Trump Directs Nuclear Weapons Testing to Resume for First Time in Over 30 Years
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The story reports on Trump's directive to resume nuclear weapons testing, sparking concerns and criticisms among HN commenters about the implications for global security and the escalation of nuclear threats.
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Weak response to multiple russian invasions enabled all kind of dictators around the globe.
Well, anybody have any modern simulation models for fallout distribution after a nuclear war between the USA and Russia?
Here's a paper [1] and an article [2] based on that paper that looked at what a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could do to the rest of the world.
The scenario they look it is each firing 100 nukes the size of the bomb used at Hiroshima at the other, aimed at major population centers.
Here's the abstract from the paper:
> A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.
BTW, both India and Pakistan rely on the glaciers in the Himalayas for freshwater. The glaciers in effect act as a natural reservoir system.
Something like 70% of Pakistan depends on that system, and a similar percent for northern India. Overall in Southeast Asia about 1.9 billion people depend on those glaciers.
As global warming reduces those glaciers it is not a stretch to imagine disputes over allocation of the remaining water getting heated enough for war to break out. I've read that if we let it get to 3℃ above pre-industrial levels we lose about 75% of those glaciers.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117
[2] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-in...
... but with China instead. The trouble with this guy is, you can't be sure if what he spouts from his mouth is him being actually serious, him just parroting whatever the last person to talk to him said (seems to be a common trope regarding anything Ukraine) or if he's just out of his mind and gone off script, off rails. And on top of that you got stuff like the sinking of the "Venezuelan drug boats" that would be seen as and dealt with as a declaration of war if the aggressor weren't the USA.
All it takes for stuff to go Seriously Damn Wrong is one person on the other side taking his verbal diarrhoea seriously and literally and acting accordingly.
2.5 Millennia ago no one spoke English...
The leading guess I've seen is that he's "striking back" after Putin announced successful tests of new delivery platforms for nuclear weapons (which Russia developed because Bush abandoned the ABM treaty for the lols).
Pretending it's all a crazy-man act with hidden strategy a) requires that he isn't mentally declining (when he obviously is and his doctors think so and are trying to tell us) and b) would require that this ignorant man has good advisors where he very clearly does not.
Well... Project 2025. There are people behind Trump actually pulling the strings in a very dangerous direction!
> Trump: ‘Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?’
And the carefully crafted intel briefings informed by best in the world intel services just to ensure he’s operating on good info? He doesn’t bother:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-...
Dude shouldn’t be in charge of anything let alone nukes
The US is conducting nuclear tests periodically just like other nuclear powers. Subcritical nuclear testing is allowed. The last one was in 2024 https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-completes-subcriti... "NNSA successfully executed a subcritical experiment in the PULSE facility at the Nevada National Security Site. The experiment was executed in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory."
The article you linked says this:
> This experiment performed as predicted; consistent with the self-imposed moratorium on nuclear explosive testing that the United States has held since 1992, it did not form a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction.
And yet, in the BBC article, Trump is said to have said:
> President Donald Trump has called on US military leaders to resume testing
Pretty obvious he doesn't mean "resume 2024 testing". He also said this:
> "With others doing testing, I think it's appropriate that we do also,"
Which would conflict with resuming the testing that was done in 2024 (if it ever stopped).
> Trump's announcement did not include details of how the tests would occur
Again, if it was what was happening in 2024, what new details would need to be added?
He has been obsessed with using nuclear weapons since he took office 2016. He even proposed nuking a hurricane.
Who is attention whore and bullshitter. For any other president statements equal policy, that's not so with Trump.
The statement is so vague that it does not indicate out of ordinary nuclear testing. The statement was made in TruthSocial. There is no presidendtial action (proclamation, memorandum, or executive order.) He might be just talking shit.
And now he's saying it when being asked by reporters.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m4g67chzo226
> Q: What prompted you to announce you're resuming nuclear testing right before the meeting with Xi?
> TRUMP: They seem to all be nuclear testing. We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don't do testing. We halted it many years ago, but w/ others doing testing I think it's appropriate we do also
I think he's pretty explicitly saying that he wants to start doing testing we aren't currently doing.
