Public opinion on nuclear warfare is marked by anxiety and concern regarding escalation risks, especially in light of geopolitical tensions and military advancements. While many acknowledge the importance of security and India's technological progress, there is a strong inclination towards peace, emphasizing the need for international cooperation and careful management of nuclear arsenals to prevent catastrophe.

India

United States

Russia

Ok-Amphibian-7369

I have to imagine this was one of the worst places in the world to fight. Thousands of meters in altitude, cold, few roads, no electricity, little medical infrastructure, and everything is done in a hurry so you're not going with a lot of supplies or planning.

Responsible-File4593

The comments will be civil and respectful.

vd812031

No_Necessary_3356

This is what many people are not aware of. Pakistan did not win any territory in First Kashmir War from independent India. It won territory only from the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, after Kashmir joined India and India joined the war, Pakistan ended up losing a lot of the territory they had conquered.

TheWillowRook

Thanks for your work OP ! Would love to see the same animation projected onto a political map because I have to admit my India/Pakistan border region is quite hazy in my mind lol

Also, what are rhe big numbers drawn every side of the frontline ?

Ok-Excuse-3613

leeuwerik

I dont usually like thise sub but I have to give it to you on this one. I really enjoyed the info, I don't know very much about how the Kashmir thing started. Thanks for the info. I love finding history gems that are actually massive but get very little to no information about it, especially in the west and even more so as I'm from UK. We should be teaching things like this in our schools as our country basically started it and didn't do anything to stop the killing. Cheers bro 👍

CorswainsDeciple

Hepheat75

Thanks for putting raw unadultered history in front of the masses without any narrative . People whose agenda ain't getting fulfilled by this can sure cry about it.

BYRON2456

Nehru made blunder every time when it comes to kashmir. First in 1948 going to UN citing to prevent collateral damage, rather than finishing the business, then 1962 against chinese, a stupid surrender of aksai chin no one could agreed to. Especilly Zero involvement of then stronger Indian airforce.. also intel failure of possible chinese agression made Indian defence clueless and unprepared..whereas, nehru himself let china take the permanent seat in UN only some years ago before that. These mistakes cost India and affected as well as geopolitics in the region even today..

karmachameleon3991

 Heroic Seige of skardu 🥺 and subsequent leadership betrayal by involving UN

le_pere_des_CATS

Pakistan claim kashmir bcoz of the rivers , not bcoz they care about kashmiri culture .

The access and control of rivers is the key .

You could see the culture of kashmiri people in POK .
Very few people knows kashmiri in its original form

[deleted]

Still arguably the most high stake border in the world to date, even with the active wars being fought currently.

Both nations have the power to start a nuclear war.

S_Demon

Jokes and controversies aside, this is very informative. Thanks for posting this OP

DareDweller

But but India is the occupier and Kashmir is Gaza

ResearchAdept7185

1104 and countless soldiers lost to terrorism since

LazyDatabase7218

Astral_Vastness

Weird_Ad7998

Im going to be honest... Those killed in action numbers look way to small compared to the numbers for the front lines. Or am I the only one?

ICameToUpdoot

You can watch these videos to see what is actually happening in kashmir. [video1](https://youtu.be/MN_KWoG2rTg?si=9RFDdYXHt2usdFY-),[video 2](https://youtu.be/Z59Jr5i6kgw?si=Aa57Dd0PuqyQ0UrH)
India actively developing infrastructure for kashmiris also watch how free they are.

tycoonrt

At that time, India should fight back hard with the militia forces to clean this mess.

ManInMiddle0

India can't take pok or aksai chin anytime soon . When ever india tries to build infrastructure thought those location climate activist come over and protest there and fast forward to few years ( china has taken over the land where climate activist protested and started building their infrastructure). China is indias biggest adversity not pak . India needs to be desperate in order to catch up to china , just like how china is desperate to catch up to usa . A desperation like this is not possible in india due to its so called biggest democracy.  People  will opposite every decision and china will continue to grow its gap between india further and further until its unreachable , its already in the verge of that . This thing is just the result of our early independence idealistic leader's who Don't know how the world works and made a series of blunders and made india even more vulnerable. 

