Nukes and Comets

Respect should only be given when some degree of admirable character is in evidence too. But what you're describing is fear. I cannot muster respect for anyone who would hold the the very real threat of nuclear catastrophe over all of humanity. But sometimes a strong, eviseral, fear can be a healthy, survival oriented, emotional tool. And if a leader can inspire respect, his people will happilly follow him through any troubled times. But if he should give them cause to fear him instead, they will eventually become a mob, and go after him with pitchforks.

Thank you for your thoughts, Mr. Howard. I suspect you have much more insight into the realities of how government functions than most. I hope we are not yet fully arrived at the state of, say, the Roman empire in its latter days. But it does seem lately that corruption and its toleration seem now to have crowded out the sort of people who might be capable of navigating the present challenges. Mr. Howard, I grew up in the 50s, son of a Navy WWII vet who had served on carriers in the Pacific. This was a time when most families either had a member or a close relative who had served in uniform, or in some vital job as a civilian contributing to the war effort. Attending funerals with neighbor families whose dads were carrier aviators, I learned by 3rd grade that Carrier aircrew were killed in training accidents with appalling frequency. At very nearly the same rate -- I later came to understand -- as in Combat, because the training has to be as close as possible to combat conditions to be useful... The spectre of nuclear weapons is after all no more deadly than the so-called Spanish Influenza pandemic, that took both of my grandfathers in 1917, and an estimated thirty million others around the world in a few years, while the GREAT WAR ground on. Slaughter is to my mind equally horrifying when done by bullets, bombs, swords, scalpels or salad forks... or flawed polio vaccines for the profit of some half fast entrepreneur with forty billion $$$ to buy himself opportunity and good will.

Thanks George, for a voice of sanity amongst all the armchair warriors baying for blood. I watch TDA back in the day, as a child of the Cold War. Jaw-jaw first and foremost, not war-war: the former provides far more options to reduce tensions. Russia needs the business/trade, regardless. Also, Pugin is an former Colonel in the KGB's counter-intelligence arm. He's no dummy. Couple that with provocation from NATO - expansions and not enough negotiating on that - we are where we are.

Amen and Amen. I lived through the Cuban Missile affair and again, we are in very dangerous times. BTW The Cosmic Tusk is great.

" Since 2010 the Tusk has never mentioned nuclear war " ....... That may be surprising to some George ..Victor Clube and Bill Napier devoted a section to ' nuclear error " - that is Tunguska class impacts and the hazards of misinterpreted nuclear attack - in chapter 17 of their 1990 book The Cosmic Winter .- "A Risk Assessment ' . They mention the Swiss scholar Daniel Frei who was commissioned to examine the probability of accidental unintentional nuclear conflict by the United States Institute for Disarmament Research . Clube and Napier lamented that nowhere in Frei's 1982 treatise did " he consider the possibility of [misinterpreted ]' meteor impacts . This is a poignant topic for the Cosmic Tusk that should be explored in depth . President Bill Clinton was awakened in the early hours of the morning of February 1 1994 by his defense aides fearing a nuclear device after a 1000 ton bolide tracked by US spy satellites detonated 20 km over the Pacific ocean northwest of Fiji .. Try to envision the consequences of say the 2002 Eastern Mediterranean Event exploding over India or Pakistan at a time of high emotive tensions between the two subcontinent nuclear armed neighbors . It is a dangerous scenario that deserves greater public attentiveness . Give thanks you do not live in a corrupt police state .

Vladimir Putin nostalgically believes the disintegration of the USSR that marked the end of the Cold War was an absolute catastrophe and he sees Ukraine as a renegade province of the Russian motherland 'Richard Lamb......Anyone who has ever researched the Holodomor would understand why Ukrainians would never suffer under Russian hegemony again . Have you ever spoken to Ukrainian emigres and their descendants to hear their horror stories Mr Lamb ? Former Eastern bloc states such as Poland and the Baltic republics who prefer the protective umbrella of NATO are not the aggressors provoking Putin . After centuries of lost and tenuous sovereignty they do not want to be swallowed up again ...

We got through the Cuban Missile Crisis, see 13 Days movie, only because of an intelligent US President JFK made a deal - brother RFK agreed to withdraw Turkey-stationed Jupiter missiles in exchange for a back-down. Both brothers did not survive long. Exactly a repeat - a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. NATO will not back down. Sane heads in D.C.? So, the only way out of this extremely dangerous mess is : Convoke an International Conference to Establish A New Security and Development Architecture for All Nations https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/convoke_an_international_conference_to_establish_a_new_security_and_development_architecture_for_all_nations Do what JFK did then, this time around internationally. It is a big world out there, if we can keep it - to paraphrase General Washington.

Any thoughts on age dating of the Hiawatha Crater in Greenland, the silence is deafening??

Beginning in 1978 I was a KC135 flight crew member, I served with the 42nd Air Refueling Squadron, 8th Air Force, Strategic Air Command at Loring Air Force Base Main. I spent weeks on alert rotation along with my SAC bothers and sisters waiting for the call to end humanity and the world as we know it. Alert meant you lived in a well guarded building for a week at a time with fully fueled KC135s and nuclear bombed B52s a short distance away, all with the intent to deter Russian nuclear attack. If deterrents failed our mission was to support the B52s, via multiple air-to-air refuelings, in their effort to penetrate Russian air space and turn Russia and Ukraine into nuclear wastelands. In other words, we were to ensure Russia experienced The Day After ten fold to any suffering they could impart on the United States. Frankly speaking, being scared shitless of Vladimir Putin’s nuclear ability is not only ill informed but dangerous. Fear and misguided respect will not keep Russian nuclear missiles and bombs in silos and bunkers let alone render them economy draining paper weights. At this time, at this juncture of a contemporary European land war and TikTok, the only thing keeping Putin in nuclear checkmate is the American resolve to ensure he visits Hell shortly after the first Russian missile lights off. The people who have volunteered to keep this land war in Europe a land war in Europe are unknown. Movies aren’t made about them, they don’t share their experiences on pod casts, and you will never see one win a CMH. Tonight they are on submarines, in command of ICBMs, and maintaining B2 bombers. Warriors all. If you have respect to give, with them is where it belongs.

"I’m not sure my kids, 19 and 16, have even felt that pit in your stomach when you are presented with the graphic results of an intercontinental nuclear exchange," It's called a sucker punch. Ehrlich and Sagan commissioned the graphics that floored you in 1983 from the creative department of Porter Novelli six months before they submitted the TTAPS paper. They too repurposed the Alvarez impact sceanario.