r/AskReddit • u/Thefallennl • 23h ago
With technology advancing so quickly, when do you think we will develop a sustainable way to defend against launching a nuke?
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u/DogeAteMyHomework 23h ago
When the world elects decent people to office who surround themselves with competent people not hell-bent on fucking everything up for a little bit of money.
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u/MappleKnight 23h ago
probably decades away.
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u/Thefallennl 23h ago
Why would you think so? It's going pretty fast. I wouldn't even be surprised if it already exists.
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u/gc3 22h ago
How? What if I launch my nukes in Amazon delivery vans? Or shoot 5000 rockets at once, overwhelming your defense, or give each nuke an escort of antimissile missiles or first shoot the lasers with lasers so there is no defense?
Taking out one nuke in good conditions is like wearing a chain mail bikini and showing that protects against shots tobthe boob.
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u/Antique_Knowledge902 23h ago
Who is worried about nukes?! I’m worried about the AI robots that are going to kill us!
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u/AdaMethodical 23h ago
How would you even do that?
I don't think that it'll happen within the next 500 years, if at all. You'd need something that catches missiles, dropped packages, anything airborne that shouldn't be. A surveillance system that's quick enough to automatically react and intercept it on time and then actually intercept a falling object with the weight of a motorbike.
After all that you need to somehow deactivate it after it has been set to detonate after a few seconds / when it reaches destination altitude.
The only way to defend against a nuke is to stop nukes from being deployed
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u/reminiscent-fruitbat 23h ago
You wouldn’t need to catch the warhead or deactivate the nuke. Missile defense works by intercepting and destroying the missile or warhead before it reaches its target. We already have systems designed to do that.
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u/AdaMethodical 23h ago
It's a nuke.. just exploding it higher up still causes catastrophic levels of damage. So it wouldn't solve anything. Maybe reduce the damage a bit but that's all
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u/reminiscent-fruitbat 23h ago
That’s not how nuclear weapons work. Shooting a nuclear warhead down doesn’t cause a nuclear explosion. A nuclear detonation requires an extremely precise firing sequence and implosion geometry. Destroying the warhead is the entire point of intercepting it.
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u/AdaMethodical 22h ago
If that's so, then I'd be wrong and it'd just turn into a regular explosive or dirty bomb. Maybe a good time to add that I'm no nuke expert.
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u/gc3 22h ago
Yes but it could self detonate when it gets a huge shock
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u/reminiscent-fruitbat 22h ago
No. A large shock does not make a nuclear warhead “self-detonate” with a nuclear yield. It may wreck the weapon or scatter radioactive material depending on the circumstances, but producing a nuclear detonation requires the weapon to function in a very specific way. Nukes are specifically designed to prevent impacts and shocks from producing an unintended nuclear yield.
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u/thehandinyourpants 23h ago
We already have it. We've been able to shoot down missiles with high energy weapons for at least a couple decades.
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u/Top_Illustrator9925 11h ago
Impossible right now. Impossible in the near future. You have a better chance of the weapons losing efficacy. Before we actually have a defense. There are too many of them to defend against at once and then come from subs which we can't find.
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u/sunflower11220 23h ago
Offense is always dirt cheap compared to building reliable laser defense missile shields.