I think he is saying something confused and vague.
Others are only testing the delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons (missiles, submarines), not the nuclear weapons themselves. So "Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis" may also mean that the weapons won't be detonated in these tests.
The US hasn't detonated a nuclear weapon since 1992. You can call the distinction a technicality if you like, but it doesn't seem like one to me.
There is psychological effect, but it's not that important. More important is keeping nuclear test ban in effect. If the US does test, Russia and China will follow.
[0]: https://youtu.be/JhkZMxgPxXU
Everything is now. That’s what you get when you build a mind rape device that explicitly rewards attention whoring an other antisocial behavior.
One of the best benefits of the current no live nuclear testing treaties / environment, was that the United States was one of a few countries that had done extensive live tests early on.
The United States is able to sit on its arsenal and data, and with extensive research and simulation validate to a high degree of accuracy that "hey our bombs still work".
Most countries do not have the data/technical expertise/resources to be able to validate with just simulation. But since no-one else is doing live tests, they do not do live tests either.
How much do you want to bet that a subset of the Russian nuclear weapons simply do not work, and that they will only figure this out when they need to 'test' in response to American tests.
My bet is that it is non-0.
Now, earnest question: what happens to the nuclear engine fuel at end of flight? While it certainly won't become critical it's likely the only part it stops being is "engine fuel".
(Of course the question above is irrelevant the moment the missile is fitted with a nuclear warhead)
However, testing it says nothing about whether the nuclear warheads still work, which is the nuclear testing in question.
My bet is that most of them are in disrepair. Russia spends around 8 Billion USD on nuclear weapons. France spends around 6 Billion USD on nuclear weapons. Difference is that France has something like 200 warheads, while Russia has something like 5500 warheads.
https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_spending_get_the_facts
Furthermore the fact that using of nuclear weapons has extremely low probability of happening is giving a massive space for corruption. Why maintain what you are not going to use? They managed to siphon money from maintenance of armored equipment, why not ICBMs?
We can get to the staggering reality like Russians have less than 100 working nukes and they themselves may not even know which one are those from those 5500
US spend: 57 billion USD; US GDP: 29,000 billion. US spend on nukes as % of GDP: 0.19%
Russia spend: 8 billion USD; Russia GDP: 2173 billion. Russia spend on nukes as % of GDP: 0.36%
France spend: 6 billion USD; France GDP: 3174 billion. French spend on nukes as % of GDP: 0.18%.
Your "staggering reality" of 100 working missiles is completely delusional.
At some level when people have enough technical skill to do these jobs well, they also have enough technical skill to leave the country and go elsewhere and do something else for better quality of life.
Like GDP per capita in china is much lower than the USA, I bet that their nuclear program engineers are getting paid at least ~80k range, which while less than the equivalent engineer in the USA is paid, is not the same level as what a direct PPP comparison would give.
With your logic Kongo should be able to afford 5500 nuclear warheads just by spending 0.4% pf GDP. That's not possible is it?
For the Russians it would be a mistake to rely on the unreliability or inferiority of their weapons - they historically are very adept at addressing those with sheer numbers.
Sadly, the world learned this lesson the hard way from Ukraine’s example: a country that gave up its nuclear arsenal for security guarantees, only to be invaded by the very power that signed them.
There is a huge active conflict in Ukraine, right in Europe, the Middle East and many other places like Africa. Many more conflicts are brewing like in Latin America, China, India/Pakistan etc.
There should be alarm bells going off. People aren't aware of just how massive and devastating this threat is.
In the 1980s there were huge protests about jucelar weapons that actually resulted in detente and a relaxation of tensions.
Right now tensions and conflicts are rising. Many people think the threat of nuclear weapons went away after the cold war. They never did.
Where are the peace movements? There has to be popular pressure to institute arms control, make peace and ultimately dismantle these nuclear weapons.
A lot of the "peace movements" of the past were financially and ideologically supported by the USSR and Russia [1].
There's nothing bad per se to say against pacifism, to the contrary - but the public image of pacifist movements these days has been heavily tarnished by both the obvious Russia-apologetism regarding the Ukraine war [2] and outright glorification of the horrors done by Hamas on Oct 7th.
