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0 pointsbusterarm5y ago0 comments

You can build nuclear reactors in your home (and people do[1-6]) pretty much without regulation and if you fuck up and vent a bunch of radioactive gas to atmosphere, your community will suffer for it.

As for chemical weapons, people accidentally create chlorine gas all of the time. Aside from that, the reason you don't see more of this is because the really potent nerve agents and useful explosives (smokeless powders and beyond) have complex reactions that require trained chemists to produce.

It's a good thing most people aren't motivated to do that, but Aum Shinrikyo happened in our lifetimes.

I personally have the know how to create several things that are genuinely dangerous (like an EPFCG...I even have a copy of the 70s-era paper from LANL), but absolutely zero motivation to do so. It's not regulation that's stopping me.

You can build lasers that can blind people with the laser diode from your blu-ray player and people do it for fun. Nothing illegal about it here either and I've built a few.

[1]:https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-to-build-a... [2]:https://www.businessinsider.com/12-year-old-builds-nuclear-r... [3]:https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/ [4]:https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a30917842/homemade-... [5]:https://www.foxnews.com/science/teen-builds-working-nuclear-... [6]:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/07/150726-nucle...

Regulation really hasn't stopped any government from manufacturing nuclear weapons. Proliferation treaties have largely been a failure as you can see evidence of in recent years. The actual _use_ of nuclear weapons is something else and has nothing to do with regulation. The use of nuclear and chemical weapons doesn't support any governments war objectives. It turns out you don't actually win if everyone in the world simultaneously hates you, won't trade with you and will sanction you into oblivion. It turns out that the ability to import and export goods is worth more than the dead bodies of your enemies.

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Retric5y ago· 2 in thread

There are well over 100,000 people in the US that could afford to buy a Nuclear bomb if it was for sale at a reasonable multiple of it’s construction cost. Similarly effective chemical weapons that can kill tens of thousands of people when released over a populated area are relatively cheap to construct. If they where on sale you can bet people would buy them as artwork if nothing else.

So sure, people can do plenty of mildly dangerous things, but it’s hard to find something significantly more destructive than intentionally setting off a few hundred fires out west. That’s the kind of thing a homeless person could pull off with a backpack and 30$ worth of supplies.

busterarmOP5y ago

My argument was that _regulation_ doesn't stop these things. Your argument is still not a refutation of that.

Regulation is not the reason that people don't use the technology. It turns out that most people aren't assholes.

And notice how all of the access to said technology is still there.

Retric5y ago

It’s regulation that’s stopping the sale of nuclear weapons to the general populace. If there where several thousand of the thing in random peoples hands globally you can expect one of them to have been stolen and used. Or just purchased with the intent to make a statement.

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