Re: David Gerrold - War with the Cthorr

Wayne Throop wrote:
> ::: bacteria and nukes should be able to finish off the Chtorr. 
> 
> You mean... the way we've been wiping out AIDS and antibiotic-resistant
> diseases and preventing ocean algae blooms, and kudzu, and killer bees,
> and so on and on, wimpy earth organisms that they are?  I think you may
> have a great deal of unwarranted confidence in what technology can do.

Are we in danger of being wiped out by any of those things? Do any of 
those things have a biochemistry that is completely unlike the "good" 
stuff in the local environment that we're trying to preserve? Chtorr is 
significantly different from those examples in both of those regards.

> And IIRC most of humanity was wiped out by disease.  To be faced
> with literally hundreds of disease organisms using completely novel
> mechanisms, and failing to beat them back, seems entirely plausible
> to me.  At that point, you're trying to put *anything* back together,,
> and you're faced with space-kudzu driving out native organisms, also
> on hundreds of fronts.

And yet, humanity post-plague is still shown to have resources and 
technologies far in advance of what we've got now. They've still got the 
ability to continue major research and to manufacture lots of advanced 
technology. Presumably this means they have indeed managed to put things 
back together fairly well.

> Yes, any given infestation could be destroeyed with technology.
> But *all* of them, *and* defend earth ecosystems on a worldwide scale
> into the bargain?  Pfft.  You're way optimistic.

Some collateral damage is inevitable at this point, the Terran ecosystem 
is already very badly damaged. But stopping large predators from killing 
humans is a problem humans solved in neolithic times, and given the 
biotechnology humans are shown to have in the books I think it's 
reasonable to expect that the same would apply to the smaller predators
too.

> : Better to live on a world with some radioactivity issues than to be
> : wiped out of existence. 
> 
> Sure.  But this "world with some radioactivity" would mostly have
> Cthorran critters running around.  If you nuke the kudzu, then the
roaches
> and kudzu take over anyways.  I'm not sure why that point would strain
> anybody's credulity.

The suggestion was to use nukes in conjunction with a more widespread 
biochemical attack. The nukes are merely to disrupt the large-scale 
organization that Chtorran ecology tries to put together in Mandalas and 
  other such "city-like" structures. Nobody's proposing to use nukes 
against kudzu or roaches, that would be silly. That's what Round-Up and 
Raid are for.