During the cold war, there was a clear narrative: an ideological opposition between the US and the Soviet Union. Moments of great tension were understood as episodes within that narrative. The closest we came to nuclear confrontation was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the two countries seemed on the edge of war. But the crisis itself was finished inside a fortnight, and there was a wider framework to fall back on. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty calmed the waters.
Then, in the early 1980s the tough-talking but critically derided , Ronald Reagan was elected US president. He reignited the cold war rhetoric and began escalating the arms race, and there was an assumption – particularly in Europe – that nuclear destruction was creeping closer. But it was still within a recognisable context. That ended with the collapse of communism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For a while the world felt a much safer place than it had been.
But the cold war was replaced by uncertainty. And now the uncertainty is combined with the unpredictability of Donald Trump. The recent bombing raids in Syria and Afghanistan were isolated moments, without any sense of programme or continuity. Nor does there seem any logic to why North Korea should have suddenly become a pressing issue. Incidents that seem to arrive out of the blue can be much more frightening. We're probably not on the verge of nuclear war, but it's destabilising if we can't make sense of events.
Is the world more dangerous now than during the cold war?
[Related]: Nuclear war will ignite in May 2017, mystic Horacio Villegas says
What do you think ?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @06:44AM (19 children)
Here's why :
1) Technology has made it possible to conduct war at a distance and with grossly asymmetric casualties.
Here's an example : A drone operator sitting in air conditioned building in Nevada presses a button and
seconds later people thousands of miles away are dead. The drone operator was never at any time at
risk, which makes modern war distinctly different from wars in the past. The ability to make war without
risk of casualties for the side which possesses the high-tech weapons means war can be conducted with
little or no objection from the populace of the aggressor country. For that matter, the acts of aggression can
be done in secret. Actually this is already happening. The core issue is that related events that formerly
led to cessation of hostilities ( loved ones coming home in coffins etc. ) are not necessarily a problem now.
This means that it is easier than ever before at any time in recorded history for a very small number of
people to conduct war without oversight. And that leads to more warlike behavior, which leads to a more
dangerous world.
2) Technology which is available now means that a determined person can cook up very bad things in
a basement lab. These "bad things" when used as weapons are distinctly different with respect to
their destructive potential, when compared to all the weapons that have been available to a single person
or a small group of people, at any time in the known past. One superbug and it's "game over", and the
people whose job it is to worry about such things are far more terrified of this scenario than they are of
any nuke scenario.
I could write more but I am not being paid to do so, so that's all I have.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 23 2017, @06:59AM (2 children)
2) Technology which is available now means that a determined person can cook up very bad things in a basement lab.
I concur that this is a real risk. It's even worse because technology becomes cheaper and easier with time. Eventually some thresholds or critical points are reached.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:18AM (1 child)
Those thresholds have been reached already.
Ask any person who is educated in the relevant fields if you
doubt what I say.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:27AM
You are right. But be sure, there are even more thresholds to be had ahead. As technology becomes cheap or easy enough ie less than the available resources. More nut jobs will gain access. Add Murphy to the mix and.. kaboom.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:19AM (11 children)
Horseshit. Unadulterated and fresh out of the horse's ass.
Unless you manage to build up a drone fleet carrying thousands of hydrogen bombs ready to usher in nuclear winter, every single thing you mentioned is a mosquito bite. As for the mad scientist, I'm sure all of DC would love people to be terrified of that fantasy so they could finish eviscerating the Bill of Rights, but as compared to the real threat thousands of missiles posed during the cold war, your fantasy is just that. We might as well be afraid of mutant killer bees designed by Monsanto to be immune to Roundup -- could happen, but it is not an actual salient threat in the way that actual warheads is.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:20AM
Well nuts: that last "is" -- should be an "are".
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:36AM (1 child)
The Africanised honey bee is already a fact since 1957. It a real "oops"..
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 23 2017, @04:47PM
and it causes me worry every day --- not
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:45AM (5 children)
"Horseshit. Unadulterated and fresh out of the horse's ass."
The professionals at the CDC in Atlanta don't agree with your assessment
of the danger posed by bio-weapons.
Maybe you should call them and tell them you, who are a high-level keyboard
warrior and armchair expert, know better than they do.
I'm sure they could use a good laugh.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Sunday April 23 2017, @12:28PM (2 children)
Some at the CDC may not agree, but I think you'd find some with a less breathless viewpoint. The truth is that both chemical and bio are harder to pull off than most people think.
We've had several home brew attempts to conduct biological attacks and they've flopped. Aum Shinrikio had at least some trained people and were unable to mount an effective attack though they tried. They were much more successful with a sarin attack in the Tokyo subway, but even that was limited.
It's not just the bio-agent itself that stands in the way. Yes, you could conceivably cook up a nasty bug, but you have to be able to deliver it effectively and not have it quickly snuffed out by modern medicine (or not so modern medicine. We've known how to contain nasty viral disease outbreaks for a long time.). That means overwhelming defenses with large amounts of effectively delivered agent. You cant just release the bugs and hope, like Aum Shinrikio did (the attack wasn't even noticed at the time, but was learned about during the sarin release investigation).
