Article on Sam Cohen, creator of the most moral weapon ever invented

[Epinephrine]

This is a really great read if you have 45 mins to spare. I enjoyed it immensely.

http://boingboing.net/profits_of_fear.html

[Tone]

i dont like it, using moral and this weapon in the same sentence. the argument is the the morality comes from minimizing suffering and long term damage, since humans are going to use weapons anyway. thats a shitty way to think and we should be focusing on other things. its less than half ass and we create our own reality.

from the article:

Ideally he wanted to reduce blast damage to zero, to eliminate the wholesale demolition of civilian housing, services, and amenities that he had witnessed in Seoul. He saw a way to achieve this if a fusion reaction released almost all of its energy as radiation. Moreover, if this radiation consisted of neutrons, which carry no charge, it would not poison the environment with residual radioactivity.

The bomb would still kill people--but this was the purpose of all weapons. _If_ wars were liable to recur (which Cohen thought was probable), soldiers were going to use weapons of some kind against each other, and everyone would benefit if the weapons minimized pain and suffering while ending the conflict as rapidly as possible.

Cohen came up with a design for a warhead about one-tenth as powerful as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. If it was detonated at 3,000 feet above ground level, its blast effects would be negligible while its neutron radiation would be powerful enough to cause death within a circle about one mile in diameter. This was the battlefield weapon that came to be known as the neutron bomb

also from the article:

The Project for the New American Century appears to have been especially influential. In 2000 it published a position paper endorsed by Dick Cheney, just in time to influence presidential candidate George W. Bush. Titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" the paper argued that the United States under Clinton had behaved as irresponsibly as Britain during the 1930s, when the British chose to kick back in a cheerful state of peacetime complacency instead of building up an arsenal to counter the emerging threat of Nazi Germany. "Rebuilding America's Defenses" urged the United States to use its unique wealth and power to intimidate potential foreign adversaries before they could grow big enough to intimidate us.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center almost seemed to validate this call to action--except that the attack was launched by a handful of religious nuts armed with box cutters.

[Theif of Time]

A nuetron bomb is preforable to a nuclear bomb, but I haven't seen the whole article (not enough time) and can't judge.
But I think that the sword is a more honorable weapon than the nuetron bomb (not sure about moral, though). A sword also leaves no radioactive residue.

[Reclusion]

Neither does a bullet.

[Colossos]

Would have taken ages though to end the Korean War by slashing everyone with a sword or shooting them individually.

[Pressure Drop]

Neither does a bullet.

unless its those depleted uranium bullets



i like swords, but i would not like to be cut up by one

[Colossos]

oh, the sword is the most honourable weapon, yeah, but only if the person you're fighting has a sword or better.

[DoTheFandango]

Samurai Jack says:



SOOKIE SOOKIE FAI DOLLA

[Squeezer]

hahahahaha.

[Pressure Drop]

wow samuri jack would do anything to get back into his own time

[Theif of Time]

Would he even trade his sword in for a nuetron bomb?

[Vykromond]

i dont like it, using moral and this weapon in the same sentence. the argument is the the morality comes from minimizing suffering and long term damage, since humans are going to use weapons anyway. thats a shitty way to think and we should be focusing on other things. its less than half ass

tone wins

[ZeUs!!]

The best bit about tone's post was he said he disagreed with the story and then rephrased the story without ever mentioning what bit he disagreed with or why

[DoTheFandango]

It's good that he didn't though, because we would have dismissed it no matter what.

[Kyace]

i dont like it, using moral and this weapon in the same sentence. the argument is the the morality comes from minimizing suffering and long term damage, since humans are going to use weapons anyway. thats a shitty way to think and we should be focusing on other things. its less than half ass and we create our own reality.

If you must kill people then a weapon to target only kill the people you want and to leave the bysiders alone seems a moral enough weapon to try to build.