Text File

Aucbvax.2195 fa.arms-d utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!REM@MIT-MC Thu Jul 9 07:04:27 1981

From: Robert Elton Maas <REM MIT-MC AT> It should be pointed out (in regard to CS.WEBB's claim that GRIT can never reduce weapons levels below MAD level) that MAD is quite loosely defined. This looseness isn't due to the logical definition, but rather due to available data. You see, "the unknowns are bigger than the knowns", i.e. mutual ASSURED destruction of 10% means that between 10% and 99% of the population will be destroyed. All it means logicaly is that at least 10% are guaranteed to be destroyed even if all factors go against the attacker, like fog which blocks the flash of heat&light and light breezes that fail to distribute fallout. But most of the time things aren't that bad (for the attacker) and in fact many more people will be killed than MAD calculations would give, like twice or three times as many, until you start approaching 100% when it's more accurate to say only 1/2 or 1/3 as many will survive as MAD would predict (or maybe 0 will survive even though MAD calculations said 95% killed). Thus we could go well below 100% MAD and still be pretty confident that we'll utterly destroy the "enemy" just by reasonable luck. Thus we migh be willing to go below MAD even if our goal is to destroy the "enemy" totally.

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.