Even a trained scientist (presumably Dr. Bruce Ivins) with major experience in anthrax growth who was trying to create trouble only mailed a few letters that killed a small number. The response to it was understandably massive and very expensive but in terms of casualties a suicide bomb vest is far more effective.
One of the problems for a would be bioterrorist is that we have a massively trained opponent that has been trying to wage biowar on us (and every other living thing) for billions of years. Mother Nature. And she's massively better at it than we are.
Now, maybe someone can brew up the next genetically engineered version of smallpox in a home lab, but then again, we defeated smallpox which was a pretty damn bad bug. Far more likely they'd come up with something that will fizzle.
Now, if you have a government lab with major funding and years to perfect development followed by weaponization studies and large scale deployment, it's a different scenario. But governments can already devastate areas with the weapons they already have.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday April 23 2017, @06:56PM (1 child)
Chemical has limited impact.
Bio is harder than people think, but it's not impossible. And it can even happen by accident. OTOH, it probably wouldn't be a civilization ending problem, as nuclear war could be. But that's just probably. Even the secure labs aren't a secure as they're supposed to be, and a couple of years ago one of those came up with a version of influenza that was transmitted by aerial infection (coughs?) and was 100% fatal among the ferrets that were used as a test population. (How many?) Ferrets were used because their immune reaction to influenza is as close as feasible to that of humans.
Well, that was "safely" controlled. It didn't get out. It was being done by professionals. But there have been cases where those same professionals were found to have carried home infections of the very things they were working on in a nominally fully secure manner. So I don't really feel reassured. In any one year the probability is low, but I'm less sure how low it is in any given decade.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @08:12PM
Bio is very dangerous: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-controversial-us-scientist-creates-deadly-new-flu-strain-for-pandemic-research-9577088.html [independent.co.uk]
Right now the tech is probably within the reach of most nation states. It would get scary once it's within reach of crazy religious groups. Then very dangerous if it ever gets within reach of any random person with USD10,000 in the bank.
Wouldn't happen? Well I see very many scientists and people here saying stuff like "you can't/shouldn't stop scientific 'progress', if you don't do it, someone else will", whenever people talk about restricting certain research.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:43PM
Their salaries and budgets are on the line, so they will always talk up the bio threat.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Monday April 24 2017, @07:04AM
I actually know a few of those professionals at the CDC in Atlanta. They're not unconcerned (e.g. about the security of the extensive weaponized stocks once held by the USSR), but it doesn't seem to be a big worry compared to more immediate threats (like the gutting of public health services across the US).
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:48AM (1 child)
You are a dumb fuck masquerading as an intelligent boy.
Roundup is a herbicide, not an insecticide.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 23 2017, @04:54PM
Which affects bees. http://www.boerenlandvogels.nl/sites/default/files/Effects%20of%20Glyphosate%20on%20Honey%20Bee%20Navigation.pdf [boerenlandvogels.nl]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday April 23 2017, @08:20AM (1 child)
The threats that you cite are real, but the data [ourworldindata.org] doesn't bear out your conclusions [ourworldindata.org].
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @08:06PM
There may be fewer and fewer murderers but if the ability to commit mass murder is increased and made more affordable and accessible the world becomes a more dangerous place.
It's like more and more people being able to afford Big Red Buttons that kill 10% or more of the world's population. Hardly anyone will use the buttons but doesn't take many does it?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-controversial-us-scientist-creates-deadly-new-flu-strain-for-pandemic-research-9577088.html [independent.co.uk]
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population defenceless against its reemergence.
Most of the world today has developed some level of immunity to the 2009 pandemic flu virus, which means that it can now be treated as less dangerous “seasonal flu”. However, The Independent understands that Professor Kawaoka intentionally set out to see if it was possible to convert it to a pre-pandemic state in order to analyse the genetic changes involved.
Once that technology gets cheaper and more accessible, some nut might try to replicate it or worse. Doesn't take much for a disturbed environmentalist to justify killing much of the human race.
It could be as safe as a Mexican Standoff. Normally nobody would pull the trigger, so nobody dies for quite a long time. But once you add millions of people, there might be a candidate willing to do it. Works in the virus lab, broke up with his girlfriend or something, so it's the end of the world.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Sunday April 23 2017, @08:46AM
This is a really cold blooded way to describe the sacrifice of a perfectly good drone who did not hurt anybody. Poor drone. YOU SHALL BE AVENGED.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @12:56PM
Deeper dodo because of war at a distance and easy access to bad technology?
Hmm, I think it depends on what danger you are worried about.
If you are worried about something blowing up somewhere, then yes.
If you are worried about everything blowing everywhere, then yes but for a different reason.
It's not a technology thing.
We have the same probability of success if it is decided to have WWIII. 100%
Unfortunately it appears that now the quality of leaders choosing a path not to do this has diminished.
There, now you don't have to worry about your original problem.