If You Ever See This Speed Sign, You're Probably Going to Die
143 comments
·January 14, 2025killjoywashere
0xbadcafebee
Nationalists are not motivated by reason. Just telling them they're going to start a nuclear war isn't a deterrent. Loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, ethnicity, borders, tradition, etc are their primary motivators today. If they have to end the world with nukes to protect "their" nation, then by golly, that's what they'll do. Self-preservation isn't as important as preservation of the ethos.
Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause.
The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.
tipiirai
Well said. I can strongly feel this happening in Finland, which became a racist country in one year.
matthewdgreen
The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.
lamontcg
> North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US.
Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep.
They also need to be able to hit a location accurately.
And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it.
Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
openasocket
North Korea has successfully tested multiple missile launches on a lofted trajectory that demonstrated an intercontinental range. I believe both the hwasong 17 and 18 are capable of hitting the continental United States. Rentry vehicles have been demonstrated multiple times. Accuracy is a bit more of a concern, but with a thermonuclear weapon missing a city by 10 miles is still more than enough to cause millions of casualties.
The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.
titzer
> Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
Indeed, so hard that it took until 1957 for the US to master them....
Not trivialize the effort of making such rockets and reentry vehicles, but the North Koreans only have 6-10 countries to follow, at least two of which are semi-friendly to them and two more that they could crib tech from. Oh, and they have computers and it's not the 1950s anymore.
Dalewyn
>Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs.
Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
nocoiner
So that just means that if they ever make the political decision to pursue nuclear armament, they’ll call it the Japan Strategic Self-Defense Force.
As it is, Japan probably already has nukes that are all-but-assembled. Even if they don’t, they’re at most a handful of months away from taking whatever steps remain for a highly advanced industrial economy with existing nuclear infrastructure to finish building a bomb or two.
teractiveodular
That would absolutely happen if China invaded Taiwan and the US stood by twiddling its fingers.
Remember, Sweden and Finland were staunchly against NATO membership until Russia invaded Ukraine.
naniwaduni
National attitudes have a remarkable ability to shift in response to neighbors getting invaded, as we learned a couple of years ago.
BurningFrog
Japan could of course do it in secret, like others have.
option
The Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO.
This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
monero-xmr
Hong Kong was very different than Taiwan would be. Taiwan will be a bloodbath as an armed, diehard anti-communist population fights to the death.
And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.
HWR_14
Unless its existence and defiance of China was a sore point. Then an uninhabited ruin might be appealing.
actionfromafar
That notion didn't stop Russia from scorching Ukraine, can't see why it would stop China.
markus_zhang
I doubt there would be any meaningful resistance, TBH.
jaco6
[dead]
whatsupdog
[flagged]
TOMDM
The only ones normalising war are the ones carrying water for Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with rampant conspiracism fed by a healthy dose of Russian propoganda.
Even Putin doesn't parrot the Russian propoganda, the only ones still eating that out of the trough are Americans. Putin when interviewed by Tucker just talked of the history of the Soviet Union, and the strength and cultural ties of that block.
NATO expansionism as a justification for Russia's annexation of Ukraine is an excuse reserved only for those dumb enough to believe Russian propoganda.
mopsi
Blatantly untrue. Russia got all it wanted: Ukraine seeked NATO membership in 2008, Russia threw a temper tantrum, the US, France and Germany bailed out of the invitation, and Russia invaded Ukraine a few years later without having to risk with getting hit with NATO nukes in retaliation.
elzbardico
And yet, it was the current administration that put the world the closest to a Nuclear War with Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was on the current administration that we substituted the bad Assad in Syria for motherfucking worse ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
It was on the current administration where Israel promoted a genocide in Gaza while ramping up agressions against Lebanon and increased the violations against the palestines on the occupied west bank.
Please spare me your liberal pearl clutching about how fucked we are without "the adults on control" of foreign policy.
aardvarkr
Huh? What did the current administration do to force Russia to invade a sovereign nation? How did this administration topple Assad? Laughable that you think it’s ISIS running the show. How did the current administration convince Hamas to launch a war against Israel? Gtfo with your “liberal Pearl clutching” lmao you’re a joke
ls612
MAD precludes total wars of national survival ala WW2. It does not at all preclude the sorts of cabinet wars that were fought between the European powers for centuries before Napoleon.
killjoywashere
If we crossed the Yalu River today, do you think we'd be alive tomorrow to talk about it? Nuclear deterrence, as part of the taboo, prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power. The only exception I know of is the Yom Kippur War, and if there is ever a person who never received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize, it's Golda Meir.
teractiveodular
Yes? North Korea's own nuclear capability is very limited, and China doesn't care enough about North Korea to use its own arsenal and risk nuclear annihilation.