One of its greatest example would be giving away UN veto power to china and thinking that china is best friend with india and not building up military, and the next thing you know , china invaded india and india lost its territory. Like who even is this idealistic . And the other thing is giving away coco islands as a gift to Myanmar,  like what , is the island your personal property to give it away , its the peoples . How could you give it away with out consulting your poeple and now china has made a military base in that island , a perfect place to threaten india ☆.

zaky_vfx

Is it wrong that I feel happy that foreigners(some) in the comment section who are actually learning and understanding the matter are realising that Pakistan is a fucked up place.

inevitable__guy__

Dear Pakistan, send your kids to school instead of fuelling hatred.

CallMeMonsieur

SuddenCompetition997

Btw a big thanks to mods, it's rare that we get to put our stance forward without getting banned.

Relevant-Ad9432

So main question, why kashmir is not yet solved?, why voting still not conducted as per UN resolution?, because as per UN to conduct voting pakistan must withdraw first from pok,  
So now why pakistan is not doing it as they claims themselves that they want it, 
Because if this problem will get solved pakistan military's whole existence will not be justified, their huge budget irrespective of their economic crisis will not get justified, their rule over Pakistani government will not be justified they need a problem and a villian to justify all this, that's why even after getting defeated badly many times even after doing world's largest surrender after ww 2 they still rule pakistan, they makes oats to cement, they even controls manufacturing of pakistan, to justify all this this problem must remain alive so pakistani people always believes that there is need for them

Friendly-Tennis-587

Can we take back kashmir from the chinese and pakistanis please .

I want this land to be like Switzerland

I just watched the Doctor Who episode Demons of Punjab last night so its really interesting seeing this pop up today.

anotherdamnscorpio

Stupid Nehru took this to UN instead of solving it when he finally had the upper hand.

Over_Argument_9718

Its always Britain right?
In asia
In middle east

They invade u and when they go out they let ur country in war for years and years

Esnacor-sama

Did Pakistan just decide to annex Indian territory?

AfterEye

One of the best animations for troops movements. Showing airborne and bombing runs was especially interesting to see. I dont know if this is a new standard, but I appreciate the effort either way.

happy_standard

Looks like the truth hit the nerve of some Pakistanis, they have resorted to racial slurs against Indians already :) I guess that’s what you have to resort to when you can’t defend your war mongering army, which happens to control your country.

Decent-Cookie3350

JaredHoffmanEverett

No hate, i am just trying to learn.

didn't this all start because of pooch rebellion by Muslim nationalists under pretext of high taxes?

&gt;It was driven by grievances such as high taxes, the Maharaja's neglect of World War veterans, and above all, Muslim nationalism with a desire to join Pakistan.

[source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Poonch_rebellion#:~:text=It%20was%20driven%20by%20grievances%20such%20as%20high%20taxes%2C%20the%20Maharaja%27s%20neglect%20of%20World%20War%20veterans%2C%20and%20above%20all%2C%20Muslim%20nationalism%20with%20a%20desire%20to%20join%20Pakistan)

I-T-T-I

In the next couple of years this map is gonna see lot of more animation

Omnicurious_Learner

Foreign-Dependent-12

Islamic Pakistan violated UN, invading India after the creation of the state.

Islamic Arab countries invaded Israel after creation violating UN resolution. 

And then keep attacking, while saying the other side is the bad guy

Holiday_Archer4237

So tell me how much does pak claim like does it also claim Buddhist Ladakh and Chinese occupied Aksai Chin or just wants Muslim majority Kashmir along with hindu Jammu?

Anon_neil01

That's exactly when nehru reached UN to complain about the war he was winning and the video ended.

peaceKeeper2571

Overall_Actuator3710

How did India not lose a single man for so long? Like, not even one accidentally slipped and hit his head? Damn

Die4Gesichter

Narco_Marcion1075

Bobsytheking1

Consistent_Law_7647

The Paki propagandist will ignore this. Hopefully they’ll see how Pakistan had declared proxy wars in Kashmir and illegally occupied parts of Kashmir. 

Indian kashmir will never be an independent country and misled Kashmiris who want that can move from India and help in the peace restoration process by the Indian government.

