> Alexander has a lot of failings, and we’re going to get to them. But he was unnaturally composed and at least when it came to doing violence (and getting others to do violence effectively) he was highly competent, almost absurdly so.
I suppose my question is: How do you know this? Alexander was surrounded by hand-picked men his father had groomed for decades in some cases. Offering council on every part of war fighting, from tactics to strategy to logistics. Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do?
Earlier in the article the author mentions alexander's perfect track record of logistical balancing. Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart.
Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank. That takes the work of many dozens of officers, and well trained soldiers drilled to follow orders even under intense stress.
Of course this is all speculation on my part, as we simply can't know due to the mythologizing of the man and his life. But it's a question I find interesting to ponder.
> Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do?
During battle he led his own element and consistently made the right calls when doing so. The wiser men where hundreds to thousands of meters away leading the rest of his army, with effectively no way to communicate with him.
> Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart.
The scale of the operations during these 20 years were nothing like the campaign he led. They operated entirely in Greece, the furthest they operated from their homes was in the hundreds of kilometers, in pretty much known terrain. Alexander led them all the way to India.
> Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank.
One man cannot organize and send it but can definitely lead it to do that. He made the decision to aid the failing flank, not his officers. His officers just followed him. If he chose to chase down the fleeing enemy they would just do that.
There are countless examples through out history of leaders chasing down fleeing
enemies only to find their flank collapsed and the battle lost. Similarly there are countless examples of leaders overextending in their campaign running out of supplies.
The gist is that you can't really argue with his track record. He won all the battles he fought and took down an empire several times larger than his kingdom with an army of about 50000 men. He was handed with a very effective military system, but he wielded it perfectly, that takes great skill.
Even with Alexander inheriting a war machine from his father Phillip, he managed to do something that was unthinkable in Greece: defeat Persia in detail. Even with a machine created by his father, having the gumption to take it that far makes him sui generis.
But he had to do much more than copy his father. He had to deal with logistics in a way that his father never had to. Alexander's war was as much about the logistics of supplying his army as about the battles it fought. He had to deal with large geopolitical aspects of the war, such as the need to win (or defend successfully) at sea, not just land, and he couldn't be both at sea and on land. Founding lots of cities to anchor his authority was a geopolitical technique that his father had not had to employ.
Sure, Alexander was his father's son, but Alexander's accomplishments are his own.
>History is written by the winners. 100% of that "he led the flank himself and commanded while the other men just watched" is suspect.
History is written by the literate. (i.e. the rich for most of human history)
In this case, most information about Alexander the Great comes from four distinct sources, the most famous being Arrian of Nicomedia who famously used Ptolemy I Soter as their primary source.
Ptolemy at the time he wrote his testimony was already a king and only had benefit of grandizing his own contributions not his old King. His account was famed for how straightforward it was and seemed only to confirm Alexander's exceptional leadership in battle.
Actually, while I share your skepticism about the argument, this isn't a very good counter—plenty of commanders in that situation would have been perfectly content to keep the young pliable boy on the throne. Each one of them would have had more power in that situation than they would in a succession crisis.
Indeed, in the event it worked out quite well for them. First conquer the world with the united Macedonian army, then partition the world between them when Alexander dies.
The myth propping could have stopped when he died. It didn't. And that is in spite of his kingdom immediately being partitioned and in spite of squabbles immediately arising. His generals and court fractured when he died, but they didn't turn on him.
I actually agree with the spirit of what you're saying but I feel compelled to point out that Alexander actually wasn't a king for very long. The median reign for hellenistic rulers was 20-30 years whereas Alexander's only reigned for a short 13 years.
Again while I absolutely agree with your point, he was in fact, not a king for very long.
One may rightfully ask whether Alexander just "went with the flow" as you phrase it, or to use a different term, "was lucky to be at/in the right place at the right time". Or even "lucky to have died before his luck ran out".
Let's keep in mind though that having great resources at your disposal, and a large circle of experienced and capable advisors at hand, does not necessarily create a lasting form of "action alignment" between those.