I still wouldn't want to be in Seoul or Tokyo if that happens though, and yes, there's a non-zero risk somebody somewhere gets trigger happy and things spiral out of control.
Spooky23
Ukraine crossed the Russian frontier. The Russians escalated by importing cannon fodder from North Korea.
I think the better question would be if China crossed the Yalu River today and joined the North Koreans to assault South Korea, what would the response of the US, South Korea, and Japan be? The latter two can trivially develop nuclear weapons if the US security situation degrades.
I think wielding nuclear weapons requires a baseline level of competence to exploit.
waveBidder
China has a no first strike policy for now, so yes. Doesn't mean we'd have a good time though.
Gvaskas
[flagged]
Retric
The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history.
O, no someone claims things are failing. Look people have been saying that for thousands of years it doesn’t actually mean it’s true.
elzbardico
The west can't even make enough artillery shells in one year to overcome Russia's monthly production. Fucking Russia for God's sake.
Dalewyn
>The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history.
I would argue the West was at its peak in the mid to late 20th century when we were so awesome we conquered the god damn Moon, made transcontinental, transoceanic and even space travel quick and mundane, invented the microprocessor, and then finally invented a communication system that connected the entire world.
Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline.
The world becomes more tumultuous every year, the East is clearly catching up and has in some aspects already surpassed the West, the Middle East is a bigger tinderbox than humanity has ever known, and liberal values like free speech and equal opportunity have become decisively unpopular.
A paradigm shift is coming, probably this century within most of our lifetimes, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to smell that.
AlotOfReading
What a strange argument. Nationalism is only around around 200 years old, because it's one of the basic ideas that formed the modern era.
Gvaskas
We might have only given it a name 200 years ago. It was the default state for all of human history, and still is in the animal kingdom.
A population of people of shared blood and history sharing a homeland in pursuit of common values and ambitions, violently defending it from foreigners whenever necessary.
Not a soulless economic zone where foreigners are treated like royalty by traitors and treasonous authorities.
d_e_solomon
I'm pretty sure people who grew up under feudalism with no loyalty to a national state still saw their child as their child and not a compatriot. What a weird take.
Dalewyn
>nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII.
WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.
WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes.
Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.
BurningFrog
> WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.
The murderer Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist, who committed the murder for nationalist reasons.
dullcrisp
So you’re saying that if we want to avoid World War 3 we have to get rid of nationalism in Serbia?
vkou
That was just the excuse everyone used to have a go at eachother. Russia didn't want its pan-slavic ambitions to get embarrassed again (as they were with the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia), France wanted revenge, Austria-Hungary wanted to remind everyone that they were still around and relevant, Germany wanted to establish supremacy on the continent, the UK wanted to curtail German ambitions, and prevent the rise of a rival empire.
Everyone was itching for a fight, all for incredibly stupid, selfish reasons, and unleashed a war that butchered an entire generation of Europe's youth. Three of the five major belligerents had their governments overthrown, and that was two too few.
barnabyjones
The nationalist spirit is founded on imperial ambitions, and the pieces were in place for WWI partly due to empires and pretenders who would claim the title of "empire" both increasingly desperate to cement their legitimacy through power projection.
Starlevel004
> WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad
So bad that germany was the strongest economy in interwar Europe under ten years later? If anything, the allies was nowhere near harsh enough on Germany; the state should have been systemically dismantled and remade as an inoffensive rump state.
option
you can’t have de-escalation from just one side. When one side has embraced facism, invades neighbors and does hybrid attacks against you the only path that does not lead to MAD is when you are so overwhelmingly stronger that they have no choice but back up or die.
The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.
waveBidder
You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.
aardvarkr
What do you think maintains those no-go lines? The threat of recklessly gambling mass death if those lines are crossed
option
What do you do when those lines are crossed? Like they have been repeatedly.
