5 May 1986

The future does not belong to us

A tacit premise of all arguments against the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons is that the continued existence of the homo sapiens is desirable. Let us suspended this premise for just one moment, and considere the ultimate consequence of an all-out nuclear war. Such a war wiould annihilate most -- though not necessarily all -- animal species. Survivors would probably include -- if not consist of -- insects, as they have great tolerance toward nuclear radiation. Thanks to evolution, maybe in another billion years or so, intelligent descendants of today's insects would walk the earth. They would look nothing like us, and the earth would probably look very different too. More significantly, their personalities would be different from ours; they would be more industrious, social-minded, and less desirous of individual material well-being -- truly all-for-one and, especially, one-for-all -- truly social animals. They would be genuine social animals, as indeed they have always been, unlike the so called social animals among mammalian species, which, generally speaking, tolerate and utilize society for their own ends, and are in fact lazy, self-centered, and greedy brutes. Maybe all won't be lost, after all. At least, insects would never wage nuclear war.