The subestimated Nuclear Risk
Posted by nmarcel on June 1, 2009
When driving a car or flying an airplane there is some risk of accident. An accident with variable level of damage, from material losses thru minor or major injuries and death. Depending on multiple factors, the risk of accidents can be estimated from statistical data: A drunken man driving an old Cadillac has more risk than a commercial jet pilot. For any study group of cases there are more or less probabilities of disaster to occur over certain time. For example, let’s say in the world a fatal car accident occurs every 0.5 seconds, but a fatal aviation accident occurs every 6 months, a fatal merchant navy accident every year and so on. The risk is never zero for any human activity, industry, machine or system.
That danger of risk can also be considered about the way governments along history have solved conflicts or threats. Many times a diplomatic or pacific solution can be found, but some others no. Most of time terrorist attacks could be stopped, but some of those eventually will have success. If we are concerned about a mad wanting to kill us with a gun, then we should be concerned also about killing ourselves with one accident of our own thousand guns. That is the type of risk that the current status of nuclear weapons have over mankind.
The next Google Techtalk, presented by professor Martin Hellman, is the cause of this post and a voice of “hey! wake up, see and do something” about the subject.
