eli5: Why can’t countries that want to build Nukes build Nukes? Especially since several countries built them, some 75+ years ago
In: Engineering
Making a nuclear weapon requires a recipe, just like making cookies. You need all of the right ingredients and you need to know how to use them.
You’re only five. You probably don’t have any money of your own, so you can’t even buy the ingredients. If you find a way to buy them, or you happen to find the ingredients laying around, your mom might punish you if you use them without permission, so you still might not be able to make your own cookies.
And you’re only five, so you might not know how to put all the ingredients together. Maybe your mom doesn’t want to teach you because she doesn’t want you making cookies whenever you want. The same as she doesn’t want you to make them even if you can get the ingredients. You’d ruin your dinner if you could have all the cookies you want! No cookies in the house!
Even if you have all of the ingredients *and* you know how to use them, a nuclear weapon also requires you to use some tools and machines and things, like making cookies requires an oven.
Your mom doesn’t want you to use the oven because you’re only five and she’s afraid you might hurt yourself. So, even if you know what the recipe is, you’re not supposed to use the oven. Maybe you don’t even know how. But if you do, you know that your mom might come in the kitchen and find cookies and a hot oven, and she’ll know you broke the rules. Then she’ll punish you, by taking things away.
So maybe you’re better off letting mom make the cookies. She’ll give you the cookies she thinks you should have, you won’t hurt yourself trying to learn the hard way how to make them, and you won’t get punished for trying to do it yourself.
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