My wife can't, either. I can, once every few years, but I think that's because I remember both the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan's crazily provocative shenanigans in the early 80s so clearly, and remind myself that Nancy Reagan also saw The Day After and Testament.
She made Ronnie watch them. Read his diary sometime. You can tell they really shook him up.
Great writing but I somewhat dispute the premise. Practically you're correct of course. But in a strict armchair sense, you're required to have a very narrow definition of both "destroy" and "world" for this to be true. Nuclear is just more fire. We've always had fire and gigantic world scale fire has always been on the table, we just couldn't cause it.
But still, it's just fire. The scale really doesn't change much. I mean I 100% agree with your goal in writing this. But the challenge of "winning" nuclear war isn't about preserving humanity it's about preserving governments and cultures. The real extinction threat is luddism, because while our little pop rocks might be marginally dangerous on a cosmic scale, the actual cosmos has far far more dangerous things lined up for our little dirt ball. The real threat is time.
I feel like also pointing out that evolution itself is profoundly limited as evidenced by the nature of nature. Apparently nothing can evolve to really eat grass for example or else it would have gone extinct. Apparently it requires hyper specific conditions chemically. What I mean to imply is that apparently nothing can evolve into grey goo.
But you know I agree on the over all point here, it's comically stupid to risk all out war at our current technological level. We're on the verge of something like bronze age collapse already. I almost wonder if that's the plan.
One nuclear bomb isn't enough - the thousands that could follow likely are enough to destroy humanity (well, people - since we're having this discussion I can argue "humanity" is already destroyed as a concept).
Cockroaches could survive, and maybe a few really, really isolated people - but not in a world I would enjoy.
Humanity had a bottle neck in the tens of thousands or lower at one point, and on a long time line you'd have to wipe out all the higher primates too or else we'd pretty quickly re-evolve. A real question is why didn't dinosaurs evolve intellect. But seriously I don't think wiping out humanity could be done with nukes. There's too many of us and we know too much. There's too much shielding in the form of dirt and water. Submarines, bunkers, short wave radio, caves, mines. Billionaires are the real threat imo because if I'm right they correctly think they could survive such an event. I'm sure they have nuclear powered bunkers setup already. You could bury a single apartment building and have enough people for genetic diversity. God knows what's under North Korea alone. We've spent many decades living under this threat. It's kind of insane to assume no one with resources has prepared. But then again logically speaking cryonics should be orders of mag more popular, so I guess it's possible some random dropout from Kentucky is more forward thinking than the entire world's government's and billionaires. But I find it unlikely.
A full thermonuclear exchange is a lot more than "just fire." It's radiation and nuclear winter. Nuclear war would definitely be an Extinction Level Event, as they say.
I admit I deviated from ol' Darwin a bit, so your quibble is a valid one. He wrote only about physical evolution. I applied the theory to social evolution. I don't think it's that much of a stretch, and the overall point about war too dangerous to keep doing is the main one.
It's not a quibble. Radiation is more fire. It's literally analogous to embers. The hotter they are the faster it burns out. Fire is oxidation, fuel consuming chemical decay. Fission is fuel consuming atomic decay. The longer radiation lasts the less dangerous it is. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
People are paranoid, they view radiation as black magic. And ironically, if they weren't this way oil would barely have a price. Misusing fossils for electricity is 99% of the problem here. If we used fission for electricity oil and fossils would be left as a nearly limitless supply for carbons and other chemicals. Plastics, fertilizers, dyes, drugs, etc. OCEANS of it. Burning it for power is by orders of mag the real drain on that supply.
I honestly don't see much difference between radiation and something like extreme cold. It's a chore, but it can be lived in. especially if we're just talking about rays and not particles. Again like fire, there's a difference between getting embers on you and standing too close to the fire. Chernobyl is a nature preserve now and people still live there. And those people don't even have to take steps vs the radiation. We could easily treat it like living in a submarine or even a space station.
I would rather have radiation than chemical poisoning. Dioxin contamination scares me a lot more than anything fission makes. If I were in palastine ohio, I'd rather live in Chernobyl.
I feel like a real issue here is this notion that outside on earth is a gentle garden. And it just isn't. Anywhere. This comes from a death cult tolerance for other kind of death. Like dying of cold/heat isn't just more dying.
Yes, you can't roll around in it naked, but then again try that in normal eastern US forest. Enjoy your Lyme disease.
