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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scumbria who wrote (129987)	12/20/2000 5:58:45 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1570447

Millions of Americans die every year because of disease caused by poor diet. 25,000 die every year in car accidents, and an equal number by gunshot wounds. Have any ever died from nuclear missile or asteroid attack? There are a lot more serious (and less costly) problems to obsess about. The chance of a nuclear missle attack is small. The chance of a large astroid attack in the near future is even smaller. However the destruction caused by either of these things is so great that it makes a lot of sense to be prepared against them. They could easily be a lot more devistateing then global warming, but you are willing to devote much greater resources to that issue then these programs will cost. Many environmental and health regulations have never saved any lives. The estimates for some of the stupider laws would perhaps have them save one life every several thousand years after spending more then a $1tril to prevent the hazard. Nuclear war depends on human decision so the chance is hard to estimate. As far as astroid strikes go a big astroid strike capable of doing more damage then a nuclear war combined with global warming from CO2, will probably happen in the next few hundred million years. Quite possibly very early in that period. The chance that it will happen in the next century is very small but considering it could wipe out all life on the planet, and the cost per life saved (take the money spent and devide it by the estimated chance of a big strike in the next century multipied by the number of people that would be killed by such a strike), is not unreasonable, esp if you give extra wait to the fact that it would not just kill so many people but wipe us out completly.

To: Scumbria who wrote (129987)	12/20/2000 7:04:21 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570447

Dear Scumbria: Over 200,000 died in the last nuclear attack. The only thing that has been saving us is the cost, infrastructure, and logistics in creating nuclear weapons. Actually more have the ability to make ballistic missiles than the weapons themselves and now you can buy, at least, the missiles from China and Russia (and maybe even a Russian tactical nuke). North Korea has tested missiles with a range of 1800nm and have stated that they will test one that goes about twice that. That begins to get to Anchorage Alaska. There are many military bases and other prime targets in Alaska. If they double it again (7200nm) now you begin to hit places like LA, SF, Seattle, and Denver. One nuclear weapon is all it takes to ruin the life of hundreds of thousands of people. As for asteroid deaths one need only look to Siberia in 1908. The fact that only a few dozen died was only due to the low population density. Its like hitting Denver around 1700. If it happened above NYC, it would have killed millions. Actually your chances of dying due to asteroid impact are about the same magnitude as being hit by lighting. Of course, if an event like the one 65 million years ago occurred today, there would be over 6 billion dead, and countless trillions of their descendents with it. We force industry to spend billions so that one or two lives could be saved per year. Matter of fact, more than 95% of the cost of a nuclear power plant is in dealing with regulations and safety standards that spend billions to save one life in 50 years. It is better to have a capability in place before one needs it than, all the pain and suffering that is caused by not having it at all. Besides, if it is not necessary, why did the Russians have such a system currently deployed defending Moscow? Pete