Humans: Flawed or flawless?

[Darth InSidious]

Actually, I'm pretty sure Cleisthenes invented democracy in order to get one up on the Pisistratids.

[Totenkopf]

Besides, what other species on the face of planet Earth has the capability to end all life on the planet at the push of the proverbial button?

 

We surely do not have that capability. We're far away from it.

 

ACH!! And I thought I'm anti-nuke simply because it wastes tax money, is immoral, and gives a bad taint, especially when dropped over a city, not because it might destroy all life when dropped in hundreds.

 

This is why I posed that question.

 

I seem to recall that cockroaches are projected to be able to live through such a thing.

 

Why I was careful not to say all.

[Ray Jones]

So, I'm against the use of nuclear weapons, and at the same time I say mankind is not able to end all life on this planet at the push of the proverbial button. I'm not sure why that is so irritating for you?

 

Also, Ray, with the present nuclear stockpile, most human life would be snuffed out within seconds. The subsequent Nuclear Winter would freeze the Earth, killing everything else in a long, slow, mournful death.

Sure, overkill use of nuclear bombs would shorten the food chain quite a bit, and probably directly or indirectly causes almost all plants, mammals, birds, reptiles and a large number of fishes to cease their existence. Insects and micro-organisms will be most probably the least effected.

 

Also, life has gone through some incredibly cold/heat periods on Earth already, so I don't really think a nuclear winter would be too much of an issue, although it will add to the body count, yes, just like the nuclear summer that will follow inevitably.

 

But obviously some creatures always manage to survive, just like some did after the big impacts/eruptions causing the same nuclear winters and summers. So nothing new here as well.

 

The observed resistance against radioactivity of some species is pretty easy to explain, since early Earth had a different atmosphere, which was much less protective against high-energetic cosmic radiation, which is basically the big brother of what our nukes produce.

[jonathan7]

Sure, overkill use of nuclear bombs would shorten the food chain quite a bit, and probably directly or indirectly causes almost all plants, mammals, birds, reptiles and a large number of fishes to cease their existence. Insects and micro-organisms will be most probably the least effected..... <snip>

 

Aye life does usually find away, though I'd of thought you'd be talking 90-95% of Animals initially being killed by a Nuclear winter. And obviously because of radioactivity and mutation, the higher up the food chain you are the more 'easily' your body will be effected by the radiation.

[Ray Jones]

When we talk about a scenario where hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons are fired, we have to differ whether the detonations take place evenly distributed or concentrated somewhere like ten there, twenty there etc.

 

A nuclear winter takes place mostly because of the smoke of fires, dust and vaporised matter that's blown into the air blocking off the sun causing a significant drop of temperature on Earth.

 

So, even if we drop like 1000 nukes over the ocean, the chances for a nuclear winter to occur are dropping near zero, though we'd have much radioactive rain/fallout in the following time, causing less but still many deaths.

 

If we drop them equally all over all the continents, surely almost nothing will die due to a nuclear winter as well. Everything that's not "under a rock" will be burned at several thousand degrees, disrupted, or dies because of the intense radiation. The nuclear winter will occur, but its death toll will be only "minimal".

 

If we drop 1000 bombs over South America, most deaths will be due to the nuclear winter caused by huge fires of the burning rain forest. However, it should cause less deaths than the above scenario. Also, we really would not need 1000 a-bombs for that, just "some" gas and matches, and somebody willing to light up a whole continent.

 

 

However, each of these scenarios means that the "higher up the food chain" will be significantly closer to its lower end.

[Totenkopf]

So, I'm against the use of nuclear weapons, and at the same time I say mankind is not able to end all life on this planet at the push of the proverbial button. I'm not sure why that is so irritating for you?

 

Don't flatter yourself. Seriously, though, I just thought it was a glaring inconsistency on your part. Even with the thousands of nukes we posses (and will no doubt be added to in the future), I'd agree that we aren't likely to kill ALL life on the planet, just a very large part of it. Maybe any human survivor's of such an "exchange" will become like the Moorlocks.

[Arcesious]

I particularly don't like the fact that, at any given time, some stupid power-hungry leader of soem country could cause a nuclear war and end my life due to his/her idiocy... Comedy Central tends to lighten the mood about such things for me, thankfully.

If Russia, China, and the U.S became military allies, then maybe I'd feel a bit safer. Well at least we can be glad that Germany didn't get nuclear weapons in WWI... If they had... The world would be far worse than it is today.

 

When you talk about Humans being flawed/flawless, count your blessings. We're not that flawed...

[Ray Jones]

Seriously, though, I just thought it was a glaring inconsistency on your part.

Hee, and it seems I splendidly managed to worm out of that one, eh! :D:D

 

(yeah you wish I'd really say that)

[Totenkopf]

Hee, and it seems I splendidly managed to worm out of that one, eh! :D:D

 

(yeah you wish I'd really say that)

 

 

Not so fast there, hoss. Was referring to your statement about us (humans) being "far away from it". The "push the button" scenario is one that would result in the exchange of thousands of such weapons (much greater in yield than the firecrackers dropped on Japan, which had you apopletic when challenged on the degreee of damage they caused). So, using your previous logic about how damaging even a low yield weapon is to the environment and the life in general, it's a stretch for you to conclude that we're "far away from it". Nice try, though.

[Ray Jones]

I think now you're interpreting too much into that while discarding the initial context which my apoplectic argumentation about the damage was addressing - the idea that a conventional solution would have caused more deaths than the one that took place.

[Totenkopf]

I think now you're interpreting too much into that while discarding the initial context which my apoplectic argumentation about the damage was addressing - the idea that a conventional solution would have caused more deaths than the one that took place.

 

Naw. It spiraled beyond that in that thread. However, just so there is no further misunderstanding, never said you thought ALL life would be annihilated by a massive thermonuclear exchange, just found your contention that we were "far away from it" (the ability to destroy life on the planet) to be inconsistent with your previous postion about the destructive nature of nukes in general. Ce le vie.

[Ray Jones]

But we *are* far away from it despite the destructive nature of nukes.

 

For instance, the explosion of Chicxulub impact from 65 million years ago which supposedly killed "only" 90% of all species was about 2 million times more powerful than the explosion of the most powerful fusion-bomb man has ever created (its fireball was 9 km in diameter).

 

2 million times.

 

When we take all active-and-ready-to-blow nuclear warheads of today we're pretty much at 20,000 (we had a maximum of about 70,000 in the eighties), let alone the fact these are not all 50MT Tsar-type bombs (which was built and detonated only once) and have only up to 1/25th of that power (as a very, very positive average, most are in fact at 1/50th and below).

 

You're not gonna try to tell me 20,000 "weak" a-bombs, even if detonated at once on one spot, would have the same effect as a ten kilometre asteroid multiplying these powers by at least the factor 2,500. Heck, even if we take all nuclear bombs that have ever been built (roughly 150,000), and assume it were all Tsar-type bombs, our penis still lacks size by the factor 10 at least.

 

If that is not butt raping our nuclear powers, I don't know what it is.

 

 

That is why I say we are far away from destroying all life by the push of the proverbial button, without feeling any contradiction to my previous statements about the dangers and effects of nuclear weapons.

[Samuel Dravis]

A nuclear exchange would not be limited to a single point on the Earth's surface and would invariably target cities and other points of interest on land, which would put out the most radioactive dust, unlike the crater you've spoken of. It's entirely possible to kill everything off if we wanted to-- although I agree such a scenario is extremely unlikely (since I don't think that anyone using nukes will want to blanket the WHOLE world with them).

[Ray Jones]

Of course, no one would drop all his bombs over one spot. I just made a comparison.