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E-Bombs: Technology Update
vaderhelmet writes "'In these media-fueled times, when war is a television spectacle and wiping out large numbers of civilians is generally frowned upon, the perfect weapon would literally stop an enemy in his tracks, yet harm neither hide nor hair. Such a weapon might shut down telecommunications networks, disrupt power supplies, and fry an adversary's countless computers and electronic gadgets, yet still leave buildings, bridges, and highways intact. It would strike with precision, in an instant, and leave behind no trace of where it came from.' (Story from IEEE Spectrum Online)"
The problem is that most of the generals wear pacemakers, and these bombs would kill them, thus causing the US to respond with nukes. You might not think it's possible, but what if an ebomb was detonated near Washington? How many senators have pacemakers? The President likely has one. It would be a nightmare to all, if such a thing happened, especially the innocent.
Technologically inclined countries would suffer the most from such attacks.However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods, like hijacking a plane and flying it into a building; no cost to Al Queda (they just had to pay for training and carpet knives).
Yes ebombs would be horrible if detonated on American soil, but switching to them is currently against terrorist doctrine. And the US wouldn't bother with them because there aren't any circuits in AK-47s, and the collateral damage is too great. Might be good to take out surface-air rocket launchers, and other big baddies, but you end up setting back the country you're attacking technologically on an even scale; there is no target descrimination.
It might make the general population of "liberated" countries like Iraq, even more hostile if you blow up their computers and Internet connections! Nothing worse than a horde of angry Iraqi children denied their Quake time.
"It would strick with precision"
strike?
It would strick with precision, ...
It appears to have already stricked someone...
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
First, the geek in me says: "Cool!" I know the military has been working on these kinds of weapons for decades, and it looks like they're getting closer. Anything that adds to the arsenal is a win in my book.
Now, it's too bad we didn't have this weapon last year for use in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Imagine the effectiveness of such a weapon! We could have annihilated the entire high-tech infrastructure of Afghanistan far more quickly than we could have using conventional weapons. The invasion would have been far more effective if the Taliban's high-tech, integrated command and control technology could have been disrupted from the start. I'd just like to see those camel-jockeys try to coordinate their attacks without their iPaq's and virtual reality headsets! Good luck with that one, Ahmed!
However, I'm a little concerned with the effectiveness of this type of weapon from a ratings point of view. How exactly do you keep the audience entertained without any explosions or visible signs of destruction? I really don't think people are going to stay tuned through the commercials for this. "After these exciting messages from our sponsors, watch all the lights blink off!" Great... Perhaps, as part of this research, they could integrated a conventional weapon with an E-weapon. I guess what I'd like to see is a combination E-Bomb/MOAB. Then you still get the visual effects, sure to scare the poop out of Terrorists (and their camels), with the added bonus of disrupting their sensitive, high-tech infrastructures. It's a win-win! Just make sure the next invasion is during sweeps week.
e-bomb eh? Well, I guess that's better than an i-bomb.. Already have too many i-bomb's on the market as it is..
That sounds a lot like the EMPs they use in the film !
i-surrender!
Just reading the story made my teeth tingle.
"Most types of matter are transparent to microwaves, but metallic conductors . . . strongly absorb them, which in turn heats the material."Maybe somebody with better physics can help me out here, but I think I'd rather be shot than have all my fillings melt.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
It would strick with precision, in an instant, and leave behind no trace of where it came from.' (Story from IEEE Spectrum Online)"
That's why they didn't have any EMPs at Zion - they were still waiting for IEEE Compliancy.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
by Michael P. Kube-McDowell, Arthur Charles Clarke
would create the perfect shadow environment for good old fashioned guerilla warfare.
It might just be better to leave the lights on.
It would also strike all hospitals, causing loss of life. Which is particularly bad, because the Geneva convention forbids attacks against medical facilities, which shall be marked with a red cross, and the e-Bomb *would* attack such.
(8-DCS)
Don't tell that to Rockstar games!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I would *seriously* frown upon anyone who fries my gear or my 'net connection.
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
It is a DUPE. This has been on slashdot before.
People erroneously believe that water absorbs only at around 2 GHz where the microwaves operate. Wrong. It also absorbs in the C and Q band and some of these weapons are intended to operate in these bands. So you in fact can tune them to kill selectively any higher life forms. In fact it is the ultimate mass atrosity weapon if used in these bands. Ever seen a rat after 15s in a microwave?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
"and wiping out large numbers of civilians is generally frowned upon"
not if you're al qaeda. that's their primary goal.
Of course, I can picture the implication of it taking out some certain annoyances :-). A low powered one for script kiddies.
It'll look a lot less impressive if the truck just slowly comes to a halt rather than have the entire bridge blow up.
On a more serious note, what about tactical bombing - you blow up bridges to deny the enemy choice within the battlezone. You attack dams to deny the enemy water, etc.
Somehow I think there'll still be big explosions in any up-and-coming war... Of course, it could be an E-bomb, targetted at a nuclear reactor...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
But what will it do against a single person with an explosive belt who is determined to die and take as many people with them as they can?
Nothing!
The United States doesn't know how to fight against an idea, it only knows how to fight against a militia...
And in these times when men are willing to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes and strapping bombs to themselves, that EMP won't do you much good. How does an EMP stop the guy in a heavily populated area from emptying an M16 into a crowd, or blowing up a U-Haul full of kerosene and fertilizer? So long as people are dedicated to their cause, they will fight, with or without their Palm Pilots. The Romans did.
do not read this line twice.
Covered before here.
++ NO CARRIER ++
How about the premise for Goldeneye (stopping an EMP) and Dark Angel (after effects of an EMP)?
"'and wiping out large numbers of civilians is generally frowned upon'
not if you're al qaeda. that's their primary goal."
That's not their goal, it's the means to an end. They have no interest in killing except that it is the best method they believe they have to achieving their goal (destruction of the USA and its allies, radical 'Islamification' of the world).
It's no different than any other war, except that the targets are civilian instead of military units. The goal in most wars is to topple a political power or achieve independence, the fighting is just the method by which nations attempt to get there, not the 'goal' itself.
GL
So we have an e-bomb, all that means is in the end were back to swords and arrows. Hell, MacGyver can greate a bomb out of bubble gum - take that you techno-warriors
Jets need anti-missle systems, bigtime. But first airline companies have to stop going broke.
...after the fact, without making a notation.
that's right. this stuff is unbreakable, & operates on several (more than 3 ) dimensions.
lookout bullow. the daze of the felonious georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi softwar gangster ?pr? ?firm? hypenosys stock markup fraud execrable, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss at the increasing speed of right, &, dare we say, light.
you won't be needing any payper liesense gadgets, or even a model rocket cam, to be able to detect which way the wwwinds of change are bullowing at gale force/farce.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.. the big flash is underway.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3225626.stm
it's not like the people giving the US a hard time in iraq are all driving around in BMWs with computer controlled navigation devices, with iPods strapped to their waists and a laptop on their knees.
With Whacko Jacko's special going buh-bye, the people of the world crave something else for sweeps!
