slj@mtung.UUCP (S. Luke Jones) (09/12/86)
This has long-since degenerated past the stage where it deserves to be inflicted on net.sf-lovers, so please followup only to net.politics. > > OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj) > I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of > a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in > the first place. The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up > with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath > of World War Last. His major concern is protecting his survivalist > fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth. You guys crack me up. First, you say that Heinlein has been advocating a nuclear war, then when roughly a dozen refutations are posted, you change your complaint. The hero should have prevented the war from happening rather than trying to survive it. 1. Just how the hell is an individual supposed to prevent a nuclear war from happening? Join Greenpeace? Aside from making a boring book, it'd be a stupid way to prevent a war. (Don't bother giving me that "100th Monkey" pseudoscience. If it worked, you unilateral-disarma- ment weenies would already have delivered the rest of us to the tender mercies of smilin' Mike and his Gulag Gang.) 2. You probably think it would be better if, given an inevitable war, the protagonist made a point of dying rather than trying to live. Why? What would this prove, and to whom? > "Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of > nuclear war whatsoever. For example, because an all-out nuclear war > would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their > eyes shielded would soon be blinded. Then of course there is the > likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect. Heinlein could be excused Speaking of pseudo-science, what Archangel handed you this privy information about what would happen after an all-out nuclear war? Would I be wrong to surmise the source's politics are to the left of, say, Edward Teller? Does he say "millions and billions" a lot and publish most of his articles these days in that world-famous technical journal called PARADE Magazine? Besides, who brought up "all-out" nuclear war? The reason that the town in _Farnham's Freehold_ was plastered so heavily was because it sat next to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, home of NORAD. I suspect anyone living next to Omaha bought it as well. But those places were almost certainly the exception rather than the rule. > But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which > he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism". > Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to > massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold" This was in fact dealt with in the novel. But your collection of excerpts must have missed it. Too bad. > It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also > don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity- Did you really read it? Do you remember why there was no radioactivity? Hint: "the bomb shelter gets transported a long time into the future." (If you read even the back cover, you'd be hard put not to learn that.) > I would say that as I recall Heinlein's story in "Farnham's Freehold" > that it more closely resembles Reagan's Undersecretary of Defense, > T.K. Jones statement that > "we can survive nuclear war with enough shovels. Just dig a hole > a few feet thick and jump in it." > than any statement by pacifists or even people like Eisenhower > or Khruschev ('the living will envy the dead') > tim sevener whuxn!orb As has been pointed out numerous times, your recollection is faulty. Heinlein said that certain people under certain circumstances could possibly survive a war with luck (time travel? most survivalists aren't banking on it) and EVEN THEN he goes out of his way to make clear that the survivors aren't out of the woods -- the future holds cannibalism and slavery in store for them. -- O "I used to bull-eye Womp Rats in my T-16 O OOO O in Beggar's Canyon back home, and they're OO O OO not much bigger than that." OOOO OOO OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj) OOOOOOOOOOOOO AT&T Information Systems OOOOOOO Middletown, NJ, U.S.A.
orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (09/15/86)
I (tim sevener) wrote: > > "Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of > > nuclear war whatsoever. For example, because an all-out nuclear war > > would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their > > eyes shielded would soon be blinded. Then of course there is the > > likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect. Heinlein could be excused S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj) replied: > Speaking of pseudo-science, what Archangel handed you this privy > information about what would happen after an all-out nuclear war? > Would I be wrong to surmise the source's politics are to the left > of, say, Edward Teller? Does he say "millions and billions" a lot > and publish most of his articles these days in that world-famous > technical journal called PARADE Magazine? > Here are some references for you: Dr. Martyn M. Caldwell, a leading authority on the biological effects of ultraviolet radiation, in a recent article in "Bioscience" titled "Plant Life and Ultraviolet Radiation: Some Perspective in the History of the Earth's UV Climate" states that the ozone layer has a critical importance to life on earth, because it protects the earth's surface from ultraviolet radiation in sunlight which "would otherwise be lethal to unportected organisms as we now know them." The 1975 National Academy of Sciences Report, "Longterm Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations" stated: "As biologists, geologists, and other students of evolution recognize, the development of an oxygen-rich atmosphere, with its ozone layer, was a precondition to the development of multicelled plants and animals, and all life forms on land have evolved under this shield." B.W. Boville, of the Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service, has written the ozone layer is " a crucial element to climate and to the existence of all life on earth." Dr. Fred Ikle, Reagan's Under Secretary of Defense for Policy has stated that the severe reduction of the ozone layer through nuclear explosions could "shatter the ecological structure that permits man to remain alive on this planet." A paper delivered at a UN-sponsored scientific conference in March, 1977 states "The whole biological world, so dependent on micro-organisms, may, if doses [of ultraviolet radiation] increase, be in serious trouble." So I think we can pretty well establish the importance of the ozone layer. Next point, its destruction in nuclear war: The 1975 National Academy of Sciences Report, "Longterm Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations" found that the explosion of 10,000 megatons of nuclear weapons would increase the amount of nitric oxide in the stratosphere to something between 5 and 20 times the normal amount., that it would reduce the ozone layer in the Northern Hemisphere, where the report assumes that the explosions would occur, by anything from 30 to 70%, and that it would reduce it in the Southern Hemisphere by anything from 20 to 40%. These facts are cited by "Fate of the Earth" by Jonathan Schell. I would recommend you read it. tim sevener whuxn!orb