It is interesting in this context that none of his advisors or "immediate staff" ever strongly challenged Alexander in his lifetime.
They deferred to him till the last moment, only to basically be snubbed off by his famous "whoever's strongest" last words. Only then did they go for each others' throats.
It is of course possible, given historical records and "history is written by the victors", that his portrayal as integrative figure is flawed and more incorrect than not. The behaviour of the diadochs, the "infighting of the inner circle" which he apparently had contained in his lifetime, yet broke out immediately after, that make it likely that he brought some forms of "interpersonal skills" to the table which neither his father, nor his "successors" possessed in equal measure.
>or to use a different term, "was lucky to be at/in the right place at the right time".
Very little luck is involved in winning battle after battle and expanding a city-state kingdom 1000x, with strategic decisions which are still studied and marvelled upon by millitary experts.
Luck was definitely involved. In chaotic situations, such as a battlefield anything can happen. As an example here's a record[0] of Alexander almost dying:
At Granicus, Alexander was hit in the head by scimitar-wielding cavalry, causing his helmet to fly off his head. The Persians later struck the king with a missile, which went through his shield and lodged in his shoulder.
- The head hit could have given him a serious concussion, even causing him to fall unconcious making his troops think he died and plummeting morale.
- The arrow could have pierced his heart instead of his shoulder after going through his shield.
The real point is that such an accomplishment will never be due to pure luck. Skill also had to be there.
From the relative sizes of the original Kingom at the time of Phillip II to the expanses Alexander conquered. More like 100x (1000x would cover the whole globe), but 1000x works for emphasis.
You are suggesting that Alexander's empire covered 10% of the globe?
Please check your sense of scale.
The total area of the globe is about 510.1 million km2; the total landmass of earth is about 148 million km2. The Internet tells me that Alexander's empire stretched about 5.2 million km2 at its greatest extent. Which is about 1% of the globe, or 3.5% of the total dry landmass.
For comparison, the Soviet Union had about 22.4 million km2. And the British Empire had about 35.5 million km2 at its largest.
The Internet also tells me that Phillip II controlled about 0.3 million km2 at the end of his reign. Which makes for about 5% of Alexander's territory at the end of his reign. A 20x expansion for Alexander is nothing to sneeze at, but it's a far cry from 1000 or even 100.
Phillip II controlled roughly half of modern Greece size-wise, so 25K sq.m. At best, if we include his later (unstable) expansion territories, like the Peloponnese, he'd be at something like 35K sq.m. Not sure where 0.3M sq. miles comes from (that would be 8 to 12 times the area).
For Alexander the numbers I find are about "two million square miles".
2M / 25K gives 1/80. Round it up to 1/100 and let's call it a day.
1000x was an off the cuff number, with the point being the huge increase in the size of the kingdom Alexander inherited - not the specific multiplier.
>Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do?
Listening to "wiser, more experienced" men is part of being "unnaturally composed".
Especially if you're not just some unsure youngling who suddenly inherited a throne you can't handle, but a decisive king who expanded your father's kingdom 1000x.
In different examples, even the sons of the most wise and temperate emperors could turn into depraved bloodthirsty tyrants.
Not to mention Alexander as a kid studied with one of the most wise and educated men of his time (and the previous/next millenium or so).
Where do you get the 1000x from? Have a look at the submitted article to see a map of the kingdom Alexander inherited. It's substantially bigger than 0.001x of Alexander's empire's greatest extent.
Have a look at the article. See the map with the legend:
> Via Wikipedia, a map of the expansion of Macedonian controlled territory during the reign of Philip II. Philip controlled only the darkest orange area (and not all of it) at the start of his reign; by the end he controlled Macedon, Thrace, Thessaly and the Greek states of the League of Corinth.
Macedon, Thrace, Thessaly and the Greek states of the League of Corinth together are more than 1% of Alexander's empire.
> I suppose my question is: How do you know this? Alexander was surrounded by hand-picked men his father had groomed for decades in some cases. Offering council on every part of war fighting, from tactics to strategy to logistics. Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do?
