Human Flaw Bombs

Did you know we are running out of sand?

Sand.

Grains of sand.

As in the unit of measure used to describe an impossibly large amount of something… We are running out of that shit.

I didn’t even know that was a non-renewable resource. But apparently we keep making mirrors and artificial islands, and now our grandchildren don’t get to have any beaches.

No one gave us a manual titled “So you have reached your evolutionary peak and are trying to avoid self-destruction: An Illustrated ‘How To’ Guide.” No, instead we just sort of got here through a series of biological and historical accidents and we are now staring down the barrel of existential risks. Sounds ridiculous, but that’s what you get when you let humans run shit. That’s because humans are flawed creatures. And when you take those flawed creatures and you place them in positions of high power and responsibility, the flaws get amplified and propagated and we start hurting ourselves at scale.

For example: I’m constantly losing shit. Phones, keys, wallet, self-esteem, you name it, I’ve lost it. But the stakes are pretty small; there are no children hospitals collapsing because I can’t find my iPhone. Worst case scenario, I just annoy my wife for the hundredth time. That’s a fallout I can contain. But what happens when you take that basic and seemingly innocuous flaw and you elevate it to a position of high power and responsibility? What happens when we start losing the nuclear weapons?

As if you needed another reason to not get any sleep tonight, we estimate that there are about 50 nuclear warheads missing around the world.

Missing.

That’s enough nuclear material to sterilize the surface of the earth… and we just don’t know where they are. How does one lose a whole-ass nuclear weapon? Did it roll underneath your bed? Did your dog eat it? Seems like something dangerous enough for one to create idiot-proof safeguards so that they never ever get lost. But that would be underestimating the power of basic human incompetence.

Check out this terrifying quote from this article by Alison Maloney of The Sun magazine:

In 1958, a US B-47 bomber was returning from a test mission with a Mark 15 nuclear bomb on board when a fleet of F100 US Air Force interceptors, practicing for a Russian invasion, engaged in a simulated interception.

But one of the planes collided with the bomber, and the pilot decided to make an emergency landing on a nearby runway.

Finding the runway was CLOSED for construction work, he decided to ditch the 8,000lb bomb just off the Georgian coast.

It landed on mudflats and sunk without trace. Despite searches by frogmen, ships and overhead blimps, it was never seen again.

The US government denied that the bomb had its plutonium trigger but in a letter written in 1966, the assistant to the secretary of defense, WJ Howard, described the bomb as a “complete weapon.”

Dude… like… what the fuck. You have the whole sky and you still crash into each other and now we lost a fully armed nuclear weapon a couple of miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. I typed Savannah, Georgia into my Google Maps and it’s a six hour and twelve minute drive away from my house. That’s uncomfortably close to me. If a curious crab finds his way into the switch of that nuclear device and sets it off, Savannah and half of Jacksonville are gone from the map in an instant. I know those are all Trump counties, but that’s just not worth an election to me.

This happens with alarming frequency. A plane carrying a bomb is flying over the Pacific, there’s a malfunction, said bomb gets dislodged and falls to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again. We don’t know what the fuck is down there. To this day, we have mapped less than ten percent of the ocean floor. The average depth of the ocean is nearly two miles and it covers 70% of our planet. That’s all to say that WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS DOWN THERE.

For all we know, there’s some hyper-advanced, lost civilization at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, lying dormant, waiting for their opportunity to strike. And we just keep handing them the weapons they will use to destroy us.

Seems a little irresponsible doesn’t it?