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Herman Kahn

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Herman Kahn

Unread postby roccman » Thu 15 Nov 2007, 23:44:18

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The unthinkable

Due to his willingness to articulate the most brutal possibilities, Kahn came to be regarded by some as a monster, although he was known as amiable in private. Unlike most strategists, Kahn was entirely willing to posit the form a post-nuclear world might assume. None of the conventional issues bothered him. Fallout, for example, would simply be another one of life's many unpleasantries and inconveniences; even the much-ballyhooed rise in birth defects would not doom mankind to extinction, because in any event a majority of the survivors would still not be affected by them. Contaminated food could be designated for consumption by the elderly, who would presumably die anyhow before the delayed onset of cancers caused by radioactivity. A degree of even modest preparation — namely, the fallout shelters, evacuation scenarios, and civil defense drills now seen as emblematic of the paranoid 1950s — would give the population both the incentive and the encouragement to rebuild. Furthermore, having a strong civil-defense program in place would serve as an additional deterrent, because it would hamper the other side's potential to inflict destruction, thus lessening the attraction of the nuclear option. A willingness to tolerate such possibilities might be worth it, Kahn argued, in exchange for sparing the entire continent of Europe in the more massive nuclear exchange more likely to occur under the pre-MAD doctrine.

Interestingly, a number of pacifists, including A.J. Muste and Bertrand Russell, admired and praised Kahn's work, because they felt it presented a strong case for full disarmament by suggesting that nuclear war was all but unavoidable. Others criticized Kahn vehemently, claiming that his postulating the notion of a winnable nuclear war made one more likely.
"There must be a bogeyman; there always is, and it cannot be something as esoteric as "resource depletion." You can't go to war with that." Emersonbiggins
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Re: Herman Kahn

Unread postby deMolay » Thu 15 Nov 2007, 23:54:05

Kahn was a very intelligent man, I have read some of his writings. Something I have always wondered, was he a globalist? Did he also want all the varities of humankind homogenized like Monsanto seed?
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Re: Herman Kahn

Unread postby I_Like_Plants » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 00:52:24

Kahn is just like the rest of us, only more so.
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