Alexander did inherit a superb army. However, while he was present the army enjoyed spectacular operational and battlefield success. Once Alexander was gone, the successes also stopped.
> Once Alexander was gone, the successes also stopped.
While true, this doesn't necessarily preclude the hypothesis that Alexander's generals were the real power behind the throne. The successes stopped around the time that the Macedonian armies started fighting each other and trying to actually rule the areas that they conquered. This could easily be explained by the generals being all roughly equally competent at commanding soldiers and also simultaneously being distracted by affairs of state and so drawn away from expansion into non-Macedonian territory.
The fact that he commanded the respect and loyalty of all those officers, who were older and more experienced, tells you a lot. Not a single one of those men, who served under his father and knew Philip's caliber, would have allowed an immature, incapable teenager lead them. He would have been murdered quickly, as it happened many times to the lesser children of great emperors/kings/etc.
At those levels, loyalty and respect are very much something you _must earn_. It is not given.
Leadership always plays a huge role in the success of any operation. Part of the job of a leader is to understand which advice is worth listening to. Furthermore, advice is never unanimous, there are always huge trade offs to weigh in any large endeavor.
What I got from that is that moving an army of more than 10000 men was a monumental effort in and off itself. The real genius commanders were the ones who had more than 5% of their attentions and talent to actually do any sort of tactics on the battlefield.
Just showing up in proper order would more often than not lead to winning, since it was so damn hard.
So managing to move such an army across asia was an incredible achievement that warrants praise, regardless if he himself was responsible or just recognizing the talent and keeping it in the right position.
> Earlier in the article the author mentions alexander's perfect track record of logistical balancing. Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart.
Alexander's officers had experience campaigning in Greece. It's logistically incomparable to conquering even Asia Minor, forget the whole of Persia.
Definitely fun to ponder, speculate away! Parmenion lost to Memnon before Alexander turned up, maybe he wasn't so hot? Alexander's logistics on the journey home certainly seemed a mess, maybe he shouldn't have alienated so many of the old Macedonians? Besides, history doesn't who actually asked Philip "what if we made the spears LONGER?" Maybe we should be giving that guy more credit.
Perhaps it was even like Shakespeare - how do we really know he even existed as a person at all? Perhaps "Alexander" was actually a collection of Macedonian Generals?! As was stated in the article, all the original sources are gone.
Because we're not talking about some undiscovered pre-historic Atlantis, it's from a period with tons of historical evidence and records (including written ones) from multiple nations.
We have had records about rulers and events from that wider area (from Greece to India) for centuries before Alexander.
>As was stated in the article, all the original sources are gone.
Just the primary sources from contemporaries who directly worked with him. We still have histiographical sources about him referrencing and quoting those, and from very close chronologically times, epigraphs, whole cities established by him, coins, and so on.
I find myself in an odd position - I am pro-Anthropocene but I find this reasoning suspect:
> But the Anthropocene’s future as an informal time period is assured. It’s too apt—and too important—a term to be abandoned. As Paul Crutzen pointed out in 2002, barring a “meteorite impact, a world war or a pandemic,” humans “will remain a major environmental force for many millennia.” Science recently summed up the situation this way: “the anthropocene is dead. long live the anthropocene.”
If this was all the justification I would be against the anthropocene being accepted. As the anti-anthro crowd says, geology is not the study of "maybes" or "if this trend continues".
Instead I am pro-anthropocene because even if humanity died today, there would still be an extremely weird layer of rock that would need to be explained and the existing human impacts on the enviroment would still take millions of years to dissipate. Further, '1952' is in the past. It's very recent, but it is in the past. Stratigraphy is the study of layers, and humanity has undeniably created a clear and very odd layer in the rock. Therefore, a new age is justified to me.
