There were many wars in human history, and some of them are big, which we call them world wars. The most well-known world wars are world war I and world war II. Even though when talking about world wars, people would discuss the causes of the wars and what roles each country played in them. However, within the scope of concern of this class, we not only will talk about how these wars formed, but more importantly, we will also talk about how science and technology were involved in them. For example, for World War I, technologies such as telegraph, trains, tanks, aircrafts and chemical weapons were widely used. In Word War II, science was even valued more than in WWI. This is shown through accomplishments like the establishment of quantum physics and the refinement of the genetic mutation theory. More importantly, WWII might be the first-time which hundreds of thousands of brilliant minds are gathered together to complete one single scientific project-the Manhattan Project. Through this project, human beings used a newly found energy source-“nuclear power”- and constructed a type of bomb more powerful than any other bombs made before. We call this bomb “Atomic bomb”. The good news is with these technologies and weapons in hand, we didn’t have any world war since WWII. This is definitely a good thing, and factors contributing to it are various—education, agriculture, demography, cultural change, political structure, and etc. In my perspective, another reason why there’s not a world war III is that science and technology not only eliminate the need of having a war, but also the countries are afraid of heading into another world war, especially because of the destructive powers we now own.

Science and technology “free” us from the need of having wars. Traditionally, the reason why wars happened is to acquire more resources for one country. This was one way how countries lack resources would be able to feed its people and continued to grow stronger. Nowadays, such needs are weakened since humans can utilize the resources more efficiently. For example, in the past, countries with saline-alkali soils were not able to grow crops and other foods. However, now, there are possible ways of “fixing” these soils. Ways include irrigating the crops with fresh water and setting up desalting plants to treat the saltwater running out of the saline soils. In the past, the first job would require tons of people carrying water around all day, and the second job wasn’t even possible. Now, with the help of water pump, drill, and other machines, we can easily drill a whole on the ground to get fresh underground water, irrigate the crops with these water, and build a desalting plant that can convert the salt water back to fresh water which can be transported back to the saline ground to facilitate irrigation. Other than helping the countries to explore the resource they already own, sciences and technologies improved transportation and communication methods so that global trade became possible. In this sense, the countries can exchange the resource they don’t need with the ones they need, which also helped with the lack of resource situation.

Another reason why there’s not a world war is that the world can no longer afford a new one. When world war I and II started, humans have powerful weapons, but those weapons are not powerful enough to destroy ourselves. In contrast, nuclear weapons can do this. For the two bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan, they killed over 200,000 people, most of which were civilians (311, Cormack). These two explosions were equivalent to 36,000 tons of TNT.

https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/06/in-photographs-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-after-nuclear-attacks-75-years-ago

After the explosion, these two cities were completely destroyed with a few remaining structures. Unfortunately, these two atomic bombs were small comparing to some of the atomic bombs we own today. For example, the US-owned B83 bomb can produce a blast of 1.2 megatons of TNT which is 80 times more powerful than Little Boy’s 15 kilotons of TNT power. The largest nuclear weapon was detonated in 1961 by the Soviet Union-Tsar Bomba, which was equal to 50 megatons of TNT-3333 times more powerful than Little Boy.

These were just the scales decades ago, and who knows how powerful these nukes become in recent years. Right now, around 15600 nuclear weapons are currently owned by 9 countries in the world. If a world war occurs and drags all those countries into the stage, the earth will be destroyed completely. This is why no matter how tense the situation becomes between big countries, big wars will not begin easily.

In conclusion, the emphasis and development on science and technology in recent years may dragged the world into several wars in the beginning, but in the end, the result is still promising. Both due to the convenience that the technology brought to our lives and the deterrent force of the existing weapons, the world comes to a relative peace. Even though we don’t know if the world will be chaotic again in the future, at least, with the information provided to us, it’s not likely for another world war to happen, and I hope there never will.

 

 

Citation

Cormack, Lesley B., and Andrew Ede. A History of Science in Society: From

Philosophy to Utility, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Vidal, John. Irrigation, Drought, Sea Level Rise and More Are Causing Salt to Build

up in Soils around the World. What Can We Do? 11 Apr. 2019,

ensia.com/features/salinization-salt-threatens-soil-crops-ecosystems/.

How destructive was little boy and fat man:

https://www.lanl.gov/museum/exhibitions/_docs/Fatman-Littleboy.pdf