AltSci Cell

I was walking across a beach with Charlton Heston when he shouted: "You did it! You finally did it!" If you do a search for "planet of the apes statue of liberty", you'll get analysis like:
Is humanity even worthy of freedom? ... the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand on a desolate beach, is one of the most enduring images of science-fiction cinema. Now that's irony. [1]
this final plot twist sees the protagonist's arrogance undone when he is made to realize that it is precisely this characteristically human arrogance that evidently precipitated a catastrophe (assumed to be a nuclear war, a looming fear in the Cold War era) [2]

Blaming all of humanity for the annihilation caused by nuclear holocaust is not exactly legit. There are plenty of us that are part of humanity that don't want to be annihilated by atomic weapons. Actually, as we now know there are enough people that agree that they don't want to be annihilated by atomic weapons that we've survived a whole 62 years since the first use of atomic weapons. 62 years is not nearly long enough to prove that nuclear war is preventable, but it's anecdotal evidence that we might survive another 62 years. The politicians and military officers that brought us into the cold war obviously had to justify their stance of 'defending' our values with mutually assured destruction. The same is true of absolute pacifists: one must justify his/her stance of 'defending' others through action or inaction. But gambling or relying on a strategy that is likely to end in disaster of epic proportions? That's fucking crazy. I don't know what they were smoking back in 1945, but I know what they're smoking right now. Mutually assured destruction is philosophically bankrupt and can be proven so. I don't have enough time to explain it tonight, but here's an overview of the inconsistencies.

• You have a large number of devices that could destroy the entire planet.
• Your enemy also has devices that could destroy the entire planet.
• If you attack your enemy, they will destroy the entire planet.
• If your enemy attacks you, you will destroy the entire planet.
• In order for your enemy to press the big red button, they have to be willing to kill everyone on Earth, something that not many people should be willing to do.
• In order for you to press the big red button, you have to be willing to kill everyone on Earth, something that not many people should be willing to do.
• Fear of killing everyone on Earth stops both sides from killing each other.
• The inconsistency is that if a person is already willing to kill everyone on Earth, they probably don't fear killing everyone on Earth, so the real thing that stops both sides from killing everyone on Earth is the fact that the leaders of our nation simultaneously fear killing everyone on Earth while are still willing to kill everyone on Earth.
• This inconsistency and the fact that elections are not based on mental stability (Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, ...) mean that mutually assured destruction is a terribly unstable system.
• The idea that mutually assured destruction could be justified as a defense is unreasonable.

I haven't gotten much work done on Small Wide World, but I've been working billable hours instead which isn't so bad. Show some interest in SWW and I'll put some hours into it. I think getting the Dodgeball and Myspace mappers online will be amazing good free PR for me. I just have to code it right.