(no subject)

[danalwyn]

Dear Israel,

If you're going to invade Lebanon, could you at least have the decency to delcare war on them first?  I mean, I know that dropping bombs on capital cities and crossing the border in force are usually considered to be acts of war, but you might want to formally declare it. 

By the way, the rest of us spent a great deal of time forcing Syria out of the country.  If you're going to destabilize the naescent democracy in Lebanon and force them to let Syria back in to stabilize their own country, the rest of us are going to be very unhappy.  Please clean up the mess you make.  Thanks,

The rest of the world.

Comments

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

cedarseed is posting from inside Beirut. Worth checking out her LJ.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I don't agree with all the opinions, but I must admit that she's doing a good job of giving straight reporting, and I think she's probably right too.

I'll try to post what I think is a good course of action at some point.

[aries-ascendant.livejournal.com]

Could you please tell them too that I'm tired of hanging out under my bed? It's not a good bomb shelter and it's getting kind of uncomfortable.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I'll pass it along.

(You're not on site, are you?)

[aries-ascendant.livejournal.com]

On site? You mean like in Lebanon? Nope. I'm just concerned that this is going to erupt into something major - and as there are enough biological weapons to kill everyone on the planet like six times over, and crazy, angry people w/ nuclear capabilities and dirty bombs, and a whole mess of missing "suitcase" nuclear weapons...um, I get very, very nervous.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

The chance of it blowing up is extremely unlikely for the most part, and the threat from biological weapons has been slightly overestimated in the press (last I heard, the ex-Soviets were still having some problems with their super-smallpox). Not many people there with nuclear capabilities either.

I can't speak for Strategic, because I gave up any pretension of being able to understand Grand Strategy years ago, but I don't see any advantage in a general war from a tactical standpoint. It looks like Israel is trying to send a message to Damascus, using a very badly thought out method. Neither Egypt nor Jordan seems ready to throw down, which should keep things relatively quiet.

What you should worry about is that this could destroy progress in Lebanon, and reduce what might have been a thriving country to a hate-wracked wasteland. As a firm believer in the idea that economic prosperity and stability reduce random violence, I have to say that the lost opportunity for peace that is being thrown away hurts me more than anything.

Of course, that's just my opinion, and I've been wrong before, but I think that it's safe to come out from under the bed.

[aries-ascendant.livejournal.com]

I'm not worried about what the press says about biological weapons...I'm worried about what I learned while getting my degree.

The ex-Soviets are having problems with their Super Smallpox - but it's a matter of distribution, not engineering. Biological weapons are relatively cheap and easy to produce. And there are a lot of other bioagents to worry about besides Super Smallpox. When the Soviet Union fell a lot of scientists fell on hard times, so they sold suitcase bombs, and weaponized anthrax and the like to groups in Afghanistan that had international, Middle Eastern ties. Lots and lots of bad shit from the former Soviet Union went "missing" in that area. So while no one officially has nuclear capabilities, or dirty bombs or other General Badness - the possibility is there. And not knowing which hate-filled, opportunistic Crazy has what really unsettles me. - Especially as this most recent conflict paves the way for more Crazies to hate everyone and everything.

I am reassured by what you said, but it just feels like this whole thing is giant powderkeg. It's funny. Lebanon and Israel don't even cover that large of any area. But when that region is unhappy, it seems like the whole damn world is unhappy.

*sighs* But I suppose I'll crawl out from under the bed. Life goes on, no?

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

Life always goes on. What else could it do?

Dirty bombs and suitcase bombs are currently not that much of a threat. Suitcase bombs are relatively small, and have some decided defects. For instance, the ones that went missing from the Soviet Union have been missing, and out of production, for at least ten years. Some things I read indicated that you might have to perform critical maintenance and replace bomb components as often as once every six months. Where they would get the parts would be a bit of a mystery. Without that maintenance, your bomb gets dramatically less useful. Maximum yield is probably about 1 kiloton of TNT which, although spectacular, is not city destroying. For reference, Air Force and Navy pilots had dropped 864,000 tons of bombs (and you can guess at one ton of bomb ~ one ton of TNT) on North Vietnam by the start of 1968. We still lost the war. Moreover, most "suitcase" bombs, modified to avoid easy detection, might fizzle, or have much less of an explosive range. Estimates drop to as low as 0.1 kTons of explosive power.

Dirty bombs are also an uncertain threat. A bad wind current can reduce your bomb to nothing. A piece of the countryside that can close its windows might reduce the radiological damage to the equivalent of getting X-rayed at the dentist (take this with a grain of salt. My office is about five meters away from a Radiological Hazard area). The real problem is that your bomb might just fizzle and make a big mess in the middle of a city that can be easily cleaned up. End result, a lot of money spent on cleanup, and a small number of people die of cancer.

I agree that biological weapons are the most potent threat, but I'm not sure about how dangerous they are. I was under the impression that they still were having problems getting the correct balance between too lethal (wipe out an entire region too fast to spread), and too slow (enough time to implement quarantine or a cure). Weaponized anthrax especially, if I recall correctly, had difficulties matching its delivery efficiency to a high rate of contagion. I may be wrong of course. This is much closer to your area of expertise than it is mine.

Ultimately, I'm a subscriber to Murphy's Law. Given how often crazies get weapons, if it were that easy to wipe out the human race, someone would have done it years ago. That doesn't mean that we should not be prepared, but it does mean that we can get out from under the bed.