I’m not worried that Russia is going to launch a nuke and destroy humanity by starting World War III. I’m worried that a splinter group is going to seize control of a Russian nuke, fire it, and destroy humanity by starting World War III.

[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Honestly I doubt that Russia has maintained their arsenal. Nuclear warheads must be maintained because the fissile cores wear out due to the natural halflife of uranium. So after X number of years (super-dooper state secret stuff, but it's like every 10 years based on napkin math I did in my undergrad) the cores must be replaced.

All that said - I think Russia's nuclear program is likely not in a functional state. The rockets work. They'll do a publicized underground test every few years to show off capability. But something like nine in ten of their warheads will not reach criticality and misfire today if actually used. That's still not a fun scenario, tens of millions would die. But it's not nuclear apocalypse level that they use for defense posturing.

[–] AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 7 points 2 months ago

This, this this.

IIRC (forgive me I haven't looked at this in ages) the USSR (lets face it, Russia is using their old shit, just like they're using in Ukraine) had tritium based weapons. The half-life of tritium is just over 12 years. The USSR fell apart in 1991, so to make math easy lets use 1990 as the year their arsenal all got a nice refresh. 35 years have passed since 1990. That means they are on their 3rd full refresh of nuclear fissile material since the fall of the USSR. The budget for Russias nuclear force is a fraction of the US's budget. There's no fucking way they've refreshed 5500 warheads 3 times since the Cold War.

For everyone else on here, it's not JUST the bombs they have to maintain either. Those missiles need changed out, fuel needs swapped in and out, components in those missiles go bad because of the radiation, the facilities themselves that house said missiles need maintenance, the subs need maintenance, etc etc etc.

Russia doesn't have 5500 nukes. What the actual number is, I have no fucking idea. But it's nowhere near that number. I'm sure people in intelligence services know.

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