Nukes in a subway - this has to be the stupidest idea ever
 

That's No Train! Air Force Eyes Subway for Nuclear Missiles | Danger Room | Wired.com

The nutcases from the US military actually want to build subways that carry nuclear missiles. What the heck, they refuse to properly build and use subways and other public transport on a scale that makes sense in times of energy scarcity and isntead want to invest that money in subways for nuclear missiles? Those people are utterly insane. I hope that this idea is too idiotic even for the US government to approve....

As someone who you would THINK would LOVE this idea, (I used to carry the "Keys" to the electronic lockbox for Tactical Nuclear Missiles in Germany in the Seventies), I am dead set against THIS Nutjob idea for MANY reasons, none of which have anything to do with pacifism, I will leave THAT for someone else.
Niri Tawa

No, wait!

This is a great idea!

When somebody screws up, the bomb will go off and help reduce the human population while simultaneously leveling large cities!

It's brilliant!

Energy is not at all scarce. Sustainable energy might be, but who cares about that? ;)

(Yes, I'm being sarcastic, thanks for noticing.)

Nukes don't... go nuclear at all easily. If you just smash them into a wall at high speed, they'll just make a "big" (though small compared to the full yield) mess of radiation, not actually detonate.


In terms of how practical this idea is... guys, you have full second strike capability against any target. You can't go anywhere else from there. :P

Its called natural selection ;)

I don't understand how this would be better than strapping missiles to aircraft, just sounds like a lot of work.

It's not like anyone has a system that can intercept MIRVs. :P

Lol, I bet the CIA is watching this thread now.

There will probably be a way to find them underground soon enough, given a few years. I don't think subway nukes would remain some kind of untraceable novelty forever.

It's not as though you can hide the results of digging kilometer-long tunnels easily, either. :P

As I understand it the idea and motivation behind this is that either it is cheaper to build such an underground network of tunnels and have one nuke rocket transported in it than to build several rocket silos. Or - and this is what I believe is done here - they are trying to fulfil their promised "nuclear weapons reduction" by basically shutting down 3 of 4 (or any other number) of rockets, but keep the launch silos active and shuffle the remaining rockets around. That way they can threaten others with alomst the same power as before but without having so much nuclear rockets on the list. And the rockets remaining are probably enough for overkill anyways... In a way thats brilliant. The upside is then that there actually are less nuclear rockets around, the downside is that if there should be a nuke war, as many nukes would reach their target as before - and that it costs billions of much needed money that could be invested in something that makes more sense - public transport, responsible energy, social programs, education,...

All things considered, it doesn't seem worth it at all.

Then want a lot of things; reality is a little different. I don't think anyone would even try and count the number of interesting yet impractical ideas proposed that never happened.

Interestingly, Russia already does this above-ground.

Well, their giving up on things sometimes produces nice results. Things would've got very messy if the Star Wars anti-missle project got off the ground, for instance. :P

Apparently the Cold War never ended. Exactly what adversary is this defending against?