Over2Chars
The virulent anti-nationalists are, themselves, often a very pro-war faction.
vlz
Can you give an example? Honestly don’t know who this is supposed to be.
Over2Chars
Virulent anti-nationalists are generally marxist leninist communists.
The rhetoric of the anti-nationalists is generally implicitly or explicitly "internationalist". In early Communist organization names they often used the word "international" and I think they even have a toe tappin' song by that name:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4
And if you doubt the second part "are often pro-war" this is the doctrine of divide and conquer, civil war (called "class war") in which the target of their anti-nationalist colonialism is provoked into disorder before the "forces of liberation" can swoop in and expand the mother country.
This has been endlessly documented in many places. Probably one of the better ones is George Orwell's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia
redox99
The title and some of the comments assume it would be something like if you take 15 extra minutes you would just die. When in reality it would just be an increase in cancer risk. If it were THAT contaminated they'd use the AREA CLOSED the article mentions anyways.
To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.
somerandomqaguy
I'd imagine the concern is the radioactive dust / fallout getting stuck onto the vehicle, clothes, and hair which would increase your exposure time; getting through that zone as quick as possible could limit that dust sticking. But that's just my guess.
jcgrillo
[delayed]
titzer
This is the problem. It's not just being in the area, it's inhalation/ingestion and direct exposure to radioactive dust. If you look at [https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Quick%2...], the levels just from increased radiation from a single detonation there are certainly not fatal in a few minutes, but with multiple detonations it's not difficult to get a lethal dose in a few or hours or a day or two. Couple that with the inhalation/contamination issue, and yeah, be afraid.
If I saw that sign I'd be a hell of a lot more concerned than "oh, miniscule cancer risk later in life, meh, I guess I'll just slowboat this one".
adamredwoods
Some Chernobyl radiation levels recorded in 2009, were not this high. (They were higher in the blast, though.)
https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiatio...
teractiveodular
Interestingly enough, the Fukushima exclusion zone has roads that pretty much fit the bill. They're the pink lines on this map (PDF), with the exclusion zone in gray:
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pd...
You are permitted to drive through but not stop or get out of your car. I presume ordinary speed limits apply though, so no exciting post-apocalyptic signage.
XorNot
That's likely because alpha and beta emitters are trivially blocked by common car materials, but getting your skin covered in them or inhaling them does much more damage (this is actually what killed a lot of Chernobyl firefighters: they wore their dust covered coats for hours, and died of sepsis from extensive beta burns. Had they been decontaminated quickly, they would've survived).
bpye
I’m not 100% convinced by that as motorcycles are also permitted in some cases?
hobobaggins
As you'd find if you drove a motorcycle fast enough in the rain, a motorcycle with a fairing and windshield will sweep the rain (or dust) over and past you and you only get wet when you stop at a light. Perhaps that's the case here as well.
XorNot
It's more the dust issue. Like, someone on a motorcycle who doesn't stop isn't going to pick up an appreciable amount from the road way. But if you pull over, get out, stroll around in the dirt in your boots etc.?
IronWolve
Driving in montana before the state implemented a max speed, I'd have my cruise control set at 100 mph. I remember seeing limos pass me like I was sitting still.
I miss those days.
AcerbicZero
Reasonable and prudent is objectively the best speed limit.
Going 110 on a dry empty highway? Carry on.
Going 110 on I-90 right outside of Billings? Pull over young man, its time for the highway patrol to have a philosophical discussion with you on the side of the road.
hobobaggins
The problem is that it's literally subjectively the best speed limit, at least from the standpoint of that young man outside of Billings.
magneticnorth
Driving through Montana is how I discovered my current car won't let me set the cruise control higher than 90 mph.
Probably for the best, they do have 80 mph speed limits now, but lots of drivers there still drive like there's no speed limit.
ajmurmann
Visit Germany. The right stretch of Autobahn at the right time and you can still experience this. I just did two days ago.
timeon
It depends where in Germany. Many parts of Autobahn have local speed regulations.
