So your basic literary objection to "On The Beach" is that it isn't the book that YOU would have written. Fair enough, ultimately irrelevant for anyone except you.
But since you're couching your objections in terms of scientific accuracy, I think you might be interested in learning some facts that you appear to be unaware of.
• "On The Beach" was written in the mid 1950s, and published in 1957. But the first nuclear submarine (Nautilus) had only put to sea in 1955. She was tiny, and could barely sustain a few months' voyage, let alone carry enough food to keep her crew alive for the decades required to avoid fallout.
• Even modern nuclear submarines learn submarines are not designed to function without require regular access to external maintenance and food re-supply. (The USS Pennsylvania holds the current record for longest sustained submarine cruise -- 140 days at sea.) A larger surface vessel, like a a nuclear aircraft carrier, can sail much longer, because it's enormous, and has vastly more cargo capacity than any submarine -- but would provide no protection against significant atmospheric radioactive fallout.
• The enhanced radiation exposure from a large-scale exchange of salted weapons could last for decades. That's well beyond the food capacity of any submarine ever built -- and even further beyond their operating limits with only onboard self-maintenance.
• The uranium in the world's oceans emits radiation at a tiny, tiny fraction of cobalt-60. Co-60 has a 5-year half life, while U-238 (~99.3% of natural uranium) has a half-life of 4.5 BILLION years... So the difference in radiation output is a factor of a billion. Also, U-238 is an alpha emitter, while most of Co-60's decay energy goes into gamma rays that are much more difficult to shield against. I'm not aware of any estimates for oceanic radiation levels from enhanced-fallout weapons, but your comparison of cobalt-69 to U-238 is pretty meaningless.
• The world's cobalt mining/production output is determined by global market demand, not any fundamental physical limit on the availability of Cobalt. If either the US or USSR had decided to pursue a major enhanced-fallout strategy, they would have spent money to drastically increase the mining and production of materials they needed to make these weapons -- increasing demand raises prices, which encourages more cobalt mining. Basic market capitalism.
• Besides cobalt-59, there are a number of other candidates for "salting" jackets in enhanced-fallout weapon designs. Cobalt is merely one convenient option. As a large-scale strategy, it might be more economical to use a variety of salting materials, either in the same weapon designs or as different variants for specific purposes.
But let's be honest -- your real problem with this book is that it raises uncomfortable emotions that you can't cope with.
If you really cared about the scientific facts, you would have been motivated to research for yourself the facts that I just provided -- and you never would have posted what you did.
Your reply strikes me as snarky and rude. You could have phrased your comment differently, and made the exact same point, but without being disrespectful to everyone who has to read your reply.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
...
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Please reconsider your interpretation of what I said:
* the strongest plausible interpretation is that I re-framed the part of the post I was responding to into the viewpoint of an event organizer before the outcome of said event was known. I think "being rude and shallowly dismissing it" is not the strongest plausible interpretation, but rather a shallow dismissal of my comment.
* I believe you are not assuming good faith in my statement.
* how is it snarky?
* how is it rude?
I have no idea how it could be plausibly have been interpreted as disrespectful to anyone merely reading the exchange - would you mind enlightening me on how I insulted you?
> To me the original Woodstock vibe was the peace and free love part of the 60s counterculture. peace and love is not a feeling you get from korn in those times
You're not wrong about the difference in vibes. And there were plenty of other music festivals in the 90s that did feature lineups more akin to the original Woodstock... But those festivals were pretty small in comparison, because the main thrust of popular music had changed so drastically in the decades since the original.
And attendance will ultimately limit the amount of money everyone can make--organizers, bands, vendors, drug dealers, etc. The money provides a strong motivation to cater to current popular tastes, because the festival has a bigger potential audience.
And given how well-attended the festival turned out to be, I think it's safe to say that they were right... If only a couple of thousand people had turned up, that would be a different story.
I believe the explanation is in the 3rd-to-last paragraph:
> In healthy volunteers and right- but not left-onset patients, religious belief-scores significantly increased following the aesthetic prime consisting of the ocean view (a wonderful reward) but not the death prime. (The religious ritual prime increased religious belief only inconsistently, with little impact compared with that of the ocean view.) The results directly refuted the anxiety theory of religion while supporting the notion that religiosity was spurred by the quest for unexpected reward.
