The point of the essay is to convince you that "a nation's leaders might rationally decide that a thermonuclear war would be the least undesirable of the possible alternatives".
My favorite bits so far:
Contextualising the globally distributed health risk of fallout as proportional to car accidents:
> Assume, for example, that the Soviets dropped 5000 MT on the United States (a fairly large attack). This would mean that worldwide, 5 million people would die just as a result of the backlash [fallout]. Less than half a million of these deaths would occur in the Soviet Union, however, and even those half million deaths would be spread over fifty years or so. The impact of these deaths would be less significant than, say, that of the annual number of deaths due to automobile accidents in the United States.
Conceptualising the urban/rural divide as two entities sharing a single space:
> Suppose the United States or the Soviet Union were to be divided into two countries - an A country with the largest 50 to 100 cities, and a B country, the remainder. The A country cannot survive without the B country; but the B country, so far as we can see, can survive without the A country. Moreover, we estimate that B has the resources and skills needed to rebuild A in, say, ten years. In other words, a country should not be considered analogous to a body with vital irreplaceable organs, but rather should be considered as two semi-independent pieces that trade with each other.
The unavoidability of tech debt:
> True, many of the measures that preserve our ability to fight and survive wars may turn out to be temporary expedients that will not solve our long-run security problems, but this does not mean they are not important. You cannot reach 1970 or 1975 if you do not successfully pass through 1960 and 1965.
This paragraph, which is apropos of everything:
> We do not have unlimited time. Our problems are being increased rapidly by many things, including the mounting rate of technological progress, the "revolution of rising expectations," increasing nationalism, and an increasing diffusion of the newer military technologies. It is possible that there may be some invention, discovery, or crisis that simply cannot be handled even momentarily in our present international society. Progress is so fast, the problems are so unprecedented, and the lead-times for cultural assimilation are so long that it is difficult to believe that muddling through will work.
The point of the essay is to convince you that "a nation's leaders might rationally decide that a thermonuclear war would be the least undesirable of the possible alternatives".
My favorite bits so far:
Contextualising the globally distributed health risk of fallout as proportional to car accidents:
> Assume, for example, that the Soviets dropped 5000 MT on the United States (a fairly large attack). This would mean that worldwide, 5 million people would die just as a result of the backlash [fallout]. Less than half a million of these deaths would occur in the Soviet Union, however, and even those half million deaths would be spread over fifty years or so. The impact of these deaths would be less significant than, say, that of the annual number of deaths due to automobile accidents in the United States.
Conceptualising the urban/rural divide as two entities sharing a single space:
> Suppose the United States or the Soviet Union were to be divided into two countries - an A country with the largest 50 to 100 cities, and a B country, the remainder. The A country cannot survive without the B country; but the B country, so far as we can see, can survive without the A country. Moreover, we estimate that B has the resources and skills needed to rebuild A in, say, ten years. In other words, a country should not be considered analogous to a body with vital irreplaceable organs, but rather should be considered as two semi-independent pieces that trade with each other.
The unavoidability of tech debt:
> True, many of the measures that preserve our ability to fight and survive wars may turn out to be temporary expedients that will not solve our long-run security problems, but this does not mean they are not important. You cannot reach 1970 or 1975 if you do not successfully pass through 1960 and 1965.
This paragraph, which is apropos of everything:
> We do not have unlimited time. Our problems are being increased rapidly by many things, including the mounting rate of technological progress, the "revolution of rising expectations," increasing nationalism, and an increasing diffusion of the newer military technologies. It is possible that there may be some invention, discovery, or crisis that simply cannot be handled even momentarily in our present international society. Progress is so fast, the problems are so unprecedented, and the lead-times for cultural assimilation are so long that it is difficult to believe that muddling through will work.