DP Tool Club 26/CD_ASCQ_26_1295.iso/vrac/rubyv50.zip/RUBY50-7

Text File | 1995-10-27 | 5KB | 86 lines

Copyright (c)1995

                       NUCLEAR CONUNDRUM
                       by George Witter

     A warhead delivery "bus" floats through the silence of space.
It looks down on a small blue-green planet from a thousand-mile-
high orbit. It waits with cold, calculating patience as the world
turns below.
     With a puff of compressed gas, a six-foot, cone-shaped
projectile launches from the open front of the bus. Then another.
And another.
     Reentry vehicles, each capable of delivering immense nuclear
devastation, descend, propelled by momentum and gravity. At an
altitude of 100 miles, the first RV touches the atmosphere. It
begins to glow due to the friction of air passing at 6,000 feet
per second.
     Below, people are relaxing with Leno or asleep. Those souls
that happen to be out late might see a glowing ember in the sky,
but the night is overcast. Above the clouds, the reentry vehicle
is still descending toward its target. Earth's gravity becomes
stronger as the RV cuts through the increasingly dense air. Its
shell begins to glow white hot, converting the surrounding air into
plasma.
     Someone looking into the overcast night might notice that the
clouds seem unusually luminescent. Before he can contemplate the
source, the deadly courier punches through the clouds. Mere feet
off the ground, it is little more than a blur streaking toward the
target. It strikes with a terrible thunderclap, and a dust cloud
rises above the crater. Hundreds of pieces of reentry vehicle cool
in and about the crater as the Earth leaches away the remaining
heat. The payload of electronic tracking equipment has turned into
so much scrap metal. Tonight, at least, it was only a test.
     The fear that consumes most people today is not about a test
vehicle, but the threat of a reentry vehicle loaded with a
20-megaton warhead. The reentry vehicles are real, as is the
threat. Should we maintain our threat deterrent? Should the
United States disarm her nuclear arsenal? If so, what would we
do with the nuclear stockpile? These are complex questions that
may have an extraordinarily simple answer.
     The universe, as we know it today, is several billion years
old. Humans developed in only the last 10 thousand years.
Furthermore, our development of high technology has taken a mere
100 years.
     On this scale, our experience with nuclear technology is
analogous to a child near a pot of boiling water or a baby with its
finger on an exposed electrical outlet. Carl Sagan, scientist,
educator, and motivating force in the exploration of other worlds
has computed the chances of human survival in the future. Taking
our past history and applying our current technology, he has
calculated the possibility of humans surviving the next 100 years
at less than 1%.
     Should we maintain the arsenal or disarm?  Either choice has
pros and cons. If we maintain our nuclear stockpile, we ensure the
protection of our country and tempt the destruction of the world.
    If we disarm, we ensure the survival of the human species, but
not the American way of life.  Disarmament would almost certainly
increase the probability of our survival, but what of the surplus?
It is estimated that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy
the surface of the world several times. The sheer amount of
potential devastation is unacceptable if it is in a lead storage
bunker or a missile silo. The answer to the problem is in the very
technology race that created it. Project Orion is a realistic
proposal for a starship. A starship that could reach our nearest
neighbor star in our lifetime. A starship propelled by nuclear
warheads.
     If all the countries of the world were to pool their
resources, the planet Earth could have a fleet of Orion starships
exploring the stellar neighborhood by the end of the 21st century.
The start of the 22nd century would have ships returning with
accounts of things beyond our imaginations and just maybe the
discovery of another race to share our galaxy. This would be the
ultimate and final example of "swords-into-plowshares" for the
human race.
     Humanity is on the brink of answering these questions. Do we
stay where we are, continuing to play nuclear brinkmanship or do
we take a chance on peace? Do we begin to trust our brothers over
the horizon or shake hands under the shadow of a mushroom cloud?
Will we be the ones to take our story to the planets? Will we tell
other civilizations about humanity, which took itself to the edge
of self-destruction but finally evolved beyond territoriality to
become artists, philosophers, and explorers?  If not, all we can
hope is that a race from a distant world may visit our devastated
planet and take a warning back to the cosmos.

                                END