Thinking the Impossible

I was raised with the "duck and cover" exercises for all out nuclear war. I take it seriously. But most don't these days. Here's a bit from a posting by science reporter K.C. Cole in the NPR blog site.

Last Friday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set back The Doomsday Clock from 11:55 to 11:54--six minutes to midnight, instead of 5. I find it hard to take much comfort in this "progress." On the long lists of things most people worry about, nuclear weapons don't even show up. It didn't help that the Bush administration used the term "weapons of mass destruction" to lump biological, chemical and nuclear weapons into the same category--which is a little like lumping sparklers and exploding stars: only a nuclear weapon can vaporize a city in an instant, and we have many thousands of them on "hair trigger" alert. And during the Bush years, the investment in developing new weapons rapidly increased while investment in securing nuclear weapons through-out the world so that they don't fall into the hands of terrorists almost disappeared.

This is not a pretty sight. And the funny thing is that most people can't imagine and and don't even want to think about it. I remember as a kid looking at the city I lived and trying to convert kiloton payloads into the size of a crater being dug in the valley floor and the radius of destruction for that size of bomb. I remember going on school outings to visit backyard bomb shelters. And the wierdest memory was of a bomb drill where they had my class crouch in a hallway opposite a wall of windows that in any explosion would have showered us with shards. When I tried to point this out to the teachers I got indifference. A lesson I learned early in life: bureaucrats only go through the motions, they don't want to know the truth or understand the meaning of their actions.

Here's a nagging worry that Cole points out:

In fact, for the first time, the control of our nuclear arsenal is in the hands of people who have never seen a nuclear explosion first hand. It is not a pretty sight.

I still remember the shock when people realized in the 1980s that an all out nuclear war could create a nuclear winter. This more than anything else helped get serious disarmament started. But, when you realize the size of the arsenal still remaining and the proliferation of nuclear nations, you have to be pessimistic about humanities likelihood of survival. When you have fanatics eager to get into heaven by blowing themselves up, the idea of an arsenal that will destroy the world many times over must leave them drooling and panting with desire and anticipation. The end will come. And it will come when it is least expected. That is the "lesson" of history. I've lived my whole life knowing how pointless everything is because there is madness behind every facade. We live in a world that is past is "best by date".

It is funny... those who look to the skies and realize there are a 100 billion stars in our galaxy and that there are a 100 billion galaxies in the visible universe often wonders "where are the aliens?". The answer may be very simple. They, like us, built weapons too powerful for their social control. They blew themselves up. The universe is a lonely place because "intelligent" life snuffs itself out early in its adolescence.