00node00

Since Pakistan has history of rule violations; there should be no new agreements in discussions; for each new violations (involving Pak govt and military) there needs to be ‘minefield’s of sanctions and punishments from India and every other country who make such laws, otherwise it’s just a big joke for India to follow international agreements and other country just going Scot-free.

findravish

xxxHAL9000xxx

i can bet most Pakistanis can't digest that it was Paki side that attacked first and then much later india Entered the war and also they talk about peoples of J&amp;K but don't talk about how many of J&amp;K civilians were killed by Paki Army and Tribals in this conflict and also they can't digest the fact that the UN resolution itself says that "Pakistan was intruder and entered illegally so Firstly to resolve the Conflict Pakistan needs to Step back from the region completely and then remaining Indian forces should also step back but keep enough indian forces in Valley to Administer it until Plebiscite".

Atri_rishi7773

Pretty sure Kashmir was a Muslim majority state that was handed over to India by its Hindu maharaja but of course you decide to omit that detail and say we invaded Kashmir for no reason. Victim mentality can't be drained out of u insects

yolomancrafting

Pakistan and idea really hate eachother huh

The_Junton

In your description, you missed out mentioning "the **Indian** subcontinent was divided....". The whole region (present day India, Pakistan &amp; Bangladesh) were all India prior to Aug 1947. More precisely, it was British India for the approx 200 years prior to 1947. 

Its just that after 1947, they just became sovereign countries with their own constitutions. 

This narrative that Pakistan was not part of India prior to 1947 is the most bizarre form of delusion I've noticed among current day Pakistanis.

Bread_Fruit8519

Every time there’s an India Pakistan conflict, India claims two things: it was on the verge of a decisive victory, it doesn’t listen to foreign powers. But India agrees to a ceasefire regardless. The only exception is 1971.

DiscoShaman

So you're saying that in 1947, Pakistan was formed. And immediately after forming of a state, it had a functioning military/politics which participated in attacking another state directly or indirectly? How does that work?

Soomroz

While this sub is lately brigaded by Indian and Hindu nationalists let’s set some context here from Kashmiri pov. 

1) Maharaja was seen as a very oppressive and cruel monarch who had discriminatory policies towards muslims of the state that constituted around 70% of the state. Particularly among those, Kashmiri muslims were the main target since they inhabited the core land and very high taxation was imposed on them which prompted them to migrate and leave their homes in multiple waves to Punjab which was under British control. 

2) Because of this, there was already a freedom movement in Kashmiri society since at least 1930s that sought to overthrow this oppressive and unjust rule of Maharaja. 

3) As the partition approached in 1947, Maharaja who was highly unpopular amongst the muslim populace, began to strategically disarm only his muslim subjects which had further ignited suspicion and lack of trust amongst his subjects. The [Jammu massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Jammu_massacres) further sowed the seeds of discord prompting the people in the western sector( Poonch-Mirpur) to rebel against the Maharaja in favour of Pakistan. There was also an independent revolt in the north weatern part of Gilgit who managed to free themselves from the Maharaja’s army and acquire a large amount of land upto baltistan and beyond. 

3) Shortly after this, the tribals from other parts of Pakistan started to invade, their prime objective to capture ‘Srinagar’ the capital city. On their way around ‘Baramulla’ they resorted to looting and plundering which made them extremely unpopular among the locals. Maharaja left Srinagar and signed the ‘Instrument of accession’ on ‘certain conditions’ and India airlifted its troops in Kashmir.

4) Fighting became official and translated into First Indo-Pak war. Nehru, the then Prime minister of India, arrived in historic Lal chowk (Srinagar) and promised that Kashmiris will be given right to choose their destiny.

5) India went to UN, UN proposed plebiscite, directed Pak to withdraw first and asked India to demilitarise the area to the extent that is enough for law and order. Pak rejected citing simultaneous withdrawal, India too rejected due to Pak’s demand and also due to it’s own reasons related to demilitarisation. Subsequent UN proposals were either rejected by India or by both, resulting in the failure of UN backed Plebiscite. 

6) All the while, India started to encroach the autonomy on which Jammu and Kashmir had agreed to accede to it, resulting in the arrest of the then Prime minister of Kashmir—Sheikh Abdullah (which was pro India in 1947 but later was not trusted by New Delhi).

Pretty-Campaign2661

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DeltaBot

I don't think you can separate this kind of macro-risk, they're all deeply intertwined.

Climate change can make a country that has nuclear weapons more starved for resources and make it actually desperate enough to use its nukes. Conversely, the existence of nukes makes it harder to enforce painful but necessary climate policies internationally, which contributes to climate change. These are just two direct examples, but you can think of many other cross-effects like this that relate to these and other threats.