Also, geology isn’t just sedimentation. Erosion, from various causes, removes layers of rock, sometimes sweeping away thousands of feet of sediment. Our mining industry has removed rock on the scale of a significant meteor bombardment. Future geologists might ask “why is there a massive stratigraphic absence here?” as often as they ask “why is there a weird sedimentary layer here?”
Also movement of large amounts of rocks from one area to another. Our concrete momuments to arrogance and excess, even when theyre rubble, will be hard to explain without the human element.
> Instead I am pro-anthropocene because even if humanity died today, there would still be an extremely weird layer of rock that would need to be explained and
Our current impacts are significantly different from what they were four hundred years ago. They will probably be even more different in another few centuries. Assuming we do not wipe ourselves out, our eventual impact will be very different from our current impact. Maybe we will even reverse many things, and a millennium is just a blip in geological time.
In any case, the Holocene is defined by human impacts on the environment, so really Anthropocene is more of an alternative name for the Holocene than a separate epoch: https://www.britannica.com/science/Holocene-Epoch
That's actually one of my issues with atomic rockets, some of its conclusions are a bit....massaged to ensure the end result it wants in terms of space combat even if it doesn't super make sense. As an example, even as an undergrad in physics the definitiveness of 'no stealth in space' struck me as implausible given what I knew about long range detection mechanisms.
Very straight forward solution one person came up with, I'm sure there are dozens of other approaches to achieve the same result. Especially if you put military level budgets into figuring this out.
The most logical form of space combat is, as boring as it sounds, undetectable suicide drones. Space battleships are both super cool sounding and also alas probably utterly impractical.
Edit:
"In terms of military tactics, introducing stealth ships is the equivalent of punching a hornet's nest. The standard fare of bright, bold warships pumping out gigawatts without care, streaking across the Solar System laden with weapons, are forced to become meek and paranoid affairs, as a stealth ship can dump a thousand tons of weapons out of nowhere, at any time."
As an aside, this is something I wish scifi writers understood - don't include stealth ships in your stories without recognizing how they change the mechanics of war completely.
Nearly every use of the vehicle as described is more effective if it is never built, just widely publicized as being built and launched in large quantity.
Something that blew my mind long ago was learning the scottish highlands used to be a massive forest. Ancient humans clear cut the entire landscape and it still hasn't recovered. That sort of broke the illusion of there being some forgotten past of arcadian perfection, where we lived in one and balance with nature. Humans have always been humans. Exploitative, expansionist, perfectly willing to destroy our long term prospects for short term gain. At least in modern western societies we have the power to recognize this part of ourselves, and put aside areas like national parks free from our grasping fingers.
That is post-agricultural revolution humanity. Sure it is ancient by the standards of an individual, but it is only a relatively recent and small part of the more than 100 thousand years of human pre-history.
Okay but humans did this in a ton of environments pre-agriculture. The Amazon was a large grassland with patches of forest that tribal peoples shaped into a giant rainforest over time. This is thought to be the case with tons of places in the old world as well. Humans have been doing mega engineering type stuff for at least 20-30000 years
This was a fun rabbit hole to go down. Magnesium does not seem to be present in radioactive fallout, there is more Manganese than magnesium from the data I was able to find online. Further NOX, the chemical combination of oxygen and nitrogen is a serious pollutant by-product of nuclear explosions indicating nitrogen seems to remain largely elementally unmolested by the blast. Finally, looking at the calculations it seems to fuse nitrogen nuclei in any kind of meaningful number would require atomic detonations with heat in excess of tens of billions of degree, while real contemporary explosions produce only hundreds of millions of degrees.
The other claim I wondered about was that a nuke created the hottest temps ever on earth. Wouldn't a large asteroid strike come close? Edit: chat g 4 set me straight, nukes are tens of millions F, asteroid impact thousands of degrees F.
> McCarthy shares none of these inclinations. His characters ride aimlessly through the desert and kill for what seems like no reason at all. Blood Meridian is a book that reflects a particular moment in history, but his characters have no sense of that history, are otherwise immune to time, and seem oblivious to the forces ordering their world.
