Am I the only one?

[editrx]

... who thinks that re-reading Neville Shute's ON THE BEACH is like reading nonfiction, right now?

No wonder I'm not sleeping.

And yet I can't stop reading it. I would say at least it's short and sweet, but that would be too sarcastic for our current circumstances, eh?

Comments

[nancylebov]

I've been saying that it's easy to predict disaster and hard to estimate the resilience in the system.

It's possible that Trump will set off WW3, but by no means certain. If people push him hard, he steps back from specific bad ideas, even if he has a stash of other bad ideas.

As evil leaders go, he isn't especially blood-thirsty.

He could push North Korea too hard or worse, have a serious falling out with Putin. Neither one is inevitable.

I also think that if a nuclear exchange happens, it will be limited. And I believe that even a large nuclear war won't wipe out the human race.

I have this weird worry that Trump will start a conventional war with Mexico over paying for the war.

[editrx]

A large part of me finds it very, very frightening that more people these days speak of "a limited nuclear war" as if that's completely doable and completely survivable.

My step-father was #2 (there was only one #1 badge at both facilities, and that was Oppenheimer) at Oak Ridge and was a big developer in what would become the design of the implosion device. I know far too much about both atomic and hydrogen bombs. And survivability. Even of "smaller" ones.

[nancylebov]

We've got proof (India and Pakistan) that nuclear powers can fight a limited conventional war. That doesn't exactly make me happy.

[luke_jaywalker]

I think you're being paranoid. But I do see global disruption happening; we live on an incredibly tenuous edge of last-minute logistical supply for critical things.

I'm glad, to be honest, that I live in Australia now. I just wish this country had oil, because when the global economy disintegrates we're going to have trouble without that.

I'm not going to die, but being a farmhand would suck. I like writing and my trades of marketing and now math.

[editrx]

I don't think it's paranoia so much as pragmatism in the face of so many people, who I thought knew better, throwing around the term "limited nuclear war" as being not only practical but completely survivable.