Swanson has had to rewrite the cooking directions on their "Hungry Man" dinners to ensure that the food comes out to jst the right consistency. It reads: Depending on your altitude and strength of your weapon of mass destruction cooking times may vary.
I think you should say nothing worse than a horde of hungry iraqui children denied their FOOD!
Don't take it personal, i'm not talking against USA People, i am talking about USA Government, and about a big percent of USA People that keeps supportying that governments, year after year, diferent faces, all the same shit.
In fact, it's really amazing that you mentiones Quake. I think that War in Iraq is 'cause of quake. I Think that The terrorist attacks to the USA are because of Quake; and not only because of Quake, but because of TV, because of POP Music, Because of the ALCA, and because of lots of other ways the USA has to conquer the minds of the res of the world. That is a war. In that war, the USA takes away Freedom. And that, has consecuencies; i am not saying that you deserve it, i am ust saying that it's a consecuence of the action of your government in the las century.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
In warfare defeating your enemy means eliminating his capacity or will to wage war. Psychological campaigns can only have a limited effect. Even the most intense PsyOps arguably would never have won Vietnam (given that years after the war VC commanders said they could fight for 5 to 10 *more* years and take *unlimited* casualties). Terror bombing (i.e. firebombs over Dresden and Tokyo or napalm) has a significant psychological value. Unfortunately along with it psychological and physically destructive effects it also inflicts heavy civilian damage. The thesis here is that advances in immobilizing weapons make war less horrible, less hellish. Yes, civilians will still die, but pursuing weapons that minimize this is the duty of every government. After all I doubt we will ever rid ourselves of war. Humans have waged it for thousands of years; there is no reason the next few hundred should be any different.
sig
With the weak enemies the US has lately, we would be better off developing bombs to incapacitate camels.
This bastard had a better laptop than mine.
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
Did anybody else confuse this for flux capacitor when they first read it?!? :)
"Look out! He's got a board with a nail in it!
this e-bomb would have been useful in the 80s before everything had a circuit board.
i remember reading an article about the east coast black out where auto flushing toilets ceased to work. so much stuff has circuitry in it. as i look around my cube and office: phone, computer, speakers, watch, wall clock, lights, thermostat, water fountain, auto-on/off lights in the bathroom, elevators.
i would think that dropping this type of bomb on the downtown of a top 1000 most developed city in the world would have some devastating affects. it would almost make it worth it to do it the old way of precision bombing targets.
if the bomb were to hit equipment that was responsible for pumping water or treating sewage. it would not be a good day.
just some thoughts...
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Everybody who has seen the horryfying British TV movie Threads knows that it is just a question of a high-altitude nuclear detonation, and all electrical appliances fail due to the following EMP...
USA is already looking into using mini-nukes in conventional warfare, so why not take it one step further? Would also make use of all those big-nukes which might still be available...
-- someone who was a child when the fear not was of terror, but total and global annihilation of all things human
These wouldn't be, at the moment, effective weapons for the U.S. to use, but they would be highly effective against U.S. forces.
The potato it is uninformed.
Fine.. you will destroy infrastructure itself.
And leave people for dying without food and water.
Diseases will spread fast around...
I dont think its is a good wepon.
THERE ARE NO GOOD WEAPONS!
Don't. Make Me. Repeat. Some of the. Speeches. They Would Give.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Your "e-bombs" won't stop our donkeycarts of doom, infidel!
Lessons I learned from Star Trek
"A Taste of Armageddon" A Federation ambassador named Fox, who boards the Enterprise to reach the planet Eminiar VII, where he hopes to negotiate a peace treaty with the inhabitants. Instead the crew of the Enterprise gets caught in the middle of an interplanetary war between Eminiar and neighboring planet Vendikar. The twist is that the war is being fought on computers, and compliant residents of those "destroyed" areas obediently report to disintegration chambers, where their "virtual" death is made literal.
Get a free ipod.
Yeah that's great. We've already seen how Saddams forces were armed with mainly Russian and some Chinese/American and french weapons. Now we can give them e-bombs. That way when Al Quida want to bomb the HSBC building in Istanbul like they just did they can now use an e-bomb to screw up all the emergency exits, and lighting, just bfore the car bomb goes off. That way they can use the hysteria for a higher kill rate.. Please, who cares. It's another weapon that should never have been invented. Whatever happened to ethical science??
You drop an e-bomb... you hinder your enemy. But your enemy is still there...
The perfect weapon is not the weapon that temporarily hinders the enemy. If I were involved in an assault on anything, my first concern is whether or not Johnny Badboy on the other side has a weapon and if so, ammo, not whether or not you succesfully disabled his communications to his boss or even took out Cartoon Network. If he's got something to fire at me and the means to do it, he is not *disabled* and it not out of the fight.
or maybe I'm missing something... but as far as I can think, nothing about taking communications out of the fight takes the fight out of the dog. Especially when our foes are in technological dark ages compared to us.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
> the perfect weapon would literally stop an enemy in his tracks,
> yet harm neither hide nor hair.
Nope. The perfect weapon kills all of your enemies. 'What if' we killed no Iraqis in Bush's war? Instead of 50,000 insurgents, how many hundreds of thousands of guerrilla fighters would we be facing now? Guerilla fighters do not need electronics, just weapons and the ability to talk to each other face-to-face.
Death is preferable in so many things. Suppose you accidentally drive over a pedestrian. Your civil suit fines will be much higher if you maim the person instead of kill him because you're paying for pain & suffering to cover the rest of his life.
Back to war... if you don't kill your enemy, he lives to fight another day and teach his children to hate you too. War is about killing and always will be. If you can't stomach it, don't play that game.
Alan Ralsky here we come!!!
Ocean's 11. But we all know the effects only last 30 seconds.
Drop one of these on the house of file-swappers, that will teach em. 8)
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
High Technology always loses! Hasn't anyone ever seen Stargate? Camel-riding nomads will always destroy their teched-out overlords!
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
New Scientist report from August 2002 on e-bombs and explosive pumped flux generators.
9 99 92654
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns
Shock and DOS
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Where it wouldn't work is a place like Afganistan, where a local irregular knows how to use a camel and a kalashnikov. (Unless this device melts guns).
So, in summary, it seems like the perfect underdog weapon, where the underdog is not the US, but, say, Palestinians or Baathists. Terrorists could use it in the US, and we would be virtually defenseless, and it would render our expensive, high-tech army useless overseas.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Okay, that bomb is great for taking down semiconductor gadgets. The question is, whose military (except the United States and its allies) is vulnerable to that?
Old Soviet military designs, which are the foundation of e.g. Russian, Chinese and North Korean armies don't use sophisticated semiconductor circuitry that extensively, and when used, these parts are heavily shielded.
On the other side of spectrum there are irregular combatants such as Taliban formations and Iraqi guerrilas, whose most advanced gadgets are probaly electronic watches they wear.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
So someone saw it and thought it was real huh?
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0138304/
It seems rather ironic that the Western superpower has been developing weapons that are most effective against, well, a western superpower! You could drop a bunch of these things on the African continent, and the AK47s would still fire, the grenades would still go boom, and the face to face meetings in basements would continue to happen. Drop one on America or an American troop concentration, and the cost would be in the Billions.
