Lawrence M. Krauss Quotes
It is hard to seriously suggest that from a national-security standpoint, 1,000 warheads are not enough to protect the United States. Such an arsenal is literally overkill, sufficient to destroy every major population center on the planet outside of our borders.
Lawrence M. Krauss, Theoretical Physicist, “Letting Go Of Our Nukes”, New York Times, July 7, 2012
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This was his last publication. He died of a heart attack as the magazine was being printed. Since this was written one other possible use of nuclear weapons has been suggested—namely, retaliation for a biological attack. From a policy point of view, maintaining an arsenal of biological weapons for retaliatory purposes is dangerous and use for retaliation of biological weapons is not very controllable and arguably less humane than a nuclear weapon. His point however still holds. We have to have a national defense policy against many threats and we have to have defense policies that handle all these without nuclear tactics is insufficient to handle any of the threats without causing more problems and we have other weapons and techniques that are just as, if not more, effective. They and systems under development have the major role in our current defense policy.
Canada had the same absurd civil defense propaganda in the Cold War as the U. S. did. Both governments wanted to persuade their publics that a nuclear attack was survivable.
1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Israel started it nuclear weapons program under Perez’s leadership. They do not admit that it is even in existence. Yet all their potential enemies in the Middle East realize that they have enough nuclear weapons capacity that if they are in danger of being overrun, they can literally destroy the attacking nation and all the countries that might be assisting that nation. Before Israel had developed this capability, some in the Middle East had as their objective to destroy the state of Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea”. No one believes that it is now possible to militarily defeat Israel without the attacking nations also being destroyed. For years, Israel has had the military might to conquer any nation in the Middle East and use their nuclear shield to protect them from any interference, but they have not done so demonstrating that the Israeli governments will not use nuclear weapons for any other purpose.
Many politicians and military thinkers disagree with Kraus. America, England, France, Russia, and Israel have all demonstrated over the years that even with great provocation they would not resort to nuclear retaliation nor have they ever threatened use of WMDs. Iran, in contrast, has repeatedly stated as one of their major objective, the total destruction of another UN member state—Israel. Further, Iran has never possessed a weapon that it did not use shortly after possession, including poison gas. Therefore America and the United Nations have all determined that a double standard is necessary with Iran.
The Booklet told people that even under an atomic attack there would be many survivors and it was everyone’s job to increase the number of survivors by taking precautions like building fallout shelters and maintaining a supply of food and water at home and ducking under desks and tables if there was an atomic attack. The implication was that despite the great firepower of the then Hydrogen Bombs there would be great survivability. The suggestions for protection ranged from minimal likely effect to absurd. The Publication also bore the imprimatur of the Executive Office of the President for credibility and many people believed it.
The alternative deterrent was to maintain an army of over 2 million men overseas in both Europe and Asia, and the cost was much greater than the then perceived cost of nuclear weapons. At the time no one figured the cost of coping with the radioactive material and waste as well as the cleanup of nuclear bomb factories like Hanford. These costs were still not known byt the 21st century.
Lawrence Maxwell Krauss is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who previously taught at Arizona State University, Yale University, and Case Western Reserve University. He founded ASU's Origins Project, now called ASU Interplanetary Initiative, to investigate fundamental questions about the universe and served as the project's director.
