Whenever I hear about an experiment that’s trying to “recreate the conditions of the early universe” I think of the possibility that universes last as long as it takes for intelligent life to develop and figure out how to run experiments that attempt to recreate the conditions on the early universe.
It is coincidental that today in Medium, Avi Loeb (yes, I know his views are controversial) published a piece on whether a nuclear weapon trying to deflect an extraterrestrial object headed for the earth could ignite an explosion that could destroy the earth instead, if the object contained an unusually high amount of deuterium, like 31/ATLAS: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/can-an-atomic-explosion-ignite-a-chain-reaction-of-deuterium-in-3i-atlas-543958fb3b9d
No, it's not about trying to deflect an incoming asteroid - it's about trying to blow an incoming asteroid apart. Which is dumb, because all it really accomplishes is turning an interstellar bullet into a cloud of interstellar buckshot. Plus it's Really Really hard to transport all the requisite construction equipment to the target object.
So, it's not anything anyone is planning on doing.
If we were a sane race, we would have started planning real HARD about 1980 after figuring out what the iridium rich layer at the K-T boundary and the shape of Gulf of Yucatan suggested about the contemporary radical change in fossil record. In fact, we might be getting ready for some hardware deployment & testing by now, not wasting resources killing each other over which flavor of technocrats are in charge of Eurasia instead of getting proactive about answers for asteroid mediated extinction events?
There's more than one reason why NASA and other scientific bodies have prioritized locating and working out the orbits of asteroids and comments over the last few decades.
That being said, you completely failed to understand what I wrote. I didn't say nobody was thinking about asteroid defense. I said nobody was planning to use the one particular method that Loeb (mis)used - because it's extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily stupid compared to other methods.
I absolutely understood what you wrote and have known that smacking an incoming impactor with a nuke & turning it from a slug into God's own 00 buckshot was pointless for over 50 years now.
And when the USA chooses to spend as much per year as we regularly do on a single presidential election advertisement campaign for scanning the solar system's "near abroad", catalogueing orbits of significant masses and retaining top quality engineers tasked with preparing sensible countermeasures, I'll consider this an intelligent race.
I do. By this I mean that the vast majority(democratic) act as obedient instruments of authority. Why? Because it works! If I'm obedient to my tribal narrative, I will be rewarded, more than any other way I can get rewarded(covid, Ukraine, Brexit, rent seeking etc) . If I am not, I will be sent into exile by the tribe(cancel culture, DEI, Russia Russia, Russia. Woke, TDS etc). So, it's highly rational. Yes, this means projecting onto wealth and power is highly irrational. Because we the people decide. Wealth and power always do what we want, so long as we remain obedient to the tribe. I'm presuming humanity has not really evolved...yet.
All true. I like the guy who said humans are more dangerous than weapons(paraphrase).
BTW probabilities do not work like you say. If I roll a dice 5 times and get a six on each roll, how likely is the next roll to be a six?
You challenge me though? Well here's a good one. Have you considered the possibility that fewer 'enemy' people get killed in wars than are killed by our own people during peace time. No need to be political about this one, it's not a judgement call. The numbers speak for themselves. Incidentally I'm pro choice (but not politically, I shun all ideology, that I know of. The unknowns though?).
But which varieties of death make for the videobytes advertisers find most eyeball attractive/best for network revenue? And how likely are average news consumers to internalize what they see most & find most memorable on that news?
(Nobody here thinks that our species usually makes "big picture" rational decisions, do they?)
Great post, Alex! The subject is fascinating and you cover it in far more nuance than I've seen elsewhere. It's wild to think that this was probably the first time in our history that the possibility of self-inflicted human extinction was seriously on the table.
I must also wonder what would've happened if the uncertainity before Trinity had been higher. Let's say the calculations had suggested a small but real chance of a runaway reaction. Would they scrap the bomb they just spent billions developing, or would the temptation of a superweapon be too much?
On another note, an interesting fictional example of a catastrophic runaway nuclear reaction is found in Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" (1930). A future civilization is destroyed when an attack on a nuclear power plant causes every "fissile" ore vein in the planet's crust to explode, nearly causing human extinction. (Being from 1930, the reaction is not really fission but it's close enough, with only one element being suitable for the power plants.)
