[nerf_javascript]

The end of the article is really crazy when you look at it -- Stimson growing up w/ great-grandma who was told stories by GW as a child, advising Truman about the atomic bomb. That "one life" thing really shocks you into perspective...

In less than 200 years, we went from rioting farmers at the mercy of nature to the most powerful war-faring nation on the planet with the ability to turn a war in which other superpowers struggled. We went from the bloodiest battle numbering over a thousand dead to obliterating entire cities and hundreds of thousands of people with just two bombs.

I would've thought that as we raise the standard of life in our society, we'll inevitably create technology that will be used to become more efficient at killing, but it's actually turning out to be the opposite -- as we get better at waging war, we're developing the technology that will raise our standard of life.

[Sharlin]

To be fair, in 200 years most of the developed world went from bickering nobles and rioting peasants to a bunch of powers capable of waging megadeath war. Industrialization is like that. Honestly, the transition of the Soviet Union was even more impressive, going from an agrarian backwood to a hydrogen-bomb-wielding superpower in less than fifty years, albeit cutting some corners in the process.