He's using a concept called "priming" to study the impact that different thoughts have on his subjects receptivity to religious sentiment. If Freud's theory is correct (religion being driven mainly by our fear of death) then we would expect the people who heard the ending about witnessing someone's death to express more religious sentiment, afterwards, because the story "primed" (reminded them of) human mortality.
But that's not what he observed... Subjects who heard the death ending were not more likely to express religious sentiment.
The religious ritual ending also didn't significantly increase religion sentiment. Only the ocean view ending, with it's imagery of breathtaking natural beauty, actually achieved an increase in religious sentiment.
I guess I don’t understand how the various endings he selected are at all related to what he’s decided they “conclude”? The connections seem tenuous, at best.
You might want to read up on the concept of priming, and how it's used in psychological & neurological research. You can markedly change people's behavior by bringing up (or avoiding) particular topics that our minds can connect with subsequent behavioral options.
The classic example is talking about disgusting topics before serving someone a meal... If you tell someone a story about a sewage plant worker falling into an open vat of raw human feces, and then later contracting a bunch of diseases because the fecal matter infiltrated their mouth, nose, eyes, and ears... The people hearing that story will eat less on average, and be more likely to refuse food outright, than a control group who heard a neutral story that removes the sewage and contamination elements.
Another example: People who hear a story about a war hero saving their comrades lives by sacrificing their own are subsequently more likely to offer to help random strangers with tasks like changing a flat tire, or carrying a heavy package.
And the behavior changes are mostly transient... The effect doesn't generally last beyond a few hours or days, unless the priming process is repeated.
So researchers can use priming to explore human motivations, and reveal connections that the subjects aren't even consciously aware of. It still depends on careful experimental design, because you never really know exactly why people are responding to the priming stimulus. But if you pick your stimuli carefully, you can usually eliminate alternative possibilities pretty well.
Oh man... ANOTHER "Cadillac Desert" reference. I just finished re-reading it, a month ago, and this is like the 20th time I've overheard some random comment about something related to the book. Might not just be the Frequency Illusion, I think maybe I got inspired to re-read it because of all the news about water politics, lately.
Anyhow, NAWPA is some fascinating stuff... It's completely insane and a terrible idea, but it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer size of it.
Kinda got me wondering now... Would the biggest version of NAWPA exceed the size of the Atlantropa idea, in terms of how much land area they each would flood/drain? I mean, the Mediterranean Sea is pretty big, but...
“Cadillac Desert” has been recommended on the site by a bunch of random people many times throughout this last year on basically every thread involving the Colorado River, flooding of other US rivers, or droughts. It’s one of those books that gets laypeople fired up and causes them to become armchair experts and recommend it to others with fervor.
Oh, you again! It's like I mention "Cadillac Desert" and you pop out of the bathroom mirror like Bloody Mary.
I'm glad you're working on finding a more polite way to talk about things you disagree with... Your new comment is an improvement, but it's still hella low-key argumentive, and needlessly insulting to the people around you.
You need to learn how to disagree with people without making other people out to be jerks.
I'd've thought that all the downvotes on your last comment would've helped drive the point home, but I guess not. Maybe it just takes time to learn this stuff.
But as for me... Until you take some responsibility for the words you're choosing, and start making better comments, I'm still not interested in trying to have any kind of conversation with you. LMK when you want to try again.
You should read "Cadillac Desert", if you live in the American Southwestern state--California, Arizona, and Nevada in particular. It has significant implications for the future survivability of large-scale civilization in the region.
Mark Reisner originally wrote the book in the early 1990s, and his predictions have turned out to be quite accurate over the last three decades.
If you want to make informed decisions, as a voter and a resident, this is probably the single most important thing you need to get educated about.
It’s hyperbolic trash though. What is happening to the Colorado river has been predicted as a possibility since the dams were built.
It has absolutely no implications for the survivability of large scale civilizations in the area because the vast majority of the water goes to farming. Residential and office usage is willing to pay far more than farmers and uses significantly less.
The flow rate of the Colorado river could drop by another 70% and still support everyone living here (socal, az, nv). The instance things get a little dire, farmer rights will be stripped away by the voters, they’ll pay market rate like everyone else, and the problem will be solved overnight.