It doesn't really make sense to ask whether nukes are more or less dangerous than climate change, both contribute and amplify each other's contributions to the existential threats humanity faces in the near future.

47ca05e6209a317a8fb3

There are scenarios under which climate change may lead to the extinction of humans. Nuclear weapons on the other hand will not directly lead to our extinction.

Here's a recent paper on what we know about nuclear war as an existential risk: Scouras J. Nuclear war as a global catastrophic risk. Journal of benefit-cost analysis. 2019 Jul;10(2):274-95.

And a recent paper on climate change and its potential for human extinction: Kemp L, Xu C, Depledge J, Ebi KL, Gibbins G, Kohler TA, Rockström J, Scheffer M, Schellnhuber HJ, Steffen W, Lenton TM. Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2022 Aug 23;119(34):e2108146119.

The summary of the nuclear article: 

&gt; To summarize, nuclear war is a global catastrophic risk. Such wars may cause billions of deaths and unfathomable suffering, as well set civilization back centuries. Smaller nuclear wars pose regional catastrophic risks and also national risks in that the continued functioning of, for example, the United States as a constitutional republic is highly dubious after even a relatively limited nuclear attack. But what nuclear war is not is an existential risk to the human race. There is simply no credible scenario in which humans do not survive to repopulate the earth.

Basically, we will kill a lot of people. But, the planet fundamentally is still what it was: a pretty good place for humans to live and breed. There's just no scenario in which there aren't enough humans left. In part, we've been through big bottlenecks as a species, some theories say that about a million years ago there might only have been about 1000 humans alive. That was enough. There's no way we won't have that somewhere.

Climate change though, is very different. The Earth will no longer be what it was, perhaps never. Keep in mind that we live in a very narrow range of temperatures. And there are individual effects that could happen that would shift those temperatures dramatically. For example:

&gt; For instance, recent simulations suggest that stratocumulus cloud decks might abruptly be lost at CO2 concentrations that could be approached by the end of the century, causing an additional ∼8 °C global warming (23). 

That's a single potential bad outcome we don't understand. Also, keep in mind you need to survive every day. One day that's too hot and you die, you're dead.

&gt; Research suggests that previous mass extinction events occurred due to threshold effects in the carbon cycle that we could cross this century (40, 63). Key impacts in previous mass extinctions, such as ocean hypoxia and anoxia, could also escalate in the longer term (40, 64).

We know that species like ours: fairly large high-energy species have gone extinct from climate change many times before. From the amount of climate change we're causing!

Here's a practical bad scenario. We trip a few tipping climate tipping points and the CO2 in the atmosphere now goes up a lot! Well, our brains function well in only a fairly small range of CO2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32557862/ That on its own would be enough to end humanity; we just wouldn't be able to function intellectually anymore.

There are so many climate scenarios that can lead to extinction. It's the biggest threat by far.

light_hue_1

The issue here is about odds. 

A limited nuclear conflict would be bad and would have a lot of really bad outcomes. 

An unlimited nuclear conflict would end civilization as we know it. 

How do we assign the likelihoods of these things? In the next 100 years how likely do you think it is that we will have a limited nuclear conflict? How likely do you think it is that we will have an open nuclear war? 

Because climate change is already happening. Things are already destabilizing and right now we don't have any way to turn that clock back. Might a solution be discovered? I guess, but my laymans understanding of the problem tells me that it probably wont. We're going to be incredibly lucky if we managed to keep the damage to 1.5c, and if we get to 3c we're probably looking at such catostrophic damage that society as we know it will also collapse. 

So on the one hand we have a threat that could happen. We have another threat that is already happening and isn't being mitigated in any way that we need to mitigate it to prevent truly terrible outcomes.

sailorbrendan

Nukes haven't been used offensively in nearly 80 years, what do you think would cause that to change suddenly? Plus since we've had nukes, large scale wars such as World War II just haven't happened, and one reason for that is that nukes stop that from happening as nuclear capabile nations do not want to fight each other.

tbdabbholm

What keeps a person from killing another? Is it an innate sense of right from wrong? Is it sympathy? Is it compassion?

