The Kuwaiti oil fires were indeed an environmental disaster [0]; the main lasting effect is increased acid rain from sulfur dioxide. The fires produced half the

The Kuwaiti oil fires were indeed an environmental disaster [0]; the main lasting effect is increased acid rain from sulfur dioxide. The fires produced half the USA's entire sulfur dioxide output daily while they burned for months. The incident is considered one of the worst oil spills ever [1]. I didn't really like WarGames; I preferred Hackers. In Hackers, the world is not naturally poor or unpleasant, but is made that way by the systems which humans build. Those systems are used to oppress and control users, leading to hackers insisting that their rebellion is no less grand than one which will "hack the planet" and destroy these planet-scale systems of control. There will be another Y2K. The year 2038 [2] approaches. The amount of work that we must do to rewrite the past and prepare our entire civilization for overcoming our mistakes is exponential with respect to time; the longer we put off doing the needful work, the more effort we will need. Worse, it's possible to become locked into patterns of just barely doing enough to prevent the problem from getting worse over time, but still requiring growing amounts of effort. The problem with positive thinking is that it obscures reality. I sympathize; reality is harsh and unpleasant. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires#Environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires#Environmenta... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem