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

To: i-node who wrote (139535)	10/3/2001 12:36:23 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1580595

"We do not know the extent of the exposure or the duration of problems created by EMP." Ok, have it your way. We do know that the intensity of the EMP wavefront would be in the thousands of volts per meter and that silicon generally cannot survive more that a few hundred volts, modern CMOS as little as a few volts. We know that the intensity of the pulse is enough to disrupt vacuum tube technology, having inadvertently done that particular experiment over Johnston Island. And hey, the military has done experiments with it and deem it a serious concern. But you know better, great! "-- akin to the concept of "Nuclear Winter". Once again, paraphrasing Carl Sagan on Nightline, during the Gulf War -- "If Saddam Hussein sets fire to the oil wells in Kuwait, we will see famine resulting from the worldwide effects on crops in the ensuing years". Right. " Of course, I didn't mention anything about "Nuclear Winter", but why let that stop you? For what it is worth, "Desert Storm" was decidedly non-nuclear. So using it as a reason to shoot down "Nuclear Winter" scenarios is sort of stupid. Like many of your arguments. "This is big news -- nukes are no longer a problem 50 years from now! What this really is is a liberal saying, "50 years is a long, long time ... let's not worry about it". This kind of thinking is what brought us Social Security, the worst social program ever dreamed up." I didn't mention anything about Social Security either, I am having some real concerns about you ability to read and reason. In 50 years there are likely to be more threats that a rational person is concerned with than nuclear weapons. Modern industrialized societies are fairly fragile in that they are dependent on a lot of factors working together smoothly. At the same time, individuals have more and more concentrated sources of energy at their fingertips, in addition to other ways of making mischief, if they are so inclined. Terrorism is unlikely to go away, so there will be a ready pool of people to engage in these activities. "The simple fact is that we do not know what the consequence of EMP may or may not be. Period." Absolutely! You've convinced me! Yep, I'll bury my head in the sand and ignore what I know about reality! Thanks! And spending trillions of dollars on something that we don't know if it will work sounds like good sense! Yep! No wonder you support Dubya.