Tag: nuclear weapons

I hate to keep bringing up Dr. Strangelove, but

For example, of the 12,500 targets in the SIOP at that time, one of them was slated to be hit by 69 consecutive nuclear weapons. It seems superfluous to say that this is crazy, but it is important to understand how the planning process could result in such a figure.

One misconception you may have is that the people who plan our military adventures are cold, calculating bureaucrats who comb through huge quantities of data and calculate invasions, bombings, and coups d’état with analytical precision. That would in fact be hateful and frightening.

Spreadsheets are involved and there are huge quantities of data. And bureaucrats, lots and lots of bureaucrats doing this work. But they’re all completely insane.They have abstracted the world so completely that there is no longer any connection to the ordinary evil of war; they live in another place. Remember that next time you’re watching the news and we do something tragicomic on a huge scale.

80s Flashback Block Party: Son of SDI

strangelove

I found that Twain bit during a long web search for something I couldn’t find: a satire on new weapons technology from the 1860s that is anthologized in The Sub-Treasury of American Humor. I can’t find that book in my house yet either; the search continues. It’s a lovely bit of writing and entirely appropriate today.

The whole search was sparked by this hilarious/horrible article on the return of the discredited, stupid, and entirely evil “Brilliant Pebbles” weapons project, part of the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative that was popularly known as the “Star Wars” system.

This is courtesy of Lowell Wood, our current living Strangelove. A disciple of Teller, he believed in every mad science approach to strategic defense: killer satellites, nuclear explosions in space, throwing rocks really fast at missiles, and X-ray lasers. The last one is a beauty: nuclear bombs in satellites would be detonated and their radiation focused into laser beams.

Wood’s still at it. His entire career and ego are attached to the scheme.