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Navy's stealth destroyer designed for the video gamer generation


Zach Caldwell

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Being an "Old Navy Destroyer Man" myself, I have been following the development of the USS Zumwalt. It is truly a marvelous piece of  machinery. It is not magical, nor can it be in more than one place at a time. THAT, is the crux of the problem. Where once we had a Navy that could be in many places, all at the same time, we no longer enjoy that ability. It would be easy to point fingers and assign blame for this condition, but that would be foolish and would solve nothing. It is exceedingly unlikely that we will have a multi-ocean Navy in the foreseeable future, if ever. For whatever reasons we no longer have the will nor the treasure to be the world's policeman. While we made many mistakes along the way (we are only humans, after all) our country managed to pretty much make the "bad guys" stay home from 1945 until now. 

 

Sadly, I do not see any country ready and willing to take up the reins and do what we did. We squandered the lives of the best young people we had in an effort to bring peace to our planet and, for a short while, we were successful. That has ended now and, like the opening the gates of a prison, we are seeing a mad scramble of those who wish to be overlords to their neighbors, all attempting to gain dominance over others in the mad race to to control what is left of the rapidly disappearing supply of raw materials, food, water and energy.

 

 

It is very tempting to become a hermit and ignore the "outside" world around us, but, the fact is, it is going to take the cooperation of ALL of us if the Human Race is to survive. I do not see any of that cooperation yet and, I fear I will not live long enough to see it happen. I say to all of you who read this, encourage our young people to start NOW, while we still have a little time, to end this insane race towards mutual destruction. Let us "fix" our environment, gain new knowledge - not how to kill each other, but, rather how to keep us all alive!

 

To do otherwise is to ensure that our planet becomes a dead ball of mud, devoid of life.

 

 

Charles Bird

SeaBird

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For the most part I agree with you seabird. But I would only add that this planet will not become devoid of life. Life will continue on. The real question is will human life continue on this planet? There are days I have hope and then there are days or moments when it seems the human race is doomed. I try my best to keep faith in man kind and that we will at some point come together collectively and put a stop to the madness we seem to have been in for the last few decades. Must keep hope alive, without hope we are screwed.

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There have been five mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/11/there-have-been-five-mass-extinctions-in-earths-history-now-were-facing-a-sixth/

 

So saying that i think live on earth is cycle, i think human live will be extincted some day, be it by our one doing or by some cataclysmic event.
Yes live will go on, and a new dominant specie will arise, i only hope is that they do a better job keeping this world than what we are doing now.
And no, I am not being pessimistic, I am being realistic. 
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Zach and Anjobranco,

 

 

Some years ago, there was a theory floating around  American military circles called "MAD" Translated, that was Mutually Assured Destruction. That was during a time when the world was, more or less, sane and those who were not, did not have access to those weapons that could, literally, destroy the world. That is no longer true, there are groups, countries and peoples out "there" today who would happily destroy the entire planet just so they could go to their version of "Paradise"!

 

The worst "boogieman" of my generation was Adolf Hitler and, compared to some "leaders" of today, he was a mild mannered gentleman! What kind of leader is it who send young children into crowds as walking bombs? Beheads young girls because they want to learn how to read? Or go to school? Goodness knows, we Americans are not perfect and we have our share of kooks and nut cases, but, as far as I know, we have not wiped out whole villages because they did not force their women to walk around looking like walking circus tents.

 

It MAY seem that I and picking on a certain religious group found primarily in the Middle East, and, I suppose, they are the most "noticeable" at the moment. That however, s NOT my intent. I only mention them because they are the "boogiemen" of the hour right now. We humans are living at a "tipping point" at this moment in time.

 

Our planet is dying, but there is still time to reverse the process, if only we would cease our squabbling and pull together. We have the knowledge and the expertise to correct what ails our homeworld, if only we would work together. It would call for sacrifice by  everyone and would probably mean a huge change in lifestyles for all of us and THAT is what will NOT happen. Look around you, ALL of you, we all know people who would refuse to give up their creature comforts for the sake of the human race.

