HACKER Q&A
📣 RomanPushkin

What is the likelihood of nuclear war in 2022?


What is the likelihood of nuclear war in 2022?


  👤 webmaven Accepted Answer ✓
A few too many known unknowns (and probably a lot of unknown unknowns) to estimate with any confidence, but certainly higher than it seemed a couple of weeks ago (which was effectively 0%).

My pessimistic take is that it is currently about 2%, or 1-in-50, which is far too high for comfort.


👤 simonblack
Much as I hate to admit it, quite high.

The US is confined by its Wolfowitz Doctrine, Russia is confined by its history of 25 million dead in WW2.

Neither is capable of backing down. Things will proceed to nuclear.


👤 phillipseamore
Little to none I hope.

Nuclear weapons are their most powerful when not used.


👤 Kibae
I think close to 0. In my opinion, space and cyber warfare will be the new norm for the foreseeable future.

👤 smoyer
42

More seriously, you have an un-hinged dictator with nuclear weapons - when he loses, who knows what he'll do. A real egotarian would say "If I can't win, then everyone has to lose". The only upside is that there's one less dictator (wannabe?) with his finger on the nuclear button than there was last year.


👤 fendy3002
For WMD level nuclear, my guess is quite low. Other user have said in other thread that there are several instances of nuclear threats in cold war era that should be launched, but didn't because the risk is too great.

Talking about Russia, AFAIK only Putin that is cornered enough to want to use it (and his aides I guess). The world, AFAIK, signals that they won't have problem forgiving Russia if the current regime changes. So I guess it's higher for civil war / coup in Russia before nuclear solution.

I don't know with smaller tactical nuclear though (district size maybe).


👤 slater
None.