Essay on Modern War – Betrayal of the Scientist

The angelic face of science has been smeared with clots of blood of millions of people killed in mechanized warfare. It has pushed behind the efforts of peace loving people by tempting the political elites and satisfying their passion for blood.

With all the beneficence that science has offered to ameliorate the lot of the poor it has pushed man back to the state of savagery—the age of darkness when he ate and lived on the flesh of his own kith and kin. He is nothing more than carnivorous beasts.

Science has dismissed the horse in cavalry units, tanks roaring not in the war field but even in the war torn cities is a common sight in any part of the world. The day is not far when the deadly land to land missiles would become a common aspect of war as was demonstrated in the war between Iraq and the countries supporting the cause of Kuwait.

Science is making best of its efforts to supply this horrible but cowardly weapon to the war lords of the world. Feeling sure of their safety they would attack enemy positions with this deadly weapon. The dissolution of the former USSR in 1991 stopped it of course. But it may flare up any day in the so called unipolar world too.

Swimming in under water like fish was the ambition of man in the distant past. Science fulfilled his ambition long back.

Today it has supplied him with the fangs of poisonous snakes. A man bit by a natural snake might be saved. But the torpedo shot from a submarine does not miss its mark. A whole ship with thousands of people would be sunk. Even a submarine may not be required.

Science has provided man with magnetic mines spread in the sea at strategic points guarded and maneuvered by destroyers and huge armored aircraft carriers. Sea has not been left safe by science for commercial navigation.

Let there be war and the sky is full of bombers. One just shudders with the idea of a thousand bombers attacking England every night during the Second World War. It was a show of naked brutality of force aided by science. But the story has become a part of history. The destroyers of forties have become obsolete.

Scientists have provided the war lords with supersonic bombers fixed with air to land and air to air missiles that don’t fail their target. In the distant past crows, ravens, kites and vultures hovered over the battle field. Today the scientist has built these mechanized vultures to fly everywhere in the world.

The advent of nuclear weapons disillusions us about the generosity of Science. The benevolence of Curie couple in inventing radio-activity was erased by the atom bombs thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the scientists of the United States of America it was an experiment to decide the strength of Uranium and Plutonium bombs.

For the people of the two cities it was an experience of the Fires of Hell on the Earth. It was an experiment by the scientists to judge their potentiality in annihilating their own race. Each bomb was equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. By now, experiment—torturing experiments were (and are) made on animals— monkeys, pigs, horses, rats, dogs and frogs for the sake of man.

The ghost of Science had some more teeth to show on the screen of war. These two bombs, now, are considered mere babies—obsolete—out of date. The next to come was Hydrogen Bomb. Now the number ‘thousand’ has been replaced by ‘million’. We have now hundreds of megaton bombs stockpiled in the U.S.A., CIS i.e. States of former USSR, Germany, China, Great Britain, India, Pakistan and France. The number is a whopping 80,000 and the explosive power is considered more than 17 billion tons of TNT It means the scientist has approximately 4 tons of TNT for every man, woman and child on the earth.

The day the war lords take the fancy of using this gift of the scientist there will just be a fog over the earth for centuries and no life left. The ozone layer saving the world from ultraviolet radiation from space bodies will disappear.

The Scientist has not stopped here. Hydrogen bomb has been coated with uranium 238. They call it Triple F bomb. It would scatter radioactive materials over the world with greater economy and more destructive potentiality.

Efforts are also being made to evolve a ray that would destroy all life in the area it travels but would leave inanimate objects intact. It would leave the ghost of modern civilization for the life that may evolve after the annihilation of the present one. LASER rays are just a baby of the idea.

The scientist has given a severe blow to culture. Saints and Sadhus, a Christ or a mother Teressa do not decorate the mantle piece—do not share the toy world of the child. There are models of missiles-bombs-tanks and submarines actually moving in the rooms of the European children. It foments the love for war among the children in their infancy.

Radars, spying planes and spacecrafts are already in the atmosphere of the Earth and above it. Let the scientist not fit the spacecrafts with atomic war heads other space will be filled with the garbage of destructive material. There would be no man to clean it. Will the scientist keep his hand off the genocide of the race of humanity and not betray his kiths and kinds— his own-self.