[lit-ideas] Re: More places to nuke
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:03:59 +0900
On 2/23/06, Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> But if people in New York or Fargo have new
> weapons, whether the light goes off or stays on
> for them, or if lights go off in both places, they
> will keep the new weapons.
To me, the most serious flaw in this argument is lack of attention to
the nature of the knowledge in question. It makes sense if we are, for
example, talking at the level of a paleolithic handaxe where the
knowledge is widespread and the relevant materials readily available.
At the level of Roman weaponry it still remains plausible, given that
the relevant expertise is sufficiently widespread that the experts who
have it are not all likely to wind up dead at once and the materials
can still be found or traded for. Even at this stage, however, the
knowledge is likely to be spotty. The last surviving blacksmith in a
particular place off major trade routes and weeks or months aware from
supplies of iron ore is likely to fail to pass on what he knows. It
becomes increasingly unlikely to imagine that knowledge required to
build an M1A1 Abrams Tank, F-18 Hornet or the USS Ronald Reagan and
access to all of the relevant materials would survive the proverbial
"knocked back to the stone age." It might, of course, be rediscovered
after the necessary technologies had been redeveloped and the
requisite industrial base recreated. But that would, presumably,
require considerable time, especially given the global depletion of
easy to access supplies of such basic materials as coal and iron ore.
How does a blasted-back-to-the-stone-age or even to-the-middle-ages
man recreate even that staple of modern interpersonal violence the
Kalashnikov AK-47? One imagines a science fiction tale in which the
last bullets have been fired, the mechanism has seized up, and the
ancient weapon is venerated for powers it no longer possesses, that no
one living knows how to reproduce....
Speaking of science fiction, those who have read the classics may
recall _A Canticle for Leibowitz_.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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