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   Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD (ericfielding@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:09 JST Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD

   in reply to

   • Matt Blaze
   • Carolyn
   • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
   • Simple Nomad
   • 60sRefugee

   @mattblaze @60sRefugee @CStamp @nyrath @simplenomad One hope is that the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union might not work today, but the Russian rockets are still mostly reliable. A few leaks from the International Space Station, but not many serious malfunctions.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:11 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Carolyn
     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad
     • 60sRefugee

     @60sRefugee @CStamp @nyrath @simplenomad Yeah, Nuclear fetishists love to declare that there's no alternative, simply nothing we can do. Much like the way there's no solution to health care or gun violence.

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     60sRefugee (60srefugee@spacey.space)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:12 JST 60sRefugee

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Carolyn
     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad

     @mattblaze @CStamp @nyrath @simplenomad 1/2: They *tried* to find an exit; but none logically existed. Ban nuclear weapons? Then we're back to June 1945, when total strategic (conventional) war complete with burning down cities prompted the development of nukes in the first place. International control? The USA proposed it, the Soviet Union vetoed it (while secretly working to develop their own nukes). Mutual disarmament? The first side to cheat wins.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:14 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Carolyn
     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad
     • 60sRefugee

     @CStamp @60sRefugee @nyrath @simplenomad The thing about the escalation game is that every individual move is rational, but the game itself is completely insane. And we spend almost all our effort (especially in the 50’s and 60’s) strategizing each next move instead of finding an exit.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:15 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Carolyn
     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad
     • 60sRefugee

     @CStamp @60sRefugee @nyrath @simplenomad Yes. That’s the gift left to us by those best and brightest WW II vets who ran the world for 30+ years worshipping the likes of Herman Kahn and his ilk. A giant pile of civilization-ending weapons contolled by two opposing sociopaths. Thanks a lot.

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     Carolyn (cstamp@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:16 JST Carolyn

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad
     • 60sRefugee

     @mattblaze Yikes, really? I thought it bad enough when they were telling you to CW your monochromatic images. I think it's terrifying that someone with a very thin skin and no impulse control now sits on the largest pile of nuclear arms in the world. @60sRefugee @nyrath @simplenomad

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:17 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad
     • 60sRefugee

     @60sRefugee @nyrath @simplenomad

     I find it rather disturbing that any time one mentions that a globally apocalyptic nuclear arms race is perhaps a bad thing, someone always feels the need to jump in and defend it.

   • Embed this notice
     60sRefugee (60srefugee@spacey.space)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:18 JST 60sRefugee

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
     • Simple Nomad

     @nyrath @mattblaze @simplenomad "Duck and Cover" may account for much of the generation gap between the WW2 vets and the Baby Boomers. The vets knew from personal experience how hideous war was; but they also saw what happens to people conquered by totalitarians. The Boomers by contrast grew up with an existential fear of annihilation; to them militarism was suicidal insanity.

   • Embed this notice
     Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (nyrath@spacey.space)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:19 JST Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Simple Nomad

     @mattblaze @simplenomad

     I remember when I was a child being taught to "Duck and Cover". And being shown some cartoon about a turtle.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:21 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Simple Nomad

     @simplenomad It now seems hard to believe that for the first 50% of my life I lived with an entirely rational background fear that all of civilization might end at any moment with less than 30 minutes notice, possibly by accident.

     I lack the vocabulary to describe it adequately.

   • Embed this notice
     Simple Nomad (simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:22 JST Simple Nomad

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze

     @mattblaze I lived through that era, telling younger friends about it now there is a disconnect as it is abstract. At least these relics make it real for them, maybe (hopefully) making some of my current paranoia and political “take” seem slightly more, well, justified.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:23 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they're artifacts of what was perhaps humanity's most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn't seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.

     On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:24 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     It's unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.

     The antenna was removed shortly after the site's decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:26 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story (82 foot) monolith was the centerpiece of the "Almaden Air Force Station", a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD's SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.

     Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:27 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     This is a stitched imaged made from two captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens, Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), and a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.

     The full resolution (16152x14043) version is finally up on Flickr. There had been a bug preventing the upload of very large images there, which had forced me to use a large (but reduced size, 100MP) version as a placeholder there.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 08:18:28 JST Matt Blaze

     AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.

     Several additional pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938

     #photography