"My current estimate is about the same as losing in Russian roulette: one in six."Very Grim
These, as we know, are not internationally chill times so much so that, unfortunately, nuclear war has been on much the collective mind.
But while verbal and in North Korea's recent case, physical nuclear threats have been made, how likely is it that we'll see an actual nuclear conflict?It's a seemingly impossible question, but one MIT physics professor Max Tegmark believes he has the answer to.
"Many people have asked me what I think the odds are of an imminent major US-Russia nuclear war," the professor wrote on the blog LessWrong. "My current estimate is about the same as losing in Russian roulette: one in six." Great.
Tegmark's argument centers on a David vs. Goliath framework the former being Ukraine, the latter being Russia. And within that dynamic, the professor explores a series of possible outcomes and their likelihoods.
His worst case scenario is labelled "KABOOM," which in his words marks "a major US-Russia nuclear war that might cause nuclear winter and kill most people on Earth." But again, that's worst case, and Tegmark offers a number of other scenarios that might happen either instead of KABOOM or en route to it.
"'Kosovo' & 'Vietnam' refer to scenarios where one side wins outright (breakaway succeeds & Goliath is expunged, respectively)," he writes, "'Libya,' 'Korea' & 'Finland' refer to intermediate outcomes involving simmering war, frozen war and full peace, respectively."
The academic ultimately concluded through his risk model that based mostly on his own psychoanalysis of Putin, NATO, and the general world public there's an 80 percent chance that NATO will take some form of collective military action against Russia; a 70 percent chance that Russia will retaliate against that NATO offensive with nuclear weapons, which could ultimately bring us to KABOOM territory; and a 30 percent chance that both sides decide to de-escalate.
Distill those percentages, and as Tegmark writes, you get a roughly one-in-six figure.
It's important to remember that Tegmark's guess is, in a way, as good as anyone's.
There's no true scientific model for human nature, which is what this ultimately comes down to. Nuclear war doesn't just happen. A button, somewhere, has to be pressed though that seems to be exactly what the prof is trying to remind us.
READ MORE: Why I think there's a one-in-six chance of an imminent global nuclear war [LessWrong]
More on nuclear war: Horrific Simulation: Nuclear War Would Kill Five Billion People
See the original post here:
MIT Professor Says There's a One-in-Six Chance of Nuclear War - Futurism
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
