SDI 2010

DUFFY JOHNSON LAB

IMPACT CALC

ACCIDENTAL LAUNCH
Accidental Launch causes extinction
PR NEWSWIRE 98 [NEJM STUDY WARNS OF INCREASING RISK OF ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR ATTACK; OVER 6.8
MILLION IMMEDIATE U.S. DEATHS POSSIBLE, APR 29, LN]
Despite the end of the Cold War, American and Russian nuclear arsenals

remain on high-alert. That, when combined

with significant deterioration in Russian control systems, produces a growing likelihood of an "accidental"
nuclear attack, in which more than six million American[s] men, women, and children could die, according to a study
published in the April 30 New England Journal of Medicine. The authors, physicians, public health professionals, and nuclear experts, will hold
press conferences on April 29 in seven U.S. Cities, including Boston, beseeching the U.S. Government to seek a bilateral agreement with the
Russians that would take all nuclear missiles off high-alert as an "urgent interim measure" toward the only permanent solution: the abolition of
nuclear weapons worldwide. "It is politically and morally indefensible that American children are growing up with the threat of an accidental
nuclear attack," says Lachlan Forrow, MD, principal author of the NEJM article, "'Accidental' Nuclear War: A Post-Cold War Assessment," and
internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His study cites numerous instances of 'broken arrows' -- major nuclear accidents that could
have killed millions and exposed millions of others to potentially lethal radiation from fallout if disaster had not been averted. "Nuclear weapons
do not make us safer, their existence jeopardizes everything we cherish." Forrow adds, "We are calling upon the mayors and citizens of all U.S.
and Russian cities to join us in appealing to Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin to end this threat by taking all weapons off high-alert status
immediately." A strike on Boston would likely target Logan Airport, Commonwealth Pier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard
University, resulting in 609,000 immediate fatalities, according to the researchers. Depending on wind patterns, says Dr. Forrow, hundreds of
thousands of other Boston-area residents could be exposed to potentially lethal fallout. Launching nuclear missiles on false warning is the most
plausible contemporary 'accident' scenario, according to the authors. More than mere conjecture, this scenario almost played out to horrifying
results in 1995 when a U.S. scientific rocket launched from Norway led to activation of the nuclear suitcases carried by the top Russian command
-- the first time ever in Soviet- Russian history. It took eight minutes for the Russian leadership to determine the rocket launch was not part of a
surprise nuclear strike by Western nuclear submarines -- just four minutes before they might have ordered a nuclear response based on standard
launch-on-warning protocols. An 'accidental' nuclear attack would create a public health disaster of an

unprecedented scale, according to more than 70 articles and speeches on the subject, cited by the authors and
written by leading nuclear war experts, public health officials, international peace organizations, and legislators. Furthermore, retired
General Lee Butler, Commander from 1991-1994 of all U.S. Strategic Forces under former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin
Powell, has warned that from his experience in many "war games" it is plausible that such an attack could provoke a nuclear
counterattack that could trigger full-scale nuclear war with billions of casualties worldwide.

SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

BIODIVERSITY
Loss of biodiversity will lead to extinction global ecosystems are reliant on each other
Bruce E. Tonn, Urban Planning Prof @ Tennessee, November 2007, Futures v. 39, no. 9, Futures Sustainability,
ln
The first principle is the most important because earth-life

is needed to support earth-life. Ecosystems are composed of

countless species that are mutually dependent upon each other for nutrients directly as food or as byproducts of earth-life (e.g., as carbon dioxide and oxygen). If the biodiversity of an ecosystem is substantially
compromised, then the entire system could collapse due to destructive negative nutrient cycle feedback effects. If enough
ecosystems collapse worldwide, then the cascading impact on global nutrient cycles could lead to
catastrophic species extinction. Thus, to ensure the survival of earth-life into the distant future the earth's biodiversity
must be protected.

