Nuclear Rorschach

    One of the striking things about the field of study that has grown up around nuclear weapons is that it is a field dominated by theory. No other area of military endeavor is so theoretical - not grand strategy, not tactical air combat, not guerrilla warfare - nothing. You would be far more likely to mistake nuclear weapons discussions for macro-economics or higher physics than, say, anthropology or engineering. Dominated by game theory, complicated interlocking scenarios, it sometimes seems as if nuclear weapons are all theory.

    "But this is natural," someone might say, "highly technical fields are always highly theoretical." It is true that the technology involved in nuclear weapons can seem dauntingly sophisticated. It is, in fact, rocket science. (Not to mention nuclear physics.) But the explanation that it is the technology involved that makes the field theoretical perpetuates a confusion.  Creating use-friendly software, for example, can be very complicated and involve sophisticated technology, but it's not a particularly abstract activity. Either the system is easy to use or it isn't. Testing provides a definitive answer. Highly technical fields are often complex or arcane, but that is a description of the thing itself, not its place in a process.

    Theory, on the other hand, is a particular step in the scientific method. You are confused or troubled about (or interested in) something in the world, you develop a theory to explain it, you imagine a way to test the theory, you do the actual testing (as carefully as possible), and the results either satisfy you that the theory is correct or they don't. But the important point is that theorizing is what you do before you have facts. 

    The reason we theorize so much about nuclear weapons is that we have pitifully little hard information about  them. Imagine using a chain saw twice and then being asked to create a plan for using chain saws to fight forest fires. Or using a specialized surgical tool twice and then being asked to write the procedures manual.

    We just don't know that much about nuclear weapons. Will they create dust clouds that disrupt the earth's atmosphere? We don't really know. Will their radiation cause long-term mutations? It seems our worst fears about this were not realized in Japan. Relatively few additional mutations occurred. But we don't really know. Perhaps there is something special about Japanese genetic stock and widespread radiation would have effects we can't foresee. How will people react when their entire surroundings are torn up by the roots? -Whole cities levelled? Will they give up, turn barbaric? or find vigor and pull themselves up by their bootstraps? We don't know. Would a leader with fifteen minutes to decide launch all his or her country's nuclear weapons in retaliation? We don't know.

    There is just so much we don't know about nuclear weapons. This is the cause of much of the theoretical work. We're forced to do theory because there's no experience. No practical facts to base judgments on.

    One of the most important results of this lack of data is that nuclear weapons become a sort of Rorschach test - an indeterminate black outline on which we can project our hopes and fears.

    And this is also one reason that emotions hold so much sway in our dealings with nuclear weapons. There are no facts to hold our fears or our awe in check. - No restraining hand of practical experience reaches out and pulls back our wildest imaginings.

    Demons and devils dance across the nuclear landscape because there is no light of knowledge to banish them. We have no common sense about them because we don't have enough experience with them. Nuclear weapons are the darkness under the bed. They are the unknown. They are powerful and they are largely unknown.