Editorial – Mar 2022: Are we still here?

Hello everyone,

Are you still here? Good. World War Three is delayed then. For now.

From a geek perspective, not just for an end of the world scenario but no doubt discussions on what would you be doing for your last time on Earth, given the chance, what would you do? The answers tend to vary, depending on how much time you have, from watching your favourite film, TV episode, read a favourite book, hug or ring a loved one. Et cetera really as there are many options, as you pick your own choice and hope you’re reached an interesting bit before it happens.

Of course, all of this depends on an idealised end where such time is available. In reality, things like that tend to end unexpectedly, so unless its some sort of prolonged terminal illness, such opportunities are rare and least expected when it happens. One can only imagine the strength of a geek’s synapses that as they slowly close down one can relive at least one favoured memory. Does that sound morbid or the kind of heavy answer you would expect from me? The fact that we geeks can be a little morbid or occasionally seem bloodthirsty looking at the option, depending what we are discussing, does tend to separate us from normal mortals. Hopefully, those of us with a high imagination/creative quotient will be figuring out a last minute save from a dangerous situation. Doesn’t mean we would succeed, short of being Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley, but you know what I mean, but we would still be looking at all the options for survival.

I think it’s the nature of mind games to think through such situations and certainly a norm for us with a writer’s bent and we live in a multi-choice world. To have one answer for all of us would make us very dull. We want to think we would face such options better prepared than just proclaim an expletive at the end.

From personal experience from serious illnesses and some as near death experiences, your body doesn’t really care in such situations what is going on outside itself so the answer to the above question is probably none of the above. Hardly any comfort with a potential world war three hanging over our heads but it should raise your desire to survive and sort out any other problems afterwards.

As you might have realised by now, I started writing this editorial at the start of the month, leaving myself a gap for revisions and editing before drawing any conclusions. Maybe even an opportunity to flick one last editorial on-line before a nuclear strike, although that would wipe out any computer technology is a flash. My original thought was: Any ending will depend on what happens in three weeks time and grateful that a Winter Olympics persuaded Putin to delay and hope he’s not a bad loser or any of the Russian team been trying certain enhancements. If that happens, this editorial might be going on prematurely, hopefully, for anyone that is left with a satellite link. I was nearly right even if the threat is still here.

Even so, much of third world war protocol is stopped by mutual agreed destruction so no one wins. This also assumes that no leader is going to back down in what is essentially a game of bluff that would turn out to be fatally true as defence grid choices flash on. A sign of weakness is always seen as an opportunity. Oddly, for our scenario, Putin is of an age where even if his objectives fail, he doesn’t have anything to lose for trying other than political advantage which makes for a frightening period of time we live in.

All major wars start from a game of dare of stepping into another country’s territory and thinking it won’t go further and then get bigger, based off how further can a particular nation go before there is a reaction leading into a major war. It’s an old template, just with bigger weapons and, alas, bigger world-wide consequences. The threat is already there as Putin has said he would order attacks on any country that gets in the way of his aims. So far we only know one of those and the rest are his hidden agenda.

One dictator with a finger wavering over a red button is more than enough to hold ransom on the rest of the world. We need to ensure that never happens again. Assuming we can get out of this alive, we have also demonstrated much of the world can act together as one and such activity might be seen as a way to the future. That has to be seen as a level of optimism if we can get through this. It might not lead to nuclear disarmament, simply because it only takes one rogue nation like North Korea to discretely gather nuclear material for a dirty bomb, but it might reduce the number of warheads as a collective. I mean, how many nuclear bombs does it take to destroy a world’s population?

Presuming this is all resolved, there should be an argument that all nations needs a news service that is not under government control. Honest news or at least access to it will ensure any country’s population will have access to what their leaders are really doing and the reaction to the rest of the world. This also includes the Internet and to remove fake news simply by the need to have more than one verification. With country leaders thinking they can get away with lying at least they can be held accountable to their own people. It doesn’t necessarily need total human control. AI algorithms can check information quickly and put queries against any news not fully trusted. We might even end up with an honest world.

Thank you, take care, good night and let’s hope there is something and someone, that’s you by the way, is here for the next editorial.

Geoff Willmetts

editor: www.SFCrowsnest.info

A Zen thought: Living is for living. Dying lasts forever.

What Qualities Does A Geek Have: Think Of a number. Then another.

The Reveal: You can’t get insurance against nuclear incursion of your house and garden.

Observation: I used to find gilt golden-edged and then realised it was the wrong guilt.

 Observation: What is it was Hollywood with demonic murderous vehicles? OK, Spielberg started it with ‘Duel’ (1971) with a lorry, then there was ‘Killdozer’ (1974), ‘The Car’ (1977) Stephen King with ‘Christine’ (1983) both as a book and film, and ‘The Wraith’ (1985), although the latter did have a ghost driver. Only Herbie from ‘The Love Bug (1968 and so forth with sequels) seems to break or started the trend but only ever got problems with humans. Even so, possessed cars seems to be an American thing, mostly, I guess, because they are a car culture. Mind you, with the new robot cars, that might be a thing of the past or no one will sit in them. Oddly, none of them have been compared to the Knight Industries Two Thousand, well until they start having conversations with you and refuse to give you a turbo-boost, insisting they fly instead.

 Observation: I recently got a copy of the press kit for the 1984 film ‘2010’, as you do, and its noted in there that the Discovery only had one pod left in its pod bay here as well as in the film shouldn’t be any. Two pods lost when Bowman tried to rescue Poole and the third when Bowman went out to investigate the giant monolith.

 Observation: With the trend of old film names having ‘The’ added to the titles, I’m thinking ‘Predator’, Suicide Squad’ and ‘Batman’ is there a lack of imagination in Hollywood or should we be waiting for a film title simply called ‘The’?

 Feeling Stressed: Nuclear war will do that for everyone but mostly its survivors.