Mars and SARS

Today I watched the film “Dr Strangelove” and it got me to thinking about Mars and SARS.

The SARS business got started in China which is not at all unusual. Most strains of flu seem to arise out of the Orient. We have had Hong Kong flu, swine flu, a chicken flu (sweet and sour?) from Thailand just to name a few. These things are always a big concern and in the past there have been huge pandemics which have killed tens of thousands: notably the great flu epidemic of around 1918 which cleaned up on a few million folks that WW I had missed.

So when each year or two some new sort of strain shows up it is an issue and an area of concern for the medical folks. The recent SARS epidemic is a case in point.

It also occurred that the very closed and secretive government of China refused to acknowledge for some time that there was a real medical issue with potentially broad reaching consequences. Instead they were obtuse about the whole initial progress and extent of the virus for some time. That eventually changed and a lot of international cooperation came about.

That got me to thinking about Mars.

When I was in the Army as a “cold warrior”, between 1965-68; I was stationed for a couple of years (and a bit) in Germany. We were holding back the tide of communist aggression. The armies of the Soviet hordes and their various allies or client states were poised on the other side of the DMZ and could sweep through Germany at any moment. They had been pretty well dormant since 1946 when the East- West boundaries and spheres of influence were established but we were kept advised that the Soviets and their allies were a devious, cunning and determined lot bent on world domination so we better be ready.

And ready we were. Well; sort of. The Viet Nam war was siphoning off a lot of manpower so most units in Germany were pretty short staffed. But we gave it the old college try and besides one God-fearing American soldier was worth 20 Russians, a whole heap of Hungarians and quite a few more French (but hey they were on our side as far as we could make out although they were behind us and it is best to be careful).

 Every month or so we would have an “alert” and all hands had to show up at the barracks from their duty assignments, the taverns and various brothels around Karlsruhe and get ready to move out into our combat role. Sometimes we would just muster and the whole response time was logged then we would stand down. At others we got all our combat gear and loaded up the jeeps and hightailed it for the woods somewhere and set up a perimeter, some tents and such, a field kitchen to the endless griping from the cooks, got the latrines dug, ordered some beer and movies and established our communications. After a while the all clear would sound and we would go back about our Military Police business of grabbing criminals and chasing German girls (or the other way around).

This alert business was all pretty exciting stuff the first couple of times but got to be a real pain in the butt. We were on a very hectic work schedule due to lack of replacements and being short staffed because of troop deployments to Viet Nam. It seemed that the GD alerts always came about in the middle of my two days off in 14. I have a life-long abhorrence of camping as a result. Camping is a promotional ploy by hotel strategic managers as nearly as I can tell.

Then after only three months or so as a cold warrior I figured it out. IT! The whole thing.

 There was no cold war and there had not been for some time. At least it was abundantly clear to me that there was no cold war by August 1966. The Russians or Czechs or whoever were not coming. Never would. Well at least not on the weekends! You see everybody who was not actually on shift in our unit, and in most units I expect, during the weekend had a “three day pass”. Two and a half days, actually… Friday eve to Monday morning. So there was basically nobody available to meet the Commie hordes head on at the DMZ on the weekend. Perhaps by Monday morning; but after a weekend of whoring, boozing and general carousing there were a lot of big heads happening so Tuesday might be a better bet.

And lo and behold, as I played a bit of golf at the Army course, I discovered that all the officers were at the golf course with their wives and buddies on Saturday and Sunday. I actually joined up with two Colonels one round and beat them sorely. I could play a bit then. (The older I get, the better I was!) Even in the hierarchical structure of the military golf is a great equalized and a wonderful source of humility for the exalted. I humbled the brass and the course humbled me. (I pride myself on my humility.)

 So; if the Colonels and sometimes their wives and other folks were at the golf course or the Baden-Baden (the Walla Walla of Germany) casino or the Hockenheim formula one race track  we troopers could be in a hell of a fix if the Soviets attacked on Saturday or Sunday. The officers you see had all the maps and compasses and stuff which might come in handy in our flight to the Swiss border.

For a spell I was pretty anxious about the implications of my discovery. What if the Soviets had figured this out too? In my sense of self-preservation first, and my sense of duty a distant second, I investigated the matter further and holy smokes, the Germany Army had the weekends off too. And the Canadians.  And the Brits. And the French, though little help they would be.

Holy shit!

I perceived a real threat to the American way of life! What if those commies were as cunning, devious and as bent on world domination as we were led to believe? Hey after all we were only 19 or 20 and very impressionable.

Now it happened that some Russian officers, generals and such, were permanently stationed in some sort of liaison capacity in Heidelberg at the US Army European headquarters and they used to move around a bit with their families and had to be monitored in their progress along the autobahn, so I frequently got to meet some of them and sign and time their trip progress ticket. We used to give their kids US Army ball point pens as souvenirs, a strictly speaking verboten practice, but heck the little commies were so cute when they were small. And we had lots of ballpoint pens anyway. So it was hard for me to imagine this act of rapprochement, kindness and general friendliness as much of a breach of national security thus I was frequently derelict in my duties in this regard.