Archelaos
To be exact: Out of 25,758 km Autobahn in Germany 18,115 km have no speed limit (70.4%) and another 1,608 km (6.2 %) have gantries without speed limit under favourable conditions (construction sites not taken into account).[1]
There are also some other roads that are not included in these figures because they are not classified as Autobahn, but Autobahn-like carriageways. Germany has around 3,350 km of them, a few without speed limit.[2]
[1] Source: ADAC report from 2024-04-22 (in German), see https://www.adac.de/verkehr/standpunkte-studien/positionen/t...
[2] For examples see the German Wikipedia article "Autobahnähnliche Straße" at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn%C3%A4hnliche_Stra%C3%...
LeftHandPath
What a perfect invitation to get on one of my favorite soapboxes. Spoiler: I'm a big fan of Brock Yates.
Speed limits are an imperfect tool for an important problem. They were generally much higher, or nonexistent, on US highways before the 1973 oil crisis [0]. They were intended to save fuel, but weren't very effective. Nowadays, most people discuss them as a safety tool.
They aren't great for that, either. Speed disparity is the best way to cause an accident, with those going at least 5MPH under or 15MPH over the 85th percentile speed being the most dangerous drivers on the road. Limits force people to choose between going a comfortable speed and following the rules. When the difference between comfortable and legal speed is too high, you get situations where raising the limit can reduce the rate of accidents (citation discusses stats, my suggested reasoning is more speculative) [1]. There are still of course many cases where setting a slower speed limit has reduced accidents [2], but that effect is not universal. Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Consider long, straight, flat roads with 2+ lanes on each side, a median, no sidewalks, infrequent turn and/or merge lanes, with ample room to speed up or slow down, and speed limits of 50 MPH or lower. There are several near me. They are painful to drive, because they breed traffic tickets, tailgating, and accidents. Hell, the people on either side of the "go a comfortable speed" and "go a legal speed" even fight each other, making rolling roadblocks to slow traffic, or giving way to road rage.
Either raise the limit, or add curves, trees, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc to convince people to slow down. I tend more towards the "I can't drive 55" side [3] because I think it's generally better for the economy when people and goods can move faster. Edit: For a specific example, from Kansas City, the 9+ hour drive to Colorado Springs or Denver (at 70MPH) makes it nearly impossible to go there. There's very little traffic on I70 past Topeka. Without a speed limit, I could easily do the trip in a little over 4 hours in my C350. That would be FANTASTIC for the economies on either side of that stretch (not to mention along it).
If you're not familiar with Brock Yates and his influence, check out [4, 5, 6].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
[1]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212135021.h...
[2]: https://jalopnik.com/iihs-finds-that-lowering-speed-limits-a...
[3]: https://youtu.be/RvV3nn_de2k?si=mLYQIkwlHCDPr6ec
[4]: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/a15143608/the-...
hhmc
> Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Obviously this is true, and especially important at low speeds, but I wonder how much difference there is between 70 and 80 — I would have assumed they are both typically fatal
mminer237
The energy is exponential. It takes 30% farther to stop going 80 than it does going 70.
One of my favorite trivia is the scenario that a car going 50 mph sees an obstruction in front and slams on its brakes and stops just in time just tapping it. A car next to him going 70 mph sees the same object, has faster reflexes, and hits his brakes at the exact same spot of the road. He slams into the object at 50 mph.
Just the difference between 70 and 80 is the energy of going almost 40 mph.
linsomniac
I never really got to enjoy those days. The path I'd typically take through Montana had a speed limit: 90 was about as fast as I could go and still get good enough MPG to make it to the next gas station...
TacticalCoder
[dead]
takk309
This sign is still available per the 11th edition of the MUTCD but under a different designation, EM2-3. Section 2N.06
mugwumprk
Weird. I wonder how those signs were supposed to be installed. So dangerous you need to blow through at 120mph, but safe enough for a worker to stand there for awhile installing a new sign.
xboxnolifes
Military. Acceptable working conditions are significantly lower than for civilian workers. Particularly in the scenario where these signs would be installed.
waveBidder
You put the sign far enough outside the zone, you wear ppe, and you decontaminate afterwards.
boomboomsubban
Worse, they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation.
