I came across this recently by CS Lewis which I thought said it well:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
The difference being that those other causes of death may kill you, and maybe your family and friends if you are really unlucky, but they won't destroy everything else you love. Our own mortality is not the issue here.
Since you're quoting Lewis and mentioning prayer, it's at least debatable whether we're all going to die, depending on your understanding of 1 Thessalonians 4 and how it relates to John 12 and other parts. :)
But I agree with you. Arms control is useful and people should work on it, but for those that don't feel called to worrying about nuclear war isn't productive.
> If vile, selfish, psychopathic maniacs make the decision to end the world then so be it.
I am afraid it's not just the vile selfish psychopathic maniacs, but also the general population, incensed by the media. For example, one might have thought that if the avoidance of a nuclear war were people's priority number one, then the Western media (supposing Russia is the lost cause) would have demanded, every day and from every corner, that the leaders of their countries must avoid any escalatory steps regarding the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Europe. That people would be marching on the streets with slogans demanding restraint. But that's not what is happening. The voices repeatedly cautioning their audience about the danger of a nuclear war are few and far between — Tulsi, Tucker, Eric Weinstein — and they are treated as traitorous or crazy.
Dr. Strangelove : It would not be difficult, Mein Führer! Nuclear reactors could - heh, I'm sorry, Mr. President - nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could raised and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But, I would guess, that a dwelling space for several 100,000 of our people could easily be provided.
President Merkin Muffley : Well, I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down.
Dr. Strangelove : Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors of youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be vital that top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Heil! Actually, they would breed prodigiously, yeah? There would be much time and little to do. With a proper breeding techniques and a ratio of, say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could interact their way back to the present gross national product within, say, 20 years.
> Now imagine there have been hundreds of those “big ones.” That’s what even a “small” nuclear war would include.
Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe this is a matter of definitions, but this feels alarmist to me. I have to think that there are many believable scenarios (e.g., in Ukraine) where "only" one to ten nuclear detonations would be employed. That seems like a "small" nuclear war and while it would undoubtably have many negative repercussions, it would not end world civilization.
Why do you think it would escalate? Do you have a crystal ball?
I don't know anything about anything, but there have been many regional conflicts over the last 100 years that have remained regional. I don't see how the technology used to fight those regional conflicts changes anything.
Perhaps the social connotations of those technologies is significant enough that using some rather than others is "triggering" enough that non-combatants can't help but get involved. <shrug>
The US has the capability to devastate the Russian army and strategic Russian targets without the use of nukes or other WMD's. That seems the most rational and likely response to tactical nuclear use by Russia on a Ukrainian target. Not guaranteed, of course, but likely. Maintaining the moral high ground has significant value.
I find it amazing that we have people wringing their hands every year that the US dropped ‘tactical’ nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the biggest war ever. And how that is a lesson we should learn and burden we should carry, but in Ukraine, never mind, it’s no big deal. If it happens it happens. We can contain it. Keep up the pressure. If it pops, don’t worry, “We got this!” messaging we’re hearing. Just Wow!
I doubt anybody thinks "it’s no big deal". But in this game of high-stakes nuclear poker, if you communicate your fears and self-imposed limits to your enemy - you increase the chance he'll use them against you.
After all, the MAD strategy did keep us safe during the cold war while giving up their nukes did bring Ukraine an invasion.
Small aside: I thought it was cool that they used Tg (teragrams) for stratospheric loading instead of the ubiquitous "millions of tons".
We all understand SI prefixes now. I wish people would stop using "thousands of kilometres" (geography) and "millions/billions of kilometres" (astronomy) and instead just use Mm, Gm, and Tm.
I think hours are usefull, even if we could say "meet me there at 46 800 seconds tomorow". And Tg might be "pure", but to get any sense of how much it actually is I am still gonna convert it to tons in my head. Id rather people used appropriate scale of units for given scenario.
The leaders of this world, are vile, evil socio paths, but they love one thing, themselves.
Which is why nukes are inherently unuseable and prevent WorldWars. They are the gametheory six-shooters of international politics. He who owns them is equal to each creature under the sun owning a gun. Which means he gets ignored by the bullies in the alley.