SDI 2010
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BIOTERROR
BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM RISKS EXTINCTION

John D. Steinbrenner, Brookings Senior Fellow, 1997

[Foreign Policy, "Biological weapons: a plague upon all houses," Winter, InfoTrac]
Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential weapons
of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are alive, weapons are
not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in adaptive
behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has immense implications.
The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects,
whatever they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a
nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the
likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning.
The use of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely
controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly or
decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect
and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the other
direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable of
initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population. The 1918
influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer
limit. Nobody really knows how serious a possibility this might be, since there is no way to measure it reliably.

SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
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DEHUMANIZATION
Dehumanization makes all impacts of nuclear war, genocide, and environmental
destruction inevitable
David Berube, professor of speech communication, June/July 1997, Nanotechnology Magazine,
http://www.cla.sc.edu/ENGL/faculty/berube/prolong.htm
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial
science. This would involve valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the current ones,
humans would never be able to escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends dispute is at the core of
Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater than

that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the quality of
life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well
be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized
thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu
& Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe
to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone . When we calculate
the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to
measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When

people become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can
be justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's
most powerful weapon.

SDI 2010
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DEMOCRACY
Democracy solves extinction.
Diamond -95 (Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990S,
1995, p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html //)

Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global
ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality,
accountability, popular sovereignty and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern
themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors
to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much
less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to
use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer
better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who
organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and
because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect
competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of
international security and prosperity can be built.

SDI 2010
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DISEASE
Unchecked disease causes human extinction
South China Morning Post, 1-4-1996 (Dr. Ben Abraham= called "one of the 100 greatest minds in history"
by super-IQ society Mensa and owner of Toronto-based biotechnology company, Structured Biologicals Inc
according to same article)
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a much more
pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV. If this makes Dr
Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak which killed more than 100 people
in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham,
the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of
natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier
than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism ," he said. "It can come from a
rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain
reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben
-Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the impact of AIDS
on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs
into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an
outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years - theoretically, it could happen
tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the
threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He
added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human
species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to learn
how to mutate and evade the immune system. " He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have
outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, diseasecarrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses
would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.

SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

ECONOMY
NUCLEAR WAR.
Mead 9. [2/4, Walter Russell, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, Only Makes You
Stronger: Why the recession bolstered America, The New Republic]
None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great
powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of
life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of
Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold
war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars.

Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and
helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might
start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet,
decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.

SDI 2010
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ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION
Endocrine disruption causes extinction prevents reproduction
Californians For Alternatives To Toxics, 2004, Toxic Pesticides,
http://www.alternatives2toxics.org/toxicpesticides.htm, accessed 9-12
Pesticides, such as oryzalin, metam sodium, simazine or oxyfluorfen, which laboratory studies show affect blood and blood-forming
tissues, may be especially dangerous for persons with inherited blood abnormalities or acquired blood diseases. Even sulfur, which is
considered relatively low in toxicity, can be threatening to an asthmatic.
* chemical interactions such as synergism and other effects that
are created as a result of mixing chemicals together. Research on chemical blends like those in pesticide formulations is limited to lethal
effects and acute eye and skin effects. * endocrine disruption, or alteration to the system that regulates hormones .
Although there is evidence in nature and even in humans, damage to the endocrine system by pesticides and
other chemicals is only now beginning to be considered by the EPA for future studies and regulatory action. Endocrine disrupting

chemicals often affect reproductive organs and reproduction and they are especially dangerous to fetuses or
young children. This is of particular concern to scientists because of the threat to future survival of humans
and other species. * immune system depression. Hundreds of scientific studies of humans in agricultural areas in Canada and the
former Soviet Union found adverse alterations to immune systems and higher rates of infectious disease than unexposed populations (WRI
1996). Studies in experimental animals prove that many pesticides have the ability to disrupt immune system flinctions following acute and
even low-level exposures.