This is rude, and unnecessary. If your own counter-argument is actually sound, why are you bothering to label Reisner's as trash? It doesn't make you more believable--it mostly just undermines your credibility, because you apparently don't trust the soundness of your arguments to stand on their own.
Have you read the HN comment guidelines? I'll quote something that you might want to consider:
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Right now, I have zero interest in engaging with you, because of the unpleasantly combatitive way you've chosen to approach the topic. What would even be the point of trying to have a discussion with someone who believes it's OK to speak to strangers like this?
Consider rewriting your comment, and maybe we can talk about the actual merits of Reisner... As it is now, good luck, and I hope you learn a better way to interact with the world.
Water rights aren't going away without a fight. It's not something voters really understand. In the west, it's a super complex topic. There's a reason politicians go to "hey, don't water your lawn this year! No water at restaurants unless you ask for it!" mode whenever there's an issue now. That sort of worthless virtue signaling is the only thing they can really accomplish vs big water/ag. And the Republicans will weaponize rural water rights as just another thing to use against the libs.
Even if you can redo water rights (which won't happen), what happens when farmers lose their water? People aren't going to be stoked about not having easy access to beef, almonds, etc. And the farm subsidies would have to massively go up even more, which Republicans will fight tooth and nail for while pretending to defend the small farmer.
What isn't hyperbole is that cyclical mega droughts is part of our new norm and this is going to become an issue every year, alongside wildfires. None of it will be solved overnight, and it will probably get much much worse in our lifetimes. Welcome to the future lol.
When it's between having almonds or the taps drying up, people will absolutely redefine water rights. Ultimately democracy is a numbers game, and there's far, far more people living in cities than there are farmers.
The speed of the response to Covid (initially...) was a good demonstration of how fast society can react when threatened with imminent danger. We went from "liberal democracies will never limit freedom of movement" to a broadly consensual "nobody can leave their house" in 2 weeks. How fast do you think the citizens of LA will change their mind about almond farming when their taps dry up?
What we learned during covid is that propaganda has jaw dropping power and that a large fraction of the population is vulnerable to it. The citizens of LA will change their minds about almonds when the media tells them to.
The citizens of LA will blindly follow whichever tyrant is closest to their values, media or not. The media is far weaker than it's been in decades, and cults of personality amplified by marketing way more powerful.
But democracy isn't really about numbers, just power and propaganda. It's never been one person one vote. The urban rural divide has been going on for decades if not centuries, and still the rural areas have disproportionate power and the cities almost none (at the federal level). Various systems from the electoral college to campaign finance to the bilateral congress to the courts serve to purposely dilute the individual electoral power of each citizen,transferring power to political dynasties instead... to the point that what we have is way closer to a corrupt oligarchy than any meaningful sort of democracy.
Ultimately the citizens of LA don't have any meaningful political power outside of Sacramento. Water is a multi state thing and the urban dwellers have loud voices but no meaningful representation. They can yell all they want, but most of the country by area doesn't care about them. By population they should win every issue, but they haven't for decades because we don't actually have a democracy.
You don't even have to directly deal with water rights. The state could easily make it completely impractical to farm with onerous regulation and taxes - something liberal states love to do in general.
The "state" is not a unitary actor that somehow magically intuits and implements the desires of a majority of voters. All state policy, but especially legislation, is a massive hodge-podge of independent actors motivated by all sorts of factors, and very often in direct opposition to each other's interests. All those actors are just as selfish, ignorant, stupid, greedy, angry, racist, corrupt, and venal as the rest of the human race.
The state's legislative apparatus will always do (and ONLY do) that which is achieved by the outcome of all the competing interests and their efforts at lobbying, contributing, marketing, persuading, bribing, intimidating, etc, etc. Occasionally there may be room for the individual conscience of a principled actor. But most often the ethics of individuals don't mean anything in the face of the economic, political, and cultural forces that shape state policy.
Even with direct ballot intiatives, we've just shifted the target of all those lobbying efforts from the statehouse to your house. The mass of voters might be less immediately corrupt and power-hungry than professional politicians in the legislature, but we're also more ignorant, stupid, distracted, and impatient than the pros.. And since ballot initiatives because a thing, we've managed to create about as many serious problems as we've been able to solve.
