In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
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Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#2Protip for wired articles.
Ctrl-save and read them offline to get around the stupid ad blocker popup
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#3Protip for wired articles. Ctrl-save and read them offline to get around the stupid ad blocker popup
Protip in general: that page renders just fine without Javascript, and then there's no stupid ad blocker popup
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#4Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#5Crazy that the spectre of instant destruction still haunts us today.
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#6I'm always wondering what PR is behind articles of journalists visiting nuclear silos. This one looks like a first-person account, so was a military allowed to write about his job? How comes he writes so well? He could have been a journalist... Also, was the piece read, checked and corrected by a commandant before being published? If so, which parts were left out? Why did they leave the part where he admits not dressing with the uniform, installing a hammoc, playing video games and so on? Last question, he describes his role as reading a console, decrypting and triggering a button at request, and at the same time saying human error is the most probable cause for a nuclear winter: Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message to another missile-launching machine? Couldn't both machines be wired up together? Sure it would allow hacking the launch of the missiles, but at the same time, if he receives the correct message, he's going to send them anyway...
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#7I'm always wondering what PR is behind articles of journalists visiting nuclear silos. This one looks like a first-person account, so was a military allowed to write about his job? How comes he writes so well? He could have been a journalist... Also, was the piece read, checked and corrected by a commandant before being published? If so, which parts were left out? Why did they leave the part where he admits not dress…
Because you can't account for all eventualities. He is presumably trained in other aspects of maintaining and operating the base.
And probably more importantly: because presumably when given that order, he might know some context a machine doesn't and actually disobey.
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#8Crazy that the spectre of instant destruction still haunts us today.
I wonder if this will ever change now. As technology goes forward, we're creating a world in which an individual can gain more and more destructive power, and in which when something goes terribly wrong, it can wider and wider consequences. We're at global level now, and fast approaching extinction-level.
Two areas to highlight the point:
- High-energy anything. There's a saying that any propulsion system that could allow us to travel between planets in a reasonable (for human) timespan is also a weapon of mass destruction. And it's not just space travel - history of technology in general is about getting, storing and making use of bigger and bigger quantities of energy.
- Self-replicating system. The best-known example of these is also known as "biology". Something we're only beginning to play with on a serious level. Mishaps, or worse - deliberate malicious actors by crazy individuals - could have planet-wide consequences as our ability to manipulate biological nanomachines grows.
Sleep tight :).
(Also, alt-text from https://xkcd.com/728/ - "Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in really cool ways.")
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#9Crazy that the spectre of instant destruction still haunts us today.
I wonder if this will ever change now. As technology goes forward, we're creating a world in which an individual can gain more and more destructive power, and in which when something goes terribly wrong, it can wider and wider consequences. We're at global level now, and fast approaching extinction-level. Two areas to highlight the point: - High-energy anything. There's a saying that any propulsion system that could…
Of course a lot of the risk comes from the trend for technology to operate at larger and larger scale to achieve efficiency. We could see a trend in the opposite direction where individual households and communities can be more self sufficient. For example, efficient small scale energy production could reduce the risk of nationl level grid disruption. That same biotech industry could enable local food production without needing to depend on complex infrastructure for evey meal.
Re: In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
#10I'm always wondering what PR is behind articles of journalists visiting nuclear silos. This one looks like a first-person account, so was a military allowed to write about his job? How comes he writes so well? He could have been a journalist... Also, was the piece read, checked and corrected by a commandant before being published? If so, which parts were left out? Why did they leave the part where he admits not dress…
> How comes he writes so well?
Why does it surprise you that someone in the military can write so well? There's a great history of brilliant writers and poets coming from the military.
Many people join the military before doing something else with their lives so you get a tremendous mix of talents and passions in units. I found that a surprising number of people turn out to be excellent sketchers and painters when working in the military, for example.