If Nuclear War Comes
The Soviet Union, it is said, with new long-range missiles, new submarines and new strategic bombers under development, is going to become the dominant nuclear power in the years ahead — unless. Unless the U.S. speeds up its own research and development to "stay ahead" in the arms race. Otherwise, it is feared, the U.S. will forfeit the arms race to the Soviet Union.
This question might seem academic to some, since present nuclear strength and wipeout capability is awesome to behold — from either side. It is estimated by the U.S. defense department that if the 50 largest cities in the United States were hit, approximately 86 million Americans would be killed. That is 42 percent of the U.S. population. Such a nuclear attack would also kill the majority of professional people — doctors, lawyers, architects, scientists, political leaders.
Such a staggering blow to the nation is inconceivable, apocalyptic. To live in an age where such calculations are made is inconceivable. Still, these quickly read, meaningless "numbers" portray at least a sketchy, hastily forgotten idea of the very probable toll should nuclear war be joined.
That the nation could survive such a destructive horror is purely conjectural, since the massive fallout, resultant pollution, disruption of all major communications, power sources, and nerve centers for a modern, technologically oriented society would be destroyed. No human imagination can appropriately envision 86 million deaths in an instant, any more than the men aboard the Enola Gay could do more than gasp with macabre fascination as they saw the monstrous cloud unfolding itself into the skies — unable to comprehend the bits and pieces of the cloud had been human; and human habitation.
But the clinically correct words go on.
About 55 percent of the U.S. industrial capacity would be destroyed.
If the Soviet Union were attacked it would lose 48 million of its citizens — about 20 percent of its population. At the same time, about 40 percent of Soviet industrial capacity would be wiped out.
Whether either nation would recover biologically, psychologically or otherwise is an entirely different question. Some scientists feel neither could.
Nevertheless, the cry from both sides — the Soviet Union and the U.S. — is "Our strategic arms advantage is evaporating." "We're losing the arms race."
Back in 1953, the U.S. clearly had the vast edge in military power over the Soviet Union. The late President Kennedy told the Russians to "Get out of Cuba — or else." The "or else," presumably, meant America would use the power she possessed. The Russians were clearly intimidated. At the time one Soviet negotiator was heard as saying, "This is the last time you Americans will be able to do this to us."
So the Soviet Union herself stepped up the race to build up her nuclear armaments. Today, part of her arsenal includes at least 300 (total late 1970) SS-9 missiles. The cost of each missile is nearly 30 million dollars in its silo. Each missile carries a 25-megaton warhead.
Also, the Soviet Y-class nuclear submarines may outnumber the U.S. Polaris force by 1973-74.
Alternatives in the Nuclear Age
What is the U.S. to do? Experts see only the following alternatives. The U.S. must aggressively push its own research and development — accelerating the arms race. Otherwise she must take second place in a world of war where nuclear blackmail by the Soviet Union would ultimately reduce all nations — including the U.S. — to vassal states.
A third alternative was spelled out by a Pentagon planner. When two nations are headed for what appears certain conflict, the weaker nation must STRIKE FIRST to offset the greater power of the enemy.
With weapons of humanity-destroying magnitude, this makes our world filled with terror and danger.
There is, of course, a fourth possibility. Nations should simply learn to live in peace. All should subscribe to an impartial world government capable of solving national grudges, mistrusts and problems. This fourth way has never been tried by the governments of this earth. Today, it would be considered an impractical, fool's policy inviting disaster.
The first three alternatives, all representative of mistrustful, hostile, hating human nature, are insane.
Still, the madness goes on.
Overkill is not enough. The ability to kill fifty worlds is not enough. Each nation continues its demoniacal dance of death, committed to a never-ending spiral of weapons-making, constantly attempting to counterbalance each new weapon created by the other.
Currently, at least 10 tons of explosives, using the TNT equivalent, are stockpiled for each person on earth. Each of us, numbering more than 3.6 billion, may now contemplate the tons of explosives waiting, quiescently, impersonally, ominously, for their intended use.
It has been pointed out, time and again, that weapons have never been designed and produced which have not been used.
The nuclear stockpile of the world, according to the most conservative estimates, is already equivalent to 50,000 megatons (MILLIONS of tons) of TNT. That's 50 BILLION TONS of explosive force — or an overkill factor of 14 for every man, woman and child on the earth.
One scientist, Dr. Linus Pauling, estimated that there were 500,000 megatons of TNT in the world nuclear stockpile, averaging out to 150 tons for every person on earth — a theoretical overkill of 150 times!
But what's "overkill?"
Can you MORE than kill someone?