This is my biggest issue with all McCarthy's works. They feel like pointless exercises in sadism and cruelty, where the forces of evil are literally superhumanly powerful (like the judge) and nihilistic misanthropy is the only sensible philosophy.
But, in the novel's defense, I grew up after the myth of the west was dead. I have only ever thought the frontier was a miserable, lawless place full of bandits. So perhaps if the novel's goal was to 'bust the western myth', that's why it failed to engage me in any way except utter disgust.
My biggest complaint about Blood Meridian is it throws all this graphic violence in your face and then has typical American squeamishness about sex. It felt like the inability to depict sex undermined whatever point it was trying to make with graphic depictions of violence. Compare, here is the single sex scene in the book which is "fade to black" blink and you missed it:
I seen you right away, she said. I always pick the one I want.
She led him through a door where an old Mexican woman was handing out towels and candles and they ascended like refugees of some sordid disaster the darkened plankboard stairwell to the upper rooms.
Lying in the little cubicle with his trousers about his knees he watched her. He watched her take up her clothes and don them and he watched her hold the candle to the mirror and study her face there. She turned and looked at him.
That doesn't seem squeamish. I think many writers of that era viewed violence as bad, and sex as private. You may disagree with them on that point, of course.
The text is painfully awkward, not McCarthy at his best.
1985 isn't usually considered a locus of Victorian attitudes toward sex, at least in the United States. The Hayes code was abolished in 1968. The Miller test was established in the late seventies, reducing publisher risk for content that would have been considered pornographic a decade or two earlier.
Anxiety about sex—and particularly homosexual sex—didn't significantly rise again until the early 2000s, around the time Lawrence v. Texas was decided. The Puritans have been loudly agitating for blanket censorship ever since.
I'm not talking about Victorian attitudes in particular. Sex is often considered private, even today. I'm pointing to a resolution of the apparently irony of describing violence but not sex.
There is a strong philosophical message in the works of McCarthy, but it's not explicit, you have to synthesize it. If you read his best works being totally oblivious to what he's really saying, then they'll feel like pointless exercises in sadism and cruelty.
Blood Meridian is perhaps the easiest of his works to understand in that regard, since he's as far from deliberate occultation as he can possibly be. The philosophy in that book reaches out and punches you in the face.
One theme seems like it's not that hard to distill. That aimless young men with no prospects and no philosophy are more inclined to participate in destruction, and end up destructed.
We have English literature classes for the very purpose of finding and discussing these and other themes. The point of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Orwell aren't always immediately understood to some readers, even if they sense that there's something to be taken from what they're reading.
Being told something makes less of an impression than figuring it out. When an author explicitly states the theme of their work, there is nothing to think about or consider. Personally, I much prefer stuff that makes me do some of the legwork myself.
Yeah, this is a huge difference in, for example, 2 of Ayn Rand's books. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The first is a simpler story with fewer characters, and though their dialogue obviously matters, much of the message happens through their actions. The same is true for Atlas Shrugged, but it contains many more monologues that are really the author expressing her philosophy explicitly in words, and the story around them is much more just providing context. Both great (or terrible, if you hate her) books, but The Fountainhead is much more poetic for this reason.
> If you have to be briefed on what an author is "really saying" outside of the story conveying it, what's the point?
It's not about having it explained to the reader in a briefing. A sophisticated reader comes to a book with the cultural, literary, and historical understanding in which the themes of the book are in play. Understanding of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at age 12-14, where it's commonly taught in the US, is pretty superficial. Studying it as an adult sheds light on subtle threads woven through story. What exactly are Friar Laurence's motivations in helping Romeo and Juliet? At the end, after he confesses his role, why does Prince Escalus say, "We have still known thee for a holy man"?
> If you have to be briefed on what an author is "really saying" outside of the story conveying it, what's the point?
What armitron said was, "it's not explicit, you have to synthesize it." The verb 'synthesize' implies the exact opposite of what you've construed them as saying.
Also now “The Passenger”, it strikes me as a lot like Suttree and is a surreal experience to read.
