Why would Einstein say such a
somber thing?
The basic premise is
that World War III will likely be fought using the world's
supply of nuclear weapons and that such an event will likely
wipe out humanities' systems of government, nearly all of the
earth's easily accessible resources,
and nearly all of humanities' knowledge base of technology,
physics, chemistry, and engineering.
Are you reading this webpage
on some
electronic device?
If so, do you know exactly
how your
electronic device works? Does
anybody you know, know exactly how your
electronic device
works? How many
people in
the world today understand every single aspect of
how your electronic device works?
Most people are unaware of how much their smartphones can do,
much less how they do what they do.
Some may have considered a world
without social/government support in which humans have to
survive off of the land. In this scenario humans must have a
way of growing crops and hunting for game. But how many people
reading this know how to make a gun? how many people even know
how to make gunpowder? Lets say you are familiar with the
ingredients for making gunpowder (saltpeter, sulfur,
charcoal). How many of you know what saltpeter is? (KNO3). And
to most people KNO3 doesn't mean much.
The
point that I'm trying to make is that most of the
technology we depend on today is highly
specialized. Only a handful of people in the world
today understand most of the
technology that makes
our society successful.
With this melancholy image of society in mind
imagine a world raped by battling
armies, seared by
conventional
munitions, scarred by entrenchments,
and baked by nuclear radiation. Imagine a civilization where
all the tech companies have been bombed, all the cell towers
toppled, all the bullets fired, all the petroleum burned, all
the research of physics, chemistry, and engineering destroyed,
all the smartest people in the world dead, and most of the
world's immediate food supply depleted. With this view in mind
its fairly easy to see what Einstein was envisioning for
humanities' future, and how without the knowledge base of
technology that our society depends upon, humanity could
likely be thrown back to what some would say resembles the
Stone Age.
picture by:
http://www.consultadd.com/insight/technology/