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Nuclear weapons were invented 80 years ago. It’s easy to show that the probability of having escaped nuclear war over such a long period is extremely low. In fact it’s so low that it’s reasonable to suppose that some mysterious force—presumably God, if you’re a theist—has prevented mankind from destroying itself.
Here’s how to “prove” that assertion, i.e., prove it in the ordinary wide sense, as in the courtroom phrase ‘to prove beyond a reasonable doubt’:
Imagine flipping a coin once where Heads means ‘no nuclear war’ and Tails means ‘nuclear war.’ Since there are two equally possible outcomes, the probability of no nuclear war is .5 or 50%. If we flip the coin twice, the probability of no nuclear war is .5 x .5 = .25 or 25%. The math, though simple, may not be self-evident, so think of it this way. There are four possible outcomes when you flip a coin twice:
Heads followed by Heads
Heads followed by Tails
Tails followed by Heads
Tails followed by Tails
Only one of the four outcomes doesn’t involve nuclear war, Heads followed by Heads. So the probability of no nuclear war is only one in four, or 25%.
The Wikipedia article, “Nuclear close calls,” lists fourteen intentional close calls, and about twenty unintentional close calls. Although some of the unintentional close calls were quite capable of igniting all-out nuclear war, we will ignore these in order to be conservative. However, because the Biden administration seemed intent on allowing the Ukrainians to fire long range ATACMS missiles into Russia, in late 2024 the CIA estimated that there was a more than fifty percent chance of nuclear war by the end of the year. So we will add one more close call to the other fourteen for a total of fifteen. For simplicity and because of ignorance we will assume every close call had a .5 (or 50%) probability of no nuclear war. This seems reasonable when you consider that it was almost a miracle that the Cuban missile crisis didn’t lead to nuclear war. Among other possible triggers, most of Kennedy’s civilian and military advisors pushed for an invasion of Cuba:
AI Overview: In the 1990s, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara revealed that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union had deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, a fact unknown to U.S. intelligence at the time. Upon learning of this, McNamara stated there was a “99 percent probability that nuclear war would have been initiated” had the U.S. proceeded with a planned invasion.
Thus the probability of escaping nuclear war can be calculated as follows:
.5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 (or .5^15) = .0000305 or .00305%. One chance in 32,768!
If we optimistically increase the probability of escaping nuclear war to .8 or 80% for each close call, the overall probability is as follows:
.8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 x .8 (or .8^15) = .03518 or 3.52%. One chance in 28.
From the results of these calculations we can choose between a grotesquely improbable conclusion (or, if we go with the second calculation, a rather improbable conclusion), and a rational conclusion. It seems to me that the most rational conclusion is that God or some mysterious force has intervened to prevent nuclear war. General George Lee Butler, the last commander of Strategic Air Command (SAC), arrived at a similar conclusion by the end of his 33 years of service in the United States Air Force: “And that is: we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” It should be noted that such a conclusion would be consistent with the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is an emminently trustworthy authority when He says in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew respectively (italicization added):
“. . .for those days will be days of distress, such as has not been since the beginning of creation till now, and can never be again. There would have been no hope left for any human creature, if the Lord had not cut those days short; but he has cut the days short for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen.”
“. . .for there will be distress then such as has not been since the beginning of the world, and can never be again. There would have been no hope left for any human creature, if the number of those days had not been cut short; but those days will be cut short, for the sake of the elect.”
It’s not clear what ‘cutting those days short’ would mean after a full-scale nuclear war, for it’s important to keep in mind that the “survivors” of nuclear war—including most of the “elect”—would be without heat, food, money, gas and (worst of all!) internet access. Though it would probably be the least of their worries, they would also be deprived of simple manufactured goods such as toasters, as explained in the first two minutes of this youtube:
Why Simple Everyday Objects Are Impossible to Make
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