[1] https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/wie-russische-einflussne...
[2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/zuviel-verstaendnis-fue...
I don't claim they don't exist any more, I claim they lost political relevance.
> and also they exist and are cheering for Hamas to kill Israelis
AI and HRW have a serious anti-Israel bias [1].
[1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-amnesty-international-suspended...
You could also argue that for such as small country Israel has managed disproportionate amounts of suffering and should be treated thereafter. I'm so sick of people taking the Israeli side as if they are some innocent nation being harassed by Hamas. They are ruthlessly killing Palestinians and the world is mostly acting as if this is a proper response to a single incident killing just a fraction of people. What Hamas did on the 7th of October 2023 was terrible, what Israel has done since then is way way way way worse, not even comparable. And going back in history it looks the same. AI and HRW is taking a stance against these terrible crimes, while the rest of the world is cheering on.
Legally, Israel would have had the right to wipe Palestine off the map as a response to this factual declaration of war until Hamas declares surrender.
"British democracy recognises that you need a system to protect the important things of life, and keep them out of the hands of the barbarians. Things like the Opera, Radio Three, the countryside, the law, the universities ... both of them."
You only vote for which lunatic to run the asylum. And I agree that there are differences among the lunatics, but what about the people who run the asylum?
"A common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -- Alice Walker
Other nations are subject to the penalties of the NTBT.
I hope that we all hope that fusion research will displace hazardous waste in energy production.
Peace movements are sponsored by lots of people in lots of nations.
Nixon, for example, worked to smear the pro-Peace antiwar folks as drug user hippies who couldn't figure out free booze at presidential parties who thus deserved to be incarcerated (without conjugal visits, rights over their bodies and their health, library books, or the right to vote) and marginalized.
People voted to cancel saboteurially-wasteful Reagan-Bush cold war star wars bs and invested in free trade and Peace.
The US is the only NATO member state that claims immunity for War Crimes before the ICC International Criminal Court.
The US just bullied other NATO nations into committing to spending 5% of GDP on defense spending by ~~2030~~ 2035 IIRC. Defense ETFs are up since this administration took office in January, and AI datacenter and AI spending are up, but we are now otherwise lacking in economic growth and we've stopped creating new jobs.
All nations suffer the opportunity costs of war; things we could have paid for instead like healthcare, infrastructure, and education will be underfunded due to zero-sum allocation of the proceeds in the coffer to fights that don't net Peaceful returns.
List of heads of state and government Nobel nominees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_and_gov...
List of individuals nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (2000–present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individuals_nominated_...
For example, W Bush and Blair were nominated for Nobel Peace Prizes in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 (while occupying Iraq and Afghanistan with ___ % civilian casualty rates (and while they were not paying the bill for the multi-trillion dollar debt-financed discretionary wars with Tax Cuts))
AFAIK, both fusion and fission rely on the same neutron radiation to extract energey from the reaction. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think fusion doesn't produce hazardous waste.
Fusion reactors are super hot and there can be thermal runaway, but you can just kill the electricity to kill some fusion reactors AFAIU.
There are described models where production of e.g. 3He (from standard D-T fusion or similar) is in a different facility than the fusion electricity production plants that process the 3He (in order to limit processing and distribution of hazardous materials).
Hopefully the nuclear transmutation folks can find a way to retrofit existing fission plants to burn the fuel further down before storage and transport; burn it all the way down in the existing casks with lasers and radiation please.
1. People feel "we won the cold war, so the threat of nuclear war is past". I do not think they are entirely wrong (the risk is still much lower) but its complacent to ignore it. I think it is worsened by people clinging to "end of history" theory.
2. Campaigning against nuclear weapons was far easier when the west was winning the cold war and dominated the world economy.
3. People who are worried about existential threats as now focused on climate change. People seem to be able to worry about only one big threat at a time. There are a number of others (space weather is another, pandemics were until we got a rude awakening) that get ignored.
