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The Nuclear Question (and Worldbuilding Scenario Reconstruction in general)

Copying over my thoughts from Discord:

Assuming we cannot agree on who has nukes or by what mechanics they can be obtained, there is also perhaps the following option concern nukes.

They could have existed, there was a limited exchange where millions died (community event), and in a hopecore moment the world was actually like “This really sucks“and managed to abolish them like 30 years back.

Now enough time has passed and in theory someone could strive to violate the equilibrium, and start development from zero, giving everyone the chance to do it on equal footing.

Or if we prefer the utilization of nukes to still be banned, we can make it a meta stipulation that everyone is sticking to the paradigm: You are not allowed to RP a faction that wants to have and is actively moving towards having nukes.
 
So I better understand the proposal —

What would be in place to stop the first X months of RP of this scenario from being players intermittently posting about how their team of the best scientists, best infrastructure, best resources, best engineers, etc etc is inching closer and closer to a working bomb?

If there is no intent to stop that, then why not just implement no rules and let everyone have as many nukes as they want?
 
Nothing, and I certainly agree having no rules around it whatsoever is an option as well.

But for future viewers that’s one of two scenarios you picked from the post, there’s also the they existed but you can’t RP anyone who wants to actually have them exist again angle.
 
Based on discussion here and on the discord, it seems as though there are (oversimplified) two broad "ideas" regarding nuclear weapons.

The first is that nuclear weapons are a tool for stories and world building, something whose existence prompts or requires RP, both directly in their making and posturing, and indirectly in having it be a deterrent from more extreme ideas like total war with equal-strength powers etc. This is a thought process to me that prompts its adherents to be more open and willing to go down the route Xen proposed: where we have an admittedly arbitrary starting rule where no one has nuclear weapons but everyone is able to devote time and energy to developing said weapons within the rules should they choose to. Or, alternatively, we stick with the original proposal, and limit the amount of secondary nations at this time, and thus open up the community to the idea of intrigue surrounding nuclear weapons. Lobbying the nuclear powers to station these weapons in their countries, get them to share their knowledge, go down blackmarket routes if need be. This provides the most potential for rich, interesting RP, but requires extensive rules in place to limit those of the second broad "idea."

That is of nukes being stats, numbers, and essentially prestige for lack of better term, something which I gathered @YUANGUO was demonstrating as a visceral example on the Discord. This is where people want nukes because it makes their military look better, because it makes their nation look stronger. There's not a LOT of super deep thinking here beyond "Well I want a strong nation, one that's protected from other strong nations, and obviously the best deterrent is nuclear weapons, and besides that they're cool and I like to be cool so I'm going to have nukes," and the RP that surrounds it is more of an excuse than the point. These folk will consider any significant and stringent rules as "arbitrary" and "unfair," especially if we also have, as in the original proposal here, nations who already have nuclear weapons. "Well, why do they get nukes with no work while I have to do all this work I really don't want to do to get them?" Is a question we have to answer beyond "Because."

Like it or not, I see the spectrum of views on nuclear weapons fall more or less into these two broad buckets, and the extremely long question we have to answer is: Do we take the time and energy to craft an extremely nuanced, fair, and creative rules system where it's hard but also fun to develop nuclear weapons, including for the people who just want them simply because? Or do we take the easy way out and just ban them completely as a tool that is not only easily abused, but honestly doesn't contribute that much, passively, to a scenario if they're just treated as stats and numbers in a nation's factbook or a 'get out of trouble free' card by waving the nuclear weapons threat around?

The third option is to just let everyone have nuclear weapons, no big deal, and that too seems like a bad idea because it's not only kind of a cop out and against the grain of collaboration and community participation, it further cheapens nuclear weapons as a concept, both as an RP device and as a stat or number.

All of that said, what I'd ideally like is for us to come up with that system which will make everyone happy or at least satisfied enough to work with it. But that will take a lot of work that, frankly, I'm not 100% confident everyone's going to want to invest, and it requires folks to actually, truly want nuclear weapons, something which, I've expressed in the past, I'm not one of. I see nuclear weapons as a tool for RP rather than "just something I gotta have," and so if nuclear weapons don't help with RP then I don't want them. I get the sense there's a fair amount of folks in that same category.

I'd like others to sound off and give their opinions.
 
The more I noodle on this, I’m frankly leaning toward the Great War ending in a nuclear hellfire and when we emerged from the rubble we were all like “ok you all suck, but like let’s not do that again.” This way, the technology from nukes exists in our world but bombs do not.

In other words, Xen’s other proposal.
 