Unless, of course, America is planning on taking on the Western World(tm) in the not so far future?
On a more serious note, what about tactical bombing - you blow up bridges to deny the enemy choice within the battlezone. You attack dams to deny the enemy water, etc.
You attack and destroy a dam and most likely you are going to cause a natural disaster short of a nuclear explosion.
Thousands would drown in the subsequent water rush. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps. Attacking a dam and releasing that kind of kinetic energy on an innocent civilian populace is the VERY FREAKING DEFINITION OF A WAR CRIME.
Think about it.
By the way, Al-Qaeda could ram a plane into the side of most dams, and all the dam would do is smile at them. Holding back the water is the larger issue than the plane. It would take more than the biggest U-haul truck to blow a dam.
Either way, if you're going to blow a dam, then I would suggest you use nukes. It'll do less damage.
The smart chaps forget that many critical military items are supposed to be hardened against radiation attacks whereas the equipment in hospitals,power plants,water and sewage plants,supermarkets,telephone exchanges isnt.....so it harms an innocent civilain much more than an explosive bomb would.
Wanted : A Signature.
And this is useful for anyone because... why? To start, I was against this war from the start, but to analyze it a little further, Iraq didn't seem to put up much of a fight, and what fight there was was usually low-tech, just regular guns firing from the sides of the roads. Now that the actual war part is over, what is left? Roadside bombs, most of them detonated by timer (could be mechanical) or remote control (could possibly be affected by a weapon such as this). But the problem is no one knows where the roadside bombs ARE, so you can't just indiscriminately drop e-bombs on the country without fucking up the rest of the mission, which was to steal all the oil for the president's buddies, errrrr, rebuild Iraq for the Iraqis.
So what have they done to fight terrorism lately? Take away some rights, break the Geneva convention why locking people up offshore.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I think it was called Nimda!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
That would depend on who the teroists are. Al Queda are not the only teroist group, and they are considered unusual because they are prepared (even eager) to commit attrocites with a high civilian death toll.
According to conventional doctrine a rational terrorists group will avoid killing large numbers of civilian bystanders in order to avoid aleanating the community from which they draw their support (and funding). For such a teroist group, a weapon capable of causing billions of dollars of economic damage to an enemy, while killing few if any civilians would be quite attractive.
An example of and economic attack would be the IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombs in the City of London financial district, which killed few if any people, (I can't remember the details) but did close to a billion dollars of damage. Had microwave weapons been avalable to the IRA at the time, it is likely that they would have used them.
Like dropping 500 kg bombs on Iraqi homes. Cheap as chips to the US military budget.
Take this story and combine it with the analysis of the root cause of the big Northeast blackout this year.
Put a relatively small one of these babies near a power line in Ohio and you could cause a similar cascading blackout.
Now place a few of these suckers in strategically diverse locations throughout the grid and you might wreak some real havoc.
Read any good sonnets lately?
Holy crap this weapon is perfect! Let's start a petition so that they use nukes instead...
Diego Rey
diegoT
Next, a public statement by the makers of "E-Machines" stated the computer manufacturers plan to sue the D.O.D. on grounds of defamation. They further stated, "This name 'E-Bomb' carries a negative connotation! Our machines don't crash or blow up because of the hardware, they do that because they're running Windows!".
Next, Microsoft sues E-Machines for defamation claiming... Oh wait, they're stating the truth. Microsoft later stated that the real reason they've decided to sue E-Machines is because they think E-Machines... "shouldn't have pointed that out"...
;-)
"Not the Earth!!! That's where I keep all my stuff!!!" - The Tick
American military supremacy is based largely on technology. When a less developed country hits American forces with an ebomb, that advantage disappears. Terrorists like Al Queda use a tech edge against Americans (a 747s/WTC bomb in lower Manhattan is extremely technological) in just that strategy, launching "asymmetrical attacks" against them. But when a military enemy has enough tech to launch ebombs, perhaps by buying them from an American proxy arms dealer, they'll be able to match forces at a dollar ratio of 1000s:1. Power to the People's Republics?
--
make install -not war
All of our enemies are still sporting mules. EMP-Bombing a group of sheep hearders isn't going to get us anywhere.
I do security
Rumour has it that some of the older SAM installations from USSR times are stuffed with thermionic valves. Not much to go wrong there either.
See my journal, I write things there
...most types of matter are transparent to microwaves, but metallic conductors, like those found in metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS), metal-semiconductor, and bipolar devices, strongly absorb them, which in turn heats the material...
Curse my manic depression!
Spread the RC luvin'
Believe it or not, most modern pacemakers are fairly well shielded against EMP. Most of the problems that were had with people being near microwaves, etc. were with older designs of pacemakers. They have to put the warning signs on microwaves because you never know who has an old pacemaker. However, the amount of old (unipolar lead) pacemakers still around is rather small. Any EMP which damages the new designs is going to make every muscle in your body twitch, and do heart damage to those without pacemakers too.
I'm afraid I don't have a link, but I could refer you to the Report of Task Group 34, from the American Association or Physicists in Medicine, section IV. Don't ask why I have that paper lying around my office - it's a long story. The basic gist is, pacemakers are already encased in a Faraday cage.
Shockingly, we are one of the worst violators
Collateral damage happens regardless of the weapon. Which would you rather, have the hospital building collapse, break windows, send shrapnel all over, or have all the electronics die? Electronics are a lot easier to replace and workaround than collapsed buildings. A lot easier to come in and rescue survivors too.
Infuriate left and right
would be a device that would break all the windows in a specific area thus making a fortune for glass manufacturers in the US.
-Matt
right dipshit - that's why virtually all of the 9/11 hijackers were recruited while attending schools in Germany, and had money to fly all over the place. Because they were so oppressed? They were all so poor and hated western culture so much, that they went off to western universities and spent years in the west before the attacks.
But hey - you hippies can have it both ways. America is bad because they support corrupt mid east governments, but America is also bad when we oppose corrupt mid-east governments. Perfect!
But you are right - since America wants people to buy our communications devices and dvds, we deserve to have fundamentalists blow stuff up (I mean they only want women kept in the home and uneducated, and who kill those who don't exactly follow their rules about such important topics as music or shaving - and as all the hippies tell me, we have to respect their culture)
corn kernel bombing attacks
+
high-power microwave (HPM) weapons
=popcorn?
One link: tempest/hpm Two link: another Three link: link the third
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
A weapon like this brings out the best arguments for believing in peace and adopting a peaceful attitude (which I admit only works if everyone does it).
Why? Because this weapon naturally works against the most powerful member of a conflict. Weapons like these (as the article points out) are inherently more harmful to those countries who have a heavy reliance on technology. That's us. So there will be little disincentive or disadvantages for poor countries to try to build them and use them -- what do they have to lose?
In the face of this argument, you can see that we lose. We build this weapon, and the easiest target for it to be used against is us. How many times have weapons come back to bite us in the ass? And this is a weapon which only wants our ass to bite, not some third world country's technology infrastructure.
