I heard the idea of a Doomsday Bomb in my childhood. Poul Anderson's Xoan, interrogated by a Monwaingi, explains it:
"Hordelin-Barjat: 'A set of disruption bombs. Buried deep in the planetary crust...and beneath the ocean beds...strategic locations - You are familiar with the technology. They - the bombs belonging to a given alliance - they would go off automatically. If more than three nuclear explosions above a certain magnitude occurred within the borders of any single member country...all those bombs would explode. At once.'" (p. 93)
By that account, the doomsday response would be avoided if an enemy caused either only three nuclear explosions above a certain magnitude or any number of explosions below that magnitude. But that is not the point. The question is: would a doomsday device be an effective deterrent? No. People are capable of committing suicide. Therefore, someone able to launch a nuclear attack might decide to take everyone else with him. In any case, accidents and all kinds of unforeseen events remain possible. A doomsday device: what a MAD way to try to ensure peace!
The two extra-terrestrials continue their discussion. When Hordelin-Barjat has said, "At once," Kaungtha responds:
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I take a certain grim relish in how skillfully Anderson was at hypothesizing the destruction of all life on Earth. But readers would soon read of how Donnan and Sigrid discovered flaws in the reasoning behind that doomsday scenario.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that even at the peak of the Cold War in the 1970's and early 1980's, a nuclear war would not have destroyed the human race. Civilization, possibly, but not humans. People tend to overestimate the destructiveness of nuclear weapons -- for example, 90% of the fallout from a ground-burst fusion bomb is gone after two weeks. 90% of the remainder is gone after a year.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Maybe it depends on technological changes? The nuclear exchange between the US and Maoist China frame working your Antonine books seem to be far more powerful than the bombs you described.
Ad astra! Sean
An H-bomb for every city of over a million people would pretty thoroughly demolish technological civilization, while leaving quite a lot of humans alive.
Kaor, Jim!
Then, going by the comments of both you and Stirling, I agree a large percentage of the human race would survive. And, because books and libraries would be so numerous, there would not necessarily be much loss of knowledge. Albeit some libraries would be burned as fuel by starving neo-savages in the chaos of the immediate aftermath of such a clash by China and the US.
Ad astra! Sean
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