Nuclear powers plan weapons spending spree, report finds

The world's nuclear powers are planning to spend hundreds of billions of pounds modernising and upgrading weapons warheads and delivery systems over the next decade, according to an authoritative report published on Monday.

Despite government budget pressures and international rhetoric about disarmament, evidence points to a new and dangerous "era of nuclear weapons", the report for the British American Security Information Council (Basic) warns. It says the US will spend $700bn (£434bn) on the nuclear weapons industry over the next decade, while Russia will spend at least $70bn on delivery systems alone. Other countries including China, India, Israel, France and Pakistan are expected to devote formidable sums on tactical and strategic missile systems.

For several countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Israel and France, nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence, says the report. In Russia and Pakistan, it warns, nuclear weapons are assigned "war-fighting roles in military planning".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/30/nuclear-powers-weapons-spending-report

We have doom coming at us from six different directions at once, and these lunatics are racing to beef up yet one more way for us to do ourselves in.

Jeez, some days I just have to conclude that humanity is another of nature's failed experiments. We're just a bunch of technologically clever apes without the slightest clue about the nature of wisdom.

If they wanna make the world safer, they could take on global warming, the population problem, the wealth distribution problem, the dead-democracy problem, the starvation problem, the epidemic disease problem--and if they actually took them on all at once, we might mitigate the looming mass extinction events.

But no. We build fucking bombs.

FarCenter's comments pretty well cover what most of us are thinking.

But I have to wonder... world leaders are not stupid people. They are well educated, they have read much of the material we have, they know just how much modern nuclear weapons cause. They know our economic situation.

What the hell is wrong with them?