I’m less worried about that nuclear power plant than I am about putin being backed into a corner and starting a nuclear war. I’m not 100% sure I buy what all the pundits are saying about putin being “different” from before and possibly unstable. But it definitely seems possible.
He has said (paraphrasing) “what good is the world without Russia in it?” And he clearly doesn’t give a fuck about killing women and babies for no reason other than the glory of his beloved Soviet Union – oops, I mean Russia. What if he sees that before long the economic sanctions are going to ruin his country? What if he senses that the oligarchs are going to turn on him? In what way could the oligarchs turn on him besides assassinating him? It doesn’t seem at all unlikely that he will soon conclude that it’s him or all of us. Would he push the button then? Would somebody stop him?
What are the chances that putin just gives up and retreats? Practically zero, I would guess. I think the most likely outcome is an occupation of Ukraine by putin. No revelation there. But then what? Between economic sanctions and the costs of war, Russia can’t economically survive for long. I have no idea whether the oligarchs will put up with that, and I don’t really know whether or not they have both the capability and the huevos to assasinate putin. If they don’t, then what? Putin just watches his country die while his citizens turn against him? Propaganda is a strong force, especially in Russia. I suppose it’s possible that his citizens, deceived by his propaganda, won’t think it’s his fault in sufficient numbers and with sufficient energy to do anything about it. Whether they turn against him or not, though, the country will be economically devastated within, I don’t know, a couple years anyway. Is putin just going to sit there and let that happen? Will he just sit there knowing he failed to do anything but ruin two countries, including his beloved Russia? More worryingly, will he, at some point, see all of this ahead of him and lash out before all that happens?
Putin is obviously a psychopath. Fellow psychopaths stalin and hitler (and others throughout history) had no problem killing millions of people for the glory of their state (or their ego, or their race, or whatever really drove them). Does it matter to a psycopath like that if its several million or several billion?
All that said, I would still put the risk of global nuclear war in the next 2 years at maybe 1 in 300. Which is up an awful lot from the 1 in 10,000 odds I’d have estimated a year ago.
I’m no expert on any of this, so I don’t really know if any of the above even makes sense in real life. And I would like to hear others’ opinions. But it makes sense to me.
I have always been the opposite of these guys who always think the apocalypse is coming. Storing guns and ammo and learning survival techniques. But a 1 in 300 chance was enough to prompt me to buy a fishing net and a shotgun. It turns out I already have a lot of other things that would be helpful to survive such a scenario. Looking into water stills or other purification methods. $400 total for a shotgun and a fishing net (and a few other things) seems like cheap insurance. Of course, I’d have to survive the attacks for any of this to matter. But it’s possible that we’d see it coming a day or two in advance and have time to get out of dodge (away from Miramar, Camp Pendleton, North Island, etc).
One more fact about putin. He’s been reported to be fascinated with Russia’s nuclear armaments. An unstable psychopath, fascinated with nuclear weapons and determined to return Russia to glory, backed into a corner with no way out of disaster for his beloved Russia, which he thinks the world is worthless without. For a few hundred bucks that I’ll never miss, I’ll give my family a little bit better odds of surviving a worst-case scenario.
