This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
I grew up in a time when ghost stories around the campfire had been replaced by stories of how, “right, if you’re in the bath when the bombs drop, the water will boil around you and your eyes will melt before you die, my brother told me”.
I guess that’s why I’m fascinated by this stuff now. Plus another 4 years of that idiot Bush, thanks to hordes of God-fearing Christians preferring Armageddon to (gasp!) liberalism.
Nuclear research gave us some wonderful problems, and there were some amazing suggestions for solutions. How do you discourage people 10,000 years in the future from digging up your waste dump? Here’s how.
Why limit nuclear weapons to a simple explosion? Why not have an autonomous nuclear-powered missile fly back and forth 1000ft over your enemy at Mach 3, dropping nuclear bombs, trailing radioactive exhaust dust, destroying buildings with it’s sonic booms and finally crashing into them? That’s what I call an efficient use of materials.
[edit: see also here]
But how do you protect the public from all this? Easy. Tell them to hide under the table.
Fat lot of good that would do.
Happy New Year!