From 10 tons to 150 tons of TNT is reserved just for you, and for each of your own loved ones, and for everybody else, and for all of their loved ones. Does more than a few ounces or so make any real difference?
Eager New Nuclear Nations
At least three major nations other than the Soviet Union and the United States possess the bomb. Britain, France, and Red China are in the business of manufacturing fissionable material. Another seven nations, Canada, India, Israel, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, West Germany, could produce nuclear weapons in a very short time. Another FORTY nations, in addition to the "big five" of the nuclear age, have nuclear reactors, whose immediate by-product is plutonium — essential ingredient for a nuclear bomb.
By 1980, the present non-nuclear nations of the world will be producing sufficient plutonium to build about 100 small atom bombs each week.
Soon, then, the nuclear nightmare will take on ever more imagination-defying proportions, until the world, notwithstanding the presence or absence of life elsewhere, could represent a threat almost large enough to challenge a huge, exploding star.
The mindlessness of all this, the stupidity of pursuing endlessly a course which can only end in apocalyptic horror, is more than bestial. For beasts exercise, among their instincts, the strong drive for self-preservation. Man's devilish death march defies even that most basic of instincts — shrugging off the very meaning of human life.
For all our calls for peace — we diligently, eagerly pursue the business of war, or revel in the technology that directly results from such pursuit.
But nuclear power is only one of the several methods for Cosmocidal madness. Botulinus, a biological agent, if equally dispersed via the jet streams, ocean currents, or in strategic areas on earth, could wipe out all humanity in six short hours.
By using only 10 aircraft, if they successfully arrived over target areas, an enemy could kill or incapacitate thirty percent of the American population with biological warfare agents. One fourth of one ounce of a particular virus could infect every man, woman and child in the British Isles.
Then, there is the biological time bomb — population versus insufficient foods, with resultant disease epidemics in the offing. Then there is the specter of famine, and of dread plague, and of earthquake, fire, typhoon, flood, and storm. The elements around us rage with indignant groaning at the madness of mankind. Our world groans — it reels drunkenly along an uncertain, insane course, talking artificially of peace, and smacking its lips in expectancy at each new technologically oriented artifice which results from the search for the more horrible war.
Now, it's time to seek God. Only God can save this world now — save it from itself — from insane, even accidental, destruction. O God, save us from ourselves; save us from our smoke-choked, filthy, stifling cities; from our chemically poisoned, sadly depleted, artificially fed farms; from our stench-ridden, sludge-filled, polluted lakes and rivers; from our sterile, computerized, dehumanized, death-searching society; from our hatreds, jealousies, and greed; from our bigotry, prejudice and egotistical defiance; save us from each other.
Save us from ourselves.
. . . Meanwhile
With a faint sigh of escaping bubbles, the long black shape slid almost soundlessly beneath the swells, its nose swiftly nudging bits of oil sludge, filmy slick, and unseen chemicals among the flotsam and jetsam of the offshore ocean. Frightened, the wide-eyed little fish darted away, jerking with effort as its mercury-laden body shuddered with unnamed strain.
The captain sighed, snapped scope handles up, and tiredly issued the same orders of four days previously, when he had made the same precise turn in the same quadrant of ocean, maintaining the same speed, with the big, threatening, bottle-like missiles pointed in computerized memory at San Francisco.
A hundred miles away, maintaining 12,000 feet, the big patrol bomber droned along, its crew routinely scanning their radar screens, sipping black coffee.
Near Albuquerque, the Colonel was again listening to the magazine reports, including three carloads of new arrivals, now "safely" tucked away into their underground vaults. He sported a new cast on his left ankle, testimony to an icy slope and a bad fall at Taos. The bent door had been fixed during his brief absence.
At Norad, the routine business of instant global communication went on — if with more precision and alertness — spurred on, now, by the public outcries, and threatening congressional investigations.
The submarine lurched gently, bringing sudden tension to the eyes of the captain and crew alike. Quickly questioning orders brought reports from all sectors. "Mild collision." "No damage aft." "Engines operating normally." "All secure."
It must have been one of the California Gray Whales, migrating southward through these shallower waters.
The big gray gasped, its giant, barnacle-encrusted body heaving more rapidly, now, through the dark Pacific water, its trips to the surface for air coming oftener. Ahead, the dimly sensed shoals told of the bleak beaches of the channel island. The gray struggled into the shallows, throwing itself ponderously into the surf, to lay shapelessly, sides gently heaving, on the surf-pounded sand.
In the hazy, early morning, the shrill, raucous cry of the gulls told of the find. The first gull landed, standing beside the sightlessly staring eye.