Posted on 04/22/2017 11:14:28 AM PDT by Ciaphas Cain
Well, in the case of ordering nuclear holocaust, then yes, one man can destroy 99.9999 percent of all humans on the planet in a few minutes. Hopefully a fraction of the few left over survive.
George Taylor: You Maniacs! You blew it up!
Whoops. wrong book.
>Well, in the case of ordering nuclear holocaust, then yes, one man can destroy 99.9999 percent of all humans on the planet in a few minutes. Hopefully a fraction of the few left over survive.
More like 30% of the population. We could however wipe out most life on earth with Cobalt slated weapons which thankfully no one has ever developed or deployed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
That last sentence tells it all...
It says that, right in the post.
I was just giving links to other Crichton works on AGW.
Sorry to bother you.
99 is still accurate. Infrastructure would be shot and there would be hardly anyone able to handle themselves without it. You would have people kill each other for cannibalism because the farm animals and wild animals would be killed and eaten to extinction.
Rush would play this back in 1992.
Crichton’s untimely death at 56 occurred on November 4, 2008. There are no coincidences in this life.
Around that same time, Tony Snow was subbing for Rush a played Heston reciting a WWII vet's letter in response to bill klinton's statement that the seniors would need to "pay their fair share". I'd love to find a copy of that....
>>99 is still accurate. Infrastructure would be shot and there would be hardly anyone able to handle themselves without it. You would have people kill each other for cannibalism because the farm animals and wild animals would be killed and eaten to extinction.
Close to half of the people on earth live with minimal or no “infrastructure” right now. Animals are far better at surviving that we give them credit for. Also, nuclear war would not spread the bombs evenly across the land masses of the world. The 99% figure is one of those figures created by people who do not understand nuclear weapons. A full scale nuclear war would make live difficult and would cause massive depopulation in the heavily inhabited areas of the northern hemisphere, but would not come close to killing 99% of the people on earth.
Well, in the case of ordering nuclear holocaust, then yes, one man can destroy 99.9999 percent of all humans on the planet in a few minutes. Hopefully a fraction of the few left over survive.
...
I don’t think it would be that bad, but if cities were targeted that would cause the most casualties, and leave behind an improved Conservative to liberal ratio. Not that I’d want that to happen.
My apologies....really. I mistook your intent. Sorry ‘bout that.
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet.
Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. Theres been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years.
Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not.
If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. Its powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time thats happened?
Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself.
In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didnt have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We cant imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we havent got the humility to try. Weve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If were gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
That is so bloody beautiful! The hubris of Mankind astounds me at times.
Funny... how we’ve been told nukes will make a place unlivable for thousands of years... and yet... people by the millions live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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