#110: MAD
There’s this theory: If both sides have enough nuclear weapons to completely annihilate each other, they won’t actually do it, knowing that if they were to shoot first, they’d still get destroyed. This is called Mutually Assured Destruction.
It doesn’t account for accidents, malfunctions, and human error (see Stanislav Petrov). And it only works if both sides are truly aware of what happens when nuclear missiles start flying.
Enter the video game DEFCON. It features a stylized representation of a world map, inspired by several 80s movies (most of all Wargames), and pits multiple players in their roles as various global powers against each other. The game’s name and main gameplay mechanic stems from the DEFCON notation used by the US military, and starts out at DEFCON 5. At that stage, everything is fine, no shots are being fired, and players are simply placing their missile silos, early warning radars, and military units. After a while, the game moves on to DEFCON 4. Gameplay-wise, nothing much changes, but it would represent the breaking down of diplomatic relations in the game world, putting everyone’s militaries on high alert.
At DEFCON 3, conventional warfare starts. You are now in a shooting war, but there are only military units involved.
DEFCON 2 doesn’t change anything gameplay-wise. But it heightens the tension, because you know what’s next.
Upon reaching DEFCON 1, players can launch nuclear missiles from their silos, bombers, and submarines. And the game’s world map is suddenly filled with arcs tracing the missiles flight paths as they shoot towards the targets. And these missiles do not have to be aimed at military targets. Most of them will go towards cities.
Fittingly enough, the game’s tagline is “Everybody dies”. No one really wins a game of DEFCON, there’s just someone who has lost the least.
It’s a truly scary game. Watch this video from Polygon to see why:
“DEFCON scares me and science says it will scare you too” by Polygon
As a video game, it’s a testament that yes, games can influence you. But that influence is not necessarily bad. DEFCON demonstrates just another facet of this: By showing you the consequences, you might think differently about something you hadn’t really regarded as a threat before.
The Disease You Know…
There are certain diseases well suited to causing panic. You would not, for example, want to be anywhere near someone who has Ebola. Measles, on the other hand, who cares? It’s not a dangerous disease, right? But that’s only because there’s not only a vaccine for measles, many people in the western world are also vaccinated against measles. In other places, the reality looks different: Measles is killing more people in the DRC than Ebola—and faster.
Underdog Computer
As Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary rolled around, you might have read the claim that even a smart doorbell from today had enough processing power to spare to get Apollo 11 to the Moon and back. And while todays computers do have more raw processing power available, they would still not be capable of getting Apollo 11 to the moon: The Underappreciated Power of the Apollo Computer.
You Can’t Handle the Truth
Conspiracy theories rely on being just plausible enough, relying on a tiny kernel of truth, while no one can actually disprove it. Whenever someone argues against the conspiracy theory, they can never really disprove it, and besides, they’re just covering for the conspirators anyway. And then, sometimes, a conspiracy is kinda-sorta right, giving fuel to all others: How the Jeffrey Epstein Case Gives Rise to Conspiracy Theories.
Write It Down
If you’re anything like me, you have a stack of notebooks, ones you never finished writing in. They all started out as a great, unsullied canvas for whatever idea or project you were going to use them for. Eventually, life got in the way, and you abandoned it: Why it’s so hard to finish a notebook or journal.
Hidden Pollution
We’ve known about air pollution from industry and vehicles for a long time, and there are legal limits in place to control how much pollution they put into the air. But there are other, completely unregulated air polluters that you maybe even have at home: The Hidden Air Pollution in Our Homes.
Hidden Danger
And it’s not just air pollution inside our homes. CO2 is not just a culprit in climate change, it also has other, serious effects on us humans: Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard, scientists warn.
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