SDI 2010
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FOOD PRICES
Food shortages lead to World War III
William Calvin, theoretical neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, Atlantic Monthly, January, The
Great Climate Flip-Flop, Vol 281, No. 1, 1998, p. 47-64
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting

crop yields would cause some powerful countries

to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands -- if only because their armies, unpaid and lacking food,
would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The better-organized countries would attempt
to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take over countries with significant remaining
resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating
competitors for the remaining food. This would be a worldwide problem -- and could lead to a Third World War -but Europe's vulnerability is particularly easy to analyze. The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas, drastically altered Europe's climate as
far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than 650 million people. It has excellent soils, and largely grows its own food. It could no
longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North Atlantic.

SDI 2010
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FREE TRADE
Free trade solves nuclear war and extinction
Copley News Service 99 (December 1, L/N)
For decades, many children in America and other countries went to bed fearing annihilation by nuclear war. The specter of nuclear winter
freezing the life out of planet Earth seemed very real. Activists protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle apparently have
forgotten that threat. The truth is that nations join together in groups like the WTO not just to further their own prosperity, but also
to forestall conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has traded in the threat of a worldwide nuclear war for
the benefit of cooperative global economics . Some Seattle protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the mold of nuclear
disarmament or anti-Vietnam War protesters of decades past. But they're not. They're special-interest activists, whether the cause is
environmental, labor or paranoia about global government. Actually, most of the demonstrators in Seattle are very much unlike yesterday's peace
activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or philosopher Bertrand Russell, the father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged
people and nations to work together rather than strive against each other. These and other war protesters would probably approve of 135 WTO
nations sitting down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might have been settled by bullets and bombs. As long as nations

are trading peacefully, and their economies are built on exports to other countries, they have a major
disincentive to wage war. That's why bringing China, a budding superpower, into the WTO is so important. As
exports to the United States and the rest of the world feed Chinese prosperity, and that prosperity increases
demand for the goods we produce, the threat of hostility diminishes. Many anti-trade protesters in Seattle claim that only
multinational corporations benefit from global trade, and that it's the everyday wage earners who get hurt. That's just plain wrong. First of all, it's
not the military-industrial complex benefiting. It's U.S. companies that make high-tech goods. And those companies provide a growing number of
jobs for Americans. In San Diego, many people have good jobs at Qualcomm, Solar Turbines and other companies for whom overseas markets
are essential. In Seattle, many of the 100,000 people who work at Boeing would lose their livelihoods without world trade. Foreign trade today
accounts for 30 percent of our gross domestic product. That's a lot of jobs for everyday workers. Growing global prosperity has
helped counter the specter of nuclear winter. Nations of the world are learning to live and work together , like
the singers of anti-war songs once imagined. Those who care about world peace shouldn't be protesting world trade.

They should be celebrating it.

10

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HEG
Leadership is essential to prevent global nuclear exchange
Zalmay Khalilzad, RAND, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1995
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to
multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an
end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous
advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and
the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major
problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level
conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the
United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a
global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance
of power system.

11

SDI 2010
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INDO PAK WAR

India-Pakistan war culminates in extinction.
Fai -01 (Ghulam Nabi, Executive Director, Kashmiri American Council, Washington Times, 7-8)
The foreign policy of the United States in South Asia should move from the lackadaisical and distant (with India crowned
with a unilateral veto power) to aggressive involvement at the vortex. The most dangerous place on the planet is
Kashmir, a disputed territory convulsed and illegally occupied for more than 53 years and sandwiched between nuclear-capable
India and Pakistan. It has ignited two wars between the estranged South Asian rivals in 1948 and 1965, and a third could
trigger nuclear volleys and a nuclear winter threatening the entire globe. The United States would enjoy no sanctuary.

