Unsurvivable Weapons - Nuclear by Louis Evan Palmer

Not
Just
Unthinkable

Herman Kahn wrote a book a while ago which he called "Thinking about the Unthinkable" and one of the basic premises it examined is that a war using nuclear weapons could be fought & won. We know, but have seemingly forgotten, that this is not true.

Part of the reason we know it's untrue is because while waiting for a Martian dust storm to clear, the scientists tending to a 1971 Mariner 9 space probe decided to do some extra-curricular investigations. Their resultant calculations highlighted that the dust blocked enough sunlight to significantly lower the temperature on the martian surface. Similar conclusions were reached by German scientists a decade later regarding raging global forest fires that would be caused by nuclear blasts. This led to a concerted effort to study the phenomenon of atmospheric particulates and their effects, especially on sunlight reaching the surface and the life dependent on it. Gwynn Dyer talks about this in the latest edition of his book "War".

In this context, the bottom line was that a nuclear exchange of more than 100 missiles in the 1 megaton range that was targeted on major cities (a likely scenario) would be enough to plunge the world into a nuclear winter with a massive post-explosion loss of life - plant, animal, human.

This is not the hundreds of millions who would die from the bombs themselves which has always been the main focus - this is the billions who survived. It could be the extinction of humans. It would certainly be a mass extinction of plant & animal life. It would also destroy the ozone layer which would render the surface uninhabitable. It would poison the entire world which would not allow it to sustain life. This is a horrible possibility which must be dealt with in the swiftest, most unequivocal manner.

This means that nuclear weapons are unsurvivable which means that they are unusable. The only solution to protecting ourselves against unusable, unsurvivable weapons is for their banning, destruction and subsequent & unrelenting prevention measures up to, if necessary, a prohibition on nuclear (fission) power .

To be clear, unsurvivable means that even if a country launched a completely successful first strike and there was no retaliation whatsoever, everyone on the planet would still die.

If a defensive posture is offered, let it stand as unchallenged that there is no shield imaginable that could stop all the missiles. For this reason, retaliation has always been part of the "defense". The only thing that a anti-missile defense opens the way to is a first strike or, the recurring dream of war planners, a tactical strike.

A tactical strike is such a ludicrous proposition that it defies reason to have it as an option. Does anyone in their right mind think that dropping a few tactical nuclear bombs on the fringes of Russia will not result in a counter-strike? Russia has made it abundantly clear that any nuclear strike against any part of its territory will result in a massive response - not a tit for tat - a full retaliatory counter-strike. What part of that don't we understand? Or, is this possibly a bluff in some catastrophic poker game where the ante is all life on the planet.

This then means that tactical strikes would be reserved for smaller, less powerful non-nuclear countries - which, of course, leads to a tremendous push in these assorted countries for these very weapons; this, in turn, pushes the whole world closer to the brink with each country that joins the "club".

Think about it - we're looking at a situation where India nuclear-fighting Pakistan could destroy the entire planet. Not Russia, China or America - India versus Pakistan. Israel, if it has the 200-400 nukes, it is reputed to have, could also destroy the whole globe if it launched all its missiles at major cities. The game is out-of-control.

The other option which seems to be rearing its venomous head is that of micro-nukes which can be disguised for public consumption as regular high-yield bombs. How many micro-nukes equal the damage of a major nuke? How long would it take to get to that point given the mind-numbing amount of ordinance being hurled at small countries like Afghanistan and Iraq? Does it matter if you're poisoned quickly or over a longer period?

The only reasonable path is an outright ban - immediate, complete, enforceable, and rigorous. Press your government for this, press the U.N. While the soonest possible disarmament is ideal, safety may dictate a slower, paced reduction but it must start now and continue unabated until nuclear weapons are a footnote in the history books.

If it feels like Time is short then it is!

Unsurvivable Weapons - Nuclear, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright Louis Evan Palmer 
He lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have been published in numerous publications. 

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Future World by Louis Evan Palmer

What'll
It
Be?

Every once in a while, each of us will get a flash of the future, where we perceive something on another level and we are as sure as we can be that this thing we see will occur or exist in the future.

It may be an image we see in a movie or that we imagine while reading a book or staring into space but when we do see it, we immediately feel that it will exist just as we see it sometime in the future.

If we could collect all these special instances from various credible & incredible persons, it would make for a very interesting document I'm sure.

