The dignity of work, the terror of nuclear war, the artifices of dating, the terror of nearly dying, the sublimity of the cosmos, plus Cthulhu, very old fantasy and very new, and some science fiction.
I agree the 'plot' she painted was a bit contrived. Her motives, though, were to explore a full out nuclear war so in some sense her 'characters' had to be doomed from the start in order to illustrate the whole picture for us. The crux where this was a problem was when the US decided to launch many missiles at North Korea in response, which put Russia in the awkward position of having to 'trust us' as they watched hundreds of dots coming over the north pole at them.
I feel a President would likely decide to use only submarine and non-ICBMs for now least we cause Russia to do a mass launch. On the other hand, the urgency to hit everything and anything in North Korea to stop additional launches (remember they have theirs on trucks so we might need a lot of bombs) could put massive pressure on a President to hit every possible place mobile launchers could be hiding. Even for a small nation like NK, that would require a lot of nukes.
I don't think she was that wrong about hitting a nuclear power plant. Let's keep in mind:
1. We know not only is Chernobyl still radioactive, it's still dangerous. Russian troops reported got radiation sickness after digging ditches near the 'no-go' zone. The bulk of Chernobyl's radioactive material, though, was never released. It's contained in a massive structure where it will probably not be a problem for ages, that is unless someone does something stupid like hit it with a nuke.
2. So if you were going to hit the US with a single nuke or two, does it make sense to hit LA or the plant? Well it really depends on the motivation. If you want to kill a lot of people very fast, LA is a good target. If you want to leave 'your mark' for centuries. Well the canyon will probably do the trick. You can say that isn't rational but then neither is simply wanting to kill the most possible. That leads us to...
3. The fall of the liberal order on an international scale is not causing it to be replaced with a different order but a type of nihilism. One cannot trust nuclear plants won't be targeted either by 'gentlemen's agreement' or the rationality of regimes. The presumption must be norms and rules will not work as reliably as before.
The downstream consequence of this is that this is another knock on nuclear power. It was always a risk with nuclear but the assumption in the Cold War was that nuclear war could not be limited and if you have a full scale nuclear war we're all dead regardless, or at least the global north is close enough to dead. But now the consideration should be that a limited outbreak is something that could happen, and if it happens once it could happen many times. Not only is that bad for nuclear in developed nations, it should cause us to be less eager to encourage nuclear in developing nations.
I agree the 'plot' she painted was a bit contrived. Her motives, though, were to explore a full out nuclear war so in some sense her 'characters' had to be doomed from the start in order to illustrate the whole picture for us. The crux where this was a problem was when the US decided to launch many missiles at North Korea in response, which put Russia in the awkward position of having to 'trust us' as they watched hundreds of dots coming over the north pole at them.
I feel a President would likely decide to use only submarine and non-ICBMs for now least we cause Russia to do a mass launch. On the other hand, the urgency to hit everything and anything in North Korea to stop additional launches (remember they have theirs on trucks so we might need a lot of bombs) could put massive pressure on a President to hit every possible place mobile launchers could be hiding. Even for a small nation like NK, that would require a lot of nukes.
I don't think she was that wrong about hitting a nuclear power plant. Let's keep in mind:
1. We know not only is Chernobyl still radioactive, it's still dangerous. Russian troops reported got radiation sickness after digging ditches near the 'no-go' zone. The bulk of Chernobyl's radioactive material, though, was never released. It's contained in a massive structure where it will probably not be a problem for ages, that is unless someone does something stupid like hit it with a nuke.
2. So if you were going to hit the US with a single nuke or two, does it make sense to hit LA or the plant? Well it really depends on the motivation. If you want to kill a lot of people very fast, LA is a good target. If you want to leave 'your mark' for centuries. Well the canyon will probably do the trick. You can say that isn't rational but then neither is simply wanting to kill the most possible. That leads us to...
3. The fall of the liberal order on an international scale is not causing it to be replaced with a different order but a type of nihilism. One cannot trust nuclear plants won't be targeted either by 'gentlemen's agreement' or the rationality of regimes. The presumption must be norms and rules will not work as reliably as before.
The downstream consequence of this is that this is another knock on nuclear power. It was always a risk with nuclear but the assumption in the Cold War was that nuclear war could not be limited and if you have a full scale nuclear war we're all dead regardless, or at least the global north is close enough to dead. But now the consideration should be that a limited outbreak is something that could happen, and if it happens once it could happen many times. Not only is that bad for nuclear in developed nations, it should cause us to be less eager to encourage nuclear in developing nations.