12

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JAPAN RE-ARM
Japan re-arm causes nuclear war
Morton H. Halperin, Director of Policy Planning at State Department, -2K [The Nuclear Dimension of the US-Japan Alliance,
http://www.nautilus.org/archives/library/security/papers/Halperin-US-Japan.pdf]
However, any realistic appraisal of nuclear dangers would suggest

that neither rogue states/terrorist groups nor

a deliberate Russian attack is the right focus if the goal of U.S. national security policy is to prevent the use of
nuclear weapons anywhere in the world. The most immediate danger is that India and Pakistan will stumble into a nuclear war
following their nuclear tests and their apparent determination to deploy nuclear forces. A second danger will continue to be that Russian missiles
will be fired on the United States by accident or as a result of unauthorized action. Over the longer run, these threats will be

eclipsed by the danger that the non-proliferation regime will collapse and other states will develop nuclear
weapons. A terrorist threat should, in my view, become a matter of serious concern only if there is much
wider dispersal of nuclear weapons among states stemming from an open collapse of the nonproliferation
regime.

13

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KOREAN WAR
Korean war causes extinction.
Africa News -99 (AFRICA NEWS, December 25, 1999, p. online)
Lusaka - If there is one

place today where the much-dreaded Third World War could easily erupt and probably reduce
earth to a huge smouldering cinder it is the Korean Peninsula in Far East Asia. Ever since the end of the savage three-year Korean
war in the early 1950s, military tension between the hard-line communist north and the American backed South Korea has remained
dangerously high. In fact the Koreas are technically still at war. A foreign visitor to either Pyongyong in the North or Seoul in South Korea
will quickly notice that the divided country is always on maximum alert for any eventuality. North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) has never forgiven the US for coming to the aid of South Korea during the Korean war. She still regards the US as an occupation
force in South Korea and wholly to blame for the non-reunification of the country. North Korean media constantly churns out a tirade of attacks
on "imperialist" America and its "running dog" South Korea. The DPRK is one of the most secretive countries in the world where a visitor is
given the impression that the people's hatred for the US is absolute while the love for their government is total. Whether this is really so, it is
extremely difficult to conclude. In the DPRK, a visitor is never given a chance to speak to ordinary Koreans about the politics of their country. No
visitor moves around alone without government escort. The American government argues that its presence in South Korea was because of the
constant danger of an invasion from the north. America has vast economic interests in South Korea. She points out that the north has dug
numerous tunnels along the demilitarised zone as part of the invasion plans. She also accuses the north of violating South Korean territorial
waters. Early this year, a small North Korean submarine was caught in South Korean waters after getting entangled in fishing nets. Both the
Americans and South Koreans claim the submarine was on a military spying mission. However, the intension of the alleged intrusion will
probably never be known because the craft's crew were all found with fatal gunshot wounds to their heads in what has been described as suicide
pact to hide the truth of the mission. The US mistrust of the north's intentions is so deep that it is no secret that today Washington has the largest
concentration of soldiers and weaponry of all descriptions in south Korea than anywhere else in the World, apart from America itself. Some of the
armada that was deployed in the recent bombing of Iraq and in Operation Desert Storm against the same country following its invasion of Kuwait
was from the fleet permanently stationed on the Korean Peninsula. It is true too that at the moment the North/South Korean border is the most
fortified in the world. The border line is littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and is
constantly patrolled by warplanes from both sides. It is common knowledge that America also keeps an eye on any military movement or buildup
in the north through spy satellites. The DPRK is said to have an estimated one million soldiers and a huge arsenal of various weapons. Although
the DPRK regards herself as a developing country, she can however be classified as a super-power in terms of military might. The DPRK is
capable of producing medium and long-range missiles. Last year, for example, she test-fired a medium range missile over Japan, an action that
greatly shook and alarmed the US, Japan and South Korea. The DPRK says the projectile was a satellite. There have also been fears that she was
planning to test another ballistic missile capable of reaching North America. Naturally, the world is anxious that military tension on the
Korean Peninsula must be defused to avoid an apocalypse on earth. It is therefore significant that the American government
announced a few days ago that it was moving towards normalising relations with North Korea.

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LIBERTY
Every invasion of freedom must be rejected.
Petro -74 (Sylvester Petro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, Spring 1974, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, p. 480.)
However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway I believe in only one thing: liberty. And it is always well to bear in mind David
Humes observation: It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the

invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects.
That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In
sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual
and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying
spirit.