So while these things are technologically impressive, and may benefit us in the short run, the only ethical (and successful) solution is not to get started in the race. I hope we come to this conclusion as a people someday.
There is no perfect bomb.
Except the one that changes the minds of the people who use bombs.
From the article:
"People can put tacks in the road. Are we worried about electronic tacks in the air?"
ummm.... a well placed 'tack' yes... It's this kind of attitude that helps make weapons development more scary than it already is. The mindset of "well, we did this but nobody else can" is ridiculous. Look at how many things started out in someones garage/basement/etc that turned into major things...
BSOD? It won't fry "an adversary's countless computers and electronic gadgets" and will cause damage to hair (when the enemy pulls theirs out), but it will stop them.
And how exactly would this help are boys on the wrong end of a bullet or car bomb ? Lou Sir
Every few years somebody who is responsible for
writing weapons systems proposals at one of the
big bomb factories proposes some plan that is
utterly ingenious... and it often turns out to
have a development-to-deployment budget of, oh
say $100,000,000.
This person usually finds that he is looking for
a new job soon afterwards. Nobody in industry,
defense, or the gov't wants to hear about a solution that will not make them all rich and
keep on paying off for at least 20 years.
So, unless this can be implemented from satellites
at a yearly budget of > $1billion, it won't fly!
You know folks, the scary thing i see about this is... what if the enemy had one of these microwave devices and were able to deploy it around a vital target. The second we tried to bomb the target, that very bomb or cruise missile would be disabled in no time flat, and the bomb would fly off course and blow up a children's hospital... Of course this would also be a very cool way to stop an enemy's missile attack, it would probably make a far better missile defence system than those lasers they have mounted in 747's
My stepson has a year old copy of Popular Mechanics/Science (I forget which one) with a front page on E-bombs. The article inside is only two short pages long, but they point out that the hardware and cost of these things is certainly not out of reach of those with a few bucks and technical know how.
the flux compression generator, or FCG, is a good choice
Marty! That's impossible! Unless... you can drop the bomb when the clock tower is struck at precisely twelve midnight going 60 mph...
Firstly, I would certainly hope that no one but the technologically advanced nations ever get their hands on this technology.
Secondly, against anyone but the technologically advanced nations, this technology isn't all that useful.
Consider that "bombing them back to the stone age" wasn't a great fall for the Afghani and Iraqi armies. They're much more used to living in caves, firing AK-47's, and getting from place to place by foot or mule than the US, UK and everyone else.
We're the ones with the stratofortresses, the smart bombs, and laptop and night-vision equipped infantry. Developing an eBomb is like H.G. Wells' Martians developing the Common Cold before invading Earth.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I am glad the future is finally here. I've been waiting for stuff like this forever. Althought people thought it might come in the form of a grenade, this is even better.
Pretty Pictures!
Slashdotter "Space Cowboy" being held for terrorist acts
After suggesting the Hoover Dam as a possible terrorist target in this post Simon "Space Cowboy" [yourLastNameHere] is being held as the courts decide whether he should be tryed with a military tribunal or under civilian courts.
Perfect weapon? Not in a 3rd world or 2nd world country. Take an ebomb to Afghanistan or Iraq and you will quickly see how effective it really is. This weapon is good for developed countries but it is unlikely that developed countries ever go to war. Chances are, they are too socially, politically, and economically tied to the rest of the world.
The military must prepare for The Next Enemy, whomever that may be. That's how you stay ahead of the curve and assured your not blindsided by something (say Sputnik and the possibility of living under a Commie Moon). Most nations out there have a varied mix of irregular and regular land, sea, and air branches. Predicting their national government, culture and outlook (and their possible hostility towards us and our friends) 40 years into the future is the domain of the State Department and think tanks.
So, yeah, an e-bomb might just gather dust... now. But in 10 years when it's in production? 20? Back in 1983 could anyone here predict the path of events that lead us to now?
Politicians start wars. Armies finish them. The military is just preparing for any contigency our governments decide to point and click them towards.
What is music when you despise all sound?
In some ways, these kinds of weapons are almost worse than conventional weapons in that they can thoroughly attack a country's infrastructure while not invoking the guilt of actually killing people. New York had a half day blackout 3 months ago and we're still getting news about it. Imagine what it would be like if someone dropped a big E-bomb on New York. How could anyone even begin to think about repairing the damage? How long would it take? Years? Decades?
I'm not saying we'd be better off with conventional weapons or even that these kinds of EMP weapons, used for small targets, are bad. What I am saying is that people need to look at more than body count when evaluating how humane a weapon is. If someone dropped a nuke on my home town (pop 60,000), it might create more outrage than an EMP in New York, but the EMP will be much much harder to recover from.
I wonder what sort of effect this would have on our lives if one just "accidently" gets dropped on the Microsoft campus? Hmmm.
Considering our own George W. Bush, the man in control of the largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world cant even pronounce the word "nuclear"...
Yes. I'd say developing weapons like these, even if it's only for the purpose of distracting Curious George away from the bright red buttons...i'd consider that a good idea.
Bowie J. Poag
Interesting that we had this story that discussed what we would do on a network outage.
Should I be pulling my baseball glove out of the garage?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
And after we drop one and go in there, those pesky enemies will roll right over us with their AK-47s and other "low tech" weapons. So wonderful to have a weapon that's most effective against yourself!
E-Bombs would clearly hit more advanced countries more then low-tech countries, but low-tech countries cannot develop such high-tech weapons. If you want to fight terrorists, I think they won't be impressed by E-bombs at all.
It'd still fritz out pacemakers. And people would still whine that we were immoral, baby-killing pigs for killing 300 innocent people in an attempt to topple a regime that slaughtered tens of thousands ever year.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Will this knock out Rivera's camera as well? Maybe we should increase funding. :)
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
And since you freaks scream "1984!!! BIG BROTHER!!!" every time the government scratches its ass, much less when they actually do anything, you're right, we're not going to have the capability to stop one single person in an undisclosed location from doing something that requires no overt or hostile action aside from the explosion itself.
You people don't even know what you want. First you scream freedom, then you scream security. Can't have both at top capacity. At a certain point they become mutually exclusive.
Well, considering that this country was founded on fighting a control freak like King George who restricted and taxed the freedoms of its people, and that WWI, WWII, and Korea were about freaks that restricted freedoms, then I would suggest you look back at a FARKING HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE about why you feel so inclined to give away your freedoms for a little security AT ALL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
There is strong historical evidence to prove that dictators and kings cause wars. There is also even stronger historical evidence to prove that innocent boys get drafted into wars to die on both sides for some reason that is more about a dictator's greed and schlong size than his merits as a leader. The equation goes a little like this: Weirdo gets in power. Weirdo takes all the power. Weirdo takes your son and decides to put a rifle in his hand. Son dies. Weirdo gets to leave country and sit on beach in some other weirdo's country for rest of life. Son never comes back from dead.