Also, how fast is "safe" when seemingly you'll regularly be encountering crashed cars from people who didn't make it?
thfuran
What do you mean crashed cars from people who didn't make it? The sign is basically a "minimum speed 40 mph" sign routinely seen on the interstates but with a bit more teeth. The sides of highways aren't usually lined with crashed cars (except occasionally when winter gets feisty).
boomboomsubban
I understood it as "this level of radiation could kill you in hours, but this is the only way to a fallout shelter." Reading other posts made after mine I appear to be mistaken.
myself248
If I have permission to do 150, you bet I'm going to do 150. Even though I don't exactly have a ton of experience doing it. A fair number of people are going to misjudge, overcontrol, suffer equipment failures, etc.
XorNot
It's worth considering that a lot of places aren't safe for the general public while being perfectly safe for trained workers.
Radioactive contamination is mostly dangerous from the alpha/beta emitting dust, not the gamma rays. The dust is only dangerous if you get it on you or stir it up and breathe it.
Trained crews with proper procedures and gear can manage a risk like that, your average citizen can't. And since there is a hazard, you're obligated to give correct advice - i.e. leave as soon as possible.
NoPicklez
The sign could be installed using appropriate safety gear no?
ALittleLight
Probably put the signs up at the outer limits of the zone and/or using safety gear. Worker in Hazmat suit at the periphery is probably fine.
null
timeon
There were volunteers even in Chernobyl. (Not-really volunteers as well)
manquer
> (Not-really volunteers as well)
There were many volunteers at Chernobyl, like the three engineers who went underwater to close the valves, many people fully understood the risks associated and still worked on it voluntarily. Lets not belittle their sacrifices by snide political commentary
slackfan
Let's also not belittle the sacrifice of the unwilling prisoners sent to die
maxwellg
Who would be willing to take the risk to do road maintenance in a radiation zone? Hitting a pothole at 120 mph would be devastating.
karamanolev
Depends on the pothole, but for some, driving at a higher speed is actually better than lower speed (short and deep ones) - the wheels just don't have enough time to fall significantly.
0xbadcafebee
I believe the wheels still fall the same amount (the springs are pushing them down) but the suspension works faster/more efficiently. Once the wheel either bottoms out in the pothole or hits the trailing edge, the spring sends the wheel up faster due to the energy from the impact. The shock is thus pushed up faster, and upon reaching its full contraction, settles back down into position to level the suspension on the road. The car ends up moving less in space and the suspension regains its position faster. If the car were moving slower, gravity, momentum and the inefficient suspension would end up moving the car itself more which has a larger impact on the ride.
wiseowise
Absolute cancer of a website.
Autoplaying sticky video, every two paragraphs of text interrupted with huge ad block.
hardibro
Hey, publisher here. We tend to look at our competition and do half or less the number of ads. That means there's an ad unit every sixth node, not every two paragraphs (so three paragraphs, two images an embed or five paragraphs or whatever). The video player doesn't stick if you're a member, because we are partially member-supported. If you'd like to see fewer ads you can become a member!
karamanolev
I appreciate the comment. FWIW, I understand you need to survive and I also think it's not the worst I've seen.
hardibro
Thanks, it's tough being a small publisher. Many of our competitors use a ton of ads, which screws with ad rates, and we use the usual off-the-shelf tools, but people still get mad that we have any ads. It's exciting.
batch12
Or use reader mode and/or an adblocker
pessimizer
> Autoplaying sticky video
Not only autoplaying, but I've got my browser settings so screwed with and tuned that I haven't had a video autoplay on me in at least a year, and this one broke right through.
They should be proud. It's probably the most invasive ad on the web.
hardibro
It shouldn't be playing sound, so I hope that didn't happen. Also, we use one of the three biggest off-the-shelf video players. We're a very small independent publisher so it's not like we tuned it specially. In fact, we put more restrictions on the video player than most of our competitors (and make less money because of it).
naming_the_user
Wouldn't a higher speed turn up more dust and make things worse in general if your aim is to prevent the effects of radiation, given that inhaling alpha/beta is worse than the effects of gamma?
dangoodmanUT
Everyone who doesn't see this sign is also going to die
vikingerik
To save you a click on this clickbait: the sign is "Maintain Top Safe Speed", and the intent is to tell you to spend minimum time on this road to get out of this area as soon as you can because of nuclear contamination.
baxtr
Maintain top speed leaving this site I’d say!
They had two cookie banners for me.
Click deny on the first, get greeted by the second one and then still get 3 ads in between a single sentence.
> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.
THEY STILL DO!!!!
This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism