Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Lerner]

Rematog and everyone should go over and look at the “proliferation” topic under focus fusion technology–general discussion. The key point raised ther by Rezwan and others is that with FF you rapidly make fission energy obsolete. That gets rid of the whole uranium cycle. Without fission for electricity there is no non-weapons-related reason for having uranium. It can be far more tightly countrolled–no uranium, no nuclear weapons. So FF is very anti-proliferation.

I may be a fool in Rematog’s eyes, but I do not see military applications. Thermonuclear reactions have, unfortunately, already been applied to weapons. FF will add nothing to that. Things that were impossible before, like beam wepaons to shoot down missiles, will still be impossible. As the Star Wars program abudantly demonstrated neutral particle beams disperse at great distances and charged particle beams get tangleds in the earth’s magnetic field. The basic problem is also the overwhelming advantage of the offense. If someone throws 1,000 H-bombs against the US and you shoot down 90% (just about impossible) you still end up with rubble.

Yes, I think FF will eventually make possible aircraft of essentially unlimited range, although for aircraft and spacecraft, safety standards will have to be a great deal stricter than for ground-based generators (planes do crash.) But would that have much impact on warfare? Does the range of US aircraft really have any impact on the war in Iraq? Did it in Vietnam? I doubt it very much.

Anything can be used as a weapon. You can kill a person with a hammer. You can drop a FF reactor on someone from a plane and squash them. But will FF have a significant impact on weapons? No. FF’s main impact on warfare will be to make it one hell of a lot less likely. Without the central role of oil, we sure would not be in Iraq.