 

There have been mass extinctions on our planet before now and I believe we are headed for yet another. This one, unlike those of the past, will come on us slowly, maybe even generations of agony until we are all gone. I would challenge everyone to take a careful look around and, if you are honest with yourselves, you will see the dying process next door, the next block or the next town.

 

I am speaking, of course, as an old engineer who has worked and traveled over much of our world, seen hunger at its most awful levels, children sitting alongside the road with dull, dead eyes as we passed by. Adults carrying their dead children in their arms as they trudge to somewhere else, anywhere else. Mothers selling their bodies so that their child could have a rotted fruit to stave off starvation one more day. Fathers working  in the most terrible conditions,  for the chance of a moldy loaf of bread to feed his family. The most awful thing was common, dead babies, their bloated bodies being scavenged by wild animals. Those of us who live in places like America have yet to see such tragedies, but, I believe they are coming to our hometowns in the not too distant future.

 

I hope I am painting such an awful picture that I am waking you up! That you have the same nightmares as I do! That you wake up in the morning in a cold sweat of fear! There is still time to do something about it, how much? Hell if I know, but it IS headed our way. It is not my intent to frighten people, but, if THAT is what it takes, who better than an old man who has seen it first hand? At my age, it will not affect me, I will be long dead before the end comes,  but my children and my children's children will face times unimaginably harsh.

 

Charles Bird

SeaBird

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It MAY seem that I and picking on a certain religious group found primarily in the Middle East, and, I suppose, they are the most "noticeable" at the moment. That however, s NOT my intent. I only mention them because they are the "boogiemen" of the hour right now. We humans are living at a "tipping point" at this moment in time.

 

 

 

Yes those are the most noticeable, but fortunately those we can "see", the "boogieman" that we must fear the most is the unseen one.
 
Those that use and twist religion any kind of religion (Muslims, Christians, Catholics, Jews, and many more), to justify the killing and destruction of everything that they do not know or understand, that it is different from them.
 
Those that believe that:
 
- Gay man should be killed because they are abominations
- Mental and physical disabled should be killed because they are aberrations
- All the persons that do not believe in Good as they perceive it, should be kill because if do not believe in what they believe they are demon spawn.
 
And the worst is that they cam be any body, your next door neighbor, the guy that lives in the house just across the street.
They lurk in the shadows, hidden behind the mask of social decorum.
 
 
Those that are rich and use man woman and children in poor country's making them work in factories countless hours just to received a bowl of rice as payment, just so they could get more richer.
 
Those that robe children of the joys of childhood, at the same time children in the USA and Europe happily play ball, in some Asian country children are locked in some factory all day making those balls.
 
Those that make children fight wars, literally making them living killer zombies.
 
 
Unfortunately goodwill alone will not solve mankind problems. Why? 
Because of the status quo of power, power gives money and money buy power, those in power will not relinquish the power they have.
 
Per ups what earth need it is an Apocalypse that levels all, and make us start all hover again, hoping will be people that have learn whit our mistakes and do not make them again.
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Anjobranco,

 

All that you say is true, more true than you will ever believe, but they all pale in the face of the Death of the entire Planet! Man's inhumanity to man has been with us since we crawled out of the caves and, as bad as it was, the race survived. What is coming down the "pike" in our direction may very well wipe us all out, the victims of persecution as well as the persecutors.

 

The Apocalypse that I envision headed our way has the potential of wiping ALL biological life from our world. All through the history of the human race, when disaster struck, those who could run away, hide or overpower the tragedy facing us would survive and could begin anew. Now, we are facing manmade changes to the basic structure of our world and escape is not possible. There is no hiding place. There is no "escape tunnel". There is no hero to rescue us. Those of us who perceive the danger we are in are derided, ridiculed and called names whenever we even mention slowing down our consumption, proposing to make REAL changes in our habits and lifestyles or making small changes to reduce the pollutants sent into our atmosphere.

