How long until the next bomb? Why there ’ s no reason to think that nuclear deterrence works

Every day one sees politicians on TV assuring us that nuclear deterrence works because there no nuclear weapon has been exploded in anger since 1945. They clearly have no understanding of statistics. With a few plausible assumptions, we can easily calculate that the time until the next bomb explodes could be as little as 20 years. Be scared, very scared. The first assumption is that bombs go off at random intervals. Since we have had only one so far (counting Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a single event), this can’t be verified. But given the large number of small influences that control when a bomb explodes (whether in war or by accident), it is the natural assumption to make. The assumption is given some credence by the observation that the intervals between wars are random [download pdf]. If the intervals between bombs are random, that implies that the distribution of the length of the intervals is exponential in shape, The nature of this distribution has already been explained in an earlier post about the random lengths of time for which a patient stays in an intensive care unit. If you haven’t come across an exponential distribution before, please look at that post before moving on. All that we know is that 70 years have elapsed since the last bomb. so the interval until the next one must be greater than 70 years. The probability that a random interval is longer than 70 years can be found from the cumulative form of the exponential distribution. If we denot...
Source: DC's goodscience - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Politicians politics bomb deterrant exponential distribution Markov nuclear statistics Trident Source Type: blogs