I’m not nearly as anti-nuclear as most of my socially conceious friends… at least as it relates to nuclear power and research. That said, I’m seriously worried about the “bigger stick” theory as it escelates into… well… the upper ranges of weaponry we’ve had for a few decades. Though we’ve been sitting on (or making more) weapons and not really attacking with them (just testing them)… they exist to be used and can be within minutes from right now. {is one in the air already?} I don’t worry about this with every breath, but that is only due to my human nature, allowing me to hide in ignorance when I want to.
Imagine being worried someone will break into your garage… so you might make a boobie trap – suspending a huge hunk of metal over your car… no worries, it’s being help up until triggered. Ok, nobody’s been breaking in – it’s a good device – make a few more… great. Now what? A few more… of course. Now what? I suppose we just gotta hope nothing triggers the devices which would at this point smash everything.
motivition:
Bunker-Busting the Nuclear Taboo by Tom Engelhardt
By the time the Russians got their [first nuclear bomb] in 1949, the U.S. had 235 in its arsenal. By the time Britain got its first (“Hurricane”) in 1953, the U.S. had 1,436 and the Soviets, 120; by the time France had its first four and China its first in 1964, the U.S. had 31,056; the Russians, 5,221; and the British, 310.
And those were the big five, the atomic Big Boys, who, for years, made up the “nuclear club.” By the time, in 1967, the Israelis reportedly got the first nuclear weapon in their never admitted arsenal of, by now, perhaps 200, the U.S. had 31,233; the Russians, 8,339; Britain, 270; France, 36; and China, 25. By the time, India got its first (“Smiling Buddha”) in 1974, the U.S. had 28,965; the Russians, 17,385; the British, 325; the French, 145; the Chinese, 170. By the time Pakistan got its own in 1998, the U.S. had 10,871; the Russians, 23,000; the British, 260; the French, 450; and the Chinese, 400. (South Africa produced six nuclear weapons, but dismantled them as the apartheid era was ending in the early 1990s.)
….
On coming to power, the Bush administration claimed that one of its central purposes was to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In this endeavor, it concentrated all of its energies on three “nuclear” states: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003, had not had an actual nuclear program for years; Iran, whose “bomb” – the focus of almost all-absorbing administration and media attention these last years – according to the latest National Intelligence Estimate (and all reasonable observers) is perhaps a decade away, should the present Iranian regime really opt to build it; and North Korea, which had no nuclear weapons in 2000, but may now have several, though whether with appropriate delivery systems or not is unclear. (Were that country actually to use such a weapon, however, its leadership, intensely concerned with its own survival, would essentially be committing national suicide.)