1.
MODERN ARMAGEDDON, ANCIENT CATASTROPHE: CATASTROPHE
CONFRONTS TECHNOLOGY, AND LOSES
“The strategy that Werner Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered the enemy... Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow... Then we were going to identify third-world country ‘crazies.’ We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons. The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it. Asteroids — against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons. And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. ”
Dr. Carol Rosin.3
The war rooms of the
world’s major powers are busy with gloomy activity, playing out
games with think tank precision and dedication, toying
inconsistently with planet-busting technologies in order to avert a
global Armageddon and save the world.
In Moscow, in
hardened bunkers far below the Kremlin, Russian President Valerie
Pisczoff and his senior defense command heatedly discuss their
options. Some urge that they deploy their gigantic region-busting
hydrogen bombs en masse and, in a
sudden, decisive, and massive strike, blow the enemy into a
thousand pieces. Others weigh in against such a drastic move,
reminding the President that the danger of a radioactive rain from
such a move would be almost as dangerous as the threat
itself.
In Beijing, in
similar bunkers, the mandarins of China’s burgeoning defense
establishment argue with China’s premie r, Dang Mai Luk, for a more
subtle course. Perhaps it would be just possible, they argue, to
divert the attack with just the right, precisely placed
counterstrike to give it a slight “push” in the right direction,
and thus avert the catastrophe. It is a classical martial arts
approach, one steeped in the Oriental tradition of warfare: the use
of an enemy’s strength and mass against him.
In Europe, defense
ministers and heads of governments hastily summoned to Berlin by
German Federal Chancellor Angeline Merkwurdigliebe urge an
international diplomatic effort in the United Nations Security
council, warning of dire political consequences if any of the
world’s powers should decide to deal with the rogue attack
unilaterally in an ill-conceived and hasty military response, while
outside, Neo-Fascist skinhead groups protest, urging that Europe’s
powers flex their considerable military and technological muscles
and take out the rogue, demonstrating to a grateful world that
Europe was still a “player.” Inside, some delegates, acutely aware
of the demonstrations outside, call for a technologically
sophisticated variation on the subtle Oriental approach: a “nudge,”
a “warning shot across the bows,” not with the sledge-hammer
thermonuclear approach of the Russians, nor the scaled-down nuclear
nudge of the Chinese, but with space-based lasers and other exotic
directed energy weapons. Leading the charge for this approach are
the four major European powers, France, Great Britain, Germany, and
Italy. The rest of the European nations’ delegates fidget and
squirm nervously in their chairs, but ultimately acquiesce, for the
reality of European geopolitics has not changed since the
Franco-Prussian War; those four nations still possessed the bulk of
Europe’s financial, technological, and military clout. Everyone
else was, well, just along for the ride.
In the United States,
an ad hoc presidential “blue ribbon panel” has been quickly, if not
quietly, assembled on the orders of President Jordan Walter
Schrubb. The panel consists of the National Security Council,
Pentagon generals and admirals, various scientists, engineers,
economists, and media experts. Typically, the panel weighs all the
alternatives being discussed in the other capitals, recommends all
of them and none of them at the same time, urges “cautious but
decisive action,” calling upon the State Department to mitigate the
political fallout of what will be perceived as “American
unilateralism.” The Congressional opposition meanwhile calls for
hearings on why nothing was done about the rogue threat long
before, since the United States government gave every indication of
having known about it for several years, and of having done nothing
to avert it. And in typical fashion, the Congressional opposition’s
more radical members produce their own retired military and
scientific experts who argue that the threat is no threat at all,
that it will break up of its own internal stresses long before it
can do any serious damage. Even more radical elements in Internet
chat rooms and discussion groups go so far as to suggest that the
government had engineered the threat for its own benefit, or at the
minimum was capitalizing on a heaven sent opportunity to expand its
power. But the opposition is clear about one thing: no military
action should be taken against the threat, since that could be used
as an excuse to militarize outer space.
And there is a final
player, a most unexpected one. In Sao Paolo, Brazil, a small and
elite cadre of generals, scientists, and cabinet ministers gather
in the president’s study over cognac and cigars, casually
recommending that the Brazilian President offer to the concerned
parties Brazil’s own quite unique technology for dealing with the
threat, a technology that has no need of the “gentle” thermonuclear
nudge of massed hydrogen bombs nor of the more sophisticated
obliteration of lasers, particle accelerators, or phased plasma
cannon. The discussion is relaxed and cordial, having none of the
sense of urgent gloom that pervading the discussions in other world
capitals.
“The earth,” says one
paleontologist in perfect and elegant Portuguese, “faced this
threat before, and all life was nearly exterminated. We are fairly
certain that the dinosaurs, at least, owe their extinction to it.
But now we can do something about it, and need not face another
such catastrophe. Mr. President, I urge you to deploy the weapon,
to make it available to the world, because we can be quite certain
that neither the Russians nor the Germans nor the Japanese will
reveal their own possession of the weapon unless they absolutely
have to, and even then, we cannot risk the chance that they would
not do so, and we cannot allow the Russians, Chinese, or Americans
to make a thermonuclear strike.” The Brazilian President nods in
agreement, savoring his cigar.
The “rogue threat” is
a killer asteroid, larger than one kilometer in diameter, and it is
on a definite collision course with the planet Earth in
approximately nine months’ time. When it collides, it will release
the energy of 10,000 megatons of TNT, one hundred times the
magnitude of the largest thermonuclear bomb mankind has ever
tested. It will throw into the atmosphere a choking cloud of dust,
alter the earth’s climate in unknown, permanent and catastrophic
ways, and possibly eliminate all life from the face of the
earth.