Railcar-launched ICBM - photos

[nova_robotics]

I have this little prayer I say to myself whenever that thought enters my mind. "Please make them ALL malfunction if the button is ever pushed".

We have enough conventional stuff to wipeout most of civilization. That would at least leave the place somewhat survivable for any of the poor souls that happen to survive.

Crazy times for sure.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Russia doesn't actually have any functioning nuclear weapons. Corrupt officials have been pocketing funds meant for the military for decades. We've been able to see that with Ukraine. The Russian military is a rotted out husk. Now pretend you're one of these corrupt officials. You could either run the high risk of getting caught by siphoning money out of the very visible active military (which they have clearly been doing) or you could steal money from the basically invisible, never to be caught in your lifetime nuclear weapons maintenance program. Nuclear weapons that everyone understands can never be used. It would be a free for all. I would be willing to wager that essentially zero maintenance has been performed on these weapons for at least 20 years. The seals have gone bad, the control surfaces have all seized up, mice have eaten all the wire insulation, the batteries have definitely all since died and the electronics are no longer working. And probably a dozen other problems. I would suspect they would need a complete overhaul to be functional.

For a country that's in economic trouble it's a no brainer that a) you would cut back on nuclear weapons maintenance spending as first order of business and b) even if you did continue spending, corrupt officials would steal it.