Mutual Assured Destruction II

Following up my discussion last week about things that can kill you, I’ve decided to give voice to some of the other dangers lurking out there.

Global pandemic: looks like most of us dodged the Covid bullet or had sufficient inoculation to avoid a deadly outcome. But what about the next one? What if we continue to dumb down our society and to shortchange the medical community? When the next super bug rises its head will we have the medical minds in place to affect a solution? Will the general public be so devoid of scientific knowledge that they don’t trust the solution? Logically, I think that won’t happen, but logic only applies to those of us willing to use it. Cults rarely use logic.

Speaking of things that will keep you awake at night, how about the claim that North Korea has tested a hydrogen bomb? I think the “hydrogen” declaration is being disputed, but apparently, they did set off something big.

As I understand it, the hydrogen bomb takes a level of expertise that is relegated to a handful of countries. North Korea has not yet been a verified member of the “end of the world” club. Considering that the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un seems to have some serious compensation issues, it benefits the world, and the insurance companies to limit his reach.

There was a time, before Ted Turner started buying up all of Russia’s nukes, that the world was set to go into a nuclear “throw down” at  a moment’s notice. The “insurance policy” that was in place to keep both sides in check was called “Mutual Assured Destruction.” “MAD” is the perfect acronym for two superpowers slinging thousands of nuclear bombs at one another because one or the other of the leaders “looked at me funny.” To launch a missile attack that would surely bring about the end of the world is, indeed, mad.

So far, we’ve dodged the “nuclear bullet” and neither the Russians nor the United States has gone MAD. Let’s hope we can keep Putin from settling his border dispute with Ukraine from going nuclear. I propose we give him Ivanka, or Jared, or whatever it is he wants that is not more territory, to keep his hands in his pockets and his finger off the button.

By the way, hydrogen bombs are a different level of crazy. A little google searching has brought me this tidbit: “The biggest hydrogen bomb ever tested, Tsar Bomba (1961), was more than 3,000 times bigger than the atomic bomb that was used in Hiroshima. When it was tested in a remote part of Russia, it was predicted that anyone within 100km of the blast would have suffered third-degree burns from the radiation released. After the test, it was observed that the blast wave broke windowpanes 900km away. That is, if the explosion had occurred in Berlin, it would have broken windows in London.”

By all means Google or follow links on Wikipedia if you want to depress yourself further. It just depresses the heck out of me that we spend so much wealth and intellect on the destruction of life. I get so depressed that it makes me want to eat a Twinkie. The good news is that according to the movies, they’ll survive everything.