[extropy-chat] Desirability of Happiness, Etc.

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 06:43:21PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:

> The destruction of Hiroshima in 1945 took the cooperation of millions of

Again, asymmetrical warfare is not warfare. It takes dual-use technologies
like nitrate fertilizer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
and civilian aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11%2C_2001_attacks
to achieve their goals of a high kill ratio with no subsequent retaliation
target.

Purexing fissibles from low-burn civilian nuclear ashes to build a nuke by
a small group would be very different from the Manhattan project.
The design target is documented, and very little actual effort would
be required, since hitchhiking upon civilian nuclear facilities.

To make this more concrete: I personally would be able to prepare 
such fissibles, given reasonably cold ashes and a small number of sacrificable
human servos. Out of a given nuclear engineering class, some 5-10% should be
able to build a functional nuclear device from that.

We have been playing this lottery for many years. Just because winning
the main prize is not probable it doesn't mean it's impossible.

> people. The (more thorough) destruction of Kiev in 1240 took mere thousands.

Kiev (a torched wooden city of 50 k inhabitants in a classical act
of war) by "mere thousands" is classical, symmetrical warfare.
A small group precipitating a firestorm event by a few concerted acts
of arson would be asymmetrical warfare. 
 
> Designer MDR pathogens or other self-replicating malware package
> >even more wallop in a smaller envelope.
> 
> In the stories we make up, yes. Not in real life.

Designer MDR pathogens are not just stories. You might be familiar with
the Biopreparat effort, which, fortunately, never saw deployment. So far, 
we have been very lucky to not having seen a man-made MDR pandemic. The 
capabilities increase, while the integrated probability over time will eventually
approach unity. If we're lucky, rise in our countermeasure capabilities
will be matching.

However, nuking high-density population centers is easier, so
expect this to happen first.
 
> You sure can build an atlatl, but how many can you kill with it, before
> >being overwhelmed yourself?
> 
> Comparable to the numbers you can kill with a bomb or a machine gun.

Reread above sentence. You honestly don't believe this, do you?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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