 

 

In my lifetime, I have seen huge swaths of vital farmlands paved over to grow houses, parking lots and malls. I have sen our clean air become murky and polluted, so polluted that there are places where filter masks must be worn to prevent the pollution particles from entering our lungs. I have seen farm land poisoned with chemicals and no longer even weeds will grow, it is barren and dead. I have seen pristine  lakes and rivers become so polluted they catch on fire and I have seen rainfall so acid, it burns one's skin to be outside.

 

 

These are ALL things we know how to fix, but we seem to prefer ignoring it, perhaps hoping it will go away on its own. As I have said, we are at a tipping point, once we pass it, there will be no coming back, no survival for the teeming masses in our cities. When that point is reached, mass hysteria will take over with riots, mayhem and murder for the last crust of bread.

 

 

I hope I am gone when that time arrives!

 

Charles Bird

SeaBird

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The Apocalypse that I envision headed our way has the potential of wiping ALL biological life from our world.

 

Now that is just plain an exaggeration.  I might agree with the rest of your points, but lets be honest: the issue isn't destroying 'all' life, it's rendering the world uninhabitable by humans.

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When I say, "ALL LIFE", I mean life as we currently recognize life. Protozoa, plankton and diatoms, while technically ARE life, they are not in any position to challenge us for primacy on the planet. It took many billions of years for life, as we recognize life, to mutate and take possession of the Planet Earth. The chemical poisons we are spreading around the surface of the planet, including those that are highly radioactive, do have the power to destroy even one celled creatures, from which, presumably, all live is derived.

 

 

As resources become depleted, those that remain will become more valuable, valuable enough to go to war over. Most probably, that war will include our huge arsenal of nuclear weapons.  With what has already been stockpiled, I am pretty sure we could irradiate the entire Earth into a sterile ball of melted stone.

 

If some life did happen to survive, or new life take root here as it did originally, I hardly believe it would be anything we would recognize. I am not an an expert on the life of stars, but I deem it unlikely our star would last long enough for a complete new cycle, started from radioactive stone, burned to a cinder.

 

Naturally, that is the worst case scenario, but the possibility still must be explored. I do NOT see any cooler heads working to prevent that scenario. The voices of reason are shushed or laughed out of existence while we gleefully continue to dance while the ship is sinking. I would like to think that there are some who believe we should "Do Something", but, other than a few politicians who hope to cash in on a bonanza of votes over the issue, there is NO progress being made to save our planet.

 

Charles Bird

SeaBird

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I am not going so far as to say that earth is sentient, but i believe she is capable to self regulated.
 
Imagine two solutions of different concentrations, if you connected them, they will equalize.
 
So i believe that if we push earth beyond is tilting point, earth will try to balance it self and we will not like the result of that.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Anjobranco,

 

I am not in a position to deny your words, I am merely an old engineer and can can only work with things I can see, touch and make submit to my will. All else, I must defer to theologians. If we destroy our world before we can leave it, it will make little difference, we and ALL our kind will perish. Should that happen, we will disappear as if we had never existed and all knowledge of our having been here will be lost. THAT is a frightening thing to leave as our gift to future generations. Especially when it is NOT necessary. We CAN stop this folly and we CAN reverse the damage we have done. We have the knowledge and the science right now that will help us save the planet and form the foundation for more and better ways to do it.

 

Are we so blind, so bigoted that that we are willing to risk the lives of our children and grand children? Our future generations are the ONLY reason we exist right now, I care little for their religious beliefs, their sexual preferences or the color of their skins, they are our legacy to the world of our birth. If we truly have souls as we have been taught, they should be cringing at the thought that we are condemning future generations the the legacy of misery and death.

 

 

This is something about which I am a fanatic and, if I had the stamina, I would shout it on every street corner on the planet.

 

Charles Bird

SeaBird

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