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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: 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.