[lit-ideas] Re: More places to nuke

  • From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:13:03 EST

 
<<A  Canticle for Leibowitz>> 
Always one of my fav's ..... good  enough for a couple re-reads. 
Julie Krueger 



========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: More places to 
nuke  Date: 2/22/06 4:04:35 P.M. Central Standard Time  From: 
_john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
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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