There is no such thing as "easily" when it comes to making laws--unless you're a dictator with a firm grip on power.
I have some friends who've done week-long ski tours in remote parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East. Their guides all carried serious rifles or shotguns with slugs, and made sure everyone in the party knew how to shoot.
Their closest Grizzly encounter was a bear that stumbled across them, and charged at their lead skier from ~200m out. The guide shot the bear twice, but it still managed to get within 20m of the group before it dropped.
Here in the US, I know two hikers who've been attacked by Grizzlies in the Rockies, and another guy who got jumped in Alaska. All three survived, but required medical evacuation and hospitalization... The guy in Alaska nearly bled to death from a broken rib tearing into the blood vessels feeding his kidney.
So I'm not sure what the likelihood of bear attacks would be--but it does happen, and the consequences can be quite severe.
> In the early days, even just a humble farmer might think you're a space alien, or worse, an American. When Yuri Gagarin's flight re-entered he ejected and landed a little off the target zone. The first people who encountered him were perhaps a little apprehensive?
I think you're going way, waaaay far beyond the evidence to suggest that these farmers though Gagarin was a space alien. That's a funny little narrative, but I don't think it's remotely necessary.
These remote Soviet people weren't likely any stupider than you or me... Less educated, sure--but they knew what human beings looked like, and were aware of the fact that airplanes existed. This was more than a decade after WWII ended, after all.
I can think of a hundred perfectly terrestrial reasons why these isolated, remote farmers would have good reason to be apprehensive in this situation... I'd imagine they get almost zero visitors, so the sight of any strangers would probably be the big news of the year--let alone a military aviator parachuting down in bright orange clothes.
In fairness, I should confess that I'm pointing this out because it kinda bugs me for us to be looking down on these folks, as if they're children or simpletons. At the very least, that narrative seems to serve our own egos, more so than any interest in accuracy.
Plenty of Americans in reasonably cosmopolitan areas reacted poorly to space-related uncertainty. Grover's Mill[1] is within walking distance of Princeton campus.
People didn't know what to think, and the Soviets were far more secretive of their space program than the Americans were - Their successes were announced after the fact, their failures were quiet. I would not have blamed anyone in rural Siberia for not recognizing a cosmonaut in a spacesuit/jumpsuit as "human".
That is a pretty good counter-example, I have got to admit... I'm not convinced, but yeah, you got a hell of a point there.
I think the US in 1938 was maybe in a distinct situation, though... For one, the US in the 30s may have been primed to thoughts of space aliens by the consumption of mass quantities of SF--radio serials, films, books, etc.
Also, the real-world news in 1938 was pretty tense, and very heavy on the specific theme of invasion... WWII was already swinging in the Pacific, and everybody in Europe was expecting the shooting to start soon. Here in the US, there was a general sense that we'd get violently drawn into it, sooner or later.
So I dunno... You definitely moved the needle for me on this one, but I'm still pretty skeptical that some isolated Siberian farmers in the 1960s would go straight for the "space aliens" explanation. Maybe I'm just rationalizing my earlier post--I'd be the last to know.
We could imagine an infinity of possible theories that might explain why these Russian people reacted with fear at Gagarin's landing. But being possible doesn't mean something is correct, or even plausible.
Rather than space aliens, I find it far more compelling to consider that:
• Russia had been severely traumatized by WWII, less than a generation earlier. Tens of millions died in combat and of starvation.
• After WWII, Russia awas again severely traumatized by Stalinism and his political purges. For a decade, anyone who was even suspected of stepping out of line was oiable to get imprisoned or just executed.
• During the 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA was attempting to train Russian expatriates in the West to return to Russia as spies and organizers of underground resistance in the event WWIII broke out. The program was a complete disaster... The CIA trained and equipped dozens of young men, and then PARACHUTED them into Eastern Bloc countries,after which none of them were ever heard from, ever again. (It's assumed they were all immediately caught and executed.)
So in the early 1960s, when some dude in a parachute lands in your village, I think it's far less speculative to assume that they were afraid Yuri Gagarin might be a Western spy.