If you’re crazy, you can also try “Stela Maris”. just be warned it’s not a story, it’s a philosophy book that doesn’t even try to pretend it’s a story. I enjoyed it but wouldn’t recommend it to most people I know.
I once read someone's dissertation on that very theme (maybe we're both referring to the same source). Even though there are some bits that one can make fit, it is laughable to think that a Gnostic fable is THE interpretation of a book that proclaims "War is God" and screams determinism every chance it gets.
Every territory wanted to become a US state as soon as possible.
I really don't understand how this idea formed that everyone in the wild west was an anarchist.
In fact I think people back then were just like people today: they wanted to lead orderly peaceful lives under the rule of law. But that would make for incredibly boring books.
>This is my biggest issue with all McCarthy's works. They feel like pointless exercises in sadism and cruelty, where the forces of evil are literally superhumanly powerful (like the judge) and nihilistic misanthropy is the only sensible philosophy.
I think Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men are like this, and The Road to a lesser extent (the evil is mortal men, it's just there's a lot of them). As others have mentioned, not all his books are like that. Suttree is downright funny at times.
I've always thought Cormac McCarthy has a great fear of evil and war and those bleak stories are his expression of it. Humans are in a downward spiraling race of shedding their humanity to be capable of greater acts violence so that no violence could be done against them. And those that don't engage in that are eventually overcome, like Llewellyn Moss in No Country For Old Men - someone capable of handling themselves, but was never able or willing to be so ruthless. It's why ironically The Road, grim and miserable, is one of his most hopeful books - the boy lives and they remain "the good guys". Blood Meridian certainly the most hopeless, and possibly a reflection how he was feeling about these fears at the time.
I'm not a literature person but that's my take on those.
Consider the Border Trilogy if you ever want to give him another chance. Blood Meridian is an anti-western, but the Border Trilogy looks at the frontier lifestyle from a more humanist perspective and deeply mourns the loss of it.
A sympathetic detonation is very unlikely for a nuclear weapon. They have to detonate in an extremely specific way, such that the explosion compresses the fissile material from all sides at once. A random off-center explosion hitting a nuclear bomb would likely cause the explosives in the bomb to detonate off their very specific timing and fail to cause a nuclear detonation.
This was actually a safety design feature:
> Walske also stipulated that all nuclear weapons in the stockpile must be “one-point safe;” that is,the weapon must have a probability of less than one in one million of producing a nuclear detonation if a detonation of the high explosives originates from a single point
In fact this entire article seems to not recognize this fact. Even if one of the bombs detonated, it was always going to be bad for the people near it but not catastrophic or anything. It would almost certainly not have been nuclear.
I disagree; under normal circumstances regarding the HE explosives you are 100% correct but I suspect a nuclear shockwave at near point blank range might be fast enough to push the near side of the primary pit to the far side in a time interval short enough to cause an additional criticality. Probably not to design yields, but plausible.
A nuclear chain reaction takes place roughly over a single microsecond. To travel the ~11 inches of a bomb, in ideal circumstances, a high explosive needs roughly 200 microseconds. It is not impossible that the exact right stuff could happen to trigger the bomb, but it is extremely unlikely - it took the smartest minds in america working together for 3 years to figure out the exact precise timing to prevent a nuclear fizzle and achieve a true atomic explosion. It is, contrary to pop culture, near-impossible to pull off by dumb luck. Mostly you'll just make a radioactive mess.
Right! But that's talking about compressing a plutonium pit in atmospheric pressure--being an extremely dense metal, plutonium will preferentially "squirt out" in any direction rather than compress, if there's a direction it can go in. Therefore, you need to make a spherical shockwave via explosives.
But that's in 1 atm! The initial wavefront of a fission device is going to be conservatively about 4 inches a microsecond (based on early above-ground test photos, modern high-yield devices would probably be faster still). This could very well turn the entire physics package of the secondary weapon into a thin pancake on the blast front, the plutonium can't get out of the way fast enough to avoid compression. This is a totally different scenario than a one-point-safety fizzle. The HE explosives in the second bomb might as well not exist relative to the overpressures faced from the first bomb's detonation.