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MIDDLE EAST WAR

Middle East conflict escalates to a global nuclear war
Steinbach -02 (John, Center for Research on Globalization, 3-3, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE203A.html)
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and
disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East
again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last
resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is
gaining momentum(and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a
major(if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish
satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in
1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control
negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the
threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of
mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a
world conflagration." (44)

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MONOCULTURE
Loss of genetic diversity causes extinction
Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, Rural Advancement Fund International, Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss
of Genetic Diversity, 1990, p. ix
While many may ponder the consequences of global warming, perhaps the

biggest single environmental catastrophe in

human history is unfolding in the garden. While all are rightly concerned about the possibility of nuclear war,
an equally devastating time bomb is ticking away in the fields of farmers all over the world. Loss of genetic
diversity in agriculturesilent, rapid, inexorableis leading us to a rendezvous with extinctionto the
doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine. To simplify the environment as we have done with agriculture
is to destroy the complex interrelationships that hold the natural world together. Reducing the diversity of
life, we narrow our options for the future and render our own survival more precarious. It is life at the end of the
limb. That is the subject of this book. Agronomists in the Philippines warned of what became known as southern corn leaf blight in 1061.'
The disease was reported in Mexico not long after. In the summer of 1968, the first faint hint that the blight was in the United States came
from seed growers in the Midwest. The danger was ignored. By the spring of 19701 the disease had taken hold in the Florida corn crop. But
it was not until corn prices leapt thirty cents a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade that the world took notice; by then it was Augustand
too late. By the close of the year, Americans had lost fifteen percent of their most important cropmore than a billion bushels. Some
southern states lost half their harvest and many of their farmers. While consumers suffered in the grocery stores, producers were out a billion
dollars in lost yield. And the disaster was not solely domestic. U.S. seed exports may have spread the blight to Africa, Latin America and Asia .

17

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NORTH KOREAN WAR

WAR ON THE PENINSULA GOES NUCLEAR.
Africa News -99 (AFRICA NEWS, December 25, 1999, p. online)
Lusaka - If there is one

place today where the much-dreaded Third World War could easily erupt and probably reduce
earth to a huge smouldering cinder it is the Korean Peninsula in Far East Asia. Ever since the end of the savage three-year Korean
war in the early 1950s, military tension between the hard-line communist north and the American backed South Korea has remained
dangerously high. In fact the Koreas are technically still at war. A foreign visitor to either Pyongyong in the North or Seoul in South Korea
will quickly notice that the divided country is always on maximum alert for any eventuality. North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) has never forgiven the US for coming to the aid of South Korea during the Korean war. She still regards the US as an occupation
force in South Korea and wholly to blame for the non-reunification of the country. North Korean media constantly churns out a tirade of attacks
on "imperialist" America and its "running dog" South Korea. The DPRK is one of the most secretive countries in the world where a visitor is
given the impression that the people's hatred for the US is absolute while the love for their government is total. Whether this is really so, it is
extremely difficult to conclude. In the DPRK, a visitor is never given a chance to speak to ordinary Koreans about the politics of their country. No
visitor moves around alone without government escort. The American government argues that its presence in South Korea was because of the
constant danger of an invasion from the north. America has vast economic interests in South Korea. She points out that the north has dug
numerous tunnels along the demilitarised zone as part of the invasion plans. She also accuses the north of violating South Korean territorial
waters. Early this year, a small North Korean submarine was caught in South Korean waters after getting entangled in fishing nets. Both the
Americans and South Koreans claim the submarine was on a military spying mission. However, the intension of the alleged intrusion will
probably never be known because the craft's crew were all found with fatal gunshot wounds to their heads in what has been described as suicide
pact to hide the truth of the mission. The US mistrust of the north's intentions is so deep that it is no secret that today Washington has the largest
concentration of soldiers and weaponry of all descriptions in south Korea than anywhere else in the World, apart from America itself. Some of the
armada that was deployed in the recent bombing of Iraq and in Operation Desert Storm against the same country following its invasion of Kuwait
was from the fleet permanently stationed on the Korean Peninsula. It is true too that at the moment the North/South Korean border is the most
fortified in the world. The border line is littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and is
constantly patrolled by warplanes from both sides. It is common knowledge that America also keeps an eye on any military movement or buildup
in the north through spy satellites. The DPRK is said to have an estimated one million soldiers and a huge arsenal of various weapons. Although
the DPRK regards herself as a developing country, she can however be classified as a super-power in terms of military might. The DPRK is
capable of producing medium and long-range missiles. Last year, for example, she test-fired a medium range missile over Japan, an action that
greatly shook and alarmed the US, Japan and South Korea. The DPRK says the projectile was a satellite. There have also been fears that she was
planning to test another ballistic missile capable of reaching North America. Naturally, the world is anxious that military tension on the
Korean Peninsula must be defused to avoid an apocalypse on earth. It is therefore significant that the American government
announced a few days ago that it was moving towards normalising relations with North Korea.