Nukes can absolutely kill cultures though you're right, they are far too large and fragile.
It's not my fault people don't know the relevant facts. Cancer and birth defects are harms that can be caused by exposure to high intensity radiation or consuming radioactive material, true. (rays and particles) But they aren't black magic. And they aren't unique to radiation either. It's not reductionist, it's informed, and proportional. A wide array of chemicals are far far more dangerous. I wish people cared about pesticides as much as they cared about radiation. Yes, fire can burn you and eating embers might be toxic. This doesn't mean you ban fire, especially when banning fire is why we're having oil wars. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtTn3kMuxf1qB5x4ZZbTSi3d6gaX5Reg5
Too much of the world is run by demented, stupid and or crazy people. Israel yesterday suggested a nuclear weapon was an option for Gaza, though the minister was reprimanded for saying it in public. I imagine it's still discussed quietly - maybe Gaza, maybe Lebanon, maybe Iran.
And the US will have paid for it, and Blinken and Biden (well, when he's told about it, if he hasn't disappeared in a flash of white hot heat) will support it.
The minister just admitted that Israel does in fact have nuclear weapons, which it has always formally denied. That's what he's in trouble for--saying the quiet part out loud--not for suggesting exterminating every living thing in Gaza.
Sorry but most folks ante got time for Revolution" besides to much work involved planning and coordinating and peaceful social disruption. Perhaps a more realistic approach would be to have the tiny minority of trouble makers arrested and their assets confiscated before a court of law. Yes there is sarcasm in this but honestly a revolution or for that matter insurrection ante happening now and hopefully never.
First, you have to actually have a court of law that's not corrupted. We don't have many of those left in the US, and the Supremes are supremely questionable.
As for your premise that revolution can't happen here, they said the same thing in England, France and Russia in the 1630s, 1780s, and 1910s respectively. No one ever sees a successful revolution coming, not even the revolutionaries themselves.
That's one reason successful revolutions are successful. History's weird like that sometimes.
That's the whole point--to remove that tiny minority from power. It always takes some anarchy to do that. Besides, I'm an American, so an inherent distrust of governments is part of my makeup. Without some anarchy, there can be no democracy.
We need a LOT more anarchy right now to disrupt a system that no longer works, and in fact is downright dangerous. At least, it is for the majority of Americans. There comes a point where ordinary people feel they have nothing left to lose, and that is when revolutions just happen, and when they do, no amount of state security makes any difference.
Whether or not I want a revolution is irrelevant. I can neither summon nor prevent one.
All the the preconditions for revolution are already present in the US, but that situation can last for years until something sets people off. Why? You're right--nobody really wants to live through a revolution, but if it's that or nuclear extinction or even debt peonage, I'll take my chances on one and I'm far from alone.
I don't have much to lose, you see, and it's the fault of the American political and economic establishment. A more disgusting, not to mention incompetent, bunch has never before held the reins of power in this country. Yet another common precondition for revolution, come to think of it. :)
We're getting a lot more anarchy - it's just not covered in media much. Look at Portland, Seattle and San Francisco - and I'm sure there are a lot more cities that are falling apart. Portland's the one I see every time I go downtown or to the east side of the Willamette.
Ever read The Change series by SM Sterling? The first three books are set in the Willamette Valley. It's sci-fi--Something stops all electricity and things like gunpowder from working, most people die off, the remainder go back to horses and swords.
Great sci-fi fantasy series if you're into that sort of thing, and I suspect the author spent a lot of time in northwestern Oregon.
Yes, marches don't do much, but one thing to remember is that there are more guns than people in the US. Sadly, if pushed hard enough, it can quickly move to more than a march.
But sir our hypothetical revolution would then turn, as those guns would no doubt be turned against us. The right to own and bare arms is to uphold the rule of law and the the right to protect life limb and property!
Gosh, I've seen those two movies, and came to the conclusion that the one that provokes the most chatter about the elephant in the room is "Doctor Strangelove", even with the subtitle, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb". THIS brilliant movie provoked talking to each other. The Morning After was "too much", so we didn't want to even THINK about those possibilities.
My wife can't, either. I can, once every few years, but I think that's because I remember both the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan's crazily provocative shenanigans in the early 80s so clearly, and remind myself that Nancy Reagan also saw The Day After and Testament.
She made Ronnie watch them. Read his diary sometime. You can tell they really shook him up.
