[IP] Profile of Neutron Bomb inventor
Begin forwarded message:
From: Mark Frauenfelder <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 16, 2005 6:52:36 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: For IP: Profile of Neutron Bomb inventor
boingboing.net is running a profile of Sam Cohen, the man who
invented the Neutron Bomb. Charles Platt wrote this 10,000 word
article, titled "The Profits of Fear."
The neutron bomb is an incredibly strange weapon. From the profile:
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Cohen came up with a design for a warhead about one-tenth as powerful
as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. If it was detonated at 3,000
feet above ground level, its blast effects would be negligible while
its neutron radiation would be powerful enough to cause death within
a circle about one mile in diameter. This was the battlefield weapon
that came to be known as the neutron bomb.
Such a weapon obviously would be more civilized than large-scale
hydrogen bombs, and would also be more humane than conventional
bombs, because it would create an all-or-nothing, live-or-die
scenario in which no one would be wounded. A stream of neutrons
cannot maim people. It will not burn their flesh, spill their blood,
or break their bones. Those who receive a non-lethal dose will
recover after a period of intense nausea and diarrhea, and Cohen
estimated that their risk of subsequent cancer would be no greater
than the risk we experience as a result of exposure to second-hand
cigarette smoke. As for the rest, death would come relatively
quickly, primarily from shock to the central nervous system. As he
put it in his typically candid style, "I doubt whether the agony an
irradiated soldier goes through in the process of dying is any worse
than that produced by having your body charred to a crisp by napalm,
your guts being ripped apart by shrapnel, your lungs blown in by
concussion weapons, and all those other sweet things that happen when
conventional weapons (which are preferred and anointed by our
official policy) are used."
After assessing every aspect and implication of his concept, he
reached his modest conclusion: "The neutron bomb has to be the most
moral weapon ever invented."
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http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/16/boing_boing_exclusiv.html
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