From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Jul 16 2003 - 14:08:39 MDT
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Seriously, I don't know why people are still trying to resurrect the old
> Star Wars technology. Not only did it not work, but it is no longer
> needed. It was meant to defend us against the old Soviet Union. It has
> no usefulness against current threats.
Without debating the merits for or against SWT, I'll offer this:
Military/Compression of the Warning Time of Nuclear Attacks
http://mt.sopris.net/mpc/military/compression.html
(an interesting look at the possible "reality")
And the Russians still have ~6000 nuclear weapons at their disposal
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/nukenotes/ja00nukenote.html
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/2000/ja00/images/chart2.gif
And that ignores the tons of bioweapons that they have failed
to destroy (which I believe they should be doing under current
bioweapons treaties). This URL indicates probably a tip-of-the-iceberg
with respect to the problem:
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2001/ma01/ma01choffnes.html
I've sent a letter to the editors of Wired regarding their recent
article with respect to "We're All Gonna Die!" (Issue 11.07/Jul 2003)
by Gregg Easterbrook and the errors with respect to some of the threats
which he claims (erroneously) we can do nothing about. But it is
important not to forget the legacy threats that we face.
I'd like to see Harvey push forward a robust "risk analysis" of
"current threats" vs. "old threats". As the SARS virus indicates
one may even need to include "unknown threats".
I spend a lot of time considering the hazard function of both
individuals (esp. myself) and populations (esp. those in which
I and individuals whom I consider of like mind reside) -- the
"threat" equation is very very complex IMO.
Robert
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