Other Intelligent Species Prior to Man

[bilby]

Back in the 80s or 90s the US launched a science missal that looked to Russians on a trajectory a polar shot would take. The international notifications had been made but it did not filter down to the Russian military.

The Russian leader had a clock running and was close to a launch on warning when it got straightened out.

There have been several other instances not th least of which was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The missing launch notification is almost certainly the incident I was describing.

As for the Cuban Missile Crisis--scary but nobody thought they were under attack, it wasn't even close to the bad incidents.

The Secratery Of Defense in the 90s in a docmenmtary he went to sleep not knowing if he woud wake up.

Hawks on both sides were pushing the leaders to go for it. Kruschev was fgacing a potential coup.

In the 80s I knew someone who had been a field tactical nuke officer in Europe. Something he witnessed. Warsaw Pack troops were massing and moving around without warning on maneuvers near a border alarming NATO. As tension escalated field tactical missiles were prepared. The other side also started to escalate.

Curtis LeMay the founder of SAC on audio tape thought we should go for it and settle the Cold War during the Cuban crisis..

The JFK tapes show him to have been an anchor of stability as things got tense.

A little known fact. Truman considered a preemptive strike against China in The Korean War. The main problem was the stockpile. Using weapons on China would reduce the weapons and deterrence in Europe.

We used nuclear weapons. It is when not if there will be a nuclear exchange. When things get really bad globally as population grows unchecked it is inevitable. It is in our DNA.

We were preparing to attack Cuba. Troops were marshaling. It was discovered later Russians in Cuba would have launched.

It as not scary, it was insanity. Human 'intelligence' for you.

If evolution with completion among species including plants is a constant, then we know what may b out there. Predator and prey. The Star Trek saga covered some of the possibilities.

You can rest easy. Population hasn't "grown unchecked" for almost sixty years, and the only thing keeping it going now is demographic lag - the people having children today were born a couple of decades ago, when the number of surviving children per woman was much higher; And life expectancy has steadily been increasing, so there is a long delay before the effects of falling birth rates per woman translate into falling population numbers.

The solution to the population growth problem that so engaged the big thinkers of the 1960s and '70s turned out to be right under their noses - all that was required was a safe and reliable contraceptive method that was under the control of women. This was developed in the '60s, and has been steadily improving since, in terms of quality, availability, and price.

Add to that the effects of reduced infant mortality, and access to primary education for girls, and you have a world population whose women, on average, want fewer than two children each, and have the means to make that desire a reality.

World population is expected to peak between 2040 and 2060, at between nine and eleven billion.

Population growth isn't a threat today, any more than the USSR is - and for much the same reason: These threats no longer exist.

It was reasonable to be concerned about them in the middle of the 20th Century, but anyone worrying about either since the end of the '80s simply hasn't been paying attention.

 

[Swammerdami]

As for the Cuban Missile Crisis--scary but nobody thought they were under attack, it wasn't even close to the bad incidents.

Are TFTers unaware of this story? One Russian submarine was out of contact with Russian command and was under attack by American destroyers. (The Americans were using practice depth charges. Russian command had been informed of this, but the sub assumed the depth charges were deadly.)

On a nuclear-armed Russian sub, both the Captain and the Political Officer must agree before a nuke can be launched. Both did agree to launch a nuclear torpedo which would have destroyed the American warship. Escalation might have followed. However that sub happened to have the flotilla commander aboard, a certain Vasili Arkhipov. He countermanded the order. The nuclear torpedo was not fired.

Here is a trailer for a PBS dramatization of Arkhipov's story, "The man who saved the world." (Unfortunately, the full episode is not available in my country.)

(Although nobody suspects this except me AFAIK, I'm cynical enough to wonder if this whole story was concocted long after the Crisis to conjure up a fictional hero.)


ETA: Google comes up with another Youtube titled "The man who saved the world" but this appears to be a Scandinavian film about a 1983 nuclear incident.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As for the Cuban Missile Crisis--scary but nobody thought they were under attack, it wasn't even close to the bad incidents.

