Putin’s Nukes in Space Are Back to Scare Us Again - The New York Times

By William J. Broad
William J. Broad since the 1980s has been writing about military combat in space, including nuclear detonations, as detailed in his books “Star Warriors” and “Teller’s War.”

March 6, 2024, 9:11 a.m. ET
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was considering what became known as “Star Wars,” a plan to shield America from Soviet missiles by deploying up to thousands of weapons in space. At the same time, as a young science writer, I was reporting on how the rays from a single nuclear detonation in orbit could wipe out whole fleets of battle stations and laser death rays. “Star Wars: Pentagon Lunacy,” read one of the headlines.

Decades later, Mr. Reagan and the Soviet Union are gone, but anxiety over a high-altitude nuclear blast lives on, brought back most recently by the ostensible war aims of the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin. Last month, American spy agencies told Congress, as well as foreign allies, that Mr. Putin might deploy and use an atom bomb in space that could disable thousands of satellites. Not only military and civilian communication links would presumably be at risk, but also satellites that spy, track the weather, beam broadcasts, empower cellphone maps, form internet connections ...

The pert tone in which this is written ignores the fact that today's nuclear weapons, no matter who they're deployed by, can end civilization. Not only by a single nuclear blast, but with radiation that poisons land and water so land is not safely arable and water, rather than being life-supporting, is life-taking. This is especially life and civilization threatening as #AcceleratingGlobalClimateCataclysm continues to reduce earth's life-supporting resources.

Carl Sagan said it best, "The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/science/space-nuclear-bomb-putin.html