Potemkin Village
Is Vladimir Putin bluffing when he threatens to use nukes? Some people say he’s gone mad, but what if he’s bluffing? How can you tell the difference? The answer is in a few numbers.
Russia doesn’t have serviceable nuclear weapons. They certainly have nukes and have demonstrated them to the world, but that was decades ago, and they have fallen into disrepair because they are too expensive to maintain, and Russia is too poor to afford it. Perhaps a small subset of Russian nukes remains serviceable, but do they know which ones? And do they want the world to know this?
This statement comes from some research and basic analysis, but I am not a nuclear scientist or diplomat nor am I in any way affiliated with the US government or any of its regulatory or military bodies. I am a civilian and a rank amateur. That said, here’s what I found.
My thesis is that Russia can’t risk launching any of its nukes because it can’t be sure they’ll work. I am sure the warheads are fine, the fissile material in them has a roughly 30,000-year half-life. Good enough for these calculations.
But the rockets that would heave these monsters of destruction are delicate things that require frequent attention and maintenance. Many of these rockets…