No need for space aliens... And no need to insult the intelligence of these Russians by lumping them in with ol' Karen up in Lethbridge, who was such a simple rube that we all laugh at her for calling the police on a Stormtrooper.
Honestly, I see why the "space aliens" narrative is appealing: It's funnier! It's hilarious to imagine old timey Russian villagers, hiding in fear of space invaders.
Unless anybody reading this happens to be Russian, in which case we'd be making up silly stories that mainly serve to depeict their parents or grandparents as a bunch of simple, stupid, gullible pigeons.
And I just don't see the point in that whole line of thinking, when we already have much more plausible theories, already.
Occam demands not to dig deeper than it should be enough.
Bunch of people, who lives in the deeps of an agrarian country (and TV isn't available yet), sees something extremely out of regular order of things. And that is coming for them! Of course they would be afraid of this totally unfamiliar experience.
Some notes:
I'm not sure how far those people were from the point where Gagarin ejected, but they probably heard some strange sounds before the encounter.
Parachutes were a known thing by that time, though if you never seen it on the ground before you probably wouldn't recognize it as such.
Pilots were still flying in a pilot's flight gear[0], at least in the collective consciousness. Someone/something in a big round helmet and a bright orange suit doesn't register as a pilot's flight gear nor as something have seen before. You can see how (a decade before) some people perceived the "space suits", unsurprisingly - just a like a winter soldier gear. *grin*
By the '60s the understanding on how a space suit should look emerge, but it still was quite off the real deal: [2] (Be sure to check mini-Godzillas attack at ~1:00!)
As you can see [3] there were a bright red CCCP label on his helmet. Looks like that didn't helped much.
For what it's worth, when I was writing my post I was trying to empathize with them, not make fun of them. Space aliens is honestly something I would think of myself in that situation, I think, at least fleetingly. We're not all so down to Earth, so to speak. :)
But since you're couching your objections in terms of scientific accuracy, I think you might be interested in learning some facts that you appear to be unaware of.
• "On The Beach" was written in the mid 1950s, and published in 1957. But the first nuclear submarine (Nautilus) had only put to sea in 1955. She was tiny, and could barely sustain a few months' voyage, let alone carry enough food to keep her crew alive for the decades required to avoid fallout.
• Even modern nuclear submarines learn submarines are not designed to function without require regular access to external maintenance and food re-supply. (The USS Pennsylvania holds the current record for longest sustained submarine cruise -- 140 days at sea.) A larger surface vessel, like a a nuclear aircraft carrier, can sail much longer, because it's enormous, and has vastly more cargo capacity than any submarine -- but would provide no protection against significant atmospheric radioactive fallout.
• The enhanced radiation exposure from a large-scale exchange of salted weapons could last for decades. That's well beyond the food capacity of any submarine ever built -- and even further beyond their operating limits with only onboard self-maintenance.
• The uranium in the world's oceans emits radiation at a tiny, tiny fraction of cobalt-60. Co-60 has a 5-year half life, while U-238 (~99.3% of natural uranium) has a half-life of 4.5 BILLION years... So the difference in radiation output is a factor of a billion. Also, U-238 is an alpha emitter, while most of Co-60's decay energy goes into gamma rays that are much more difficult to shield against. I'm not aware of any estimates for oceanic radiation levels from enhanced-fallout weapons, but your comparison of cobalt-69 to U-238 is pretty meaningless.
• The world's cobalt mining/production output is determined by global market demand, not any fundamental physical limit on the availability of Cobalt. If either the US or USSR had decided to pursue a major enhanced-fallout strategy, they would have spent money to drastically increase the mining and production of materials they needed to make these weapons -- increasing demand raises prices, which encourages more cobalt mining. Basic market capitalism.
• Besides cobalt-59, there are a number of other candidates for "salting" jackets in enhanced-fallout weapon designs. Cobalt is merely one convenient option. As a large-scale strategy, it might be more economical to use a variety of salting materials, either in the same weapon designs or as different variants for specific purposes.
But let's be honest -- your real problem with this book is that it raises uncomfortable emotions that you can't cope with.
If you really cared about the scientific facts, you would have been motivated to research for yourself the facts that I just provided -- and you never would have posted what you did.