in my history class we just stared talking about Nuclear weapons and we all know that every one was afraid of them in the cold war but if no one is going to use them are they not just chunks of metal and they hold no real power any more.
I think countries are too afraid to use them. they don't want to fire one and then looked down upon and have others say, "You cheated you lazy B*stard"
That's the point though. They won't use them, except for the threat. If a country's at the brink of destruction due to an invasion, who's to say what that country's leader will decide? Its a mind game, that's practicably impossible to win. So that's why we have politics in the world, because its one of the few ways to affect other country's without getting the shit blown out of yours
They do have one use. Now we are truely about to destory each other we now are too scared to really start a big war again i.e. WWIII. Kind of like Gort in The day the Earth Stood Still.
GaNgSta, that was freakin hilarious! Anyways, on topic.
Nukes are not good practical weapons. However, they are needed for intimidation and a principle called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Basically, you fire at us, we fire at you. Quite a scary proposition really, which is the point. BUT, once we launch our nukes, we'll most likely be dead before they hit the ground, which sucks.
Nukes keep the world from descending into mass conventional warfare a la 20th cenutry. You may not like what they are capable of, but overall, the net benefits they bring affect all of us.
The whole point is that we have them just in case. Even if there is an agreement between countries not to use them, the only people enforcing these rules are other countries, and who is to say that these other countries don't break the rules and bomb us? If we decided t destroy all of our nukes, because hey we are not going to use them, then other countries would be more likely to build nukes and attack us. But since we are following the rules, while sitting on a huge stockpile of nuclear bombs and missiles, no one will mess with us. Especially since we prove that we don't think twice about annihilating countries, like we did during WWII.