Thanks - I was aware of the issue and aware that there was a controversy. I was aware that the issue was "dismissed". But I never really understood it in totality. Now I finally understand the issue and the answer.
Luckily for us, Hitler took the idea of atmospheric ignition more seriously, when Heisenberg explained it to him. According to Albert Speer's memoirs, "Hitler was plainly not delighted with the possibility that the earth under his rule might be transformed into a glowing star."
Yeah, Ellsberg quotes this. I admit that I do not put a lot of stock in Speer's memoirs or any of the accounts given regarding Hitler's alleged attitudes towards nuclear weapons. The evidentiary base is too thin and the motivations for misremembering or invention are too high! The idea that Hitler was particularly wise about these matters (or any matters) is not one that I take very seriously.
When it looked like the Allies had gained a toehold on the continent Hitler put forth the idea of using gas weapons on the Allied forces at a high level conference, his thinking being that while they were concentrated in a relatively small area they would be ideal targets for gas. German brass present at the meeting pointed out that That would give the Allies cause to respond in kind, which was a fearful prospect given the state German forces at that time. Hitler respondied that it was true insofar as 'normal' gas weapons were considered but Germany was in possession of a uniquley potent gas(he was referring to the nerve gas Tabum, which the Allies had NO knowledge of) and it was his opinion that the Allied forces could easily be drenched with the stuff and pushed back into the Channel(exactly How he never explained). A scientific advisor present at the meeting stated that in all likelyhod the Allies had similar gases in thier arsenal and as proof of this he pointed out that all references to organophosphate compounds(a precursor to nerve agents) had disappeared from Alleid scientific literature: That it was claimed was proof that the Allies had given nerve gas weapons a high priority. Hitler reluctantly accepted the advise of his advisors and Riech nerve agents remained in their storge containers. It's an interesting episode because it shows that while on the one hand Hitler was aware of just how much of a leap nerve agents were beyond the gases used in the previous world war, he apparently had No problem using them despite that increased lethality: I can see the same sort of thought process occuring if he Had got his hands on the bomb.
It's always fascinating, this business of watching a bunch of curious physicists trying to solve the Fermi paradox by empirical means. Maybe next time?
I disagree with the odds of the final conclusion. It presupposes you have special knowledge of human behaviour under certain conditions. But you do not. You are not God obviously. So the odds being much higher for an existential war cannot be compared - they are as unknown as where the odds of igniting the atmosphere in 1945. I feel you are allowing a political master in your head lead your thought here.
This attitude (only God can predict the future) would preclude one from guessing the odds of *anything*. But I'm not making a strong prediction, here. I'm challenging *you* (the reader) to do so, and then to see if you can take it seriously.
I don't claim to know what the odds for nuclear war are. But I do think that in any other field of study, if you had, say, 3-4 close calls in 80 years, you would assume the chance of a close call was, let's just say, something like once every 20 years. Or if you want to be very conservative, let's say that everyone agrees the Cuban Missile Crisis was a close call — so once every 80 years.
We know from studying those close calls, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, that those involved in them, on both sides, felt that they were very close indeed, and that the chance of them going wrongly by means of miscommunication, misunderstanding, mishap, or simply poor decision-making was very high.
Those are still very, very high odds compared to what we are talking about, here. Let's be extremely, ridiculously optimistic, and imagine that a Cuban Missile Crisis like event is a once-in-a-century event. So that's a yearly risk of 1%. So that means it is 10,000 times more likely than one-in-a-million.
If you want to do mental contortions to avoid thinking about the problems in this way, by all means, you are welcome to... but don't let your political priors keep you from even *thinking* about it! :-)
Whenever I hear about an experiment that’s trying to “recreate the conditions of the early universe” I think of the possibility that universes last as long as it takes for intelligent life to develop and figure out how to run experiments that attempt to recreate the conditions on the early universe.
You are my kind of dystopian.
Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace is an interesting SF exploration of that idea (among others).