Great writing but I somewhat dispute the premise. Practically you're correct of course. But in a strict armchair sense, you're required to have a very narrow definition of both "destroy" and "world" for this to be true. Nuclear is just more fire. We've always had fire and gigantic world scale fire has always been on the table, we just couldn't cause it.
But still, it's just fire. The scale really doesn't change much. I mean I 100% agree with your goal in writing this. But the challenge of "winning" nuclear war isn't about preserving humanity it's about preserving governments and cultures. The real extinction threat is luddism, because while our little pop rocks might be marginally dangerous on a cosmic scale, the actual cosmos has far far more dangerous things lined up for our little dirt ball. The real threat is time.
I feel like also pointing out that evolution itself is profoundly limited as evidenced by the nature of nature. Apparently nothing can evolve to really eat grass for example or else it would have gone extinct. Apparently it requires hyper specific conditions chemically. What I mean to imply is that apparently nothing can evolve into grey goo.
But you know I agree on the over all point here, it's comically stupid to risk all out war at our current technological level. We're on the verge of something like bronze age collapse already. I almost wonder if that's the plan.
One nuclear bomb isn't enough - the thousands that could follow likely are enough to destroy humanity (well, people - since we're having this discussion I can argue "humanity" is already destroyed as a concept).
Cockroaches could survive, and maybe a few really, really isolated people - but not in a world I would enjoy.
Humanity had a bottle neck in the tens of thousands or lower at one point, and on a long time line you'd have to wipe out all the higher primates too or else we'd pretty quickly re-evolve. A real question is why didn't dinosaurs evolve intellect. But seriously I don't think wiping out humanity could be done with nukes. There's too many of us and we know too much. There's too much shielding in the form of dirt and water. Submarines, bunkers, short wave radio, caves, mines. Billionaires are the real threat imo because if I'm right they correctly think they could survive such an event. I'm sure they have nuclear powered bunkers setup already. You could bury a single apartment building and have enough people for genetic diversity. God knows what's under North Korea alone. We've spent many decades living under this threat. It's kind of insane to assume no one with resources has prepared. But then again logically speaking cryonics should be orders of mag more popular, so I guess it's possible some random dropout from Kentucky is more forward thinking than the entire world's government's and billionaires. But I find it unlikely.
I hope you're right - and I hope even more that we don't have to find out.
A full thermonuclear exchange is a lot more than "just fire." It's radiation and nuclear winter. Nuclear war would definitely be an Extinction Level Event, as they say.
I admit I deviated from ol' Darwin a bit, so your quibble is a valid one. He wrote only about physical evolution. I applied the theory to social evolution. I don't think it's that much of a stretch, and the overall point about war too dangerous to keep doing is the main one.
It's not a quibble. Radiation is more fire. It's literally analogous to embers. The hotter they are the faster it burns out. Fire is oxidation, fuel consuming chemical decay. Fission is fuel consuming atomic decay. The longer radiation lasts the less dangerous it is. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
People are paranoid, they view radiation as black magic. And ironically, if they weren't this way oil would barely have a price. Misusing fossils for electricity is 99% of the problem here. If we used fission for electricity oil and fossils would be left as a nearly limitless supply for carbons and other chemicals. Plastics, fertilizers, dyes, drugs, etc. OCEANS of it. Burning it for power is by orders of mag the real drain on that supply.
I honestly don't see much difference between radiation and something like extreme cold. It's a chore, but it can be lived in. especially if we're just talking about rays and not particles. Again like fire, there's a difference between getting embers on you and standing too close to the fire. Chernobyl is a nature preserve now and people still live there. And those people don't even have to take steps vs the radiation. We could easily treat it like living in a submarine or even a space station.
I would rather have radiation than chemical poisoning. Dioxin contamination scares me a lot more than anything fission makes. If I were in palastine ohio, I'd rather live in Chernobyl.
I feel like a real issue here is this notion that outside on earth is a gentle garden. And it just isn't. Anywhere. This comes from a death cult tolerance for other kind of death. Like dying of cold/heat isn't just more dying.
Yes, you can't roll around in it naked, but then again try that in normal eastern US forest. Enjoy your Lyme disease.
Nukes can absolutely kill cultures though you're right, they are far too large and fragile.
Cancer, birth defects and nuclear winter are "just fire"?
It may surprise you to know this, but there really is a point where reductivism makes a normal person's eyes roll.