There have been any number of psychological & sociological experiments that have tried to explore our views on what's to come. Most are fairly ordinary and trying to look some months or 1, perhaps 2, years ahead. Others, however, are quite the opposite and depending on how much faith we put into them may, in fact, shake our conception of this world and time & space.

One investigation was conducted by Chet B. Snow & Helen Wambach who performed experiments over many years (first Helen alone and then with Chet). They regressed persons through hypnosis: first, to past lives and then, if circumstances were favourable, they also guided some into the future - which was more difficult for people to accept. The regressed persons saw a world where the population in 2100-2300 AD was only 2 billion. They saw four different human societies co-existing: one where about 1/3 of the total population were living in space and on other planets; where another 1/3 of the population were inside domes or underground; a little less than 1/5 of people were vegetarians living in harmony with nature in small settlements; and the remaining 1/5 of humanity had set themselves up in small rustic towns where they ranched and ate meat and locally-grown food. This was described in the book "Mass Dreams of the Future".

In what could be described as a remote viewing experiment, Joseph McMoneagle also wrote about the future in his book "The Ultimate Time Machine". One of the vivid images he saw was that of an Utopian society in the year 3000 A.D. He lists many tribulations in between now and then and, even utopia was not a permanent state of affairs, yet it is something for to look forward to.

My prognostications are more mundane, more of extrapolations, and only going out 100+ years. They are driven in large part by logic, intuition, and a fond hope & desire.

Who Makes What?
The global organization of productive capacity. There will have to be a profound discussion and agreement as to who is to produce what and how much. We can't have huge over-capacity in many key industries with everyone expecting to export their excess. In certain fields, each country will want to have some capability.

How are You Paying?
Money, money-like instruments and other financial tools will become subject to more rigorous scrutiny and regulation. "Finance Capitalism" and its rampant speculation and profit-driven instability will be reined in, hopefully forever. This will mean the demise of national currencies and their built-in drives towards war and economic depressions. Minimum & maximum incomes will be legislated and a system of credits will setup and they will be backed by the economic unit issuing it.

Contact with non-Human Sentients
This is inevitable and may have already happened. The entrance of non-human sentients on the world stage will trigger massive social & cultural changes. It may even involve Earth in confrontations and alliances within the greater galaxy.

Theory of Everything
Humans will uncover powerful secrets & dimensions which will confer (on some) a mind-boggling array of capabilities. Free non-polluting energy, non-linear travel, a world where humans are god-like in their ability to create. Very dangerous time & place.

Hidden Societies
This refers to physically hiding, not secret societies. The technology for hiding will outpace the technology for discovery. As it becomes technologically easier to effectively hide & survive, groups of people will start to do this on a broad scale. Because it will done in secret, it will be difficult to really know how widespread it becomes. In fact, how widespread it may be.

Allocation of Resources
As societies become more enmeshed, resources will be fairly, efficiently & officially allocated on the basis of need as well as the basis of contribution. It will no longer be acceptable to allow entire regions, populations, or classes of people, to starve or die from preventable conditions or diseases. This means that the control of many resources will be vested in independent transnational bodies. (no, this does not refer to profit-making corporations!!)

The Primacy of Mind
Society will move from a belief in the primacy of matter towards a belief in the primacy of mind. Quantum mechanics has started that process but because it is so revolutionary, it is taking a long time to penetrate through and through. Once it does it will have a tremendous impact on everything. It will go way beyond a belief in God being everywhere - in other words, this is not Medieval Times Redux.

Economic Units
A grid of standard economic units will be super-imposed over the world and used for administrative purposes. Having countries that are too large or too small or over-endowed or under-endowed will be considered as a threatening imbalance. More prosperity & education will level out differences and allow for populations to come under control, with zero or negative growth curves, and this, in turn, will allow for populations to migrate more easily and thus even out the load on the environment due to people pressures.

Future World, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright Louis Evan Palmer 
He lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have been published in numerous publications. 

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

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Dueling with Duality by Louis Evan Palmer

State
Absence
Relationship
Context
Awareness

Duality is a natural state for people. We learn that basic "fact" early on and never quite seem to shake it. Typically, we never have reason to. It is a state where we feel, without obvious effort on our part, that almost every thing we sense has something which stands opposite to it or in opposition to it or apart from it in some relationship.

Duality seems to have aspects of a "state", aspects of a "relationship" and also to merely reflect the presence or absence of something where we often feel that the absence is a force or substance of equal stature to the one we sense by its presence.

