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I am a fan of the Twillight Zone and a theme of many of their episodes is nuclear war and the fact humans destroy one another at some point. In the future more and more countries and groups are going to have nukes. Is the self destruction of the human race inevitable based on our understanding of history? I would like to ask everyone how are we going to adapt and survive if there is a nuclear war or attack using history as a guide. The Mongols destroyed so much of Asia in the 13th century. Look at how Europe was destroyed in the 16th and 20th centuries. Unfortunately, humans have done horrible things to one another.
Last edited by jobseeker2013; 06-14-2014 at 01:10 PM..
Is the self destruction of the human race inevitable based on our understanding of history?
Impossible to say. We have no example of the destruction of the human race on our own planet, nor any comparative model of any civilizations elsewhere.
At best the topic could be discussed in terms of guesswork probabilities, but "inevitable" is a non starter.
To be honest, I'm more concerned about the condition & maintenance of all the nuclear reactors and their vulnerabilities to natural disasters than I am about weapons. Both could do the job of destroying civilization, one is just quicker than the other. I don't trust private companies, or governments for that matter, to do everything they should do to insure the safety of operating such technology. If something does go wrong, the damage done will last for thousands of years. A serious enough accident under the right circumstances could have consequences for everyone on the planet. Fukushima is a good example of a very close call, and it will be decades before the real amount of damage it caused is known.
Destroy all of humanity? Nah, we'd really have to go full retard for something like that to happen. Will a nuke ever go off? Pretty possible, though not any time soon.
Perhaps we will see an age where nuclear warfare sets back and critically wounds the major powers, but the theory that we'd be blasted back to the stone age I think is a dramatic exaggeration.
I think technology is going to advance further in terms of missile defence, and there is a massive capability gap between the first world nations and the rest of the world, so no I don't see the world being destroyed this way in the foreseeable future.
It's more likely the world is destroyed by nature itself, which is far more powerful and destructive than any man made force.
There are many ways we may end our brief stay on earth so far. An all out nuclear war would set us back, but not be the end. If the end were to come and presuming no natural disaster is involved, it would come from a man-made global environmental disaster, a man-made virus, or even some kind of super weapon developed by some fringe suicidal group that does something like ignite the atmosphere, which I read once was a possibility.
Sit down, take a deep breath, and have a drink of water. Here are the historic facts: We've had nukes for about three quarters of a century now and only used two of them and those were at the very beginning of the era. Both of the cities thus wiped out have recovered quite nicely. We have not used nukes in anger since.
Nuclear weapons are both simple and very complicated. Which way you see them depends on how much training you have. Not many people have that kind of training and nobody is going to get far in obtaining nukes before they must unavoidably depend on somebody who has Rational Thinking. It requires Rational People to come up with the money needed to finance such an operation. Rational People are in charge of critical materials that need to be obtained. You've got to be Rational in order to have the discipline needed to study the subjects. Rational People understand that nukes can be a two-way street and they're probably going to get hurt a whole lot worse than whoever it is they want to nuke. Rational People can be a mighty formidible obstruction to Irrational People wanting to use a nuke.
I will not put it beyond the capability of some terrorist group to get their hands on a few small nukes and set them off in a few places. BUT THIS WILL SO ALARM THE REST OF THE WORLD THEY WILL RISE UP AND WIPE THEM OUT! All the niceties and cautions will be gone. Wherever these guys came from will experience genocide on an industrial scale and nobody is going to shed a tear about it--not after they nuked a few cities. Anybody else that had plans for using nukes will suddenly decide that might not be a very good idea.
No, I don't think we're going to wipe ourselves out. You need to remember that the Twilight Zone was fiction--which means it's not true.
Umm, yeah, based on our understanding of history,we can conclude that no future decisions will be made based on any past uunderstanding of history. Invention cannot be unearned, we still know the poison that killed Socrates, and will sooner or later use it.
Second, the human intellectual capacity to influence its own environment will prevent any event from destroying our civilization, unless it also destroys virtually all other lifeforms on this planet and any other that we are technologically capable of corrupting. Human reason and ingenuity know how to sidestep an apocalypse.
Thirdly, it is no longer "we" who collectively possess this capability of generating widespread dishabitability. Each one of us, as an individual, now has the power to do this unilaterally, without the consent of "we". Any of 7 billion humans, with $1,000, can carry any suitcase of destruction , in a day, virtually unimpeded, to any point on the planet. I cannot answer for every individual human's motive or understanding of history.
All of which digresses from a discussion of History, but I think it addresses your question.
Based on our understanding of history will nuclear weapons destroy our civilization?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jobseeker2013
I am a fan of the Twillight Zone and a theme of many of their episodes is nuclear war and the fact humans destroy one another at some point.
The Twilight Zone was a product of its time; the late 50s/early60s when Cold War paranoia was peaking.
Quote:
In the future more and more countries and groups are going to have nukes. Is the self destruction of the human race inevitable based on our understanding of history? I would like to ask everyone how are we going to adapt and survive if there is a nuclear war or attack using history as a guide. The Mongols destroyed so much of Asia in the 13th century. Look at how Europe was destroyed in the 16th and 20th centuries. Unfortunately, humans have done horrible things to one another.
The nightmare of a full nuclear exchange between the US and Russia is lower now than it's been in 60 years. Other nations with small arsenals of nukes hold them as a very effective deterrent. No nuclear armed nation has ever been invaded, after all. And a large quantity of deliverable nukes isn't necessary, anyway. A dozen hits on its different cities would drive any nation on earth into a new dark age.
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Based on our understanding of history will nuclear weapons destroy our civilization?