I would argue that people do have some sense of sympathy for others but it is very weak and the main deterrents are indifference and the understanding that retaliation is likely (be this physical or judicial). On the scale of human violence that is interpersonal law and potential harm to self are likely the largest factors for would be criminals that prevent such behavior, where as indifference is mainly a factor of the lawful.

On the international level indifference is not an option as historic disputes are prevalent and racial tensions are still a factor, Nations aren't beholden to enforcement officers and as such the "law" is not of consequence either, this leaves just retaliation. The problem with this is that there used to be no equivalent to the revolver's "Colt made them equal" (in reference to man). On the international stage nuclear weapons have a cooling effect on wars as opposed to having larger nations put forth their people as a meat shield for elites the threat of nuclear retaliation means that instigating war comes with the potential of a fight that ensures nothing of value is left for either side. 

In a world of increasingly disgusting leadership, the threat of nuclear presence brings sense to the most senseless of people. The nuclear grid lock of the world is likely the strongest thread holding together the progressively deteriorating state of the modern world.

&amp;#x200B;

Climate change is likely something that can't be adapted to if the severity of the predictions is correct also assuming demographic collapse will happen more organically and independently from violent means.

&amp;#x200B;

I would argue that the bigger and more immediate threat to people is themselves, the demographic collapse of much of the modern and developed world is more cause for concern to me as a nation of no one is not a nation.

4510471ya2

I’m not going to argue that nuclear weapons don’t have the potential to do more harm. I will say that as hard as climate change would be to combat, it’s still far simpler than the idea of getting nuclear weapons out of the world entirely. 

Any country can do everything to fight climate change without other countries joining in right away, and nothing is stopping them from doing so other than money, but no country with nuclear weapons wants to be the first to get rid of them.

Because of this, while nuclear weapons might present a greater threat to the world as a whole, that’s not a reason to place it in a higher “priority bracket” so to speak. The US can start making efforts and doesn’t have to make sure Russia agrees first. But there will always be distrust that the other country isn’t dismantling their nuclear weapons, and so nobody will want to go first. But even if miraculously someone DOES go first and the rest of the world DOES follow suit, there’s still going to be the one country with the last nukes before they’re all gone, and they may just decide those ones “were dismantled” or just decide to use it since nobody could retaliate fast enough. So nobody wants to be first, and everybody wants to be last, and it’s quite possible, everyone would be “last” in the sense that they all kept one away for a rainy day just in case.

One requires trust, and the other doesn’t, so I think the higher priority should be the thing we CAN do something about right now. In a perfect world, not only would we not have nukes, we wouldn’t have guns, war, violence, etc. but we don’t live in that world. We are in a world where everything and everyone is corrupt. But FFS even a corrupt ass country can fight climate change.

IWantASubaru

Nuclear weapons are a greater theoretical threat, climate change is a greater practical threat. The former might happen, the latter *is in the process of happening*.

NegativeOptimism

I honestly think there needs to be an international convocation of citizens to discuss global action on both issues beyond governments so I would say they are equally dangerous. Gathering to discuss laying the groundwork for the much feared "one world government." Basically without coordinated action we face too many possibilities for extinction. We spend too much economically on nuclear weapons and not enough on solutions to climate change. There needs to be action in the direction of the rejection of national identities and the attendant geopolitical games we play. In an ideal world this would mean a complete restructuring of the global economy away from weapons of war to things like carbon capture, ocean cleanup, and space exploration. 

The world is so connected now that the moment has never been better for realizing an end to geopolitics. The closer we get to AGI the closer we get to a restructuring of the global economy. It stands to reason, in my mind at least, that if we are approaching the impact of AGI on the economy it makes sense to use that "industrial revolution" to restructure a global economy under a global government.

appealouterhaven

Imagine you and me both have guns. Imagine we're on an island and there's a limited supply of water. If you were to say "the guns are the bigger threat than the lack of water" it wouldn't make sense, right? Because you understand that the guns are going to be the tool we end up killing each other with over the water.

It's the same idea. The big issues with climate change aren't that we're all gonna drown, it's that mass refugees, limited resources, and all these other issues are going to cause tons of strife. At that point, people start reaching for weapons.

They are different types of danger. a Nuclear war might never happen, but climate change is starting to have major geopolitical effects and will gradually get worse and worse unless a major change to how the world works collectively happens (which likely will involve war.

I.E. Nukes are like a hair trigger for destruction, Climate change is a ticking clock. Over the course of the next 100 years, Climate change will be a greater threat to international security.