It's not my fault people don't know the relevant facts. Cancer and birth defects are harms that can be caused by exposure to high intensity radiation or consuming radioactive material, true. (rays and particles) But they aren't black magic. And they aren't unique to radiation either. It's not reductionist, it's informed, and proportional. A wide array of chemicals are far far more dangerous. I wish people cared about pesticides as much as they cared about radiation. Yes, fire can burn you and eating embers might be toxic. This doesn't mean you ban fire, especially when banning fire is why we're having oil wars. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtTn3kMuxf1qB5x4ZZbTSi3d6gaX5Reg5
Too much of the world is run by demented, stupid and or crazy people. Israel yesterday suggested a nuclear weapon was an option for Gaza, though the minister was reprimanded for saying it in public. I imagine it's still discussed quietly - maybe Gaza, maybe Lebanon, maybe Iran.
And the US will have paid for it, and Blinken and Biden (well, when he's told about it, if he hasn't disappeared in a flash of white hot heat) will support it.
The minister just admitted that Israel does in fact have nuclear weapons, which it has always formally denied. That's what he's in trouble for--saying the quiet part out loud--not for suggesting exterminating every living thing in Gaza.
Sorry but most folks ante got time for Revolution" besides to much work involved planning and coordinating and peaceful social disruption. Perhaps a more realistic approach would be to have the tiny minority of trouble makers arrested and their assets confiscated before a court of law. Yes there is sarcasm in this but honestly a revolution or for that matter insurrection ante happening now and hopefully never.
First, you have to actually have a court of law that's not corrupted. We don't have many of those left in the US, and the Supremes are supremely questionable.
As for your premise that revolution can't happen here, they said the same thing in England, France and Russia in the 1630s, 1780s, and 1910s respectively. No one ever sees a successful revolution coming, not even the revolutionaries themselves.
That's one reason successful revolutions are successful. History's weird like that sometimes.
Why subject 330 million to the whims of anarchy while a tiny minority continue to hold the purse strings.
That's the whole point--to remove that tiny minority from power. It always takes some anarchy to do that. Besides, I'm an American, so an inherent distrust of governments is part of my makeup. Without some anarchy, there can be no democracy.
We need a LOT more anarchy right now to disrupt a system that no longer works, and in fact is downright dangerous. At least, it is for the majority of Americans. There comes a point where ordinary people feel they have nothing left to lose, and that is when revolutions just happen, and when they do, no amount of state security makes any difference.
Whether or not I want a revolution is irrelevant. I can neither summon nor prevent one.
All the the preconditions for revolution are already present in the US, but that situation can last for years until something sets people off. Why? You're right--nobody really wants to live through a revolution, but if it's that or nuclear extinction or even debt peonage, I'll take my chances on one and I'm far from alone.
I don't have much to lose, you see, and it's the fault of the American political and economic establishment. A more disgusting, not to mention incompetent, bunch has never before held the reins of power in this country. Yet another common precondition for revolution, come to think of it. :)
We're getting a lot more anarchy - it's just not covered in media much. Look at Portland, Seattle and San Francisco - and I'm sure there are a lot more cities that are falling apart. Portland's the one I see every time I go downtown or to the east side of the Willamette.
Ever read The Change series by SM Sterling? The first three books are set in the Willamette Valley. It's sci-fi--Something stops all electricity and things like gunpowder from working, most people die off, the remainder go back to horses and swords.
Great sci-fi fantasy series if you're into that sort of thing, and I suspect the author spent a lot of time in northwestern Oregon.
Thank you, I will have find and read as I do enjoy that sort of thing!
So we disrupt shipping stop commerce and march on Wallstreet and Congress, now what. Hypothetically speaking.
Yes, marches don't do much, but one thing to remember is that there are more guns than people in the US. Sadly, if pushed hard enough, it can quickly move to more than a march.
But sir our hypothetical revolution would then turn, as those guns would no doubt be turned against us. The right to own and bare arms is to uphold the rule of law and the the right to protect life limb and property!
Go home and get back to work.
Thanks OB, good read.
Gosh, I've seen those two movies, and came to the conclusion that the one that provokes the most chatter about the elephant in the room is "Doctor Strangelove", even with the subtitle, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb". THIS brilliant movie provoked talking to each other. The Morning After was "too much", so we didn't want to even THINK about those possibilities.