapons  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes  The atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It made the prospect of future wars unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass and beyond there is a different country. J. Robert Oppenheimer © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes Based on a Pentagon report cited by the Arms Control Association and Bloomberg News, the government will spend roughly $100 billion to build the weapon [a new nuclear missile] which will be ready to use around 2029. …  To put that price tag in perspective, $100 billion could pay 1.24 million elementary school teachers for a year, provide 2.84 million four-year university scholarships, or cover 3.3 million hospital stays for covid-19 patients. It's enough to build a massive mechanical wall to protect New York City from sea level rise. It's enough to get to Mars. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Nukes But if in the end the expectations were confounded and truly vital interests were indeed about to be overborne by non-nuclear means —heavy CW or BW attack, say, or trade strangulation— the idea that a nuclear power would let itself be overwhelmed simply because of an NFU promise is simply absurd.  Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons  CW = chemical weapons BW = biological weapons NFU = no first use, usually of nukes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes By taking nuclear blackmail seriously, we have actually increased the overall chances of nuclear war.  If nuclear blackmail enables a Russian victory, the consequences will be incalculably awful. If any country with nuclear weapons can do whatever it likes, then law means nothing, no international order is possible, and catastrophe beckons at every turn. Countries without nuclear weapons will have to build them, on the logic that they will need nuclear deterrence in the future.  Nuclear proliferation would make nuclear war much more likely in the future. Timothy Snyder, New York Times, May 6, 2022, on Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons to guarantee a win in its war with Ukraine © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes Deterrence cannot exist if there is no possibility of use.  Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes The fact that J Robert Oppenheimer agonised over his part in the creation of the atomic bomb is not interesting. Was he meant to whistle to work? Harry Truman, to whom it fell to use the “gadget”, is the more dramatic figure, precisely because he made what might be the most history-altering executive decision since Pontius Pilate  without much in the way of outward qualms. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 25, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon. Joe Biden, October 6, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Nukes I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.  J. Robert Oppenheimer, reflecting on the Trinity Test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, on July 16, 1945, at 5:29 AM  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes I want to lob one into the men's room of the Kremlin and make sure I hit it. Barry Goldwater, 1964 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes If we have them, why can't we use them? Donald Trump © 2016 Kwiple.com
Nukes In 1962 a worker at Hanford [nuclear production plant] named Harold Aardal, exposed to a blast of nuclear radiation, was whisked to a hospital, where he was told he was perfectly okay except that he was sterile—and it didn't even make the news. Instead, Hanford researchers in the late 1960s went to a local prison and paid inmates to allow the irradiation of their testicles, to see just how much radiation a man can receive before the tails fall from his sperm. Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk © 2019 Kwiple.com
Nukes The nightmare of the Cold War was nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational person. Rudy Giuliani © 2018 Kwiple.com
Nukes North Korea could inflict a million casualties on its southern neighbor and raze Seoul. Iraq couldn't manage anything on this scale, so you could attack it. North Korea could, so you couldn't. The imponderables of the proliferation age were becoming ponderable. Once a nation has done the risky and naseous work of acquisition, it becomes unattackable. A single untested nuclear weapon may be a liability. But five or six constitute a deterrent. From this it crucially follows that we are going to war with Iraq because it doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. Or not many. Martin Amis, “The palace of the end” [2003] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes  The nuclear dragon may be sleeping, but it is certainly not dead. Michael Howard, April 2, 2008 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes Once you've dropped a couple of nuclear bombs on a city, if you drop a couple more, all you do is make the rubble shake. Air Force Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Robert Latiff, who commanded a nuclear weapons unit in West Germany early in his career © 2021 Kwiple.com
Nukes The president of the United States for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. He could launch the kind of devasting attack the world's never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. Dick Cheney, 2008 [It's a briefcase, not a football.] © 2016 Kwiple.com
Nukes Putin has built up their military again and again and again. Their military is much stronger. He's doing nuclear. We're not doing anything. Our nuclear's old and tired and his nuclear is tippy-top from what I hear. Donald Trump © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes Russia's nuclear talk is itself the weapon. … Russian propagandists want us to think that nuclear powers can never lose wars, on the logic that they could always deploy nuclear weapons to win. This is an ahistoric fantasy. Nuclear weapons did not bring the French victory in Algeria, nor did they preserve the British Empire. The Soviet Union lost its war in Afghanistan. America lost in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Israel failed to win in Lebanon.  Nuclear powers lose wars with some regularity. Timothy Snyder, New York Times, May 6, 2022, on Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons to guarantee a win in its war with Ukraine © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes The spectre of nuclear war is back 25 years after the world believed it had been buried by the end of the cold war. Financial Times, November 16, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Nukes There lies at the heart of deterrence in the nuclear age an inescapable paradox: the more seriously the possessor is believed capable in extremis  of using the armoury, the less likely it is that others will cause or allow circumstances to arise challenging its use. And the converse is also true.   Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races (January 22, 2022) [The signatories are China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. Currently, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan also have nuclear weapons.] © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Nukes What, for example, might chemical or biological weapons by now be capable of had they and their delivery systems received the same investment of resources, across sixty years and more, as has been devoted to nuclear armouries? From this standpoint the advent of nuclear weapons may have been no more than the particular form first taken—perhaps to macabre advantage, in that its savage abruptness made the reality unmistakable— by an evolution that was anyway inexorable. The issues for strategy and statesmanship, and for ethics and law, need therefore to be recognized as not only novel, but also broad and basic. Michael Quinlan, 2009 © 2017 Kwiple.com