From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Thu Feb 27 2003 - 21:42:26 MST
Amara Graps wrote:
> I would be so happy to see Spike thinking about ways of boosting
> rockets for our explorations of the universe. Instead I am
> distressed to see him analyzing how subways are vulnerable and
> unsafe. (Does that help you understand my comments Spike?)
Ja. My comments were spurred by the Nova program. I
ordinarily never think about subways. I seldom ride one,
for I don't live or work in a big city.
After I posted about the vulnerability of a subway system,
I began second guessing the wisdom of discussing publicly
such matters. Then a good friend read my mind and suggested
I cork it, forthwith. This brings us back around to another
thread of a few weeks ago, the one about scientists
refraining from discussing technologies that could be used
to harm mankind.
That being said, I will go off on a tangent of sorts. My
scenario was one of mass disruption, a short-lived isotope
that is easily available, relatively cheap, legal, at least
temporarily indistinguishable from lethal radiation sources,
but one that does not actually cause any deaths. My notion
is that subways in particular are inherently undefendable
from such attacks.
As for the more serious attackers that really wish to
cause harm, the subway is far more vulnerable to firebombing
than a train, because the tunnel traps heat, the wreckage
is inherently difficult to remove, and in a subway tunnel
it is far more difficult to evacuate the survivors.
There *may* be a way to make a subway train entirely
from nonflammables. However, as time moves forward,
societies with incompatible premises are brought into
ever closer contact. Luddites and extremists have ever
greater power to tear down society and disrupt progress.
That is why I made the prediction that within a decade,
the world's subway systems will be rendered useless.
That being said, I suggest that such a fate is not the
end of progress as we know it, for the Silicon Valley
is a prime example of an extended suburb that supports
plenty of technological innovation with few mass transit
systems or sky scrapers. A total disruption of BART, the
local subway, would scarcely be noticed, for its ridership
has never been high.
The obstructionists, terrorists, the McVeighs,
Bin Ladins, Kazinskys of this world have convinced
me humanity needs to spread out and cover all the available
real estate, to make society inherently less vulnerable
and less dependent on those systems which cannot in
principle be defended.
If global warming is true and we really can melt off
all that ice, we need to get on that, release that
carbon, free up all that land that is currently
unavailable. All of northern Canada, Siberia, the
deserts, make it habitable, spread out, build enormous,
extended tenuously populated but inhabited civilization
on all of it, with thoroughly mixed cultures so that no
one religion or custom can take hold of the minds of
the people there. All governments would need to be
secular and open minded.
Siberia is a perfect example. Russia needs money. We
should be able to buy huge tracts of that empty
real estate and make something out of it. The Luddites
and terrorists have shown that humans must stop
bunching up, spread out and reclaim unused, wasted
land. And water.
All that from a Nova program pointing out how easy it
would be to shut down a subway system. spike
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