Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (30649)	10/2/2001 11:13:24 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I take it you are using something better than the MOST optimistic 90% number? No. The most optimistic number you ever mentioned is 90%. The most optimistic number is 100%. The odds of that against any attack but a very small one are probably extremely low, but there is no arbitrary most optimistic number that can not possibly be beaten, you just get lower and lower chances of doing better then any specific number. Similarly there is no lower bound that we can not possibly do worse then (except 0%), but the chances get higher and higher of beating that % the lower the number is. Right now no one knows if it is going to be 2% effective against a large attack or 98% effective. Everything is just educated guesses about technologies that haven't even been developed yet, perhaps even new ideas that we haven't thought of yet. It would be like someone at the beginning of World War I trying to estimate how effective Jet fighters would be at intercepting attacks by strategic bombers. Universal protection against some types of attacks is probably quite possible. Universal protection from large attacks has a good chance of not working, at least not working in the sense of being close to 100% effective, but it can be far less then 100% effective and still be a lot better then nothing. Now, if the decoys are part of a combined nuke/biological strategy and contain biologics encased in styrene beads cemented with starch (which come apart after being blown around the entire countryside), even the protected war machine operators probably wouldn't be safe. If you are talking about putting biological agents on a nuclear weapon then the nuclear explosion will kill the biologicals. However maybe you are talking about putting biological agents on missiles with conventional explosive warheads so that the conventional explosion scatters the agents. This could be a very effective form of attack, however each missile will have a local effect only. If the biological agents are contagious (unlike say Anthrax) then these local effects could spread country wide but the people in a bunker with the best available counter agents probably would be protected. Also whoever launched highly contagious and deadly biologicals would be risking the disease spreading back to them. Anyone who has the ability to launch a massive missile attack probably would do better just launching nukes. The biological weapons would act slower and leave us plenty of time to retaliate. If they were going to launch a biological attack on us a terrorist type attack is probably more of a threat because then we might not know who to retaliate against. If Russia or China launched ICBMs with biological agents in the war heads, we would figure it out and we would probably nuke them to they glow and they probably realize this. Best go find out why your enemy IS your enemy and head it off with other methods than try to defend from this type of attack. I don't define this end-game as a victory for me. A much more effective (though morally questionable) method would be totally proactively smash all would-be attackers now (since we have the strength to do so). Show we should nuke anyone we think doesn't like us if they have nukes or biological weapons capability?!? Would that include China and Russia who could hit us back? Tim