I can go there
on practical grounds (what could be more 'practical' than existential grounds?)
(though the present example included at least acceptance of remuneration, not just for 'expenses'. Some didn't.)
As one who has invested countless hours, from ~age 14 on, re nukes, their care and feeding and the constellation of their moment-by-moment impending-Doom,
I could cite a single-volume as argument-enough: Command and Control [Schlosser, 2013] into evidence:
Evidence that all-along (and doubtless for the USSR as well) we have lived-through-By-Sheer-Luck! ... the absence of a single accidental detonation
(in the dis-US case: the near-closest ones being of the unnecessarily-Big versions.)
Your posit implicitly covers Fuchs et al ex post facto: as these perps (memory fails exact name-associations) subsequently revealed
a similar sense of ~ balancing-Enough [??] this Ultimate-stand-off. It has been and remains: of species-destroying Scale,
ever wielded by a succession of average-grade homo-saps in-Power.
Right Now.
The thesis is inherently unProvable; So. What. this does not make it either ludicrous nor defective.
FACT: had (any one of the dropped, foolishly-near-Armed [also Armed!] devices Gone Off ??? every level of speculation
Would Have Gone On-Full: Instantly / in a time largely of Hair-Triggers.
(This ain't just my or that particular author's paranoid dystopian fantasy: his report details are
(Now!) perfectly verifiable, despite the (still prevailing) secrecies of every govt.)
Maybe.. some day.. another Canticle for Leibowitz will resurrect the reputations of (some of) these heinous leakers-of-Armageddon-grade-Secrets,
with some awareness, not merely of what (each?--except for the purely Greed-driven) formed their hugely-personal decisions to become Pariahs (?)
Can never be 'settled' of course: the issue begs the Question: Is my allegiance to.. this particular Nation-State? higher than my allegiance to the Species?
or, as today, still: "Higher than Most-Species" (a thought rarely conceived by most, IME: I aver.)
(though the present example included at least acceptance of remuneration, not just for 'expenses'. Some didn't.)
As one who has invested countless hours, from ~age 14 on, re nukes, their care and feeding and the constellation of their moment-by-moment impending-Doom,
I could cite a single-volume as argument-enough: Command and Control [Schlosser, 2013] into evidence:
Evidence that all-along (and doubtless for the USSR as well) we have lived-through-By-Sheer-Luck! ... the absence of a single accidental detonation
(in the dis-US case: the near-closest ones being of the unnecessarily-Big versions.)
Your posit implicitly covers Fuchs et al ex post facto: as these perps (memory fails exact name-associations) subsequently revealed
a similar sense of ~ balancing-Enough [??] this Ultimate-stand-off. It has been and remains: of species-destroying Scale,
ever wielded by a succession of average-grade homo-saps in-Power.
Right Now.
The thesis is inherently unProvable; So. What. this does not make it either ludicrous nor defective.
FACT: had (any one of the dropped, foolishly-near-Armed [also Armed!] devices Gone Off ??? every level of speculation
Would Have Gone On-Full: Instantly / in a time largely of Hair-Triggers.
(This ain't just my or that particular author's paranoid dystopian fantasy: his report details are
(Now!) perfectly verifiable, despite the (still prevailing) secrecies of every govt.)
Maybe.. some day.. another Canticle for Leibowitz will resurrect the reputations of (some of) these heinous leakers-of-Armageddon-grade-Secrets,
with some awareness, not merely of what (each?--except for the purely Greed-driven) formed their hugely-personal decisions to become Pariahs (?)
Can never be 'settled' of course: the issue begs the Question: Is my allegiance to.. this particular Nation-State? higher than my allegiance to the Species?
or, as today, still: "Higher than Most-Species" (a thought rarely conceived by most, IME: I aver.)