The various psychological distresses described above would seem to be, at heart, based on a very common and very understandable assumption that life is better than death. Thus, from that perspective, mass death caused by nuclear war is seen as the ultimate tragedy.
It seems worthwhile to question this assumption which is so foundational to the human experience. Is life better than death? Is death the ultimate calamity? Why do we think that? Based on what proof exactly?
At first glance such questions may seem to be wandering off the topic of nuclear weapons. Experts on technical and political matters may find such questions to be uninviting. But, imho, such large questions are really diving deeper in to the subject of nuclear war, and not wandering off at all.
It seems worthwhile to explore such deeper aspects of the nuclear threat, given that there's really little to no credible evidence we have much of a clue of how to eternally avoid nuclear war. If it's true that we are unable to relieve our fears by removing the threat, the only option remaining to us may be to manage our relationship with the threat.
Is life better than death?
This is really not such a unusual idea. Nuclear war or not, we're all going to die of something someday. And so, nuclear war or not, coming to some accommodation with death is a job we all have to do anyway.
I'm not a child and I certainly don't want to play down Zachary's experience, but I fail to see how the Charlottesville story would be that traumatizing. It's certainly in the optimistic end by the standards of nuclear war descriptions, even for something written before people in the West knew about nuclear winter. It's so optimistic it literally mentions TV reruns as one of the problems people would be facing post-attack!
I'd not read Charlottesville before and it's a fascinating piece, if anything more troubling for the lack of direct nuclear horror; no reason an ordinary (if drastic) economic collapse couldn't cause a lot of the problems imagined there. Do we know who Nan Randall was? As far as I can tell this is her only writing credit.
The various psychological distresses described above would seem to be, at heart, based on a very common and very understandable assumption that life is better than death. Thus, from that perspective, mass death caused by nuclear war is seen as the ultimate tragedy.
It seems worthwhile to question this assumption which is so foundational to the human experience. Is life better than death? Is death the ultimate calamity? Why do we think that? Based on what proof exactly?
At first glance such questions may seem to be wandering off the topic of nuclear weapons. Experts on technical and political matters may find such questions to be uninviting. But, imho, such large questions are really diving deeper in to the subject of nuclear war, and not wandering off at all.
It seems worthwhile to explore such deeper aspects of the nuclear threat, given that there's really little to no credible evidence we have much of a clue of how to eternally avoid nuclear war. If it's true that we are unable to relieve our fears by removing the threat, the only option remaining to us may be to manage our relationship with the threat.
Is life better than death?
This is really not such a unusual idea. Nuclear war or not, we're all going to die of something someday. And so, nuclear war or not, coming to some accommodation with death is a job we all have to do anyway.
Timely subject material given that I have a chance in the near future to visit This cold war relic:
https://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/falloutpostjg3.shtml
I'm not a child and I certainly don't want to play down Zachary's experience, but I fail to see how the Charlottesville story would be that traumatizing. It's certainly in the optimistic end by the standards of nuclear war descriptions, even for something written before people in the West knew about nuclear winter. It's so optimistic it literally mentions TV reruns as one of the problems people would be facing post-attack!
I'd not read Charlottesville before and it's a fascinating piece, if anything more troubling for the lack of direct nuclear horror; no reason an ordinary (if drastic) economic collapse couldn't cause a lot of the problems imagined there. Do we know who Nan Randall was? As far as I can tell this is her only writing credit.