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SDI 2010
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IMPACT CALC

OCEANS
Ocean health is key to prevent extinction
Robin Kundis Craig, Law Prof @ Indiana, Winter 2003, Taking Steps, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, ln
The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy
percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," n17 oceans provide food; marketable goods such as shells,
aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and
weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. n18 Indeed, it is

difficult to overstate the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life
on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the
chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate ." n19 Ocean and coastal
ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. n20 In addition, many people assign
heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to
future generations. n21

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SDI 2010
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IMPACT CALC

OZONE
OZONE DESTRUCTION EMPIRICALLY CAUSED MASS EXTINCTIONS ON EARTH
Paleontological Research Institute, Permian Extinction,
http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTHOLrp/82rp.htm
Lastly, a new theory has been proposed- the Supernova explosion. A supernova occurring 30 light years away from
earth would release enough gamma radiation to destroy the ozone layer for several years. Subsequent exposure to
direct ultra-violet radiation would weaken or kill nearly all existing species. Only those living deep in the ocean will
be secured. Sediments contain records or short-term ozone destruction- large amounts of NOx gasses and C14 plus
global and atmospheric cooling. With sufficient destruction of the ozone layer, these problems could cause
widespread destruction of life.This was the biggest extinction event in the last 500 million years, and researchers
want a theory that is scientifically rigorous. Therefore, all these theories are possible but also have many faults and
create much controversy in determining if it is the one exact theory which will explain this historic mass extinction.

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SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

PROTECTIONISM
Protectionism causes nuclear wars.
Spicer -96 (Michael Spicer, economist; member of the British Parliament, The Challenge from the East and the Rebirth of the West, 1996, p.
121)
The choice facing the West today is much the same as that which faced the Soviet bloc after World War II: between meeting head-on the
challenge of world trade with the adjustments and the benefits that it will bring, or of attempting to shut out markets that are growing and where a
dynamic new pace is being set for innovative production. The problem about the second approach is not simply that it won't hold: satellite
technology alone will ensure that he consumers will begin to demand those goods that the East is able to provide most cheaply. More
fundamentally, it will guarantee the emergence of a fragmented world in which natural fears will be fanned and inflamed. A world divided

into rigid trade blocs will be a deeply troubled and unstable place in which suspicion and ultimately envy will
possibly erupt into a major war. I do not say that the converse will necessarily be true, that in a free trading world there will be an
absence of all strife. Such a proposition would manifestly be absurd. But to trade is to become interdependent, and that is a
good step in the direction of world stability. With nuclear weapons at two a penny, stability will be at a
premium in the years ahead.

