Subject:
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Re: Just Teasing, I Have No Intention of Debating Any of This...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 24 Mar 2003 05:35:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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748 times
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John wrote:
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> > John wrote:
>
> > > But don't you see? It is conceivably *very* easy for ONE madman to wipe out
> > > our history. In a totally open and free US society, all it would take would
> > > be one sick individual to detonate a nuke in D.C. Try to imagine the
> > > ramifications if D.C. were incinerated. Think of the chaos. It's
> > > practically unimaginable. And there are probably 1,000,000s out there who
> > > would do it in a heartbeat. That would be an interesting poll question in
> > > the Arab world: "If you had the opportunity, would you sacrifice your life to
> > > incinerate the capital of the US? Yikes.
> >
> > Hmm, in a "totally open and free US society" (which we've never had, or
> > certainly haven't had this century), I don't think nuking one city would
> > collapse us. See, the thing is, with a totally open and free society,
> > the power is sufficiently distributed that once city wouldn't kill us.
> > In fact, think about it, what was the real effect of 9-11?
>
> Come on, Frank, you can't possibly make the comparison of the incineration of 2
> *buildings* to the incineration of an entire *city*. And I wasn't talking
> about just *any* city; I specifically meant Washington, D.C. And what if the
> attack came during a joint session or during an inauguration? Suddenly no
> leaders, no Capitol, no White House, no Pentagon, no Jefferson, Lincoln, or
> Washington monuments, no Smithsonians, no more Constitution (physically, that
> is), no more Arlington cemetary; the list goes on (and that's not even
> mentioning the loss of God knows how many millions of US citizens).
Hmm, doesn't each of the original 13 states have a copy of the
constitution? Of course nuking D.C. wouldn't get the oldest constitution
in effect (you'd have to nuke Boston to do that). Also, the nuke isn't
going to incinerate the whole city, though it would certainly flatten
much of it.
I sincerely hope our way of life is more than just a few symbols in D.C.
New leaders would arise. There are plenty of copies of the constitution
about. Life would go on. I suspect the military and national guard would
even do a good job of protecting the rest of the country from too much
chaos. Sure, a few units will overreact to various incidents.
I just remembered another thing that leads me to believe life would go
on pretty quickly. When hurricane Fran hit Raleigh NC, the city was
choked with fallen trees, and huge swaths of the city were without
power. People very quickly worked together to restore sanity, and this
happened with very little leadership.
Yes, nuking D.C. would be an event of several orders worse than anything
we've seen so far. But I just can not see it being the end of us. I
can't even see it having that much direct impact on 90% of the
population of the US.
Frank
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