Ukraine has also destroyed some Russian nuclear bombers and early warning radars. What do you think the Russians think of that? Nevermind who you think is more responsible for starting this war... Isn't it a bad thing for it to continue down this road? HIMARS, Patriot, ATACMS, Tomahawk, Storm Shadow, Taurus, F-16's and other jets... Is there any end to it?
I was asking about Moscow.
> Russian officials have made public statements saying they know we must operate the toys we're giving Ukraine
Ah yes, in line with their leader's propaganda that Ukraine has no culture of its own and should embrace conquest. I forgot about all the American soldiers and pilots that have been captured by Russia while operating F-16s and Javelins and Patriots.
> Ukraine has also destroyed some Russian nuclear bombers and early warning radars. What do you think the Russians think of that?
Probably whatever state television tells them to think.
> Isn't it a bad thing for it to continue down this road?
Clearly Putin doesn't think so or he'd withdraw. Let's just copy his homework and keep it going.
As I said there have been many attacks on Moscow. You can easily find stories for yourself such as this one: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-drone-attack-f...
>Ah yes, in line with their leader's propaganda that Ukraine has no culture of its own and should embrace conquest.
I've never heard this but it's irrelevant to whether or not the US should risk nuclear war over this.
>I forgot about all the American soldiers and pilots that have been captured by Russia while operating F-16s and Javelins and Patriots.
It is a fact that Ukraine does not know how to operate these systems, and they require data from US satellites. It takes quite a bit of training to get up to speed. Furthermore, if anything, Russia would flatten these systems with missiles rather than roll up to them and capture the operators.
>Probably whatever state television tells them to think.
The Russians know that their media is showing them propaganda. Certain Americans like yourself don't recognize that our media is also full of state-backed propaganda. This has been known for decades and some people never got the memo. It didn't stop with Operation Mockingbird. Our military literally has a psychological warfare division (like most others, probably).
>Clearly Putin doesn't think so or he'd withdraw. Let's just copy his homework and keep it going.
He will never withdraw. That is a suicidal fever dream. Are you a Ukrainian who drank the Kool-Aid that Zelinskyy is putting out? Or are you a propaganda agent?
Which one mentions missile strikes that you previously claimed? Missile strikes. On Moscow. Not light planes. Not "on Russia". The statement you made above.
> I've never heard this but it's irrelevant to whether or not the US should risk nuclear war over this.
Putin has made numerous statements claiming the illegitimacy of Ukrainian statehood and culture. It's not relevant to the risk of nuclear war but it is relevant to the point I was replying to about functionaries echoing the bigotry.
> It is a fact that Ukraine does not know how to operate these systems, and they require data from US satellites. It takes quite a bit of training to get up to speed.
Haha and now you are backpedaling from "US soldiers are physically operating the equipment" to "well... nobody knows how to use a Patriot without training". What is your deal? Are you just used to talking to ill-informed people? Okay good you've stuck with it...
> Russia would flatten these systems with missiles rather than roll up to them and capture the operators.
And now you're an expert on military doctrine. Okay general, so every Patriot battery has been struck from the air. Then the Ukrainian soldiers hastily removed the bodies to prevent the Russians from discovering and publicizing the presence of American ground units after taking the territory. Then paid off the families of the US troops to not mention their death. And of course there is no satellite or fpv footage of these US troops. Or leak from the Ukrainian rank and file about US military on the front line.
Honestly do you think for a minute before claiming something?
> Certain Americans like yourself don't recognize that our media is also full of state-backed propaganda.
Zzz.
> He will never withdraw. That is a suicidal fever dream.
Haha so who is to blame for nuclear tensions? The country not kinetically involved in the war (except with your ghost soldiers) or the madman who threatens nuclear escalation every five minutes? The person who you say wouldn't even withdraw from an offensive war if it meant nuclear holocaust?
> Are you a Ukrainian who drank the Kool-Aid that Zelinskyy is putting out? Or are you a propaganda agent?
Zzzzzzzz.
The current peace movement likes nuclear bombs. Which is odd, the old peace movement didnt, but it has been extremely effective difference.
But this distinction has essentially made nobody acknowledge them as a peace movement. Which is crazy, we finally have a peace movement that's successful and they dont get credit.