However, I would say Nukes are a greater threat to the end of the human race, as I think that we will survive CC (Or  rather, that a few thousand will even in the worse case)

JackDaBoneMan

If climate change continues at its current pace there's a 100% chance it kills tons of people.  Meanwhile, while there is some chance that nuclear weapons could cause a disaster if left in their current state, it's not a 100% certainty by any means and there's a decent chance that the nuclear weapons simply never get used in much the way they haven't been used in the last 80 years.

Roadshell

Nuclear Weapons have been around for about 80 years and if anything they’ve increased world security.

I think people tend to overestimate the threat of thousands of intelligent people collectively agreeing to destroy the world and underestimate how quickly a country would be destroyed if your grocery stores ran out of food.

Lemme just point out: do you really think humans as a species deserve to live? If the answer isn't no, you are biased, if it's yes, then you shouldn't fixate over what's worse, just hope it comes down quickly enough and rid earth of this infestation

Maxi-19-1-4-1

Nuclear weapons haven’t been used in war since 1945, the existence of them and mutually assured destruction prevents large scale war.

It is why the big nuclear powers don’t fight each other, and that is a very good thing.

TheMikeyMac13

Nuclear Armageddon is preferable to climate disaster because the former will kill everyone and later will kill only poor 3rd worlders who have very little to do with climate change

AM2020_

It is true that climate change has been a thing in the past whilst nuclear weapons haven't. The world has survived massive natural disasters, nuclear weapons are new.

1) Technically correct, and...

2) That's a very low bar.

AGI is the correct answer,

Otherhalf_Tangelo

Which is bigger, 5 minutes or a thousand years? Nuclear weapons can do more damage in 5 minutes than climate change can do in a thousand years.

To beat climate change, walk faster than 1 cm a year.

Turbulent-Name-8349

"And about 70,000 years ago, something fundamentally changed, something changed, and our species was instantly catapulted to the very top of our planet, as far as predatory animals.” And now, all of a sudden, we became the most feared, we were the most lethal and the most successful. In fact, most of the large species that existed on this planet went extinct because of us, believe it or not, because we started eating all of it. There were a couple species that did very, very well with our ascension, our immediate ascension. And we brought a couple species with us, the dog is an example, where the dog species benefited greatly with mankind’s ascension as the alpha predator and wound up succeeding very well off of that."

I always thought that quote was interesting. We brought dogs along with us and selectively breed them for traits such as intelligence. Makes you think if we were someone else's pets who were selectively bred for intelligence. They went off and we are the strays left behind, we re-grouped and repeated the same process, trying to mimic them. It would alter our history as we know it as stated.

sarsaarsar

So when is this think-piece being published in the New Yorker? I had no idea what kind of scroll I signed up for. Great article!!!

CEBarnes

Just wanted to mention that not all of the smartest animals on Earth are predators. We have elephants, African Grey parrots, pigs, crows, bonobos and others.

KeeganUniverse

a common pattern of what I am coining now as “gatekeeper of hidden truth” syndrome, or “hidden knowledge is scary and only I can handle it” syndrome. i don’t trust upper echelon military and intelligence insiders as torch bearers of truth, I can tell you that

MountainMoo22

Oh boy this is a can of worms....

Problem I have is it all depends on how much information these guys were read in on.

You have one side (Isreals old defence minister and Canadian defence minister) claiming the US is working with NHI in some sort or galactic federation with bases on Mars and the Moon. How does this factor into your theory and the Israeli defence minister was in the position for 30 years....
 He claimed it was the NHI that prevented us the public knowing as we wasn't ready, as we needed to understand what space and spacecraft were. 


The problem I see if only certain people have a little piece of the information.

How many people are read in fully? Is the fact that only a few know because we are infact part of a federation so only need to know? 



Take UK defence they stopped investigating UAP sightings in 2009 stating they didn't pose a threat to us.

How would they know this?


So.... My problem is one side isn't fitting with the other.

But this secarcy around it is causing a little panic, cause we are left with one side screaming a threat to all mankind and the other side claiming humanity is part of a multi species federation. 

We are left in the middle throwing our hands in the air....screaming for the love of the universe which is it?!?!

JustHumanIThink

&gt;Sombre and sobering ontological shock

I feel like everyone is just taking Lou's "somber/sobering" comment *WAY* too simplistically.

