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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 6:51 pm 
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Ylis wrote:
A small group could detonate one of these over a nuclear power plant. Take over control, then kill the power to neighboring cities. When someone figures out what happened, they set the reactor to go critical. Mass chaos, plus millions die in a way that no conventional weapon could facilitate.


Hrmmmm, set a nuclear power plant to "go critical"? Keep in mind that it isn't possible to get a plant to go up like a nuclear weapon, what happens is pressure builds up and it explodes more or less conventionally, thowing neutron-activated radioactive material everywhere.

Also, since when is radiation poisoning "intense nausea and diarrhea"? I would refer the curious to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_ ... d_symptoms
for a less glossed-over description. I fail to see how any of the other things he describes is any better than "uncontrollable bleeding in the mouth, under the skin and in the kidneys"...


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 Post subject: Guess what Thinman does for a living.
PostPosted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 8:49 pm 
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Jasper wrote:
The point of war is to win. Any weapon that reduces your chance of winning must be, then, immoral, as it inevitably leads to more of your own soldiers getting killed, maimed, burned, etc. So I'd have to completely disagree with Cohen in this case.

This is actually a point that the (US) military is <a href="http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/June01/IF00015.html">slowly clarifying</a> as we speak. The point of war is NOT to "win" in the sense that winning implies huge numbers of enemy dead, bridges bombed and earth scorched. Winning is getting your own way. It may mean political concessions, a retreat from a disputed zone, whatever. The desired end-state is what drives the war and defines success in the long run. Thus (for example) a propaganda "information operation" combined with limited engagement may be MORE effective than a mass bombardment that hardens the enemy's will to fight and prolongs the war.

Also, there's a whole other question of whether or not neutron weapons actually would be less effective (less effective than what?) and therefore a danger to friendly forces.


B wrote:
Also, since when is radiation poisoning "intense nausea and diarrhea"? I would refer the curious to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_ ... d_symptoms
for a less glossed-over description. I fail to see how any of the other things he describes is any better than "uncontrollable bleeding in the mouth, under the skin and in the kidneys"...

As <a href="http://boingboing.net/profits_of_fear.html">described in the article</a>, the issue is not that killing people by radiation is such a great and painless way to do things, but rather that it can be employed with great precision. The bomb drops. Everyone with the effective radius dies. Everyone outside that radius (in theory) recovers. There are no maimed, no wounded, no vast damage to civilian and "dual use" infrastructure.

Of course, Cohen's work was done in the 1950s, with the 50's theories of radiation exposure...


EDIT: Special bonus question. Do those of you who made comments about the futility of "technical solutions to war" place effects based operations (linked above) in the same category?

EBO is being pushed as The Next Big thing in the US military. The idea is to provide a clear decomposition of desired and undesired effects at all levels of the war. The goal is to allow decision making for supporting objectives to be handled quickly and effectively at lower organizational levels. By providing well-defined desired effects to be achieved at all levels, the progress of the war is more consistent and quantifiable, the overall cost of war is lower and the force is more effective individually and as a whole. At its heart though, EBO relies heavily on technology to disseminate information and facilitate rapid decision making. There is a great emphasis on real-time communication, strategy war gaming, and computer-aided analysis.

Does this still amount to a technical solution to a social problem? I really don't see why we should turn our backs on tactics or weapons that have the potential for far fewer casualties just because they still kill people.

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 Post subject: Re: Guess what Thinman does for a living.
PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2005 12:39 am 
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Thinman wrote:
Jasper wrote:
The point of war is to win. Any weapon that reduces your chance of winning must be, then, immoral, as it inevitably leads to more of your own soldiers getting killed, maimed, burned, etc. So I'd have to completely disagree with Cohen in this case.

This is actually a point that the (US) military is <a href="http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/June01/IF00015.html">slowly clarifying</a> as we speak. The point of war is NOT to "win" in the sense that winning implies huge numbers of enemy dead, bridges bombed and earth scorched. Winning is getting your own way. It may mean political concessions, a retreat from a disputed zone, whatever. The desired end-state is what drives the war and defines success in the long run. Thus (for example) a propaganda "information operation" combined with limited engagement may be MORE effective than a mass bombardment that hardens the enemy's will to fight and prolongs the war.

Also, there's a whole other question of whether or not neutron weapons actually would be less effective (less effective than what?) and therefore a danger to friendly forces.


Agreed completely, which is why I didn't say that a weapon that specifically killed less of their soldiers was immoral. If killing less soldiers leads to a shorter war, with less friendly casualties, it's obviously preferrable to a solution that kills more. But you can't ignore the demoralizing effects of something like a nuclear weapon. If you make the enemy stop wanting to fight a war, they will.

Of course, the devastation caused by a neutron bomb would probably have the same shock effect as that caused by a nuclear weapon in today's standards. Both kill extremely efficiently (time-wise), it'd be hard to see any country continue fighting a war after a nuke had been dropped on them, except possibly us. So until neutron bombs become commonplace and the simple lasting effects of nuclear weapons start lurking as the part of them to be feared, yes, neutron bombs would be a more moral choice.

I sure hope that never happens.

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