For example, cold is the absence of heat. Heat is the presence of energy, cold is its absence. Yet, we feel cold as a force on its own even when factually it's nothing, it's the absence of heat.

Another clear example, darkness is the absence of light. Again, we usually feel darkness as a force on its own but it's an absence we detect and to which we react.

It's a perfect incarnation of the binary concept where 1s and 0s are the substance and 1s are the presence and 0s are the absence. However, this concept presents an interesting twist whereby position and relation give meaning to the absence beyond just being nothing.

Another idea to think about - if we looking at either a presence (say, heat) or an absence (say, cold), we may never notice it if it didn't vary. It is the contrast which allows us to observe many, perhaps all, phenomena. If, in fact, we cannot perceive things which do not vary then who knows what myriad of "things" we co-exist with but not not perceive because they do not vary. ..... like the source of everything.

We must also remember that context is part of the equation: we apprehend something like heat in a universe of space and time and mass and energy; we detect the presence or absence of one thing while situated in a realm on other things in which the presence or absence manifests itself.

To touch on the variance theme, we can go one further, if something exists which we cannot perceive in any way (to date), then we are not aware of its presence or absence. If that element were significant then our whole definition of reality would become suspect.

Thus far, we have a presence or an absence; we have a state which varies; and, we have a relationship wherein an absence or a presence gains additional meaning; we have context; and we have that which we cannot apprehend.

Some of the common things that we consider to be related in a dualistic relationship: love versus hate - hate seems to be more than the absence of love, where an absence of love seems to imply a frigidity, a lack of emotion, a lack of interest or empathy for someone; hate draws to mind, an active force directed at someone but with malice and ill-will. Is coldness and no feeling the opposite of both Love and Hate? It is if we want to maintain duality as a balance of presence versus absence. However, that's probably not how most people think of it.

Other potential dualities are more of the type where one thing stands apart from some other thing in some kind of a relationship. "Here" versus "There" or "Now" versus "Then". These are more of the measuring kinds of dualities - the one thing is located at a different point on some measuring standard versus another thing - in one case, it's a measure of space as in "here" versus "there"; in another case, it's a measure of time as in "now" versus "then".

"You" versus "Me" can be looked on in this way but it's really more than that though - it's one type of being versus another instance of that type of being.

"Motion" versus "Stillness" is an absence versus presence duality. "Conscious" versus "Unconscious" may be this type unless we use the more common meaning of "Unconscious" as a type of consciousness of which we are unaware - then it's two types of consciousness.

Some would argue that "Evil" is the absence of "Good" and in a similar manner that "Hate" is the absence of "Love" but it doesn't seem that way.

Reaching into the physical world again, we have a "Particle" versus a "Wave". Here is where an interesting thing happened. It was regarded for hundreds of years that phenomenon that exhibited these characteristics had to be one or the other and it was up to us to figure out which one a given thing was. At the turn of the 20th century, it began to be realized that a photon, for example, was actually both a particle and a wave. How it was both became the focus of another profound debate which is still going on today.

The Wave - Particle debate can be considered similar in some ways to the relationships a given person may have with other members of one's family - say for a male: son, brother, uncle, nephew, father, grandfather... we don't consider it an either-or proposition and yet it's the same person who has these very different relationships - is it also a duality of sorts? Maybe a photon has a "wave" relationship with certain physical aspects of reality and a "particle" relationship with other physical aspects. If so, a photon, or any other particle of this type, may have other non-wave non-particle relationships that affect its interaction with the physical world.

Is duality a lesser reality, a circumscribed version of the real thing, which allows us to navigate this universe but never actually apprehend it directly? Is it possible to adjust, or un-adjust, the observer so as to see the reality from which the duality emerges? Since it appears that the final arbiter emanates from consciousness, it would lead us to conclude that we can apprehend the reality in which duality is embedded.

What changes would ensue from this type of breakthrough? Or, perhaps "breakthrough" is not the right word as it implies something new when, in fact, it's something prior - maybe something like "unbirth" is a more accurate way of phrasing it.

It's reminiscent of sages who say we live in two realities - the dualistic one and the one from which it emanates. The feeling is that it can only be a "good" to see beyond duality.

Dueling with Duality, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright Louis Evan Palmer 
He lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have been published in numerous publications. 

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

• OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
• TALES TOLD TO A TREE - Amazon Kindle Book
• 40 POEM FRAGMENTS - Amazon Kindle Book