Nuclear weapons should not be abolished if you could abolish them.

Unfortunately time got away from me, and I was unable to post my response to round 2 in time. As such I believe I officially must lose this debate. However I would like to note, completely off the record, some comments that would have appeared in my round 2 post had I been able to make one. I do believe you are confused on the point of stating that Fission occurs within the Earth's core and provides half the heat there. From all the research I did on that point alone, along with my previous standing knowledge of planetary physics, fission does not occur within the cores of planets in any significant amount. I think you may be confusing fission with heat from radioactive decay. They are not the same things. If you have a source for your statement I suggest you cite it next time you make this debate with someone. A quicker mind than mine will probably catch you on that. Likewise your claim to natural fission reactors is a shakey one at best. As far as I can tell, there is only one reported case of this ever occuring in the Earth's history. You'll need more than that to claim it is a perfectly natural and normal process for the environment to deal with. Your claims to the length of time that radiation and fallout can affect an area are also very subjective. Some incidents can cause minimal fallout and radiation, yes. But others can make an area a radioactive hazard for years. This has to do with fallout, essentially radioactive dust, and transmutation from beta particles. Fallout isn't the only radioactive product from a nuclear blast. Beta particles can transmute surrounding matter to make it generally unstable and radioactive. These generally do not penetrate surfaces however. Alpha particles can cause genetic and cell damage, but not as much environmental damage. These can penetrate certain materials and be stoped by others, generally metals I believe. Then Gamma rays. These monsters pass through pretty much anything. Lead can stop some of them, but not all. They're not as environmentally destructive, but they can rip genetic strings, and cells to shreds. It seemed that air detonations produced more gamma rays than they did the other forms of hazard, but I didn't get enough time to make any definite calls on that. Also, you sort of missed my entire point on target discrimination. A larger blast radius, and more secondary hazards, follows directly to less discrimination of targets. It's basically like saying a scatter shot has less discrimination than a sniper rifle. Because it does. If someone was holding you hostage and was pulling you along to use you as a shield, you'd probably prefer a trained sniper shoot at you than someone with scatter shot. The sniper can discriminate better, simply because of the smaller affected area. A smaller bomb, or a smaller emp, can discriminate military from civilian targets multitudes better than a nuclear device purely because of the blast radius difference. Then finally the claim to a thermobarric race is an unfounded one. There is simple physics/chemistry behind why that is. The amount of potential energy present in a fission reaction, is thousands of times more than some of our most potent chemical fuels. In order to meet your power consumption needs, you have to burn oil (one of our more chemically rich sources of energy) at a fairly large rate. Where as if you were to do so with a fission reactor, you'd produce about a coke can or two's worth of waste, if I remember correctly. Regardless the largest thermobarric, will NEVER surpass the largest fission or fusion bomb in terms of raw energy output It is a physical impossibility. It'd probably be a better thing for the world if we tossed out nuclear devices and made an arms race in thermobarric. Because that would most likely lead to that being heavily regulated and banned, and then it would continue dwindling our available options for warface WMDs. Now, back on record. Vote for my opponent, purely because I missed round 2.