It is coincidental that today in Medium, Avi Loeb (yes, I know his views are controversial) published a piece on whether a nuclear weapon trying to deflect an extraterrestrial object headed for the earth could ignite an explosion that could destroy the earth instead, if the object contained an unusually high amount of deuterium, like 31/ATLAS: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/can-an-atomic-explosion-ignite-a-chain-reaction-of-deuterium-in-3i-atlas-543958fb3b9d
No, it's not about trying to deflect an incoming asteroid - it's about trying to blow an incoming asteroid apart. Which is dumb, because all it really accomplishes is turning an interstellar bullet into a cloud of interstellar buckshot. Plus it's Really Really hard to transport all the requisite construction equipment to the target object.
So, it's not anything anyone is planning on doing.
@Derek Lyons
(Quote)
"it's not anything anyone is planning on doing."
----------
If we were a sane race, we would have started planning real HARD about 1980 after figuring out what the iridium rich layer at the K-T boundary and the shape of Gulf of Yucatan suggested about the contemporary radical change in fossil record. In fact, we might be getting ready for some hardware deployment & testing by now, not wasting resources killing each other over which flavor of technocrats are in charge of Eurasia instead of getting proactive about answers for asteroid mediated extinction events?
.
.
.
.
.
.
(It's a personal fixation of mine, sorry)
There's more than one reason why NASA and other scientific bodies have prioritized locating and working out the orbits of asteroids and comments over the last few decades.
That being said, you completely failed to understand what I wrote. I didn't say nobody was thinking about asteroid defense. I said nobody was planning to use the one particular method that Loeb (mis)used - because it's extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily stupid compared to other methods.
I absolutely understood what you wrote and have known that smacking an incoming impactor with a nuke & turning it from a slug into God's own 00 buckshot was pointless for over 50 years now.
And when the USA chooses to spend as much per year as we regularly do on a single presidential election advertisement campaign for scanning the solar system's "near abroad", catalogueing orbits of significant masses and retaining top quality engineers tasked with preparing sensible countermeasures, I'll consider this an intelligent race.
I do. By this I mean that the vast majority(democratic) act as obedient instruments of authority. Why? Because it works! If I'm obedient to my tribal narrative, I will be rewarded, more than any other way I can get rewarded(covid, Ukraine, Brexit, rent seeking etc) . If I am not, I will be sent into exile by the tribe(cancel culture, DEI, Russia Russia, Russia. Woke, TDS etc). So, it's highly rational. Yes, this means projecting onto wealth and power is highly irrational. Because we the people decide. Wealth and power always do what we want, so long as we remain obedient to the tribe. I'm presuming humanity has not really evolved...yet.
See here for my hypothesis: Obedience Theory - https://www.northstokelife.com/2026/02/introducing-obedience-theory-let-me-put.html
Loved the article and the conclusion about nuclear war, especially in the wake of the mess in Iran...
Do watch out, 200 Teratons are equivalent to 200 million Megatons, not 20 Million.
Those darned decimal points again.
All true. I like the guy who said humans are more dangerous than weapons(paraphrase).
BTW probabilities do not work like you say. If I roll a dice 5 times and get a six on each roll, how likely is the next roll to be a six?
You challenge me though? Well here's a good one. Have you considered the possibility that fewer 'enemy' people get killed in wars than are killed by our own people during peace time. No need to be political about this one, it's not a judgement call. The numbers speak for themselves. Incidentally I'm pro choice (but not politically, I shun all ideology, that I know of. The unknowns though?).
https://www.northstokelife.com/2026/03/the-purpose-of-war.html
The following shows how many people die from various causes, globally and annually:
73 million - state induced abortion
63 million - total all cause death toll( not including state induced abortion)
2-6 million - Government and tax death toll
1.25 million - Road traffic accidents
100-400 thousand - Wars
1 thousand - air crashes
But which varieties of death make for the videobytes advertisers find most eyeball attractive/best for network revenue? And how likely are average news consumers to internalize what they see most & find most memorable on that news?
(Nobody here thinks that our species usually makes "big picture" rational decisions, do they?)
👌👍
Great post, Alex! The subject is fascinating and you cover it in far more nuance than I've seen elsewhere. It's wild to think that this was probably the first time in our history that the possibility of self-inflicted human extinction was seriously on the table.