Lose your freedoms? Then you should have "property of" stamped on your forehead. Your goverment and leaders eventuality is to ship you off. This CONCLUSION is as inevitable as the fucking sun coming up tomorrow. It is backed up in historical fact for generations. You will have someone you know get killed for mom and apple pie for NO APPARENT REASON if you let these people take all of your freedoms away. You will be sitting in the back of a cargo truck in a military base thinking to yourself, "hell, I don't even know where this place is on a map. What the hell are we doing here?"
But no, you morons, you "I would die to protect my country" morons don't realize that there is no purpose in dying for your country. You trade in your life, YOUR ONLY LIFE, for a pre-emptive war against some unreasonable twits, and our unreasonable twit leaders think its great. Do American servicemen get oil money for this? HELL NO! They get a second class trip home in a box with a extra medal and a plot at a national cemetary. I guarantee that the Bush and Cheney family is going to make a handsome living out of all of this. Really, they should go to federal prison for duping the American people and lying in a manner that caused Americans to die.
Saddam is not Hitler. Saddam is not even Kim Il Jong. This is a personal war. Our boys are caught in the middle of it, along with Iraqis and the racist a-holes that are attacking it.
It's a flag, people. Fabric and ideas. Just jumping up and saying "freedom!" doesn't excuse the deaths of others on either side. That is the same crap that got the Romans to truncate the skulls of countless other people, for what? A lifestyle? This king and country crap is as old as dirt. It has been around for generations.
Doing what you're told doesn't make you free. Giving up your rights for security is not an acceptable answer. It is only a matter of time before anything that can be abused, will. Need the proof of that? Go to a public toilet. Give the car keys of your brand new sports car to your teenage child. People have been like this for millenia. All of that rhetoric, all of that "he died for freedom" crap. EXPLAIN TO ME IN TINY DETAIL HOW GETTING SHOT IN BAGHDAD, OR SOMALIA, OR AFGHANISTAN, OR WHEREVER IS DEFENDING FREEDOM. This is a time where we send men off to die for a cause our leaders KNEW WAS BOGUS, AND IMPLIED THE BOGUS FACTS TO PLY THEIR CONSTITUENTS, and then restrict
Maybe they could adapt this Technology to Prematurely set off plastic Explosives? Could it?
Pure Evil
They're really useful in casino vault robberies and hooking up with Julia Roberts.
Here's a perfect testing location, a place with many computers loaded with worthless information:
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
That show is pure baloney.
There was one episode where they had acess to one ion gun, but they needed more. That was their problem.
DUH! They have MacGyver! He can make ion guns by the thousands using a banana peel & a rubber band.
as someone whose mother has a pacemaker, I have to stand up and disagree that people would remain unharmed after a large EMP. My mom would instantly die - in fact, back in the early days of microwave ovens, she couldn't get near those either for the same reason.
Beyond the neato effect that ebombs will scour away the enemies technology base, a lot of us seem to be forgetting the more unplesant aspects of this "friendly" weapon-- You still have to go in and take the land from people intent on keeping it, who will still have their AK47s, grenades, morters and such to oppose you. Taking the Gulf War II for instance, all these weapons would have done is make it easier to kill the opposing force. Zapping their lights would have made them only marginally less inclined to oppose you. These are not "friendly" weapons as seems to be the popular opinion. They are support devices intended to facilitate the destruction of the enemy by limiting their oppertunity to strike back on the same technological plain. In the end, you still have to deal with people behind the gun.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Not only hospitals, but probably also electricity and water supplies, all emergency services, all transport except animals, all food production facilities, all refrigerators and airco's. What a great way to liberate a country !
Such indiscriminate violence looks like terrorism to me.
The madness of these gentlemen becomes obvious, when you realize that, as usual, these devices will be copied or stolen. Without Hiroshima, N.Korea would not even have nukes. Haven't we learned anything ?
I like the idea of a weapon that can stop a war-making machine without killing. But what is the long term effects of these kinds of weapons on living tissue? The last time I looked, a microwave pulse with that much power and in the frequency range of 10ghz was closer to gamma radiation. What is the long term canser risk from being exposed to one or two of these devices? What other effects could it have on your ememies civilian population? What about your own soldiers? Can it make you sterle (sp)?
And if it does cause canser, wouldn't this be a bad thing? Your ememy maybe dying, but their relatives and childern would hate you even more, leading to more terrorists attacks.
That is just my view
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
According to conventional doctrine a rational terrorists group will avoid killing large numbers of civilian bystanders in order to avoid aleanating the community from which they draw their support (and funding).
You are confusing Terrorist with Guerilla. A terrorist by definition is doing things to cause a general sense of "terror" in his enemies civillian population. This is best achieved if the targets are essentially random so every member of the population is at potential risk and if the attacks are as horrific as possible. So a bomb in a crowded pizza parlor is an act of terrorism while a sniper targetting a soldier is an act of guerrilla warfare. Either act is a matter of tactics so any particular group can be engaged in both kinds of activities.
Obviously as in the case of the IRA bombing in the City of London a single terrorist act can have multiple advantages. It WAS a terrorist attack in that it killed a number of people that belong to the "opinion class" and thus invokes terror throughout that class. It also did financial damage to a much wider group so they felt it have an impact on their lives personally. The whole point of their terrorism was to demoralize the enemy population so that they would conclude that Northern Ireland was not worth the cost of having to live in fear. A technological attack that did even more economic damage may have been effective but part of what the terrorist wants is the graphic scenes on TV of bleeding civillians running from the blast and the sight of all that damage (the City of London bombing was dramatic). Being TOLD about a bunch of computers being disrupted doesn't move public opinion the way that the random and horrific deaths of large numbers of people *just like you* does.
Now would these E-Bombs also be smart enough to allow emergency communications ( 911 and its international equivalents abroad ) to go through so that these individuals could get the medical assistance they need? Or would these individuals just be untracked casualties caused by E-Bombs?
You don't kill or maim your enemy, you reprogram the stupid bastard to be your friend an ally via a custom virus that reprograms his DNA. This will be the preferred weapon of the future. One direct hit to Baghdad, and then 2 days later they're waving American flags and putting up pictures of Bush.
Give me 10000 motivated partisans, some AKs and mules-donkeys-horses and we'll kick your shitty ass out of our country time and time again.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
The disabling all electric devices and motors by an alien from outer space was the gave the title to this 1950s movie, consider among the best in the genre. The alien could show more discrimination in turning off devices than an e-bomb. The movie was considered a metaphor for the cold war, where the alien represented a powerful Soviet Union.
"Gort, Klaatu barada nikto"
Given the interconnected networks and advanced electronics not used by donkey-cart users, would we be able to prevent such attacks as happened this morning in Baghdad?
Or should do a intense forced upgrade of donkey-cart users world-wide?
#man woman
segmentation fault - core dumped.
Now, IANDocBrown ... but that sounds awful familair to me...
(compression generator ~= capacitor charge/discharge)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
From the article "Anyone with a technical bent could probably also build a crude e-bomb in their garage, a thought that security-minded folks find rather troubling." Are they trying to make people want to build one?
Damn republicans always ruining everything
The perfect weapon in the electronic age is a pair of wire cutters... Just snip them fibres.
