stone savage

zeitgeist: height of the cold war
ortgeist : the United States

I read an interesting book this weekend. It was called Alas, Babylon. Like most Americans, I know the idea of nuclear war was considered a certainty during the 1950s and 1960s - however, maybe unlike most current Americans, I believe it is not all that unlikely for it to occur today.

I’m aware that there are only a few countries with ICBM capability, but it’s not the governments I worry about so much - accept, perhaps, for China’s. I worry about things like “rogue” agents working nuclear material into Mexico and then bringing it over to the U.S. - something that is a lot easier to do than many might think.

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So, in light of that possibility I wonder what it is our government is doing to protect America from nuclear attack. The answer, surprisingly, is that there really isn’t much that can be done. What was once a threat from a single country has become possible threats from multiple countries - but innumerable threats from individuals is an impossibility to manage. A missile defense capability might keep a missle-launched weapon from detonating on U.S. soil - but that’s not enough. What the book I read this weekend addressed was the aftermath of a nuclear war… how a small group of individuals faired in the fall-out.

At one point the main character in the book, Randy, reflects that in the course of just a few short hours that civilization had “devolved” by about 200 years. But the author of the book, Pat Frank, failed to address (because it was not known at the time) a significant matter - the EMP factor.

In Randy’s post-nuclear world, people are scrounging for gasoline to operate their automobiles, planes and helicopters occasionally fly around, and everyone is operating some form of electronic device or another. The problem is, none of that could happen - and the survival granted to Randy’s post-war people would not be possible using the methods described. The right sorts of properly detonated weapons in just the right areas would render useless every single piece of electronic equipment in the United States.

I wonder… what would a “world” without electricity, computers, telephones (of all kinds), cars, motorcycles, radios, factories, planes, etc. be like… I imagine it would be pretty darn quiet. I also imagine it would be pretty darn confusing for most people in urban locations.

What I am currently pondering is whether or not those who might detonate such weapons in the U.S. would be doing so from the standpoint of the number of people they could kill per blast - or if they’d be patient and calculating enough to go for the “throw the U.S. back to the 1700s” tack. One method would certainly grab our attention and leave us seething in anger as we launched our counterstrikes… the other would leave us seething while we sat in our inoperable machinery.

It would only be temporary, of course, but the long pause it would create would be monumental. Who would take advantage of the pause, I wonder… and to what end? During the time of recovery, depending on how large a strike occurred inside our borders, what would become the replacement for currency?

You can’t eat or drink dollars - so I wonder how long trading for legal tender would occur. Would it be salt that became the number one barter’s currency? Maybe it would be clean water? How long before lawlessness broke out?

If even one small weapon were detonated - what lesson would every other anti-American fanatic learn from the result? And what would we be able to do to combat it?

It’s easy, by contrast, to outmaneuver a single nation or a handful of nations. How do you outmaneuver millions of individuals? How do you have NAFTA and still stop illegal immigration?

I don’t know what our government has in mind, but throwing our military around isn’t the answer to our problem. Then again… I’m not sure what the answer really is. All I know is I’m looking at things a little differently since reading that book… and wondering when, rather than if, it might occur.

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