I must also wonder what would've happened if the uncertainity before Trinity had been higher. Let's say the calculations had suggested a small but real chance of a runaway reaction. Would they scrap the bomb they just spent billions developing, or would the temptation of a superweapon be too much?
On another note, an interesting fictional example of a catastrophic runaway nuclear reaction is found in Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" (1930). A future civilization is destroyed when an attack on a nuclear power plant causes every "fissile" ore vein in the planet's crust to explode, nearly causing human extinction. (Being from 1930, the reaction is not really fission but it's close enough, with only one element being suitable for the power plants.)
Thanks - I was aware of the issue and aware that there was a controversy. I was aware that the issue was "dismissed". But I never really understood it in totality. Now I finally understand the issue and the answer.
Luckily for us, Hitler took the idea of atmospheric ignition more seriously, when Heisenberg explained it to him. According to Albert Speer's memoirs, "Hitler was plainly not delighted with the possibility that the earth under his rule might be transformed into a glowing star."
Yeah, Ellsberg quotes this. I admit that I do not put a lot of stock in Speer's memoirs or any of the accounts given regarding Hitler's alleged attitudes towards nuclear weapons. The evidentiary base is too thin and the motivations for misremembering or invention are too high! The idea that Hitler was particularly wise about these matters (or any matters) is not one that I take very seriously.
When it looked like the Allies had gained a toehold on the continent Hitler put forth the idea of using gas weapons on the Allied forces at a high level conference, his thinking being that while they were concentrated in a relatively small area they would be ideal targets for gas. German brass present at the meeting pointed out that That would give the Allies cause to respond in kind, which was a fearful prospect given the state German forces at that time. Hitler respondied that it was true insofar as 'normal' gas weapons were considered but Germany was in possession of a uniquley potent gas(he was referring to the nerve gas Tabum, which the Allies had NO knowledge of) and it was his opinion that the Allied forces could easily be drenched with the stuff and pushed back into the Channel(exactly How he never explained). A scientific advisor present at the meeting stated that in all likelyhod the Allies had similar gases in thier arsenal and as proof of this he pointed out that all references to organophosphate compounds(a precursor to nerve agents) had disappeared from Alleid scientific literature: That it was claimed was proof that the Allies had given nerve gas weapons a high priority. Hitler reluctantly accepted the advise of his advisors and Riech nerve agents remained in their storge containers. It's an interesting episode because it shows that while on the one hand Hitler was aware of just how much of a leap nerve agents were beyond the gases used in the previous world war, he apparently had No problem using them despite that increased lethality: I can see the same sort of thought process occuring if he Had got his hands on the bomb.
It's always fascinating, this business of watching a bunch of curious physicists trying to solve the Fermi paradox by empirical means. Maybe next time?
I disagree with the odds of the final conclusion. It presupposes you have special knowledge of human behaviour under certain conditions. But you do not. You are not God obviously. So the odds being much higher for an existential war cannot be compared - they are as unknown as where the odds of igniting the atmosphere in 1945. I feel you are allowing a political master in your head lead your thought here.
This attitude (only God can predict the future) would preclude one from guessing the odds of *anything*. But I'm not making a strong prediction, here. I'm challenging *you* (the reader) to do so, and then to see if you can take it seriously.
I don't claim to know what the odds for nuclear war are. But I do think that in any other field of study, if you had, say, 3-4 close calls in 80 years, you would assume the chance of a close call was, let's just say, something like once every 20 years. Or if you want to be very conservative, let's say that everyone agrees the Cuban Missile Crisis was a close call — so once every 80 years.
We know from studying those close calls, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, that those involved in them, on both sides, felt that they were very close indeed, and that the chance of them going wrongly by means of miscommunication, misunderstanding, mishap, or simply poor decision-making was very high.
Those are still very, very high odds compared to what we are talking about, here. Let's be extremely, ridiculously optimistic, and imagine that a Cuban Missile Crisis like event is a once-in-a-century event. So that's a yearly risk of 1%. So that means it is 10,000 times more likely than one-in-a-million.
If you want to do mental contortions to avoid thinking about the problems in this way, by all means, you are welcome to... but don't let your political priors keep you from even *thinking* about it! :-)