Post by wehttam on Nov 9, 2012 19:53:21 GMT -7
I had an idea, I went with it. That about sums this up.
It’s funny how horrible things sometimes have to happen in order to prevent even worse things from happening. Say for example, that in 1918, instead of a gigantic post-war baby boom, there had been a massive influenza epidemic that had killed tens of millions of healthy young adults.
Such a tragedy immediately following the most horrendous war to ever grace the face of this planet would have been the worst possible irony (Imagine being a veteran of the great war who miraculously got through it unscathed, only to die of influenza mere months later).
But if that had happened, isn’t it within the realm of possibility that the spitting of the atom would have never occurred, or at least been delayed for a decade or two? Say, until 1938.
Humanity would have had a much better go of it if the discovery hadn’t occurred immediately following such a destructive war. After four brutal years of war, the world was at peace again, and everyone was ready to make it stick this time. Who knows how long we could have gone without another war? Decades? Centuries? We’ll never know, but one can dream.
I don’t blame the scientists who published that paper- they didn’t even consider its potential as a weapon. The predicted that a practical power plant run on nuclear fission would be operational within the decade. They were right. Then, one of their peers in the scientific community pointed out that fission would be quite useful as a weapon of war- and much easier to implement. He predicted a functional nuclear weapon- possessing quote; “unfathomable” power could be produced within five years. He was right too.
Him, I blame. Not that it matters, though. If I remember correctly, he was gunned down by the U.S secret service in London a couple months after he published his paper on the subject. It was a pretty huge story in Europe, but Hearst was paid good money to keep it quiet in the states.
There was a pretty bloody espionage war between pretty much every major world power during the next couple of years while everybody scrambled to be the first to make a bomb. Firebombed labs, gunbattles in the Congo over uranium supplies, heads of state who felt uneasy about acquiring weapons capable of killing millions assassinated, the blame always being placed on whichever government seemed to have the biggest lead.
I’d be willing to bet that had their economy not been utterly destroyed by the Great War, the Germans would have had a bomb ready to go within two years. As it were, they managed it in four.
Even if the splitting of the atom couldn’t have been delayed, I wonder if the outcome would have been different had they taken the time to look into the effects radiation has on the body- and the world at large. If they had, maybe the Germans would have been hesitant to level Paris. Maybe the Brits and the Americans wouldn’t have responded in kind, and then bombed each other for good measure. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this at the bottom of a mineshaft by flickering candle light while I wait to see if starvation’ll kill me before the cancer does.
It’s funny how horrible things sometimes have to happen in order to prevent even worse things from happening. Say for example, that in 1918, instead of a gigantic post-war baby boom, there had been a massive influenza epidemic that had killed tens of millions of healthy young adults.
Such a tragedy immediately following the most horrendous war to ever grace the face of this planet would have been the worst possible irony (Imagine being a veteran of the great war who miraculously got through it unscathed, only to die of influenza mere months later).
But if that had happened, isn’t it within the realm of possibility that the spitting of the atom would have never occurred, or at least been delayed for a decade or two? Say, until 1938.
Humanity would have had a much better go of it if the discovery hadn’t occurred immediately following such a destructive war. After four brutal years of war, the world was at peace again, and everyone was ready to make it stick this time. Who knows how long we could have gone without another war? Decades? Centuries? We’ll never know, but one can dream.
I don’t blame the scientists who published that paper- they didn’t even consider its potential as a weapon. The predicted that a practical power plant run on nuclear fission would be operational within the decade. They were right. Then, one of their peers in the scientific community pointed out that fission would be quite useful as a weapon of war- and much easier to implement. He predicted a functional nuclear weapon- possessing quote; “unfathomable” power could be produced within five years. He was right too.
Him, I blame. Not that it matters, though. If I remember correctly, he was gunned down by the U.S secret service in London a couple months after he published his paper on the subject. It was a pretty huge story in Europe, but Hearst was paid good money to keep it quiet in the states.
There was a pretty bloody espionage war between pretty much every major world power during the next couple of years while everybody scrambled to be the first to make a bomb. Firebombed labs, gunbattles in the Congo over uranium supplies, heads of state who felt uneasy about acquiring weapons capable of killing millions assassinated, the blame always being placed on whichever government seemed to have the biggest lead.
I’d be willing to bet that had their economy not been utterly destroyed by the Great War, the Germans would have had a bomb ready to go within two years. As it were, they managed it in four.
Even if the splitting of the atom couldn’t have been delayed, I wonder if the outcome would have been different had they taken the time to look into the effects radiation has on the body- and the world at large. If they had, maybe the Germans would have been hesitant to level Paris. Maybe the Brits and the Americans wouldn’t have responded in kind, and then bombed each other for good measure. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this at the bottom of a mineshaft by flickering candle light while I wait to see if starvation’ll kill me before the cancer does.