On Friday 04 March 2005 17:07, Jed Rothwell wrote: oth sides had had them, it would have > been a bloody trench war stalemate like World War I -- as indeed it became > by the time Gatling guns were deployed in 1864 at Petersburg.) > > It is not out of the question that someone might develop cold fusion enough > to produce something like the dreadful remote control "mini weapons" and > "crows" I described in the book, in Chapter 11. You would not have to > perfect a megawatt-scale cold fusion reactors to produce them; they would > require only 10 or 20 Watts mechanical. Something with the power of a > remote-control model airplane or helicopter would do the job. They would be > very cheap to manufacture. I did not go into detail, but consider an > organization such as Al Qaeda decided to make some. Al Qaeda has tons of > money. (The CIA says that 95% of men under 40 in Saudi Arabia approve of Al > Qaeda and consider Bin Laden a national hero, so I am sure they have > unlimited funds at their disposal.) If the technology were available, it > could easily afford 50,000 remote-control robot "crows." They would be > similar to model airplanes and would cost perhaps $300 each in quantity, or > $15 million total. In the book I described how such devices might be used > to attack a military base and go around assassinating people wearing > uniforms. It does not take much imagination to think of what else they > might do, in the hands of people who have no qualms about committing > cold-blooded mass murder. Suppose, for example, you had 50,000 crows > available, and a few hundred people hiding in the U.S. to control them. On > day one you randomly select and kill a 16 people in cities and towns across > the country. The next day you kill 32. Then 64, 128 . . . then you go on > the radio and announced that the United States must immediately withdraw > all troops from the Middle East and the price of oil will be $100 starting > now, or the killing will escalate. Of course the US government would > defiantly refuse at first. But imagine how things would be when the numbers > reached 2,048 in a single day? This would be after 4,080 deaths, and you > would still have a stock of 46,000 "robots" remaining. The country would be > in an absolute uproar, with chaos everywhere. Europe and Japan would also > be in hysterics. People everywhere would stay indoors all day long; food > would rot in the stores; patients would die in hospitals, women in labor > would be stranded, and people would soon starve. There would be riots, and > the police and the military would be overwhelmed. Think of what happened in > Washington, DC a few years ago when a pair of snipers began shooting people > at random. Multiply that by 1024, then 2048 . . . I think a few days later > the U.S. would -- in effect -- negotiate a surrender. > How quickly we forget the past! There have been times when we had such casualties and lived through it. In Britain in WWII, the Londoners had similar casualties and pressed on with their lives. We would as well. Were we to be weak, like Cambodians, we well might live like rabbits. If so, we would die like rats, just like the Cambodians meekly went to the slaughter under the AngKha Loeu in the 1970's That slaughter was so bad that a thoroughly sickened and disgusted Viet-Namese government, albiet Communist, put an end to it in the name of humanity. This selfless act was unappreciated and soon forgotten by forces in the rest of the a world that wanted to follow Chinese lead and 'rehabilitate' Saloth Sar (AKA Pol Pot). It cost many Viet-Namese lives to end the reign of terror of Pot's murderous regime. I believe that we would not go the way of the devided and apathetic Cambodians. Were we to be apathetic, however, where would be the rioters that would 'overwhelm the military'? There are courageous people everywhere in this country. Look at the ones in the hi-jacked airplane headed for the White House on 11Sep01 that attacked the hijackers with the yell of 'lets roll', and stopped yet another catastrophe at the brutal cost of their own lives. As long as we have people like that living here, there will be no panic like ruled Cambodia in 1975!
Standing Bear
