I've lately thought that on Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Billy Brown wrote:
>mark@unicorn.com wrote:
>> Your military has a hundred thousand well-trained soldiers, a thousand
>> tanks, hundreds of planes and helicopters. My military has me... and a
>> half-dozen nukes. You die, I win. Game over.
>>
>> Don't you get it yet? Mass destruction weapons change *everything*. When
>> one person can kill millions, traditional warfare is no longer possible;
>> you cannot coerce nuclear-armed individuals.
>
>This may seem new to you, but every serious military organization on the
>planet has been thinking about it for 60 years now. Nukes don't mean the
>end of warfare, they just demand some changes in tactics.
As long as they aren't used, yeah. All of the tatics and strategy that you are talking about has been aimed at preventing their use in the first place.
>First off, despite certain popular Hollywood themes, you can't
build a
>nuclear device in your basement out of used refrigerator parts.
Or a television set -- what's your point? TVs are far more complex than nukes.
Nuclear
>bombs are complex devices, requiring exotic materials and large
>capital
investments.
Nuts. Not counting the actual explosives, one could build a device for $10K. They really are not complex, Billy.
>If you could buy them on the open market today,
prices would
>range from a few hundred thousand dollars up into the low
millions. Not
>many people are going to buy one at those prices, and no
individual or small
>group is going to be building their own.
If nuclear devices (reactors and explosives) were in widespread use, two major consequences would be: one, that people would no longer congregate in large numbers in cities (or have to, since power would be so cheap), and modern armies would be essentially obsolete.
>Second, bombs aren't much use without a delivery vehicle. The obvious
>methods are missiles and aircraft, but those obviously won't work in this
>case. Your 'small group' probably can't afford them, and besides they
>aren't likely to penetrate an aggressor's air defenses. That leaves mines,
>truck bombs, and similar terrorist-type strategies.
A small group which has been kept poor by State can't afford them -- a spread-out, high energy use society would mean that even individuals could easily afford delivery systems.
-- Wolfkin. wolfkin@freedomspace.net | Libertarian webhost? www.freedomspace.net On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man; The shape of his own future, now in his own hands.-- Johnny Clegg.