Nuclear War

[Salus]

I've found that a lot of my attitudes towards various things are influenced, subtly, by the threat of nuclear war. Yes, I know even my avatar is a reference to it. Anyway, even though we are over the Cold War, I think humanity is greatly influenced in a subtle but pervasive way by the presence of nuclear weaponry.

Yes, I know, MAD and all that. The thing is, we came close enough to annihilating ourselves already, and these weapons are in the hands of politicians, who are often regarded as some of the most infamously stupid humans to walk the earth.

I catch myself ending my sentences with "as long as we don't annihilate ourselves" whenever I'm speculating about the future. Up until the development of nuclear weaponry, humanity did not have the power to end itself. No matter how bad the wars got, we could never obliterate ourselves or our planet, or even make a dent in it for that matter. Add on top of this today's environmental concerns and the depletion of natural resources and I think we are a generation that doesn't view the future as brighter than the past anymore.

A few of the characteristics of this:

- The feeling that your life, everyone else's life, and the fate of humanity as a whole is in someone else's hands.
- The knowledge that the only thing that stops the button from being pushed is however the people in charge of the button are feeling.
- The thought that the peak of our civilization is right now, and this will be as far as sentient life ever got in the universe.
- The realization that there are more and more people of questionable sanity in charge of nuclear weaponry, and this number is only going to grow larger. (Looking at you, Kim Jong Un.)
- The realization that if there is nuclear war, you'll probably be dead before you know it's happening.
- The strange thought that even if nuclear weapons are outmoded, our killing power is not, and human lives become more and more easy to extinguish in incredible numbers in the blink of an eye.

I think this manifests in modern culture as a sort of quiet nihilism. We obviously don't trust our governments like we did, in fact it is more common nowadays to assume everyone in your government is up to absolutely no good than to give them the benefit of the doubt. Our movies often deal with the world ending, while civilians can do nothing but watch. People walk around with a very mistrustful attitude towards people in authority. I think one of the major reasons contributing to the decline of the belief in God (Christianity, Judaism, etc.) is the realization that now humans have the power to end the world. Not much need for a god when humanity is no longer so weak and pathetic, we don't even need a God to wipe out every living thing on Earth, Noah-style. It is becoming obvious that humanity is a ticking time bomb on the face of this planet, with the power to take every plant and animal down with it should things go haywire. Happened to the dinosaurs. Might we be next?

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Esotera]

I'm more concerned about climate change, as it doesn't appear that we're making much progress on it (or certainly not fast enough). It seems much more likely to happen than a large nuclear exchange, and we have a better idea of how it will happen & how to prevent it.

I am totally against nuclear weapons and am for full disarmament. There's too much chance that a device could malfunction (given thousands of devices and several decades), and if they do precipitate a full exchange millions of civilians will die. There are no winners in nuclear war.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

In terms of nuclear war passing as a possible inevitability, I honestly can't really say that is much that we can do as citiznes, short of actually finding all the nuclear arms, disarming them, and placing our fate/demise on a/several deity/ies.

In most cases, a majority of the human population will perish in the initial event, and they will be considered the lucky ones. Those that survive will either have to deal with the harshness of nuclear winter/post-nuclear conditions/radiation on a lost society, or remain isolated underground for several hundred years.

Most of the underground survivors will likely be the riches and most powerful individuals in the world, which I believe that they will not live for very long. If Elysium has taught us anything, it's that even when the rich and powerful find/create their own utopia, free from the lower classes, disease, and environmental/social responsibility, THEY WILL STILL SCREW THEMSELVES OVER.

I'm more concerned about climate change, as it doesn't appear that we're making much progress on it (or certainly not fast enough). It seems much more likely to happen than a large nuclear exchange, and we have a better idea of how it will happen & how to prevent it.

I couldn't agree more and I honestly do think that it is a much urgent issue, as it will effect our way of life and even existence further down the line. I've attested many times before that the seasons and weather in general is not what it used to be in the past couple of decades. Here in America, we have no more seasons: Summer tends to being in mid-July and end in late September (which should begin mid-to-late June and end late-to-early September), Fall is almost non-existent during mid September to early December, as we no longer get cooling breezes, Winter is way too cold, even for sunny California, and Spring is just a grab bag of weather conditions(which is how it's always been, but on a worse level).