[extropy-chat] POLITICS: terrorism and strategies

[scerir]

RJB:
> Proposed utilitarian solution: [...]

The first proposed military application of atomic energy
was not nuclear weaponry but radiological warfare.

A May 1941 report by the National Academy of Sciences
listed the first option as the "production of violently
radioactive materials . . . carried by airplanes to be
scattered as bombs over enemy territory." In the spring
of 1943, when it was still unclear whether the atomic bomb
could be built in time (that is before German capitulation)
radiological weapons became a possible fallback.

Manhattan Project scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer
discussed with Enrico Fermi the possibility of using fission
products, particularly strontium, to poison the German food
supply.

May 25, 1943 - Oppenheimer to Fermi: "I should recommend delay
if that is possible. In this connection I think that we should
not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill
half a million men, since there is no doubt that the actual
number affected will, because of non-uniform distribution,
be much smaller than this."

So they took the only other option: explode *the* bomb in
Berlin. (The bomb was still under development, Segré and
others made "little boy" much later, if I remember well).

Now these are *facts*. And I cannot say whether that option
was - at that time - fair (let me say so) or not. But Berlin
and Hitler himself were the targets. And not Japan.

Now the present situation seems to be quite different.
There is no Berlin, there is no Hitler, and perhaps there
is no Iraq. Just terror, terrorists, and jihad. And some
hope.

s.

Let me point out that in recent images of prisoners
kept, in Iraq, by al-qaeda, it is possible to see a
globe. Yes a globe, the entire world. And this reminds
me of the Great Dictator, by Chaplin, when Adenoid
Hynkel dances with that baloon, representing the globe.