A realistic answer

A realistic answer to this question requires some background. For someone of my generation, should I be more precise? All right, let’s set secrecy aside, for someone born before the 50’s, and thus straggling two centuries with experience in both, the dominant, impossible to ignore, invention was, and still is, the atomic bomb. I know, nowadays, it’s fashionable to pretend it’s old hat, that “we”, meaning presumably our ineffable elites, would survive it, in “our” super bunker, and, anyway, the fall out is for the plebs, out there, naked, and disposable.

Disparition

Well, seriously, our moronic leaders may well believe their own lies, and carry on bungling policies, and war decisions, to a point when they may well cause our disparition as a species. Nukes have determined the course of history since 1946. For a long time, shall we say, until at least the 70’s, it was accepted by those elites the world over, that total war, meaning the use of nukes, was taboo, never to be allowed.

Delusion

This determination has, apparently, melted with time. It is not clear why. Is it a generational effect, the belief in survival at the delusional top of the pyramid, entertained by false gurus and idiotic models? Indeed, has “digitalisation”, and the universal use of so-called artificial intelligence, in other terms algorithms, caused a massive rise in idiocy in those pretended elites? Here lies, as ever, a mortal danger.

Fallacies

Yet, the realistic risk is what it has always been, ever since those Japanese cities were incinerated. One of the current fallacies is that other weapons cause the same final effect, that nukes are merely one of the devilish inventions that threaten life on earth, together with dynamite, napalm, hypersonic missiles and more. Who now remembers Edward Teller and the H bomb, recognised at the time as of no military use, but a weapon of genocide?

Human beings have short memories. We are busy with our lives, our children and grand children, for those of us who are positive enough to have them, above all work and, indeed survival. We have a large menu of threats, real or imaginary, to chose from, climate, viruses, inflation, meteorites, hidden cabals, and, of course, the Devil himself, in its many disguises. So, A or H, does it matter?

Inspired by Fandango’s One Word Challenge of February 6, and Three Things Challenge #M596

Picture: President Ronald Reagan shaking hands with Edward Teller.jpg