I agree with coro that the Great War Narrative needs to be figured out first. I think the nuclear great war thing is not a bad idea actually and solves the issue of nukes. I think as part of the narrative there needs to be the creation of some sort of council or UN that figured out disarmament that still exists today. This of course does not mean that a nuclear program could not be restarted but with the history of a nuclear war it is kinda guaranteed that the moment wind of a nuclear bomb development project comes up there will be a dog pile as everyone sets aside their differences and kills whoever is trying to bring bombs back.
 
Averin said:
I agree with coro that the Great War Narrative needs to be figured out first. I think the nuclear great war thing is not a bad idea actually and solves the issue of nukes. I think as part of the narrative there needs to be the creation of some sort of council or UN that figured out disarmament that still exists today. This of course does not mean that a nuclear program could not be restarted but with the history of a nuclear war it is kinda guaranteed that the moment wind of a nuclear bomb development project comes up there will be a dog pile as everyone sets aside their differences and kills whoever is trying to bring bombs back.
Click to expand...
This.
 
I really like the narrative being constructed by Xen, Jurzy, and Zeek. It achieves the banning of nukes with an IC explanation that isn’t completely arbitrary, it also achieves the creation of a notUN that is also not completely arbitrary, and it helps create a Great War common scenario canon event that’s been otherwise missing from a LOT of other prior scenarios.

It may still need to be noodled out for further details, but right now I’m in favor of this idea.
 
As i said in discord, the Great War could have been about nukes all along. With national intelligence agencies discovering each other's nuclear programs and scientists saying, well yea it could be a reactor or a bomb or both, suddenly the paranoia is ramped up to 11 and war breaks out in an attempt to stop it as the war progresses, bombs are deployed. yadda yadda yadda and then in the future we have a nukeless world after a not UN or something came together and disarmament happened for realsies this time.

This does not stop Cantignia's plan to try and start doomsday as his spies could be out there still trying to manipulate countries into making a new bomb again. that way we prevent the nuke issue and a player's RP idea is not quashed immediately.
 
If a great war involving nukes is the big winner of the decision making, might I suggest it as having itself had a 'no winner' type of event to help go with whatever ended this conflict and the abolition of nuclear weapons? Bloodied, debt saddled, and exhausted everyone decided to lick their wounds and call it a day.
 
Alright... so to cast some Thread Necromancy (TM, Copyright, Registered, etc.) on this ol' discussion...

I'm gathering that we are, for the most part, in agreement that we should have an IC situation where nobody has nuclear weapons as a result of a Great War (perhaps in the 1950s) that motivated the nations of the world, regardless of ideology, to collectively agree to ban nuclear weapons from that point forward.

I think we'd also agree with the 'no winner' event where everybody just doesn't want to do war anymore, and the destruction, widespread it may have been back then, is now mostly recovered due to the size of the bombs used in question (AKA Fat Man & Little Boy style atomic bombs that were certainly destructive but not world ending).

If all of that is true and there are no objections, the last question I think we need to answer is the specifics of the Great War itself. Who fought, why was it fought, who developed and used nuclear weapons, who got nuclear weapons used on them, etc?
 
I'm good with the discussion to have a nuclear exchange with @Eiffelland during the war, if they were cobelligerent with Jozefania. Also for Elfriki to be cobelligierent with Ebria. So I guess I just want to clarify if my understanding is correct: that the conflict itself centered on the possession of nukes, and spiraled out of control from there?
 
Elfríki said:
I'm good with the discussion to have a nuclear exchange with @Eiffelland during the war, if they were cobelligerent with Jozefania. Also for Elfriki to be cobelligierent with Ebria. So I guess I just want to clarify if my understanding is correct: that the conflict itself centered on the possession of nukes, and spiraled out of control from there?
Click to expand...
That's my understanding of the origins of the conflict as well, but I'm happy to have that clarified.
 
Azilia said:
Don't mind me watching ya'll drop bombs on each other.:trollface:
Click to expand...

I'll pass the bucket of popcorn on to you. I don't like popcorn anyway.


Elfríki said:
I'm good with the discussion to have a nuclear exchange with @Eiffelland during the war, if they were cobelligerent with Jozefania. Also for Elfriki to be cobelligierent with Ebria. So I guess I just want to clarify if my understanding is correct: that the conflict itself centered on the possession of nukes, and spiraled out of control from there?
Click to expand...

I confirm this. I also chose two cities that would have been bombed: Wolfratshausen and Rosenheim. And eh, I fired a couple of V1s and V2s.
 
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