Are TFTers unaware of this story? One Russian submarine was out of contact with Russian command and was under attack by American destroyers. (The Americans were using practice depth charges. Russian command had been informed of this, but the sub assumed the depth charges were deadly.)

On a nuclear-armed Russian sub, both the Captain and the Political Officer must agree before a nuke can be launched. Both did agree to launch a nuclear torpedo which would have destroyed the American warship. Escalation might have followed. However that sub happened to have the flotilla commander aboard, a certain Vasili Arkhipov. He countermanded the order. The nuclear torpedo was not fired.

Any decent sonar tech should be able to tell the difference between a noisemaker and one with enough boom to sink a sub.

 

[steve_bank]

Looking at our entire eco system from virus to mammals intelligence would seem to mean survival. Wolves and deer live in a balnce of numbers. Neither one grows without bound.

Only humans consume until it becomes destructive.

 

[skepticalbip]

On a nuclear-armed Russian sub, both the Captain and the Political Officer must agree before a nuke can be launched. Both did agree to launch a nuclear torpedo which would have destroyed the American warship. Escalation might have followed. However that sub happened to have the flotilla commander aboard, a certain Vasili Arkhipov. He countermanded the order. The nuclear torpedo was not fired.

That sounds a bit wasteful... Plus a nuclear torpedo fired at a destroyer close enough to be a threat by dropping depth charges would likely sink the sub too. As I understand, the intent of nuclear torpedoes was to take out a whole task force of ships. Either that or to be fired into a naval harbor to take out all the ships docked there and the port facilities. Seems that only conventional HE torpedoes would be needed to eliminate a destroyer. Surely the Soviet subs would also carry conventional torpedoes along with any nuclear torpedo. Either way, sinking a U.S. destroyer could have started a hot war.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Looking at our entire eco system from virus to mammals intelligence would seem to mean survival. Wolves and deer live in a balnce of numbers. Neither one grows without bound.

Only humans consume until it becomes destructive.

Many animals consume to destructive levels. Then their population crashes and their prey recovers.

 

[DBT]

Looking at our entire eco system from virus to mammals intelligence would seem to mean survival. Wolves and deer live in a balnce of numbers. Neither one grows without bound.

Only humans consume until it becomes destructive.

Many animals consume to destructive levels. Then their population crashes and their prey recovers.

We are able to sustain our own destructive activity far longer through technology.

 

[steve_bank]

Looking at our entire eco system from virus to mammals intelligence would seem to mean survival. Wolves and deer live in a balnce of numbers. Neither one grows without bound.

Only humans consume until it becomes destructive.

Many animals consume to destructive levels. Then their population crashes and their prey recovers.

It is limited by environment. In a good time food for prey increases and population increases. Predator increases until
prey population decreases. Prey decreases and predator decreases. Prey begins to rebound and the cycle repeats. I don'tknow if homeostasis is the right term.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Looking at our entire eco system from virus to mammals intelligence would seem to mean survival. Wolves and deer live in a balnce of numbers. Neither one grows without bound.

Only humans consume until it becomes destructive.

Many animals consume to destructive levels. Then their population crashes and their prey recovers.

It is limited by environment. In a good time food for prey increases and population increases. Predator increases until
prey population decreases. Prey decreases and predator decreases. Prey begins to rebound and the cycle repeats. I don'tknow if homeostasis is the right term.

Exactly. With many species it whipsaws back and forth.

 

[Treedbear]

It is limited by environment. In a good time food for prey increases and population increases. Predator increases until
prey population decreases. Prey decreases and predator decreases. Prey begins to rebound and the cycle repeats. I don'tknow if homeostasis is the right term.

Exactly. With many species it whipsaws back and forth.

Often more of a dynamic equilibrium than a stable one.

 

[steve_bank]

If I remember this right rabbits brought in to Australia went feral with no predators. Ate everything. Dogs were brought in to deal with rabbits and they went out of control.

 

[bilby]

If I remember this right rabbits brought in to Australia went feral with no predators. Ate everything. Dogs were brought in to deal with rabbits and they went out of control.

