5 Minutes to Nuclear Midnight

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• Reader Comments (7)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  How’s this for bad news?

  The United States is committing a war crime every time a soldier uses a depleted uranium bomb or bullet.

  The cumulative war crimes are uncountable (the criminals too).

  Posted by Jiminy Cricket on Aug 8, 2008 at 5:07 AM

  NEWS FLASH!

  War is not a gentleman’s game (When they say, “After you.” )
  They aren’t being polite.

  It’s about survival.

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 12, 2008 at 3:41 PM

  So that makes it all right?

  Nice attitude you have there, Whatthheck ... It’s war, after all, dear chap, people die all the time, nothing to get worked up about.

  Good luck surviving.

  Posted by Jiminy Cricket on Aug 13, 2008 at 4:33 AM

  My point is no one has ever been able to prevent the use of any new weapons technology. Not gunpowder, not machine guns, not nukes.

  And no one in his right mind trusts his enemy — or he’s toast.

  Realizing what is so is not condoning, just facing reality.

  If an armed gunman breaks into your house and you are alos armed would you say, “I put down my gun if you will,”?

  I would just shoot.

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 13, 2008 at 7:28 PM

  The ol’ “gunman burglar” argument is a tricky one:

  Sure, I guess I might shoot.  But one should also consider what they can do to keep themselves from being in a situation where they have to make a kill or be killed decision.

  The point of this article is to show that, unless things change quickly, the probability of someone using nukes remains dangerously high.  But, if the international community works together, we can greatly reduce that risk.

  If you have a neighborhood watch, know who your neighbors really are, don’t flaunt your wealth, don’t leave guns and arms lying around your house and, if you feel the need, have a good lock on your door, the chances of you finding an armed gunman (as redundant as that is ;) ) in front of you is fairly slim.

  And it’s not easy, what with long work hours and everyone fighting just to keep their own families safe and satisfied, and the ever rising cost of gun locks, it’s hard to make time to work with neighbors and look after more than their own immediate self interests.  But it’s worth it.

  Extrapolate the idea to the level of nation states and, while more complicated, the moral of the story is essentially the same:

  Nations must work together for our collective safety.  whattheheck is right that there’s no perfect answer, but we must do all in our power to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons and materials ever being used to take human life again.

  Posted by PEPAndy on Aug 15, 2008 at 5:59 PM

  PEPAndy,

  Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the undisclosed (unknown?) status of their inventory the problem is far different than during the MAD strategy days.

  The control is no longer in the hands of nations which can negotiate to prevent their use. It is the radical religious nuts who not only don’t care if they die, but want to.

  Bringing that down to neighborhoods — the druggie desparate for a fix may not be to willing to negociate either.  We have had increasing breakins in our neighborhood and drug gang related shootings are up. Our house was broken into and he fled out the back door when he heard the garage door go up. My neighbor saw him running across his yard. When he was caught three months later he was armed and was on drugs.

  I’ll just shoot first if able.

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 16, 2008 at 7:17 PM

  Rather than 5 minutes to midnight, it is really many years after midnight.

  The bad news is that they are still tryiing to exterminate the human race with nuclear weapons.

  The good news is that our nuclear war fighting elite may have made their move to soon.

  If they would have held their fire and not jumped the gun, they may have been able to create a toxic plague of some sort, and killed a large number of us.

  As it sits, the good news is that they took the ‘cheap route,’ and moved in for the ‘quick kill’ using the newly invented nuclear weapons of mass destruction. If our newly minted nuclear war fighting elite destroyed us in a manner in which the other high level civilizations that share this planet with us were not interfered with, we likely would all be dead already.

  We are the ‘Living Dead.’

  It is long since time that we moved in on the criminal actors of this planet, and “Lay hands on them.” We need to humanely institutionalize them for their own good, and our safety.

  Posted by pjrsullivan on Jan 6, 2009 at 12:30 AM

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