I'm sure most people now don't even consider a realistic concern, but just more posturing by two authoratative world leaders. In Putin's case, I'd be mostly inclined to agree with that position, considering he's in a stalemate in Ukraine and has basically reached his "wunderwaffe" stage of the war, where he has essentially nothing left to use to fight an entrenched war with and the only way he sees his position to get anything out with through any sort of diplomacy is via fear. Presumably, he knows it's not a tactic that could ever work. Perhaps it's more for his domestic audience than anything else.
[1] Hammer to Fall by Queen https://genius.com/Queen-hammer-to-fall-lyrics
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderwaffe?wprov=sfla1
Really? Yes there were protests, in the west (that sort of thing was generally frowned upon in the Eastern Bloc countries), but they didn't do much.
What I recall happening was that one of the principle parties started to suffer from a worsening economy and could sustainably maintain the spending the cold war demanded. When that party became much more conciliatory, progress on arms control resulted. Didn't end up saving them in the end.
Genuine question.
Nuclear testing just means it's game-on. Every other country will need to do testing to match the show of force. This is insanity. None of the doom-sayers were hyperbolic, voting in an idiot is truly dangerous.
Former Apprentice Star Donald Trump wins the US Presidency and re-enables nuclear testing
What the fuck is going on?
Nonetheless, yes, we're still on the brink of something gloomy. The movie is quite good, and would massively gain from spinoffs showing what happens in realtime in other countries too.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov :
“His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that would have likely resulted in a large-scale nuclear war.”
Spoilers ahead, in case you decide to watch this bleak 2 hour waste of time:
"Oooh, nothing works, ooohh, we're going to die". This should've been a 15 minute YouTube video, not a movie.
I mean, to be fair, this is the actual situation with nuclear weapons.
There's nothing you can do. You just... die. Everyone. There's no magic bullshit the US can pull out of it's ass to prevent it. One singular nuclear warhead can be enough to eradicate the entire population in the US.
If you think that wouldn’t happen, then you have to believe the US would accept a nuclear strike on one of its population centers and respond with conventional force and/or law enforcement. I am not confident!
Modern nuclear strategy does not aim to use nuclear weapons to immediately kill everybody in the US. We moved away from really big payloads towards smaller independent payloads with better targeting precision, along with greatly reducing the size of the stockpile.
How big would this warhead be? "One singular nuclear warhead" wasn't enough to eradicate the entire populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, much less Japan.
I found it excellent.
I thought it was excellent. And I was disappointed with the ending, but I also don't know that any other ending would have been better. The point of the ending to me is that literally no one on earth knows what would happen beyond that point.
Our very civilization is Schrodinger's box that's a few mins away from being opened.
The very last scene, which I won’t give away but involves buses, is one of the most haunting things I have ever seen.
The big question is whether China is confident enough with the data they have from 47 tests.
Any non-subcritical testing is a gift to China as they are severely lagging behind US on number of tests conducted and therefore amount of data collected about warhead design.
Resumption of tests would add fresh data to verify new warhead designs over the decades since the last test. US would have a lesser need for new data given the amount of testing done during the cold war.
If US does conduct a nuclear test I bet a whole slew of test from China would come very shortly after that. Work has already been noticed in recent years in the test tunnel.
https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/satellite-...
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/m... ("Golden Dome missile defense system could cost over $1 trillion")
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s... ("Golden Dome (missile defense system)")
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-tested-new-nuclea... ("Russia tested new nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile")
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik ("9M730 Burevestnik")
https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-triples-nuclear-a...
[1] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/annie-jacobsen/ [2] https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/
it's like the 1960s again, but with old people
We collectively played Russian roulette electing Trump in 2016. Doing it a second time last November was astonishingly stupid. I don't see how our luck can possibly hold.
We have to thank that this guy doesn't understand software otherwise he'd have banned internet services offered to other countries or used it as barganing tool.
America is made up of the millions of hard working men and women , but the excessive patriotism is concentrating too much power in the hands of the executives.
Reaching leves such as Saudi and UAE without all the free things that their citizens get because of the oil
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/putin-russias...