Should the US government develop new materials for nuclear weapons though scientists say the current stockpile will be viable for years to come?

No

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by T. M. Beeker

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Nuclear Weapons are the physical evidence of mass insanity. The idea behind production and improvement of the weapons was MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) so the more you had and the more deadly they were the less likely war was. Yes, get a rabid Great Dane because the neighbors have two rabid poodles and so on and on. By the middle of the 1960s both the United States and Soviet Union had stockpiles large enough to vaporize their opponents cities and geography yet, we continued to build more weapons testing them to find a higher yield with the same or less material.

Clearly since the Soviet Union no longer exists this strategy was a success. Nope, economic forces not nuclear ones eliminated that system from our home planet. Which begs the question of why we did it in the first place. Well Ike on his way out of office said something akin to Washington's advice against political parties and foreign entanglements. He warned us to avoid creating a military-industrial complex. So just like with George (Washington not Bush) we ignored that sound advice and established an economy that ran on a war footing without the annoying and deadly fighting part. We scrambled to build bombers, missiles, subs and other platforms to deliver nuclear payloads which the 'experts' claimed would eliminate the need for anachronisms like dog fights, fire fights, and any conventional fighting. Good for the economy, bad for the environment (nuke waste), political power (we lost trust in cold warriors), and international peace (NATO, Warsaw Pact, SEATO, and other agreements to fight).

One benefit of the break-up of the Soviet Union was literally thousands of warheads and delivery devices could be lost and later found by terror groups. No, they will not fire an ICBM at us but fire off a dirty (low yield high radiation) nuke in a metropolitan area or water supply. So thanks to the stockpile we never needed terrorists have another great weapon suited to their style of attack with low cost for the budget conscience.

The solution is not only to stop development and never again consider production but use our smarts to safely store such weapons and materials. Heck, let's get the same 500 pound heads who dreamed up these nightmares to figure out how to speed up the radioactive decay thereby making safe the materials.

Hopefully, we as a species have figured out things so we never again stockpile weapons with the insane reasoning that just having them will avert war. War is use of force for political gain. Stockpiling arms for 'peace' is a means to keep people in jobs producing materials and weapons. Nuclear weapons were developed and produced to help us '...stand toe to toe with the Ruskies.' since the Russians are now 'allies' and no other power on the planet possess as many as we do its time to let sanity step up.

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