From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 05:48:38 MDT
Michael Lorrey [retroman@together.net] wrote:
>Show
>me a nut with a nuke and I'll be ready to show you off world capability (If its
>so easy for him to get a nuke, then it should be just as easy for me to build a
>nuclear powered rocket!!!!)
Exactly. Much of this discussion seems about as useful as the old 'but look
at the population growth curves, everyone will be starving by 1980' stuff
which completely ignored changes in technology. The plain fact is that if
crazies have this technology then the rest of the world does too, and the
non-crazies are likely to have it first. If we can destroy the Earth then
we'll easily be able to get off it.
The exception to this is the kind of government control situation people
have talked about. If this power is restricted to a few people and a crazy
gets access to it somehow then we die. If it's generally available then
we'll probably be far away by the time the crazies destroy the Earth...
and sooner or later someone will, simply because it can be done and
because to a future galaxy-spanning human-descended society Earth will be
an important symbol.
Mark
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