Have a look at the series of events that occured in and around the Philadelphia 9/11 Beoing crash.
1. Plane went completely out of control before ploughing into ground.
2. Black Box stopped recording about 3 minutes before impact.
3. People living in the immediate areas power went down, just before the impact.
4. The only planes the ASAF had in the vacinity were an F16 and another type of plane, (sorry forget name, might be C130, will look it up). This planes only redeming feature is that it can fly without electronics and can produce lots of power.
The F16 can also fly w/o electronics. These are two of very very few planes the USAF has that have this capability now. (Both are from the 60s).
So, hypothetically, if the USAF wanted that plane down, (and I do not think that this was the wrong decision to make) and they as little as possible evidence that they did it, I can think of no better weapon. And it seems to fit the above scenario of events.
Just throwing it out there.
"anything that's been hardened or shielded against an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear bomb will probably emerge unscathed."
So countries will protect everything of any value to them, and in the mean time we will all get cancer, dead, or deformed from the microwaves.
Back to the drawing board boys...
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
OK, calm down, everybody. The amount of energy absorbed and converted to heat by the small amounts of metal in your body is not going to turn you into a human torch by a long shot. The reason EMP can be felt in an amalgam or metal filling is that it's in very close proximity to a very very sensitive nerve. Not only will the metal in your leg not heat up to damaging levels, but you won't even be able to feel the difference.
Deep, cleansing breaths, people. The damage to electronics is the bad part. The damage to humans is not, since an EMP bomb will only injure the humans it physically lands on.
Virg
Quoth Niccolo Machiavelli: For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.
The only path to peace is elimination of enemies. Think genocide will just make more enemies? Ask the American Indians. No one cares about their plight, because there are so few of them left. And becuase of this, they stopped fighting back. We need not fear his vengence.
Does anyone honestly think that somday the Israelis and Palestinians will come up with a really good peice of paper for the to sign that will lead to peace? The only way there will ever be peace in that region (or anywhere) is if one side decicevly eliminates the other.
Dump the e-bomb, hang on to the h-bomb.
* Which raises the issue of the fraction of ordinance that are duds. It would suck to send in the CIA or SF to retrieve/destroy an intact warhead!!
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
And liquid metal at that. One of the primary components is mercury, one of the most toxic substances known to man.
It's banned for every conceivable use, except for embedding it in your food intake four inches from your brain.
Now don't you feel better?
If this argument were true, you would think that the VietNamese, of all people, would still hate us, but, they don't. You would think the Germans hate us, because we flattened their country, but they don't. You would think that the Japanese hate us, because we nuked them twice. But, they don't.
The bottom line is, the arab world hates the west because islam in its present form is a religion so conservative as to make fox news seem positively pinko. The US has a system where priests do not run countries, and the priests overseas, who are running their countries, do not like it.
This is my sig.
we call Ecstasy E-Bombs.
You tell that to the 300k kids fighting them. War is a media show for the assholes paying for it (you).
NO SIG
Taking out power grids doesn't inflict damage? With more and more technology being "wired", something like this could do major damage, whether it is in the form of vital power failure or damaging susceptable and vital technology.
A neutron bomb.
Leaves infrastructure, removes the living.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
oh come on! no one get the drug reference here? =)
How will the President land on an aircraft carrier?
War is as much about exciting the citizenry to your cause as it is about defeating an enemy. Peace requires that very dull people shuttle back and forth between very dull places talking about very dull topics. It's not exciting. If you have a dull, un-flashy weapon, you might as well have peace.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
==========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
it seems that optical discs would be protected from such microwave blasts, so it might behoove all of us to back up iimportant data to CDs and DVDs.
The military force this weapon would do the most damage to, is the one developing it.
Almost every other army is technologically behind (and most have zero budget to buy all the shiny new toys) - this hardly makes sense.
It's pretty obvious that the "EMP" in the Matrix Trilogy is not EMP as we know it. It creates a visible aura that is not harmful to humans, the EMP from the nukes in SR did not harm the machines, and apparently "EMP" in the Matrix is much more rare a resource than modern E-Bombs (thus ending the torrent of "why not use EMP defenses?" protests against the Matrix).
Why call it "EMP" then? Why call a Lightsaber a "lasersword" or blaster a "lasergun" when they're clearly not? It's just an anachronistic term...
ANAKIN : I saw your laser sword. Only Jedi carry that kind of weapon
vaderhelmet writes "'In these media-fueled times, when war is a television spectacle and wiping out large numbers of civilians is generally frowned upon, the perfect weapon would literally stop an enemy in his tracks, yet harm neither hide nor hair.
There are simpler ways around that pesky little problem called "public opinion."
The simplest one is to get rid of media coverage. This can be done in many ways, but the association of all of those ways together is the most efficient tactic:
1)Just get rid of the journalists, camera crews, and photographers. *
Think Chechnya.
2) Oooh, shit. You're a democracy, you can't get rid of journalists. Find a way to have them work for your P.R. department, without even them knowing it!
Think, "embedded journalists" (Iraq, 2003).
3) Damn, some of them don't want to be embedded!
Threaten them, shoot at their cars, whatever.
Think, Hotel Palestine, Bagdad, where the journalists lived, that "accidentally" got fired at by a US M1-A1 Abrams tank. (Or think, reporters working in the Gaza bank etc.)
4) The journalists are still there. Shit, shit, shit. Go back to your home front and get rid of objectivity.
Think Fox News.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
I bet this will be used against civilians, when a town refuses to go along with the patriot act (like many towns and cities have)
they could "accidently" hit one of these communities with one.. then say "if you wish to get your power turned on and your belongings replaced, you must go with or else you can stay in the stone age."
Having watched my little girl emerge from 8-weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, I don't find the idea of killing computers to be such a wonderful idea.
"In other news, the latest E-Bomb attack on North Korea was, in the words of the Air Force Chief of Staff, 'A resounding success.'
"Initial body counts indicate that civilian deaths , while widespread, were random and uncoordinated; from crashing jet liners to a hospital that exploded when a simple thermostat in the boiler room failed.
"'This is the sort of terror weapon that we've always wanted to have access to.' he is quoted as saying."
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Death preferable in so many things. Suppose you accidently drive over a pedestrian. Your civil suite fines will be much higher if you maim the person instead of kill him beacuse you are paying for pain & suffering to cover the rest of his life.
First, this is probably not true. The first one is vehicular assualt, the second is manslaughter. The tendency of civil cases is to reward someone's death by providing to their family the residual value of their potential earnings. This is very favorably considered if the person is in high school... civil cases are nasty in this case. Further, if you have insurance most of this can be covererd; and/or you can sometimes do bankruptcy.
Second, manslaughter is *usually* punishable by a hand-full of years in prison, uness you are really well-off. During this time in prision, you loose your job, most likely your career, and often times your wife/family. Further, you have the chance to pick-up a new family.. where you are the 'momma', and numerous exposure to STDs. There was an article in the Detroit News about 3 years ago about a fella who went into prison for a three month stay and came out with AIDS. That's a serious penalty.
So, nice myth.