Think of a multi-dimensional being that can steal and consume what we call our souls.  What happens after you die?  Is God real, or is God just aliens?  Is Heaven real, or is Heaven something we've been brainwashed to believe just to make us complacent to keep living long enough for our souls to ripen enough for them to consume?  Why do religious texts promote ideas like: no killing, procreate, procreate, procreate, no suicide, etc, etc.

Is death an exit from this madness, or just the culling, only to put us back in a body to do it all over again, and there's nothing we can do to stop the cycle?

I feel like people need to think beyond Human, 3D existence to get the real ontological shock.

vinnymcapplesauce

&gt;Confirmation of all this...

How would Elizondo, or anyone, confirm this?

If a NHI told you they're the biggest fish in the pond would you believe them?

HTIDtricky

This is actually the main reason my mind is open to the airline disappearance being real.  I’m not saying it is but my mind is now prepped that something “really shocking” is going to be shown to be true in the next little while.  The airline disappearance fits that bill, but the big “shock” could also be something else, or multiple things.  But I’m ready to accept something that’s hard to accept.

Amazing-Treat-8706

I don't get what the big deal is. Basically for all of human history, humans have always lived under the assumption that a smitey God or gods exists who is more powerful than us and may punish us at any time. How is this different? People will go on living just fine.

Bierfreund

What a fantastic and thought provoking write up. Thank you for taking the time to write this all.

Able-Fun2874

OP, on the technological gulf, I have another idea that might be food for thought. In our technological development we have been really good at refining a tech relatively quickly once we get it working in the first place. An example is the performance of the sr-71, flown 20 years after the first jet fighter was introduced in WW2 by the nazis. Another thing to note is that how good your tech is depends on design plus the materials and physics you exploit. If we have their stuff, which presumably is quite state of the art to them, then we have good designs and know what to make them from. All we need now is to figure out the physics and how to make them, and then refine them. My point is that they may see it this way and regard us as a potentially threatening species, because we might pop up to their level in at least a few areas and give them trouble. This may also explain the probing and surveillance. They want to know if we are becoming a threat.

adponce

I love you, thank you for taking the time you put into this post to give a convincing and reality based perspectives on all of this. I will like to add what Lue said in a podcast years ago and I’m paraphrasing “if you’re being abducted that pretty malevolent to me”.

UnitedNoseholes

OP, thank you for the write up. This is an excellent piece. I doubt you’ll get very far with the more woo woo “aliens are out space brothers” crowd here, but I fully agree with everything you’re saying. The potential risks are incredibly high, and if they are a peaceful, advanced civilization they will understand our reticence. 

I still want to know, and believe that hiding it is counter productive, but I don’t blame the powers that be for doing so. In their shoes, I’d probably have done the same. We are dealing with a certifiable outside context problem, and even a single wrong move could spell the end for human civilization.

TrainOfThot98

your TLDR is pretty spot on for my own hypothesis except, i do think there is a high chance for multiple NHI civilizations, and Earth is like a "GAS STATION" at best to these advanced NHIs.

maybe our space travel is being limited by "them" but for good reason

BigPhatMchael

The very last sentence in Elizondo's Point no.1, and also and especially his Point no.2, keep jumping out at me, and, for me, both resonate very strongly with the phrase 'non-human intelligence' (NHI) which has been introduced only relatively recently (I think).

So I find myself conjecturing (and here I must apologise if I'm unknowingly repeating something which has been suggested hundreds of times before, and rejected as nonsense every time): *"What if non-human doesn't mean off-world intelligence? What if it's already here on Earth, and either we don't recognise it, or we haven't encountered it yet, or it's in a form of which we've been unable to conceive so far?"*

There are lots of intelligent creatures who share the planet with us, eg dogs, cetaceans, cephalopods, elephants, corvids, and similar; what if they are a host to (or a vector for) a form of intelligence with which we're unfamiliar? 

What if whatever caused the human species to suddenly start developing increasingly sophisticated intelligence 70,000 years ago, as Elizondo said, also occurred in other species around the same time, but perhaps didn't thrive in them as much as it did in us? Or perhaps it thrived in species unknown to us, or which deliberately concealed themselves from us? 