Australia has had a wide range of issues with introduced pests, rabbits being one well known example. We have also had a wide range of effectiveness for solutions that involve further introductions of species we hoped would control the pests.

Dogs (dingoes) were endemic to the continent for tens of thousands of years before the first rabbits arrived. Rabbits were controlled very effectively by the introduction of myxomatosis, a viral disease of rabbits.

Other successful control programs include the control of prickly pear cactus by introducing cactoblastis moths; And the control of water buffalo using riflemen in helicopters.

Less successful was the infamous attempt to control the cane beetle by introducing cane toads, which have themselves become a major pest species.

All of which is fascinating, but completely irrelevant to the question of how many humans can live sustainably on Earth. The answer to that question depends entirely on technology; The more technology, the more urbanisation, and the more mass production, the more industrialiation we can sustain, the higher that population we can sustain while avoiding unsustainable impact on other species, and on our own environment.

The very last thing we need is to "return to nature"; that implies a carrying capacity of perhaps a ten thousandth of the current population - ie 9,999 of every 10,000 people would need to disappear. That would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. Indeed, it would dwarf every historical disaster put together. So in summary, Greenpeace can fuck right off.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is limited by environment. In a good time food for prey increases and population increases. Predator increases until
prey population decreases. Prey decreases and predator decreases. Prey begins to rebound and the cycle repeats. I don'tknow if homeostasis is the right term.

Exactly. With many species it whipsaws back and forth.

Often more of a dynamic equilibrium than a stable one.

Yes, although some species take steps to make it as little of an equilibrium as possible. I'm thinking of the 13 and 17 year cicadas. Lie low for a long time, let your predators starve, then emerge en masse so there aren't enough predators to eat you. Note that both are prime--nothing with a shorter cycle length can match it, making it much harder for a predator to evolve to adapt.

You also see an inadvertent version of the same thing with desert wildflowers. I'm thinking of the Death Valley superblooms--in that case it's the plants waiting for the right conditions, but it has the same effect--in most years there's few plants to eat, thus few things around to chow down on the plants when the conditions are right.

 

[Treedbear]

Often more of a dynamic equilibrium than a stable one.

Yes, although some species take steps to make it as little of an equilibrium as possible. I'm thinking of the 13 and 17 year cicadas. Lie low for a long time, let your predators starve, then emerge en masse so there aren't enough predators to eat you. Note that both are prime--nothing with a shorter cycle length can match it, making it much harder for a predator to evolve to adapt.

They're somewhat unique. Maybe because just about everything eats them and they have no defenses.

You also see an inadvertent version of the same thing with desert wildflowers. I'm thinking of the Death Valley superblooms--in that case it's the plants waiting for the right conditions, but it has the same effect--in most years there's few plants to eat, thus few things around to chow down on the plants when the conditions are right.

Yeah, I think that's more like filling an environmental niche. Those blooms require that the pollinator species also have the ability to respond in kind. Someone might think cicadas (or nature) would have had to have knowledge of mathematics in order to have found that evolutionary solution. But it simply requires a very unusual genetic mutation that can keep account of 13 or 17 generations, which happens to work very well at thwarting the ability of predator species to become synchronized. Other species exhibit similar anomalies. Monarch butterflies seem to be programmed to fly north generation after generation until they turn around and head south again to central Mexico. Of course there are outliers which depart from the norm, so we hear a few cicadas very year. But that just serves to keep things interesting.

 

[Swammerdami]

The only time nuclear weapons have been used in anger, the target was Imperial Japan, whose behaviour over the preceding decade certainly ranks pretty close to 'deserves to be nuked', and it's certainly at least a strong likelihood that their use saved millions of both Japanese and American lives that would have been lost during the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Furthermore, if A-bombs had not been dropped on Japan, they would likely have been used in the Korean War. The world "needed" an irrefutable demonstration of these weapons' destructive power. (A demonstration in the ocean wouldn't have been convincing; some would consider it illusion or gimmick. After all, David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty "disappear.")