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What are people's guesses for when the first nuclear weapon (since WWII) will be fired?
Could it happen before 2030? Before 2040? In our lifetimes? And between which actors, and in what context? And how would the likelihood of this change depending on political changes like upcoming elections (both in the US and elsewhere?) This isn't necessarily referring to a MAD scenario or global nuclear war, simply any non-test use of such weapons by a state or group for military purposes.
I'm far from an expert on geopolitics but my sense is that these are the regions where this is likeliest to happen:
1/ The Middle East
Since the start of the Israel/Gaza war, US and global efforts have been overwhelmingly focused on convincing Israel to abandon military action. Whether or not you agree with that, it's hard to imagine that Hamas/Hezbollah/The Houthis/Iran will look at this and feel anything but emboldened to continue attacking Israel in the near future (as is already happening with Hezbollah in the north). An extreme hypothetical scenario is one where Iran and its proxies continue making war on Israel while Western nations distance themselves more and more, refusing diplomatic support and eventually imposing economic sanctions including prohibitions on the sale of weapons. Backed into a corner and beginning to face existential threats, Israel launches one or more tactical nuclear strikes to change the situation on the battlefield.
With the Democrats increasingly hostile to Israel and in favour of conciliatory action towards Iran, and Donald Trump's likely intention to maintain his prior administration's forceful foreign policy in the region, I think this is the one situation where the choice of next US president will have the largest impact on whether we see nuclear weapons get used.
I'm going to make the prediction that there's a 50% chance Israel launches a nuke in some capacity by 2030 if Biden is elected later this yearSince posting, people have pointed out that tactical nukes aren't especially useful for, so instead I'll predict there's a 50% chance they launch a nuke by 2040.2/ Ukraine
This is another obvious candidate for where we might see nukes used. This is something that has been talked about since 2022 although obviously nothing like this has come to pass. With greater resources and numbers of soldiers, it's hard to imagine Putin feeling the need to escalate the situation in such a manner, unless the West starts deploying their troops such that the course of the war radically changes.
This is another situation where the choice of next US president will play a crucial role, although it's less obvious IMO what effect this choice will have. Biden has been rhetorically and financially supportive of Ukraine, but has been cautious of engaging the US more deeply in the war, only recently permitting Ukraine to strike inside Russia using US weapons. Trump's friendly attitude towards Putin is well known, as is his skepticism towards foreign intervention, but he's also unpredictable and belligerent. I've seen the point made here that he may take the idea of the US "losing" in Ukraine as an affront to his pride and consequently decide to escalate.
3/ China and Taiwan
This feels less likely than the previous two examples, mostly because there's no active conflict in the region yet so there are still several further stages of escalation that would need to be crossed before nuclear weapons become worth considering for anyone involved. The US also seems to be taking steps to reduce their dependence on Taiwan. On the other hand, the US is interested in countering Chinese influence for reasons that go beyond the situation with Taiwain, and if China starts making SK and Japan worried enough to think about establishing their own nuclear programs, the US might start to find its credibility in the region tested.
4/ Pakistan and India
I unfortunately know almost nothing about the situation here, besides the fact that these are two nuclear armed neighboring states with a pretty unfriendly history, which felt like a good enough reason to add them to this discussion.
This is one of those things that's really hard to say except that the odds are low.
The naive estimate is that nuclear weapons have been used in only 1 year out of the 80 they have existed. So the odds they are used in the next 12 months is on the order of 1/80, and the mean next use would occur in
22042104.Let's try to adjust that number a bit.
There are more nuclear powers today than there were in the past
The world is more peaceful than in the past.
These seem to cancel each other out. So I think a 1-2% chance per year is a fair estimate with huge error bars obviously.
We don't really have a framework to know how countries would decide to use nukes. It's only happened once. Looking at the one occurrence, the U.S. nuked Japan because the chance of retaliation was zero and it (probably) saved a couple million lives.
I think the India/Pakistan or Israel/Iran conflicts are unlikely to result in the use of nukes because serious retaliation is certain. The country most likely to nuke another right now is probably Russia. If the Ukraine War starts to go badly for them, they might threaten a limited nuclear attack, knowing that the West would never risk a full exchange. But even then, I think the odds of this occurring are quite low.
I think you mean 2104, and I'm not sure it's fair to ignore the fact that two bombs were dropped in 1945 -- 2/80 = 1/40, which... doesn't seem crazy? The attitude towards possible nuclear great-power conflict seems to be markedly more casual than it was in the 80s, at least in some circles -- if this trend continues things get a bit scary.
As a rationalist, I always like to annoy people by pointing out that a full nuclear exchange won't cause human extinction. Nuclear winter is a flawed concept. And some of the weapons will fail. And others will miss. And commanders will defy orders. And radiation isn't that bad. So, like, maybe only tens of millions people die in the first few weeks.
Then I heard people who have actual power talking in a cavalier way about nuclear weapons and I stopped being so smug. It might not be an X-Risk, but it's bad.
The main risk is food supply chain collapse leading to starvation and more instability, but if you live near farmland it's probably not going to be that much of a risk for you.
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