Another point is the massive neutron flux, which will get some nuclear reaction out of the bomb material in and of itself. Neutrons will set off both fission and fusion reactions, simultaneously.
I wonder if you had two bombs in a confined space whether the X-ray flux from one would cause a radiation flux driven implosion in the other - similar to how the primary causes the secondary to implode in an H-bomb.
I was thinking the same, given that Teller, Sakharov et. al. came up with, but discarded as unworkable, several designs (the "Classical Super", the "Layer Cake"...) before they discovered that, unfortunately, there was a way to make it work. My guess is that the X-ray pulse from a buried bomb would be quickly absorbed (it is quite rapidly attenuated just by air), and that whatever X-rays reached the second bomb would all be from one direction, ruining the symmetry that is apparently needed for fusion ignition.
On the other hand, I have heard that a non-trivial part of the yield of a hydrogen bomb comes from the fast neutrons from the fusion causing a much more complete fissioning of the fissile material. Maybe, if the buried bomb was not damaged to the point where it was incapable of fusion ignition, the second bomb would contribute to the explosion in this way, without acting as a hydrogen bomb itself. With a high enough neutron flux from the first bomb, maybe the core of the second one would not have to undergo implosion, or even stay intact.
The article also talks about a 17-mile kill zone, and the creation of a new "North Carolina bay" despite the crash being 50 miles from Pamlico Sound. These seem to me to be incompatible claims, and surely the second, at least, must be hyperbole?
"non-trivial part of the yield of a hydrogen bomb comes from the fast neutrons"
I believe in almost all "H-bomb" designs most of the energy produced comes from the fissioning of various uranium components by those neutrons (mainly the "pusher" surrounding the secondary and sometimes the surrounding case enclosing the primary and secondary - e.g. in the W88).
Yeah the author has a very uncharitable view towards Magerman. You can disagree with his political actions but I don't think he came off as a jerk, as much as someone who was aware of the old boys club nature of RenTech and wanted to change it.
Ugh. I recall the thick yellow sludge in the computers at a new job in 90s where everyone chain smoked. I asked how many years old it was. “Six months”
Promptly gave 2 weeks notice in.
what about dogs? They can cover nearly 1,000 miles of rough winter terrain in under 2 weeks, as seen in the iditarod. Or if we're looking at long distance travel in hot environments what about camels? I think this "humans can run down any animal with our endurance" stuff is vastly overblown. We're above average, but hardly the best on earth.
A human can run down any animal on earth because we're smart, not just because we have amazing endurance.
Animals don't realize that if they just ran 10 miles away they would escape easily. They'll just run far enough away that they can't really see us anymore. Then we find them and chase them again. Eventually they get tired because they sprint away and we conserve our energy.
A horse may be physically capable of running farther than a human, but actually getting them to do that is another thing.
I feel like the pendulum has swing too far in the other direction on this topic, actually. Yes people in the past weren't dumb, and shouldn't be under-estimated, but even a normal person could provide huge gains to any pre-modern society. Their understanding of mathematics, biology, evolution, medicine, astronomy, economics, reading+writing, organization, etc. are immeasurably valuable. I don't think people appreciate how much "ideas" are, in some sense, a kind of technology in themselves. Yes you probably couldn't make yourself a queen of the land with your advanced knowledge, but you could massively improve this society in fundamental ways. Like get infected with cowpox if you want to get vaccinated (a term meaning of or from cows btw!) against small pox.
>It's likely that ancient humans were adept at many of these things, like salt preservation, warm clothing, contraception, spun fibers, and boats. Many of the others (agriculture, wheels, etc) simply wouldn't make sense outside their native cultural contexts.
For people this primitive, even elementary metalworking would be revolutionary. Yes you'd have to do a bit of tinkering to work out the kinks, but iron ore pre-modern-extraction was everywhere, and once you have the foreknowledge that heat special rock -> smash into shape -> better-than-rock tool it's not hard to figure your way to something groundbreaking.
I do think you'd be limited in how much you could change things by how far back you go, but mostly due to human life span. The more new technologies you need to personally 'invent' the longer this stuff takes, as you'd need to experiment with on-the-ground resources and techniques until you can successfully realize your conceptual understanding. I know what a blast furnace is, and because I have the key concepts I can eventually build one with some trial and error. But it would take years if I had to start from just sticks and sand.
> Their understanding of mathematics, biology, evolution, medicine, astronomy, economics, reading+writing, organization, etc. are immeasurably valuable.
You could tell them that disease is caused by tiny animals, and that the earth is a sphere that orbits the sun, but getting them to believe you is a another thing. And making use of it yet another. You won't introduce quarantine just because of germ theory: book of Leviticus already has a version of quarantine, "the law of the plague" well before germ theory.
> You could tell them that disease is caused by tiny animals, and that the earth is a sphere that orbits the sun, but getting them to believe you is a another thing.
I can find a cholera outbreak, and tell whoever will listen to stop drinking water from the local wells and eating from the local markets. Go to another part of the city for water and food. Those who listen, even if only one, will be my proof. I can also do a cool science experiment with seaweed agar, silver and bacterial growth but that's not as dramatic.
The earth being a sphere that orbits the sun can't be proved without a telescope, but I can propose a vastly simpler and just as accurate approach using kepler's laws. If I was paying attention in high school physics, I can even do cool stuff with Newton's laws of gravitation to show that "As above, so below" (the planets obey the same law of gravity that we earthlings do).
Yes people might still not believe you, as we can be a stubborn and prideful species, but you know the 'why' of many things and so can keep making correct predictions based on that.
> You won't introduce quarantine just because of germ theory: book of Leviticus already has a version of quarantine, "the law of the plague" well before germ theory.
The bible simply lists procedures, it doesn't explain why you do these things or allow you to extrapolate to other situations and scenarios. By contrast, simply by knowing the "why" of infectious diseases, a smart person or government could isolate the cause of - for example - the black death fairly rapidly (rats w/ fleas) and begin taking steps to solve the issue.
A modern person has a head full of correct answers for questions people 2,3,4000 years ago have yet to even ask. That's powerful stuff, and once they've proved their credentials in some way the books they write will advance humanity by millenia.
> I can find a cholera outbreak, and tell whoever will listen to stop drinking water from the local wells ... Those who listen, even if only one, will be my proof.
Results with diseases have a fair amount of chance, as we should all know by now. It might go as you say, it might not. Your disciple might leave and get cholera soon after due to exposure beforehand. A person who stayed and didn't get cholera might attribute their success to the manner in which they prayed. Or your guy's success to the manner in which they prayed.
It's hard to falsify the assertion that "they were not stricken because they were righteous / said the correct prayer", and "statistical significance" is not a dramatic or obvious thing to convey.
I don't think they'd remember the tips about smallpox, considering it hadn't evolved yet. As for iron smelting, we have a wealth of experimental archaeology on the subject under much easier constraints than you're proposing. The DARCs team [1] took 4 years to figure out a usable bloomery based on archaeologically known designs and years of prior experience, and it took a decade more to get all the modern materials out of the design. You could certainly cold-work iron if you could identify the right meteors, but those are rare and notoriously difficult to find [2].
All I'm saying is that you're vastly underestimating the knowledge, skill, and cultural context that went into these technologies.
I suppose my question is: How do you know this? Alexander was surrounded by hand-picked men his father had groomed for decades in some cases. Offering council on every part of war fighting, from tactics to strategy to logistics. Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do?
Earlier in the article the author mentions alexander's perfect track record of logistical balancing. Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart.
Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank. That takes the work of many dozens of officers, and well trained soldiers drilled to follow orders even under intense stress.
Of course this is all speculation on my part, as we simply can't know due to the mythologizing of the man and his life. But it's a question I find interesting to ponder.