alt Hacker News- World population in 1967 was around 3.5 billion people, less than half of our current population
- The U.S. nuclear arsenal peaked at 31,000 warheads in the same year 1967
Why did we need more bombs when there were less people? Why was there a greater perceived threat when there were less people in the world to fight over resources? Why would reducing our population level by half cause a change in our behaviour when these factors seem to be independent?
> Why did we need more bombs when there were less people
Bombs don't really scale with #people do they? I'm not a military expert of any kind but I would expect the number of bombs required to end humanity is really more a function of how much landmass people occupy?
Eg if you have a nuclear bomb that levels a city block it does not matter if 100 people live there or 10000, it pretty much just kills everyone there?