[lit-ideas] Slobodan Hussein's Gallic Doomsday Device?
- From: Eric Yost <Mr.Eric.Yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:50:00 -0400
Does a nation have a right to construct a global doomsday device?
Imagine that France can install (or has installed) banks of Saturn-V
engines over a central Freeman Dyson-style fission-bomb rocket, on the
dark side of the moon.
If France is destroyed in an attack, the Doomsday Device will ignite the
rocket engines, and computers will pilot the moon into the earth.
Boom! Bye-bye all life forms, except maybe some microbes.
If the first duty of a rational nation state is to survive, and
proclaiming the existence of this device would deter attacks on France,
why would France's Doomsday Device be morally wrong?
And yet it seems wrong at the core, doesn't it? Species allegiance isn't
it? And yet there would probably be many in France (or any other
country) who wouldn't object to its construction. "Our way or the highway."
Seems like the spirit of a dying man who wills his estate to be
destroyed, rather than bequeathed to his family.
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