What happens if our government system blows up?

After Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, he told a fellow pacifist that giving opposing armies the power to annihilate each other filled him with hope that all civilized nations would “recoil from war and discharge their troops.”

We know how that worked out.

That noble yearning was an early version of the theory that the apocalyptic potential of nuclear weapons in the hands of opposing forces — mutually assured destruction — would deter war. Why would anyone go to battle if he or she knew they all would die?

It’s a question worth asking about modern-day Washington, where both political parties, fearing they might be attacked by their followers, consider extreme options in pursuit of victory. And no one stops to wonder whether that ends with their own annihilation.

The seeds have been sprouting for decades. But they shot up a little more than three years ago when then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed sacred rules to let most presidential judicial nominees and other appointments, like Cabinet posts, move ahead with a simple majority vote, rather than a 60-vote supermajority. Reid said Republican obstruction of then-President Barack Obama’s judicial picks showed the system was broken.

Last year the GOP, now in control, refused to give a hearing to Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to fill Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat — a fiasco given that nearly 11 months remained in the four-year term the American people gave Obama.

Now Republicans say President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees should be approved without delay. Democrats say, we have issues about qualifications, lack of paperwork, honesty and conflicts of interest. The GOP refuses to allow more questions. Democrats boycott confirmation votes so they can’t be held. Republicans suspend the rules and hold the votes anyway.

And the Senate continues its slow creep to something we don’t recognize.

Now they’re at war over Neil Gorsuch, the federal appeals court judge Trump nominated for the Scalia-Garland seat. And as Democrats contemplate blocking his nomination, Trump is among those encouraging or daring GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to use the appropriately nicknamed “nuclear option” — eliminating the 60-vote requirement still in place for Supreme Court nominees.

Trump doesn’t care about, or have any awareness of, the damage that could result by killing a rule that helped give the Senate its reputation as the world’s greatest deliberative body. He just wants Gorsuch confirmed.

But others understand. And still they want to push the button.

This is a civil war — on our norms. What happens when they collapse? There’s no good answer. Because no one knows. Eliminating the 60-vote rule when we’re nearly split down the middle would usher in pure partisanship, and we could end up with a Supreme Court filled with the likes of Betsy DeVos.

Perhaps we do need a total meltdown — to change government and the way it functions, to change the manner in which people relate to and converse with each another, to get things done. If it leads to new leaders and better results, great. The crew in charge now isn’t going to lead us into any promised land.

But what’s the cost? Before he perfected dynamite, Alfred Nobel experimented with nitroglycerin, causing an explosion in his factory that killed his younger brother.

I always liked the 60 votes because it ensured, theoretically anyway, that in the Senate at least there would be real discussion, negotiation and compromise.

I’m frightened at the idea of blowing that up. But I’m appalled by what Washington has become.

What’s on the other side? It might be time to find out.

Michael Dobie is a member of Newsday’s editorial board.