So to further my quest for knowledge I took the opportunity to ask a Russian General, who fortunately spoke English, one time where he was going as it was Friday. He said the casino at Baden Baden! Well it seems they had the weekends off too! 

So the war was not on for the weekend at least, and I began to suspect that it was not on at all as it would really screw up the golf  and the whole weekend unless the hostilities started on Monday and were wrapped up by, say; 3PM Friday. Happy hour was at 4PM at the Officer’s club on Friday.

Then.

I heard a good true tale about a fiasco that occurred several years before my soldiering stint in Karlsruhe. Now our MP combat mission was first and foremost, once the godless communist hordes struck, to escort all the Army wives and brats to France or Switzerland or someplace and then to hie back into the fray. (Long odds on that happening!) It seems that some visionary in the high command had decided to test this scheme in a full blown alert one time. So all the dependents were rounded up and packed into cars, busses and whatever other conveyance was available and sent packing off on down the highway to safety just like the real thing. Now the good Fraus and Burgers of Germany were pretty used to this alert racket going on from time to time what with a motley crew of GIs camping out in the sugar beet and spargel patches; but “Ach der Liebe!!” the wives and kiddies were packing it in!! This must be the real deal!! So all the Germans promptly hit the road too and the ensuing 10 million car traffic jam created quite a stir. Some of the wives and brats were lost God knows where for over a week. The genius who came up with the idea to test this scheme I am sure went on to become National Security Advisor to Nixon or somebody. (See Peter Principle.)

So the war was not on it seems and furthermore would be apparently a lot more trouble than it was worth also.

A few years later I found out from two impeccable sources that my suspicions were correct. (Thus validating by formidable investigative abilities.)

 Lou Bilik, a good friend of mine and a professor and soccer coach at St FX, had been in the Czech Army at the very same time as my military service and; lo and behold, they had the weekend off too, which was only fair as the officers did and it was after all a classless society. So the Rooskies either apparently did not expect us to attack them on the weekend or they were not up to the task of aggression then either.

Then I read Gwynn Dyer’s book “War” and found out about Mars and the whole thing became crystal clear. I had it right but sadly Dyer wrote it down and beat me to the punch or I could be on CBC in a ratty leather jacket from time to time instead of him. [Gwynn Dyer is a professor of Military History at Sandhurst and a frequent contributor on military goings on to National TV here in Canada.]

Dyer reported a startling bit of history in his book. It seems that a mob of NASA scientists had shot a rocket off to Mars a while back. It took a few years to get there. Perhaps it was rush hour and interplanetary traffic was heavy? But anyway in the fullness of time the darn thing got to Mars. It was going to take some pictures as it sped past and these would be the first close ups of the Red Planet ever taken. Pretty darn exciting stuff I bet. And well worth the money too I am sure.

But as luck would have it at the very moment the space ship got into range and they had taken the lens covers off the camera and everything there was an unholy dust storm raging on Mars. Dust everywhere. Couldn’t see a darn thing. Bummer! The window of opportunity was slammed shut and the Mariner or whatever hurtled onward into deep or at least deeper space until the batteries ran down or something and it was not heard from again.

But when life gives you lemons; make lemonade.

Well there is nothing like boredom to get the imagination going and some of the scientists decided to calculate the surface temperature effects of blocking out the sun on Mars (Well they had nothing else to do after lollygagging around for years waiting for the darn pictures which turned out to be a bust). Apparently it would get pretty cold on the Red Planet in these conditions. It was a short leap to apply the same logic to Earth. It was known that odds and ends of volcanoes and forest fires had climatic effects on our humble planet; so these guys began to calculate just how much dust and soot and such it would take to make things really miserable here on Earth. Not very much it turned out. Way less in fact than would be generated by even a modest debilitating nuclear first-strike at the Commies or vice-versa.

The science bunch presented this information at an international conference and the Russians in attendance, pricked up their ears, took notes and went home and checked the sums, and sure enough the possibility of any sort of a meaningful nuclear war was out. It would generate a so- called “Nuclear Winter”; blot out the sun for a couple of years and kill everything on earth larger than a cockroach, which cannot be exterminated by any means short of nuclear war so far at least.

So both mobs of scientists delivered this unfortunate news to their respective governments.

Well this information put a quite a crimp in the cold war and détente soon followed. It pissed off Curtis LeMay no end too I’ll bet. No need to have a kazillion warheads it seems.

The game was officially up but it took some years of further political posturing to declare victory. And the conventional wisdom was generated that somehow Ronald Regan had ended the cold war. I know better, it was over before August 1966 at least..

So it seems that when there is really something of true global importance going on national interests sort of get swept under the rug. Like SARS. The Chinese, as they are a very closed and inscrutable society, really kept the lid on the SARS outbreak at first but when it was seen to be really important to humanity they lifted the cloak of denial and the veil of secrecy to a great extent and have cooperated considerably with the West on an issue of real importance to humanity.

Once the cold war was seen to be an impossibility, everyone got on with glasnost and took pickaxes to the Berlin Wall.

Wouldn’t it be something if more of that went on for more mundane things like peace, trade and human rights and such?

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