Georeactor Blog

While traveling to Minneapolis and Denver, I finished a book on nuclear war and am making progress on climate change / Chicago's 1995 heat wave. I wanted the review to be a quick aside, but it had enough ideas that I might as well separate it out.

The Day After World War III: The US Government's Plan for Surviving a Nuclear War (Edward Zuckerman, 1984)

I picked this up for its unusual perspectives - asking missileers what they would do after launch, plans for the post office and IRS -  then it turns to a collection of related articles, including a history of the Manhattan Project and a skippable chapter on American theories of Soviet strategy. Zuckerman later wrote for Law & Order and recently released a novel.

After the success of On the Beach, Failsafe, and Dr. Strangelove the 60s was permeated by a belief that nuclear attack and retaliation would be quick and total. This book was part of 80s discourse around survivable nuclear war, such as Warday and previously-reviewed The Truth About the Neutron Bomb. If Soviet tanks rolled into West Germany, the military considered how to fight a limited nuclear war over weeks of tit-for-tat strikes. Destruction of silos might be acceptable because submarines could retaliate days later. Civil defense would evacuate cities, freeze prices, etc. and prepare civilians for two weeks in shelters to avoid fallout. Researchers studied examples of post-disaster resilience (the author interviews Cresson Kearny, a civil defense planner who survived a harrowing experience with the OSS in China), man-hours for families to dig trench shelters, evacuees' attachments to their pets, and difficulty of resettling a diverse population during the civil rights era.

Practically speaking, the military and civil defense leaders needed a diversity of options, or there would be nothing to research and their outlook (and budget) would be quite bleak. A widespread attack on silos would be so destructive to populated areas that retaliation might be total. It was unclear how well the American and Soviet leadership could command their militaries and maintain a diplomatic link for a limited war or a cease-fire to even be possible. Despite New York City participating in national exercises such as Operation Alert 1955, their leadership later pushed back at the credibility of evacuating the city or supplying fallout shelters.

Environmentalists used computer models to warn of the effects of nuclear war - including The Fate of the Earth (1982) a mostly-discredited book on the loss of the ozone layer, and a book and press tour by Carl Sagan which popularized nuclear winter. Zuckerman's op-eds and book tour in 1984–85 would cover the public debate between Sagan and Edward Teller, while remaining "agnostic" on the topic. There was also a popular nuclear freeze movement which was endorsed by several city and state legislatures, leading up to a US House resolution in 1983.

Notes

The book retells a legend that Oppenheimer came to Dr. Arthur Compton's lake house to urgently ask whether an atomic test would ignite the atmosphere (in some versions, specifically the hydrogen/fusion bomb). Unless Oppenheimer was a big lake convo guy, this appears to be the genesis of the movie scene with Einstein?

A conversation between the author and Dr. Edward Teller, the inventor of the H-bomb, before the popularization of the wheeled suitcase:

Although he had a small wheeled luggage cart with him, he was not using it to carry his bag. "It is not good on stairs," he explained to a reporter […] "and they don't like it at check-in. So I separate it from the suitcase here and rejoin them at LaGuardia."
[…] "I've seen many stewardesses with them," [the reporter] finally blurted out, "so I gather they must be very useful."
"Yes," Teller nodded, "a more useful invention than the hydrogen bomb."

Previous Reads / Notes

In a super niche episode in urbanism, Newton, MA painted a standard double yellow on a road replacing Italian flag colors. The mayor sent an email with accident statistics and apologizing about communication. Amid discussion of safer streets and parking configuration, one Redditor comments:

One thing (of many) that I will not miss about Ruthanne is her 3,000 word emails.

Move over Mandela Effect: Malala, who is releasing a book in October amid (I think?) shifting into a producer or other media role, posted a joke about Gen-Z students often thinking she is dead. Many replies said they thought she died many decades ago?

Hanaya is a North Korean refugee who recently started posting videos with an AI voiceover, such as a visit to a Google office. After Yeonmi Park became a conservative influencer, there are a few questions about the direction of this channel. For example Hanaya shows genuine interest in Google office culture, but the voiceovers take on a more 'school essay' tone talking about how North Korea does not have freedom and diversity. Despite some time working in South Korea, she recently posted a video marveling at a US supermarket. In a recent video she defends the content and AI voice.

A comment on Hacker News thinks the North Korean remote workers news cycle is fueled by Socure.

Chicago's "World Fair US" is closing early. After marketing themselves through 3d-rendered buildings and AI-generated images, they failed to attract crowds to a parking lot with clothing vendors, food trucks, and kiddie rides. I found very little about this on Facebook or Instagram or Reddit, 1-star and 5-star reviews on Google Maps, and a lively mix of videos and conversations over on TikTok (especially on Muslim TikTok, which frequently compared it to "Global Village Dubai"). There are candid reviews - one and two - and vendors commenting how much they were charged.
I understand people still going if they know a performer, but it doesn't look like visitors are happy paying for tickets plus parking plus kiddie rides. For me the puzzling thing is why they scheduled it over three weeks - maybe a requirement to rent equipment? Why would they still have problems opening on time, scanning tickets, and inflating bounce houses a week into the event? Why did they pick an unpopular influencer (a comment "I’m specifically not going because you endorse it" has over 600 likes)? Yesterday this TikTok video said that Latin dances were canceled for being too revealing for Muslim organizers. What about the palm readers and tarot? lol

The general election for NYC mayor may be a close one. Unofficial results from the primary have only ~5% of ballots exhausted this time around. They haven't released detailed numbers on candidate rankings or spoiled ballots. Paperboy Love Prince, a perennial candidate who wears clown makeup in official photos, didn't do well in the mayoral race but did win a judicial delegate seat.

OpenStreetMap added a large language select menu to the website in the past month.

Citizens' Assembly, Ireland's method of randomly selected voters to resolve constitutional questions

A history of anti-Jewish discrimination in Minneapolis

I'm staying near "Red Rocks College Station" on Denver's light rail. When it opened in 2013 this station was criticized for being "convenient to nothing". This is still mostly true. What surprised me is there's a huge (1,531 feet long) bridge for the train to cross over the highway from here to the last station, the Jefferson County offices. They have a Park & Ride, and people might be going to the county office, but it seems a bit nuts unless they can someday extend service to downtown Golden.

Plessy of Plessy v Ferguson has no surviving photographs