IMO, no effect. How many times has a nuclear weapon been used in a hostile situation? Again, IMO, nuclear weapons don't count for anything. The establishment of NATO, UN, etc, helps see to that.

People won't feel safer because biological/chemical weapons can pose a large threat and are still around.

I doubt the political scene would change. Why would it? No one's going to suddenly attack a country just because it doesn't have nuclear weapons any more, are they?

This is why I think N. Korea's (or any other country for that matter) attempts at building nuclear stockpiles are fruitless.

Quote:Original post by Beige
I have been working on a storyline for a game where, through technological means, nuclear arms have been suddenly and abruptly negated.

Weapons of mass destruction are still present, biological and chemical, but no large-scale city leveling weapons that can be carried in a briefcase exist. No more ICBM's. Nuclear weapons have been rendered completely harmless.

I was curious to see what your thoughts on the repercussions of such an event would be. Mostly in the world political arena, but also socially as well. Say it took place in the present, plus or minus twenty years.

Just nitpicking, but the only suitcase-sized nuclear weapons there are are a wee bit too heavy to lift.

I rather like the "Wet Firecracker" theory, which states that a Nuclear Bomb is unusable a decade after it's production do to oxidation of the uranium (or plutonium). It goes along the lines that to keep uranium from oxidizing, you have to keep it in a perfect vacumm. Then, ship it around the country, put it in a stockpile, put it in a missile, remove it from a missile, put it in a stockpile, ship it around the country, your vacumm loses it's perfection gradually as the occasional O2 molecule slips into the chamber.

Its a bit weak, but one could get away with assuming that the nuclear threat isn't possible anymore simply because most of the usable weapons grade materials have rusted.

Oh, and the anti-ballistic missile shields. They stop nukes too.

Quote:Original post by Beige
I was curious to see what your thoughts on the repercussions of such an event would be. Mostly in the world political arena, but also socially as well. Say it took place in the present, plus or minus twenty years.

I'm going to use a principle that Jim Dunnigan, famous wargame developer and student of history has observed: When offensive pwoer dwarfts defensive capability, you get detente, negotiation, low intensity conflict and police actions against weaker or technologically inferior foes. When defensive power dwarfs offensive power, you get constant, large scale war between very capable rivals who use mass combat to overwhelm their enemy's defensive power.

You'd need more specifics for a more detailed scenario. Do you agree that nations act in their best interest and that there is a fuel shortage coming? If so, this is going to push nations like China to flex their power against American economic dominion. You could get a return of southeast asian conflic with China as a principle player securing fuel rights.

The worldwide trend now is toward tribalism and low intensity conflict. But without worrying about large scale weapons, two very big nations could go at it over fuel rights. Even allies could break up. There's no real point in NATO anymore unless Russia reverts into dictatorship, so you may even have fighting amongst European nations again (unlikely given the amount of cultural diffusion and cross pollenation, but all you need is a strain of nationalism to rear its ugly head).

You might get more fights also because it would be harder for nuclear powers to contain them. But without nukes, I think those powers would rush to get some equivalent. Maybe you'd have the US developing solar mirror lasers to achieve similar effects, with a mad space race / escalation rush.

That's probably enough for now...