The largest number of casualties has come from the extended stay in Iraq, because the remaining resistance is using guns and home made explosives. Guns aren't going to be affected by e-bombs and neither will the bombs until they are assembled. (Bombs might actually go off if hit by one of these e-bomb pulses.)
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Setting off an E-bomb would leave guerrillas carrying rockets on their backs unharmed. The U.S. war machine would grind to a halt.
I think you should say nothing worse than a horde of hungry iraqui children denied their FOOD!
You mean the ones that starved for a full decade under the UN sanctions, while Saddam spent the UN "oil for food" money on palaces?
The ones that are being fed by the United States right now, and going to schools rebuilt by the United States?
Those starving Iraqi children?
"Al Queda". PFT! We just declared war on a 1.8 BILLION person nation. That is monumentally stupid. Beware of war-mongers--they are in this business strictly for themselves.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Time to order more tinfoil for the beanie and faraday cage
An EMP wouldn't work even against a "large massed force." The US government puts in its equipment specifications that all military electronics must survive an EMP pulse from a nuclear blast. Remember, they have been building up military weaponry for 40 years assuming nuclear weapons where going to be used. Assuming the Russians did the same, a given, you now have the world's 2 larges arm makers creating tanks, planes, missiles and what not that can survive an EMP weapon. Remember, the Iraqi's are using US made Stingers and Russian SA7's to shoot down helicopters.
Users are like bacteria, each one creating a tiny problem until the host dies.
It doesn't matter how many of them there are. We've got all the force multipliers. They live but through our boundless compassion and grace. If they cannot find a way to be peaceful by the time our paitence wears out, they will, rest assured, be exterminated. And they won't even get museams or reservations.
Seriously, you should get out more. Talk to more working slobs. Even the occasional PhD, MD. Make sure to include a few who fled the holocaust as children. See what they think should be done. There are many people who with their friends, and other company where politness isn't demanded, who'll freely talk about resuming above ground testing in the middle east.
My favorite scenario was a proposal to steal a play from the fudementalist muslim play book, but scale it up. Hold them, their whole world hostage, and give them one year to kill all the asshat, or else. Starting with Mecca, then proceeding through the list of muslim holy cities and population centers. Moving up the timeline in response to terrorist attacks. Brilliant, they're judged on their own morality, by their own morality, according to their methods, but they alone have the power to throw or not throw the switch. Maybe they'd call the West's bluff on Mecca, but after that? If I were a muslim, I'd be all about militantly preaching love. That religion has let itself be dragged out onto the thin ice. How much time is left for the sensible among them to get back to shore before the word comes to kill their God, and punch their tickets en masse?
I don't care about the ethical debate. Not any more. They've spent that charity. Now, while Might might not make Right, it does make the rules. And there is no getting around that.
You'd be the President, and you'd vigorously resist your attempt to put a pacemaker in your body.
All it is is another weapon in the arsenal. In fact, its one even the US Army chose not to use, since you have to repair all the damage done afterward. How expensive would it be to rewire a whole powerplant, hospital, or even house? Pretty expensive, thats for sure.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
That is, unless you're one of those case modders who doesn't have a metal enclosure for your computer. In that case you're probably not only emitting all kinds of funky EM radiation from your computer components, but you're also not protected against EMPs.
A RPG does have a computer in it. Neither does an AK-47, AK-74 or a friggen rock for that matter. So long as the U.S. has people in this world intent on killing us they will find a way. Gasoline, a match and a coke bottle does a pretty good job.
Maybe instead of spending money on the 'eBomb' we can figure out how to not piss off the rest of the world!
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
Wouldn't using one of these be some kind of DMCA violation? "Look man! I just used an e-bomb to beat your encryption and destroy your data!" ...and yes, it would be sweet to have a cluster of these...
http://page33.port5.com -- Spread the paranoia.
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com
...is something that addresses low-tech weaponry, like a modern day version of the double-barreled cannon [wired.com]. Just think, every platoon would have it's own anti-donkey cannon!
didnt they already do this 3 or 4 James Bond movies ago?
Take your faggot whore first post and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!
Uh, no. Frying almost all an area's technological infrastructure would result in massive secondary failures, lack of transport, lack of power and fuel, lack of food, lack of water and sanitation. In a highly technology dependent country a conventional bomb would have been kinder and more limited in its effects.
At least me, my glock, and my battery powered Nuke will be ok.
Let's consider the really significant results of an EMP attack: all you guys who have got those fancy schmancy transparent cases that show the colorful blinkenlights in your PCs will be looking at smoke curling lazily from your slagged mobos, while I will still have a running PC, since it was encased in a conservative traditional all-steel box (a.k.a. a Faraday Cage). So I'll be able to...um...play Breakout or something after the Internet is fried. Until my UPS is drained, anyway.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
1. WW1 was driven largely by monarchy. The guy ruleing Germany at that time was called the Kaiser. Bad choices in dealing with defeated Germany screwed up their economy so badly that people got very desperate, and that's how Hitler got into power. Good choices after WW2 kept the cycle from happening again. WW2 was a clear struggle agaisnt a monstrous evil, at least in retrospect, but WW1 was cloudier. 2. Without the civil war, the slaves would not have been freed (at least as quickly). If Lincoln hadn't swung the north towards ths goal in mid war, they might still have not been freed when they were, as the civil war started over quite a few issues, and the north was initially not willing to commit to ending slavery immediately (to be fair, many people, including some in the south, were at least in favor of ending it gradually.) Was it worth it in the end? Hell yes, if we saved only 20 years on abolition that's 20 years of incredible suffering that got at least a bit better, but it was a sad way to get there, and the government now counts all who fell on both sides as american dead. 3. Without the cold war, we would be trying to make an economy even more screwed up than the one we have work. Western Europe would have about the same standard of living as 1970's Bosnia. Centralized planning would still be working as well as usual - not very - over a larger part of the globe, perhaps the whole globe. 4. Without our Revolutionary war, the poor brits would probably still have a monarchy with real power, instead of just pomp and circumstance. I think we both won on that one. We also got a valiant attempt to get government off of the average person's back, one that hasn't wholly failed yet.
Who is John Cabal?
Damn, I had to read through five pages of crap to finally find the subtle reference!
Good call
Well, at least, we'll be ready for the squidies this time and we won't have to deal with the horror that was Matrix Revolutions.
I won't be mad at you, because i know that's not you the one talking, it's your brain killed by mc donalds and your made in CNN desinformation.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
...a la Ocean's Eleven?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
1) I remember you that THERE WAS A REVOLUTION IN IRAQ ONCE, that revolution was from the people for the people, then, the USA went to Iraq and terminated all that, killed everyone in the government, and created and established a KING, the predesesor of Saddam (Who acttually is a son of a bitch, but that's a diferent history). So, it was the USA who actually put Saddam on the government (Don't even talk about all the other interventions that they did in the History of Iraq, are you asking yourself why Iraq and not Uruguay?, well, Uruguay don't have Oil.). And please, don't tell me that you went there to "Free" that people, 'cause no one buys that shit man. It's really funny to talk to some of you .. your mind is so obfuscated by CNN and other Mind Domination tools that you really don't see those things that EVERYONE SEES. Lern to acept that your country is not perfect!!!! ... we know Power is Corrupt the same way here, in the USA or in China!.********
We know when to acept that we made a mistake, for example, we don't venerate our government
(And Please don't call yourself "American" Cause America is a HOLE FUCKING CONTINENT; and i live in that continent to (Argentina), so I AM AN AMERICAN; the same way as you are.)