Perhaps that intelligence *did* come from an external, off-world source 70,000 years ago? Perhaps that intelligence was 'consciousness'? Perhaps we were gifted it? Perhaps other species on Earth, known or unknown, were also gifted it around the same time, or at different times? Perhaps other species *were* able to accommodate it and evolve it to a much more advanced level than we did? 

I keep going back over Elizondo's phrase *"...What if there was knowledge so volatile and earth shattering that the mere knowledge of that could predicate an action that threatens an entire species?"* I read this as having the potential to mean that the human species would panic if it realised that this other Earth-bound but non-human intelligence was more advanced than us, and possibly posed some form of threat, and so the ordinary man and woman in the street decided to just completely wipe it out (especially if it was less physically adept than us). 

I'm sure these sorts of questions have been posed, discussed, and dismissed by better minds than mine, but I'm just not well read-in on the subject. Could anybody point me towards anything relevant?

Elegant_Celery400

I really don't give a shit at this point. We can handle it. We've gone through a rough pandemic the world hasn't seen since 1918, various economic crisis, a ongoing climate crisis,  thrust smack in the middle of geo-political uncertainty with Russia at war with Ukraine under various threats of nuclear weapon use.

Just hit us baby, we're tough and resilient people at this point.

MFuddyDuddy

I'm worried that we're absolutely all fucked

ConfidentInsecurity

Very interesting read. There seems to be a lot of users here that think that aliens want to save/help us, give us their tech for free, cure cancer, stop climate change, poverty, etc. and that the "evil US government" is somehow stopping them from doing all that. I have no idea how that became such a popular theory here but it's kinda funny.

shuuichis

How about thinking about this as a catch 22. If the MIC has NHI technology and has been stuck making progress in understanding it, then they can't produce adequate defenses against potentially hostile NHI. However, if they open the books, there's a risk that an advanced weapon gets created by an unreliable human. We believe certain NHI take interest in our nuclear capabilities. You have to wonder how they would respond if we developed a new class of powerful weapons, especially of the kind that could potentially ward them off. I don't take for granted that public disclosure is a good idea (but I do want to know the truth, personally).

motsanciens

Interesting piece and thank you for the considerable effort.  I hope the effort itself was gratifying and helped your thought process.  

Elizondo is more elegant than DeLong but they seem to cover similar ground.  I find it very difficult to follow their description in any concrete way, perhaps because of the nature of rhe beast.  Perhaps these NHI are simply so different we do not have rhe vocabulary to describe them.

Which would also infer strongly we do not currently have the capacity to UNDERSTAND them.  No matter their intent, especially if malevolent, we need to understand them, if for no reason than to protect ourselves.  

Along those lines many have stated they have technology we can not explain; extreme high G force, non aerodynamic flight, no heat signature for propulsion, etc.  This implies they have some advanced or different understanding of physics than we.  If so that is another area where we would not have a vocabulary for communication or understanding.  

So I guess I should not be surprised Elizondo or DeLong have trouble expressing the situation.  But that leaves us in a bad place, we know we don't know but we we can not even conceive what we don't know.  

As to NHI motivations very briefly put Earth is likely a rather odd planet due to our large Moon and that Earth had a collision with another proto-planet.  It has been estimated (Chicago Uni)  that fewer than 1% of similar planets have a similar sized moon.   It is possible that this odd Earth history has driven the development of life in unommon or perhaps even unique ways.

If true it may influence the NHI interaction.  Perhaps they are here because we did develop in some strange way.  Perhaps we are as enigmatic to them as they are to us.  What if our whole way of developing ethics and values is foreign to them?  That could make any conversations extremely difficult.  Think of the Star Treck BORG with hive minds or perhaps even weirder.  Perhaps their augmented physics or whatever causes them to have a value system which is mutually incomprehensible with ours.

Once you open the door to new, expanded, augmented physics or dimensions it becomes pretty difficult to make any meaningful speculations.  Quite literally the sky or universe is the limit to postulates.

The problem with my line of thought is it drives towards a sort of nihilistic position.  We are bereft of a path forward due our ignorance.  But the only way to cure our ignorance is to plow forward into the dark.  Not for the feint hearted.  

A tangential thought.  Assuming Earth is unique it may be possible that there are some resources available on Earth not widely available elsewhere.  What ever the cause it seems they are drawn here for some reason.  It would be good to know that reason.  

Again, thanks for the thread.

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