We should ban all Nuclear Weapons

"Nuclear weapons kill indiscriminately." They do not kill any more indiscriminately than any other bomb. They have a certain blast radius and depending on the type of explosion may produce fallout downwind. If the United States were to use a nuclear weapon, we would have calculated the amount of people it would kill before hand. This means that we decided who it was going to kill and discriminated against them. "There have never been weapons like these." Yes and no. There has not been a weapon that existed before hand capable of their destruction, but currently there of weapons that are capable of doing the same damage as a small nuclear weapon. The type of weapon that is rivaling nukes is a type of thermobaric weapon, Russia currently claims to have the strongest one. "They are for wiping out the populations of countries." This statement is incorrect, the main targets of nuclear weapons actually is military targets. These include missile silos and air bases. The only cities that would be targeted by nukes would be ones with massive airports that could be used in war. In addition there are more creative uses of nuclear weapon. Such uses include using them as EMPs which are mostly non-lethal and produce a barrier of ionized air which can block communication from enemy equipment that survive the EMP. Another use is using them as interceptors of volleys of ballistic missiles, such use produces zero fallout or any other negatives while saving many lives from the enemies missiles. Nuclear weapons are also the only countermeasure earth has against asteroids if we didn't get a large warning time. "There are no other weapons that can kill hundreds of millions of people in a few hours." Thermobaric weapons are also capable of such destruction. And unlike nuclear weapons lack any other uses other than destruction. "The civilian populations have no hope; no place to hide." Despite that civilian populations are not the typical target of nuclear weapons, if they were use for such purposes, they would be still survivable. People survived the nuke that was dropped on Hiroshima without injury by merely being within conventional open tunnels designed for normal air raids. (1) "Nuclear weapons have provided us with the capacity of self-destruction." Common myth about nuclear weapons is that they can kill off humanity. This is simply not true. (1) " Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. That is what nuclear arsenals potentially do." Same with any weapon. In fact if we were to abolish nuclear weapons, the next top weapon, thermobaric weapon, would be far more likely to be used against civilian population since that is their only use because of the way they explode. "In fighting a Just War (a war that is being fought because it is the only available way of defending against an aggressor) it is necessary to fight the attacking force, not slaughter the population as a whole - that is genocide." That is why nuclear weapons aren't aimed at civilian populations but military targets. "In supporting a government which deploys nuclear weapons, and does not work seriously to get rid of them, are we declaring ourselves willing to be party to such a crime?" Well that is like saying if you support the second amendment then you support murder, which in just incorrect. But never the less, if we were to get rid of nuclear weapons we would be more guilty of causing an arms race of thermobaric weapons which in turn would be more likely to cause mass death and destruction do to the lack of alternative uses. There is also the entire problem of if you were trying to abolish nuclear weapons you would fail to get rogue nations to abolish, which in turn increases the likelihood of them being used against civilian populations. In the end, banning of nuclear weapons even if successful would cause more death and destruction than leaving them exist. On top of that, it would be near impossible for the abolishment to be successful. Such a failure to abolish would only leave rogue groups have them and take them away from responsible groups. Such an attempt would greatly increase the likelihood of civilian populations being hit by a nuclear weapon. Source http://www.oism.org...