Filed under: Bruce Blair, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, General Musings, Global Warming, Government, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Science Fiction, Slate, Society, Violence, Writing stuff, tech
The hydrogen bomb is about six years older than I am. In other words, I’m one of the people who grew up fully expecting a nuclear war of some variety sometime during my life. And in spite of the ‘detargetting’ bullshit of the ’90s, I still do.
I’m in good company, though mostly the focus of awareness and concern has shifted to either nuclear terrorism or some kind of ‘rogue state’ conflict.
Slate Magazine has a piece currently about whether or not there exists a “Doomsday Machine” built by the USSR which is still operational. Citing several sources, they conclude that there is, though it is not a completely automated system. One of the experts they reference is Bruce Blair, who has written extensively about the dangers posed by the nuclear forces of the major powers, and how the systems created during the Cold War are still very much a threat. One small sample:
In addition, U.S. nuclear control is also far from fool-proof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery — terrorist hackers might be able to gain back-door electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically over radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given elaborate new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject a firing order that previously would have been immediately carried out.
Well, glad they cleared that up. But what else is lurking out there in our military, or in the nuclear forces of Russia and China that is just waiting to go wrong? And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the problems of the smaller and newer nuclear powers, who are unlikely to have as good safeguards as we do.
As I mentioned previously, initially I had an asteroid impact being the second major catastrophe of the 21st century, for the ‘history’ of Communion of Dreams. When that proved to be difficult for some of my initial readers to swallow, I dropped back to the idea of a regional nuclear war. Working off of Carl Sagan’s studies of the likely cooling effect of nuclear weapons, this would allow me to offset global warming, stymie the development of Asia, and still scare the hell out of the remaining human race and prompt the rapid development of large-scale space capabilities. Curiously, almost no one has yet expressed the opinion that they find this scenario (that of a regional nuclear war) too outlandish to believe.
Perhaps that is due to so much Science Fiction, and even mainstream fiction, having portrayed the dangers posed by nuclear weapons for so long. Or perhaps it is just that we know humankind too well, and have a realistic assessment of how likely it is that sometime, somewhere, nuclear weapons will once again be used to horrific effect.
Jim Downey
