Jef PoskanzerNov 2

Gun Town

There's a town near you where most of the residents spend much of their days running around with guns. The guns are real. They are loaded with real bullets. Their fingers are on the triggers. But they don't pull the triggers, they just yell "BANG, BANG, BANG!"

Show threadJef PoskanzerNov 2

Except occasionally something happens. Maybe they hit a bump. Or they are distracted by their cell phone. Or they had a little too much to drink before going out for a gun run. Or they see a non-gun person and want to teach them a lesson.

The gun goes off.

Show threadJef PoskanzerNov 2
The gun people nod sadly to each other. "Such a tragic accident," they say. The police arrive, interview people, and make a report: "Accident." The dead are not interviewed. Then everyone runs off yelling "BANG, BANG, BANG!"
Show threadJef PoskanzerNov 2

Of course we don't live in Gun Town. That place is obviously absurd and could never exist in real life.

We live in nice safe Car Town.

Show threadCharlie StrossNov 2
@jef By the 22nd century, people will look back on the automobile culture of the long 20th century (from about 1890 to some time not long hence) with the sort of horror we reserve for 18th century small-sword dueling culture (you weren't a gentleman if you didn't carry a sword and weren't willing to fight to the death to defend your honour if someone looked at you funny).
Show threadJef PoskanzerNov 2
@cstross I've read that in the early days of the industrial revolution, steam boiler explosions killed around 50,000 per year, comparable to the car slaughter we have now. But we don't look back on the boiler massacres with horror. They are just forgotten.
Show threadCharlie StrossNov 2

@jef The car slaughter *globally* happens mostly outside the USA and EU—it's roughly the same level of carnage as the first world war, only ongoing and permanent.

Boiler explosions were recognized as a big problem (bad for profits if nothing else) and metalurgists and engineers worked to eliminate it, hard.

Also, the affected people were mostly operators: it was an industrial accident, and those get treated differently today, too.

Nearest modern equivalent would be airliner crashes.

Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2
@cstross @jef are there any numbers on horse related deaths from the late 1800’s before the car started to become common?
Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef ok this isn’t much of a reference but the claim is the horse related fatalities in 1916 were 7x the car related ones in 1997. The links to the paper are dead unfortunately.

https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-problem/

The Horse Manure Problem

In the late 1800s cities were drowning in smelly, dirty, disease-spreading horse manure. The private automobile was a huge step forward, environmentally-speaking.

Big Picture News, Informed Analysis
Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2
@cstross @jef It seems that what we did was invent a horse with gaseous waste instead of solid.. while continuing to ignore the waste problem until it threatens to destroy the ecosphere 😕
Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.
@cstross @jef We hit the problem from the opposite direction in the 1960’s when attempting to develop high energy boron-based jet fuel. Problem is, oxides of boron are solid at those temperatures… something that does not play well with the internals of a jet engine.
Nov 2 at 4:28pmWeb