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
There seems to be a consensus that things cannot go on as they are indefinitely. This file is a scenario for the future which generally assumes the worst about the possibilities for the future. The events of the future are going to be influenced by a number of different forces. If only one problem had to be faced and overcome, I am confident that the world would get past it. However, there are many forces pressuring humanity and the total sum of them is, I believe, greater than what our society's foundations will withstand.
Forces
Here is a list of the forces that are moving us towards the EOTW:
Financial crisis:
The governments of the world have not managed their budgets well and now the lenders of the world are starting to balk at giving them any more money. The US dollar crashes because of the debt incurred by successive administrations who for one reason or another never balanced the budget.
Global climate change:
Global warming is the culprit here. The effects are very slow moving and subtle. However, where an effect takes place, it impacts agriculture most which changes the livability of a particular region. The viability of agriculture in areas shifts. Some regions gain and some lose. The net of this is probably pretty close to zero, but where agriculture is established, it is net negative. It will take some time to take advantage of the net positive areas. Storms are stronger and greater in frequency. Sea level rises as glaciers and polar ice caps recede.
Population pressures:
Although the calculations of the carrying capacity of the Earth vary, the consensus is that the present population, estimated in excess of 6 billion people is definitely greater than the carrying capacity. At some point, the deficit we are running by consuming the capital of natural resources instead of the interest catches up to us. Starvation occurs in locales. Social cohesion is destroyed in areas by the fight for leftovers. Refugees flood neighboring areas but are often pushed back. Xenophobia flourishes.
Reduced capacity of oil output:
Pressure on agricultural productivity occurs because the dwindling supplies deprive modern mechanized farms of fertilizers and the fuel to run the machinery. Less oil also results in reduced economic activity. markets becomes local again instead of global. Transport costs increase and anything that has to travel far becomes expensive in a short distance.
Water scarcity:
Affects middle east. Later, when the mechanicals of modern civilization start to come unhinged, it affects the cities.
Pollution:
Some disasters happen. It affects the resiliency of food production. Essentially, North American society starts to run out of places to our garbage and we have to start living with it. It finally starts to get people to think what kind of garbage is being created, although this is too little too late to be able to hold on our glory days.
Disease
AIDS and emerging infectious diseases will act as a wild card. The timing and severity of disease outbreaks will have effects dependent on the remaining stability. The spread of infectious diseases from local outbreaks that would have once been contained easily sap the resources and reduce the population substantially later when order and world co-operation has broken down.
Predicted chronology:
2004 - 2010
After natural disasters, the response time to get everything back to normal is taking longer and longer. Areas, once back to normal, are taking time to get back to the pre-disaster economic activity. The price of oil starts to significantly rise in 2007 which hammers the US dollar even further than voluntary devaluation started in 2003. This puts a lot of people out of work. The government, in order to avoid bankruptcy, curtails unemployment benefits, social security and reduces the armed forces significantly. The state and local governments are unable to get financing and they, too, have to reduce services. By the end of the decade, in Canada, about the only way to get your child
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
The latest attack (11/21/2003) in Iraq (against two very tightly guarded hotels) was carried out by cheap rockets put in to firing position by donkey cart . Donkey carts are, like humans, largely unaffected by such sophisticated weapons unless the weapon falls on the donkey.
I remember you that THERE WAS A REVOLUTION IN IRAQ ONCE,
Blah-blah-blah... changing the subject. Standard tactic #43.
Doesn't change the fact that Saddam lived in luxury on UN "oil for food" money for a decade while those Iraqi children you claim to be concerned about starved.
'cause no one buys that shit man.
Here's a hint for you: what you "buy" or don't "buy" doesn't matter. In the slightest.
And Please don't call yourself "American"
Well, considering that I used the word "United States" both times in that post, and "American" not even once, I'd say that your frothing at the mouth is getting in the way of your reading.
From a purely emperical point of view, the war on terrorism is not working because there are a lot more terrorists now that there were on 9/11. Bush policies are creating terrorists by solidifying the opposition and increasing their resolve and fanaticism.
There are a lot more suicide bombers (and bombings) now than before the "war on terrorism" and the Iraq invasion. Bush and his minions are too arrogant to ever admit they have made the terrorist threat to Americans greater than it ever was.
Bush has squandered a world-wide sympathy and support for the United States in his arrogant, stupid personal war on Saddam. Saddam wasn't bothering us much before the invasion, but Bush has succeeded in making Iraq the biggest problem we have now, greater even that Al Queda. The resources we are devoting to Iraq would have been better spent gaining allies around the world and chasing down every last Al Queda operative.
Bush policies have turned the US into a lone wolf, and we are in over our heads and don't even have enough troops or money to handle things as they are, much less increase the effort against the real Al Queda terrorists. The Bush administration has alredy re-activated the draft boards across the country. Expect a military draft within a year.
Hey, one good thing - if you are out of work because of the economy, maybe you will be lucky enough to work for the army as a draftee.
Just a small point, the majority of actual camel jockeys (that is, children from the ages of 2 and up who are bought, as slaves, from countries like India and Bangaladesh) end up in Saudi, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.
t m
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/stories/s792822.h
Guess which countries are America's allies in the region? Any questions why there might be widespread distrust (to say the least) of US intentions? Osama Bin Laden is a Saudi, remember...
Because, as everyone knows, DNA controls opinion, and people can't be brainwashed without changing their DNA *cough*Pattyhearst*cough*.
Or were you trying to be funny ? (which you failed)
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Mod parent up!
The fundamental problem with a weapon like this is that it's even more indiscriminate than a high-explosive bomb. It will take out essential services that are keeping alive non-combatants - and people who aren't even capable of being combatants.
YOU don't exist, go away anonymous coward. ... get a name asshole. Sos un yanqui culiado.
You are afraid of your karma??
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Hey, sparked my thoughts into what are banks/large corps and even me going to do about non-magnetic data backups seeing as how this weapon seems to be somewhere close to production. What non-magnetic (besides Compact Discs) media provide large storage capabilities?
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The problem isn't as much the mercury in the fillings as it is the total exposure you get. You get a certain amount from the fillings, sure, you get good dose every time you get a vaccination with mercury as a preservative (that's pretty much all of them), you can get some fairly large doses from certain kinds of fish (tuna, salmon) -- and it's pretty much in all of them now. You may get more if you work in certain kinds of electronics manufacturing as well.
When the total exposure is high enough, all kinds of odd problems develop. I think people are probably more likely to get sick from eating high amounts of seafood rather than from dental fillings, but I wouldn't exclude it as a factor. It's in your mouth, you can swallow them, and the mercury does leech out over time.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.