Unfortunatly, they do not create the ability to empathy in these flawed creatures who rules us, thus they are still capable to send others en mass to die for silly dreams of greatness, once they do not fall under the protective shade of the mushroom.
Unless, there were a system to peacefully dispose of them every 4 years, once their disability to govern properly is proven beyond a doubt.
We did not have the old, send every man to die in case of internal unrest mass mobilization wars for 65 years.
They are clearly no longer used as societal valves like they used too.
What basis is there for the assumption that nuclear attacks will result in so much soot in the stratosphere? Seems strange that this would be orders of magnitude more than wildfires that burn much larger areas. Are there measurements from Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Damage radius of a nuke is inverse cube of yield so even the biggest bomb is going to be 10x Hiroshima. And really it's less than that because urban density drops as you move out from the center.
The second and third order effects -- no electricity, fuel, food, etc -- of a nuclear war would likely make those who survived the initial exchange envy the dead.
Readit News
I spent my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s terrified of nuclear war.
I’m not going to do that again.
If vile, selfish, psychopathic maniacs make the decision to end the world then so be it.
It'll prove for certain that humanity doesn’t deserve the world anyway, the rest of life on earth is better off without us.
I’m not going to give them my happiness and life. They’ll have to take it.
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
Since you're quoting Lewis and mentioning prayer, it's at least debatable whether we're all going to die, depending on your understanding of 1 Thessalonians 4 and how it relates to John 12 and other parts. :)
But I agree with you. Arms control is useful and people should work on it, but for those that don't feel called to worrying about nuclear war isn't productive.
This song suck so much that I can barely listen to it even today.
And this was in France, a country that was not that engaged in the child war on a day to day basis (at least for a 15 yo).
I am afraid it's not just the vile selfish psychopathic maniacs, but also the general population, incensed by the media. For example, one might have thought that if the avoidance of a nuclear war were people's priority number one, then the Western media (supposing Russia is the lost cause) would have demanded, every day and from every corner, that the leaders of their countries must avoid any escalatory steps regarding the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Europe. That people would be marching on the streets with slogans demanding restraint. But that's not what is happening. The voices repeatedly cautioning their audience about the danger of a nuclear war are few and far between — Tulsi, Tucker, Eric Weinstein — and they are treated as traitorous or crazy.
Dead Comment
President Merkin Muffley : Well, I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down.
Dr. Strangelove : Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors of youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be vital that top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Heil! Actually, they would breed prodigiously, yeah? There would be much time and little to do. With a proper breeding techniques and a ratio of, say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could interact their way back to the present gross national product within, say, 20 years.
Thankfully, you have your trusty PipBoy.
Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe this is a matter of definitions, but this feels alarmist to me. I have to think that there are many believable scenarios (e.g., in Ukraine) where "only" one to ten nuclear detonations would be employed. That seems like a "small" nuclear war and while it would undoubtably have many negative repercussions, it would not end world civilization.
Why do you think it would not escalate? Do you have a crystal ball?
I don't know anything about anything, but there have been many regional conflicts over the last 100 years that have remained regional. I don't see how the technology used to fight those regional conflicts changes anything.
Perhaps the social connotations of those technologies is significant enough that using some rather than others is "triggering" enough that non-combatants can't help but get involved. <shrug>
After all, the MAD strategy did keep us safe during the cold war while giving up their nukes did bring Ukraine an invasion.
We all understand SI prefixes now. I wish people would stop using "thousands of kilometres" (geography) and "millions/billions of kilometres" (astronomy) and instead just use Mm, Gm, and Tm.
Which is why nukes are inherently unuseable and prevent WorldWars. They are the gametheory six-shooters of international politics. He who owns them is equal to each creature under the sun owning a gun. Which means he gets ignored by the bullies in the alley.
Unfortunatly, they do not create the ability to empathy in these flawed creatures who rules us, thus they are still capable to send others en mass to die for silly dreams of greatness, once they do not fall under the protective shade of the mushroom.
Unless, there were a system to peacefully dispose of them every 4 years, once their disability to govern properly is proven beyond a doubt.
Edit: stupid math error 10x radius is 100x area