by Sean Joseph McNeill
Published on: Oct 1, 2004
Topic:
Type: Opinions

For thousands of years the world has experienced war. It has revolutionized, civilized, displaced, shifted culture, brought forth new ideas and technology and is a key part in the birth of Western Civilization. It is tragic to those who personally experience it and it is destructive to nations, but in the big picture war is what has shaped history. All that is good has come from war and I believe it has thus been worth the damage it inflicted. However, The future tells us a different story of the effects of war.

With the new millennium has come a technological revolution. The new world demands efficiency and swiftness in every aspect of society and the result is the digitalization of the world. We want to move fast and we need technology to help us. From robotic appliances to information via cyberspace, everything about our daily life is being changed. A revolution of this magnitude affects all sectors of civilization. Economy, medicine and, of course, warfare are all part of this revolution. Naturally a shift in how society functions will effect all other parts of how the world conducts itself. Technology is in part responsible for overpopulation, and from overpopulation we can easily see how the idea of mass destruction can be derived. Large populations mean a large workforce, which in turn means large industrial capabilities and large armies. If a traditional style war was to be fought in todays world it is without question that what would have taken two or three years post-atomic era, would take decades to end now because there is a much larger supply of soldiers and a much larger industry to produce much larger amounts of war machines. The answer to this problem comes in the form of nuclear warfare. Capable of destroying the industry of a nation in a single blast, nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction prove to be an effective means to a quick end.

They are efficient, cheap and the symbol of new world order, but just how great are they? Aside from being genocidal in nature and completely immoral methods of resolving conflict, weapons of mass destruction are devastating to everyone including those who use them. Because these weapons destroy all resources and destroy or mutate natural habitats for perhaps ever, the land conquered would not be usable for at least a generation or two, if not more. The radioactive winds would threaten undamaged regions and cause large scale migration and, subsequently, overpopulation of surrounding urban centers.

Finally, those who survived the bomb and disease from radioactive exposure, but received non-lethal exposure to radioactive material, would produce new generations of mutated humans and humans with significantly weaker genetics. It is therefore concluded that action must be taken to disarm nations with nuclear stockpiles. Not for any religious reason and not because I think that it is the humane thing to do or that war is inherently immoral and evil; it is a much more practical reason that I present. We must find global peace if we wish to survive, because we have reached a stage in evolution which demands it. Returning to my previous evaluation of the logistics of nuclear warfare, I see no other way to conduct war in our overpopulated, urbanized civilizations without wasting decades, billions of lives and trillions of dollars. So we have two options, we can remain our aggressive, greedy selves and horde these weapons of mass destruction, paranoid of each other and tempted to take more than what we truly need. Or, we can change our ways and realize that if we are to continue on this path, our little disagreements and grudges won't mean anything when our cities begin to fall one by one until we have cast ourselves into the stone age. Our technology demands peace. If we ignore it, we will be destroyed.

« return.