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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#371
post #53

Though it makes me mourn for life lost when I read it even now, I never cared much for “There Will Come Soft Rains”. It’s a story exploring how what we make could continue on without us (for a time). But “The Pedestrian” (1951) is included at the end. It’s the last two pages out of that six page PDF. I think that one’s more apt to modern life. I read that one ages ago and it unsettled me.

I relate strongly with The Pedestrian. I love going for long walks at odd hours. In the United State police's defence once I was walking all by myself at 3 in the morning in Mountain View, peeking and crouching among the bushes for good shots with my camera. A police car approached me. It ended up being a non-threatening conversation. It was early 2002. All in all quite surprising given my brown skin and then long be…

I once sat on the side of a busy path - not a road! - remote controlling a silly Halloween decoration on the other side. Three times police officers checked I was okay. One person stole the battery out of it.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#372

Though it makes me mourn for life lost when I read it even now, I never cared much for “There Will Come Soft Rains”. It’s a story exploring how what we make could continue on without us (for a time). But “The Pedestrian” (1951) is included at the end. It’s the last two pages out of that six page PDF. I think that one’s more apt to modern life. I read that one ages ago and it unsettled me.

I have a friend who often goes for walks at midnight or later, around a rather nice part of town. He gets the cops called on him regularly . It's insane.

And what do the cops think?

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to think of it, why hasn't Israel launched any? We know they have them, Iran knows they have them, and they're not as restrained.

My guess has always been the delicate balance of perception. Nukes are (rightfully) perceived to be beyond the basic destruction we've come to expect of war. They're a tool for annihilation. If you use them offensively the rest of the world will become so afraid of you that they'll nuke you so you can't nuke them. Israel isn't strong enough to entertain the idea that they could survive this.

I really don't think that country is worried about its international perception right now.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to think of it, why hasn't Israel launched any? We know they have them, Iran knows they have them, and they're not as restrained.

I would assume that while Iran doesn't have the material for a bomb, they have enough nasty material for an air burst to do significant long-term impact. They couldn't possibly use it unless Israel nuked them first.

Iran's previous leader - the one we killed - had a mandate to build up material for nuclear bombs but not actually develop a bomb. Its new leader also wants to develop a bomb.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#376

reminded me of this joke Tech enthusiasts: "Everything in my house is wired to the internet of things. I control it from my smartphone. My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I give it voice commands via Alexa, I love the future!" vs Programmers/Engineers: "I work in IT so my house has mechanical locks, mechanical windows, routers using OpenWRT, no smart home crap, no Alexa/Google assistants, no internet connected t…

You forgot the punchline: "the smartest thing in my house is a printer, and I keep a gun next to it in case it makes a funny noise."

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#377

The most interesting thing about science fiction to me isn't the things the authors get right, but what they get wrong. Like, the whole house talking in a ChatGPT voice, intelligent appliances, etc: brilliant prescience. But he still thought we'd be having linoleum on our floors...

Linoleum became the premium option, now named marmoleum. https://www.forbo.com/flooring/en-us/commercial-products/lin... If fossil carbon ever becomes (commercially) scarce, vinyl might end up the premium choice. I predict plank will always suck.

[deleted]

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common for spammers to use an LLM to post a short summary of a thing in the thing's comments, to attract upvotes.

Fair, but even though I don't comment often, my account is almost 15 years old. So I'd hope that at least pushes back against the spammer aspect - but ultimately, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's also common for spammers to hijack old accounts.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quaint? We are the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, according to the experts: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

I mean, we have nukes, so we're one day closer to nuclear annihilation each and every day, and I'm not even an expert!

A fun quip, but p(nuclear annihilation) is always less than 1 unless it actually happens, so we’re only one day closer to potential annihilation.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#380
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The past year has substantially nudged things in the other direction.

I'd say it's tough to say. On the one hand, one of the major nuclear powers is embroiled in a war in Europe. Which is extremely bad news and clearly makes the probability of nuclear war increase. On the other hand, we're getting better and better at targeting, which means much smaller warheads can get the job done. We have little use for 50MT behemoths any more (excepting doomsday weapons).

Er...the 50MT device was a cold war dick measuring stunt, not the demonstration of a practical strategic weapon. But, yeah, we (the US) don't even build 1MT devices any more, because 1) we have to fit them into submarines and bombers where size and weight (and economic) requirements limit yield, and 2) we figured out pretty quick that due to diminishing returns on destructive footprint, bigger bombs were pretty much a waste of effort (and produced other side effects like more fallout). Among other gotchas, you're constrained by the cube-root law; ten times more yield is not anywhere close to 10 times more destruction on the ground.

So, since we saw first-hand what devices of ballpark 20KT yield did to an urban environment, numerically most of the operational US nuclear weapons are around 100KT (margin of error and all that)[1]. So, yeah, better targeting, smaller warheads, yada yada. Still one-shot/one-kill for an entire city and the surrounding area. I mean, McNamara could handwave with statements like "optimistically, only millions dead" (paraphrased), but I don't think that kind of thinking has aged well.

That said, things are not worse because the Big Three have Big Bombs (or don't). It's because the strategic landscape has changed. One of the big 3 is lead by a guy who thinks nuclear weapons are just like big hand grenades or something and that negotiation is a zero-sum game. Another bit three leader is maybe just holding on to power by his teeth (or not...who knows) and came of age in the 'nuclear war is winnable' era. And there are more players at the table. Israel has nukes. North Korea. France and the UK. And India and Pakistan. South Africa had them before, and could again. And Iran will get them at some point, sooner or later. And we're apparently going to give the Saudis all the required tooling and expertise required, though there's apparently a firm pinky-swear no weapons will come of it. So we aren't looking at a 'simple' US/USSR cold war, with some Chinese spice in the mix. We have regional power, some of them not known for long-term stability, some with extremely volatile regional situations, with the ability to knock over the apple cart.

So what is the escalation/deescalation path if, say, KYI has a real bender one night and decides that NK nukes Seoul? Or Tokyo? Or what if they just pull a June 1950 and march all the way to Pusan conventionally? Do we nuke Pyongyang? All their nuclear facilities (the ones we know about)? Or glass over the whole place? And what then does China do, us having set off a nuke in their literal back yard on top of their Little Buddy? Under such circumstances, I do not expect the current administration to take a measured step back and say "we need to think this through...".

Uncertainty. That's why a lot of us (who lived in the Cold War) think things look a little shakier than usual.

[1] To head off the inevitable "well ackshually...": Yes, the big players still have big bombs. I haven't been involved in this area in a while so things have probably changed a bit, but we still have some of the big boys in the 300KT+ range sitting on Minutemans for old times sake. I assume the Russians still have a bunch of their 1/2 to 1MT devices in silos. And the Chinese were pretty proud of their absurdly large 4MT+ devices, supposedly still in service.

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