This reminds me of a scene from Three Worlds Collide[1]: >"My lord," the Ship's Confessor said, "suppose the laws of physics in our universe had been such that

This reminds me of a scene from Three Worlds Collide[1]: >"My lord," the Ship's Confessor said, "suppose the laws of physics in our universe had been such that the ancient Greeks could invent the equivalent of nuclear weapons from materials just lying around. Imagine the laws of physics had permitted a way to destroy whole countries with no more difficulty than mixing gunpowder. History would have looked quite different, would it not?" >Akon nodded, puzzled. "Well, yes," Akon said. "It would have been shorter." >"Aren't we lucky that physics didn't happen to turn out that way, my lord? That in our own time, the laws of physics don't permit cheap, irresistible superweapons?" >Akon furrowed his brow - >"But my lord," said the Ship's Confessor, "do we really know what we think we know? What different evidence would we see, if things were otherwise? After all - if you happened to be a physicist, and you happened to notice an easy way to wreak enormous destruction using off-the-shelf hardware - would you run out and tell you?" >"No," Akon said. A sinking feeling was dawning in the pit of his stomach. "You would try to conceal the discovery, and create a cover story that discouraged anyone else from looking there." To answer your question about nukes: There are close to 20,000 nuclear weapons in existence. Over 2,000 of them have been detonated in the past 60 years, but most of those were underground. Detonating all nukes would certainly cause problems, but it wouldn't be the end of humanity. 1. http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pdf http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pd...