Nuclear War?

"Frothing at the mouth" Democrats are accusing President-elect Donald J. Trump of inciting war with Russia.  Last week he was a friend, then a "lap dog" for Vladimir Putin, then heading to armageddon, but not the small town in Illinois of the same name.

Thanks to President Barack Hussein Obama's "conflict resolution" and "leading from behind" philosophies we now have fewer nuclear weapons than Russia.  They have 8484 and we have 7506, but there are only about 1200 good nuclear targets on this planet. And, truthfully only a handful in a global conflict as you want to leave something worth having. 

The truth of the matter is most nuclear weapons everywhere have been built by defense contractors for the profits.  At one time we were said to have over 20,000 as GE Industries made $5 million on each one they put together and they know how to deal with US Senators.

There is doubt many of Russia's would work as all nuclear weapons have polonium triggers.  It is a rare element that is hard to make and even harder to shape into the perfect sphere BB-sized trigger that generates nine fast neutrons to set the bomb off on implosion.

We say their nukes will not work as every Russian ship we have seen in Europe was a pile of rust and their aircraft are similarly badly maintained, hence many crashes. Polonium has an 18 month half-life which means those triggers have to be replaced annually. They are very expensive and difficult to make.

At the age of 18, and fresh out of high school, my uncle Fred was a top-notch machine tool maker and inventor.  He applied for a patent on a gizmo that machined non-ferrous metals precisely.  This is a real trick as pure non-ferrous metals do not soften amenably over a range of temperatures.  They melt instantly on hitting their melting points and "puddle."  His target market was clock, watch and instrument makers who have to work in non-magnetic metals. While they were alloys with mixed melting points, softening over a range they were still difficult on lathes, grinders and shapers.  Polonium is even worse.  It is a pure element with a single melting point.  Fred's tool would handle it perfectly.

He filed a patent application with some help from my patent holder grandfather.  Both my grandfathers were patent holders.  Fred was my mother's brother.  

Within a month two FBI guys were in his shop telling him the government was taking his patent as a national secret.  He was not told it was the key to nuclear weapons until after the war. So he re-filed only to have been beaten by a German company that hit on the idea. Under prevailing patent law of 1946 to 2015 he would have had a claim as he was "...first to invent" and not "...first to file," as patent law had been from the beginning.  That change produced so much litigation the USPTO had to switch back, much to the consternation of patent lawyers who had been cleaning up.

The good news was that it kept my uncle out of the war but at the price of frequent visits from two guys wearing hats, driving four-door Plymouths and grim expressions checking up on his latest gizmos.

Meanwhile my other grandfather was heading up an engineering prototyping team to create a special crate for shipping torpedoes as they were not working due to damage in transit so he developed the first of the "damage free" shipping containers.  The point is that these men made great contributions without making real money from them, but it was wartime and that is who we were.

Now everything is about money: witness "climate change."  It is false and older physical scientists know as they were properly taught.  We fear for what the younger ones do not know as there is reason to believe they are lacking critical concepts and attitudes as revealed in publications.  If my suspicions are real we may be in for an intellectual collapse far more destructive than a nuclear war.

Adrian Vance