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posted by martyb on Saturday October 07 2017, @08:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-come-in-peace dept.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, as the Norwegian Nobel Committee warned that the risk of a nuclear conflict is greater than for a long time.

ICAN describes itself as a coalition of grassroots non-government groups in more than 100 nations. It began in Australia and was officially launched in Vienna in 2007.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-peace/anti-nuclear-campaign-ican-wins-2017-nobel-peace-prize-idUSKBN1CB0XR

[Also Covered By]:
Nobel peace prize 2017: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons wins award
2017 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons Wins 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Given the current tensions due to North Korea, this prize seems somehow apt. What do you think?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:00PM (15 children)

    by KilroySmith (2113) on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:00PM (#578597)

    Nuclear weapons have prevented the kinds of war that we saw in WWI and WWII, and as a result have saved tens or hundreds of millions of lives:
    https://ourworldindata.org/slides/war-and-violence/#/6 [ourworldindata.org]
    http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929553,00.html [time.com]

    Sad commentary on the state of mankind, eh?

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  • (Score: 2) by legont on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:22PM (7 children)

    by legont (4179) on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:22PM (#578606)

    Nuclear weapons have *delayed* WWIII. Granted, still an achievement on personal level as I hope I die before it starts. As per mankind, it is of course doomed.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 08 2017, @12:35AM (6 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 08 2017, @12:35AM (#578711) Journal

      Nuclear weapons have *delayed* WWIII.

      Which is an amazing accomplishment. A bridge might fall down after half a century or more use. But that doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to build bridges. Eventual failure doesn't completely negate the usefulness of something.

      • (Score: 2) by legont on Sunday October 08 2017, @03:24AM (5 children)

        by legont (4179) on Sunday October 08 2017, @03:24AM (#578753)

        Perhaps, but not in this case as the war has tendency to be exponentially more vicious the longer it is postponed. The logical action would be to provoke WWIII before weapons have a chance to become truly apocalyptic.

        Would be nice to see a movie or read a book about a good guy trying to start the war because he wants to save humanity from a later more deadly war.

        --
        "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
        • (Score: 2) by rylyeh on Sunday October 08 2017, @04:45AM

          by rylyeh (6726) <{kadath} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday October 08 2017, @04:45AM (#578781)

          I think the Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority sketch in Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts fits this perfectly! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082316/ [imdb.com]

          --
          "a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 08 2017, @10:42PM (3 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 08 2017, @10:42PM (#579014) Journal

          Perhaps, but not in this case as the war has tendency to be exponentially more vicious the longer it is postponed. The logical action would be to provoke WWIII before weapons have a chance to become truly apocalyptic.

          Like how we're so much more exponentially dangerously armed now than in 1980? It's been almost 40 years and last I checked nuclear firepower is down almost an order of magnitude.

          • (Score: 2) by legont on Thursday October 12 2017, @01:54AM (2 children)

            by legont (4179) on Thursday October 12 2017, @01:54AM (#580914)

            Nuclear firepower may be down at least if measured in number of warheads, but there are other developments such as AIs powered weapons that are almost here. In a few years we'll probably get nano sized AI weapons that perhaps would be able to procreate in a couple of decades and that will really be it.

            Perhaps a nice nuclear war would be a blessing just to stop this progress?

            --
            "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @02:39PM (1 child)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 12 2017, @02:39PM (#581146) Journal

              Nuclear firepower may be down at least if measured in number of warheads, but there are other developments such as AIs powered weapons that are almost here. In a few years we'll probably get nano sized AI weapons that perhaps would be able to procreate in a couple of decades and that will really be it.

              Foresight Institute which was a great transhumanist wankfest - good food and lots of crazy ideas. That year we were doing space-related themes and the participants were organized into groups to discuss various space-related topics. Our group covered space property and came to the rather pedestrian conclusion that we should divide bodies into three categories: small crap that no one will miss (denoted as smaller than 1 meter in radius arbitrarily), stuff that could be claimed automatically by a mining stake and physical presence (I think 10-100 km as upper bound IIRC), and stuff that should "belong to all of humanity" (so that no one can claim the whole thing outright just with a little physical presence).

              Anyway, as an incidental observation to our endeavors we agreed that cost of access to space from Earth would be a key driver/bottleneck of any sort of human activity, requiring property rights. One particularly bright person noted that this would probably be fixed when the Singularity [wikipedia.org] happened inside of 20 years. Well, it's 2017 and the Singularity hasn't happened yet.

              Making aggressive technology predictions about the near future tends to be very wrong. I think this will be no different. We're not that close to making self-replicating nano-weapons (deliberately or not).

              • (Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 13 2017, @12:04AM

                by legont (4179) on Friday October 13 2017, @12:04AM (#581449)

                I really hope you are right. However, is does not change my point which is that weapons tend to become more deadly. Hence the earlier a war starts the easier it will be for everybody.

                I don't think there is a way around. It's either one state for the whole planet (the idea I personally hate:) or human extermination. Looking for at least theoretical alternatives...

                --
                "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2017, @10:06PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2017, @10:06PM (#578669)

    http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=287 [worldmapper.org]

    An estimated 51 million people have been killed in wars between 1945 and 2000. Almost a third of these deaths were amongst the population of China. China, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan suffered the highest number of war deaths during this period.

    Very few war deaths have occurred in Japan, Western Europe and North America between 1945 and 2000.

    Out of sight, out of mind.

    • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @02:58PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @02:58PM (#578885)

      An estimated 51 million people have been killed in wars between 1945 and 2000. Almost a third of these deaths were amongst the population of China. China, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan suffered the highest number of war deaths during this period.

      Very few war deaths have occurred in Japan, Western Europe and North America between 1945 and 2000.

      Out of sight, out of mind.

      In all seriousness, that number does not even begin to compare with the body count of World War II.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday October 09 2017, @02:03AM (3 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 09 2017, @02:03AM (#579057) Journal
      To put this in perspective [ourworldindata.org]:

      The Absolute Number of War Deaths is Declining since 1945 The absolute number of war deaths has been declining since 1946. In some years in the early post-war era, around half a million people died in wars; in contrast, in 2007 (the last year for which I have data) the number of all war deaths was down to 22.139[sic European notation].

      The detailed numbers for 2007 also show which deaths are counted as war deaths:8

      • Number of State-Based Battle Deaths: 16773
      • Number of Non-State Battle Deaths: 1865
      • Number of One Sided Violence Deaths: 3501
      • The total sum of the above is: 22139. This is the number of all war deaths on our planet in 2007.

      There's a certain sort of ideology that gets the world very wrong. It's not left or right, but rather the idea that we are incredibly broken and every ill or evil we have or done is at immense and growing levels. While with the Syrian war, things got worse again, the above is still a remarkable achievement for a planet with 6.6 billion people on it (as of 2007). War is one of the notable evils that we have reduced substantially over the past half century and that in turn is due to nuclear weapons.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:24AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:24AM (#580371)

        And how many deaths will there be in a nuclear war, in a world that has 9600 warheads [armscontrol.org] in military service? Last time around, 2 warheads were used, causing roughly 200,000 deaths.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:42AM (1 child)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:42AM (#580400) Journal

          And how many deaths will there be in a nuclear war, in a world that has 9600 warheads [armscontrol.org] in military service? Last time around, 2 warheads were used, causing roughly 200,000 deaths.

          A lot more than 22,000 people even if only one is used on a population center. One must distinguish between potential and actual here. The tools exist to kill potentially billions of people either near instantly or over the course of several weeks. But in actuality, in a recent year, we had war deaths down to a point that probably has been rarely matched over the past few millennia.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:31PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:31PM (#582283)

            Everything that is actual was once potential. Potentially, something could go wrong. [time.com]