The nuclear arsenal is the supreme simulacrum governing everyday life by deterrence.

Evidence

The apotheosis of simulation: the nuclear. However, the balance of terror is never anything but the spectacular slope of a system of deterrence that has insinuated itself from the inside into all the cracks of daily life. Nuclear suspension only serves to seal the trivialized system of deterrence that is at the heart of the media, of the violence without consequences that reigns throughout the world, of the aleatory apparatus of all the choices that are made for us. The most insignificant of our behaviors is regulated by neutralized, indifferent, equivalent signs, by zero-sum signs like those that regulate the “strategy of games” (but the true equation is elsewhere, and the unknown is precisely that variable of simulation which makes of the atomic arsenal itself a hyperreal form, a simulacrum that dominates everything and reduces all “ground-level” events to being nothing but ephemeral scenarios, transforming the life left us into survival, into a stake without stakes - not even into a life insurance policy: into a policy that already has no value). — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 117

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete instance of the simulacrum in its most exaggerated, global form.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how Baudrillard’s ‘deterrence infiltrating daily life’ maps onto algorithmic recommendation systems today — a contemporary translation of the Louds.
• XREF: connects to: The military functions as a total institution governing nearly every aspect of life. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 461; Cheapening nuclear weapons is eroding the precondition for deterrence

Broader Connections

• The military functions as a total institution governing nearly every aspect of life. #expands (0.82) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 461
• Cheapening nuclear weapons is eroding the precondition for deterrence #qualifies (0.78)