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SDI 2010
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IMPACT CALC

PROLIF
Proliferation causes extinction.
Taylor -02 [Stuart Taylor, Senior Writer with the National Journal and editor at Newsweek, Legal Times, 9-16-2002]
The truth is, no matter what we do about Iraq, if

we don't stop proliferation, another five or 10 potentially unstable

nations may go nuclear before long, making it ever more likely that one or more bombs will be set off
anonymously on our soil by terrorists or a terrorist government. Even an airtight missile defense would be useless against a nuke
hidden in a truck, a shipping container, or a boat. [Continues] Unless we get serious about stopping proliferation, we are headed for "a
world filled with nuclear-weapons states, where every crisis threatens to go nuclear," where "the survival of
civilization truly is in question from day to day," and where "it would be impossible to keep these weapons out of the hands of
terrorists, religious cults, and criminal organizations." So writes Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., a moderate Republican who served as a career
arms-controller under six presidents and led the successful Clinton administration effort to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The only
way to avoid such a grim future, he suggests in his memoir, Disarmament Sketches, is for the United States to lead an international coalition
against proliferation by showing an unprecedented willingness to give up the vast majority of our own nuclear weapons, excepting only those
necessary to deter nuclear attack by others.

22

SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

RUSSIA
Russian civil war leads to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism against the US
Steven R. David, Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, Foreign Affairs Jan 1999
Should Russia succumb to internal war, the consequences for the United States and Europe will be severe. A
major power like Russia -- even though in decline -- does not suffer civil war quietly or alone. An embattled Russian Federation
might provoke opportunistic attacks from enemies such as China. Massive flows of refugees would pour into
central and western Europe. Armed struggles in Russia could easily spill into its neighbors. Damage from the
fighting, particularly attacks on nuclear plants, would poison the environment of much of Europe and
Asia. Within Russia, the consequences would be even worse. Just as the sheer brutality of the last Russian civil war laid the basis for the
privations of Soviet communism, a second civil war might produce another horrific regime. Most alarming is the real possibility that the
violent disintegration of Russia could lead to loss of control over its nuclear arsenal . No nuclear state has ever
fallen victim to civil war, but even without a clear precedent the grim consequences can be foreseen. Russia retains some 20,000
nuclear weapons and the raw material for tens of thousands more, in scores of sites scattered throughout the country. So far, the
government has managed to prevent the loss of any weapons or much material. If war erupts, however, Moscow's already weak
grip on nuclear sites will slacken, making weapons and supplies available to a wide range of anti-American
groups and states. Such dispersal of nuclear weapons represents the greatest physical threat America now faces. And it is hard to
think of anything that would increase this threat more than the chaos that would follow a Russian civil
war.

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SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

SPACE MIL
SPACE MILITARIZATION CAUSES WAR

Chuck Robb, Senator, 1999

[The Washington Quarterly, Winter, p. 84]
If history has taught us anything, it is that a future more like the second scenario will prevail. It defies reason to
assume that nations would sit idle while the United States invests billions of dollars in weaponizing space, leaving
them at an unprecedented disadvantage. This second scenario suggests three equally troubling consequences. The
first is that Americans would, in a relative sense, lose the most from a space-based arms race. The United States is
currently the preeminent world military power, and much of that power resides in our ability to use space for
military applications. A large percentage of our military communications now passes through space. Our troops rely
on weather satellites, our targeters on satellite photos, and virtually all of our new generations of weapons on the
Global Positioning System satellites for pin-point accuracy. By encouraging potential adversaries to deploy weapons
into space that could quickly destroy many of these systems, a space-based arms race would render many of these
more vulnerable to attack than they are today. Even if our potential adversaries were unable to build a competing
force, they could still position deadly satellites disguised as commercial assets near or in the path of our most vital
military satellites.

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SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

TERRORISM
Unchecked terrorism will result in extinction
Yonah Alexander, professor and director of the Inter-University for Terrorism Studies in Israel and the United States. Terrorism myths and realities, The
Washington Times, August 28, 2003
Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in
terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact . The internationalization and brutalization
of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological,
chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious implications concerning national, regional and global
security concerns. Two myths in particular must be debunked immediately if an effective counterterrorism "best practices" strategy can be
developed [e.g., strengthening international cooperation]. The first illusion is that terrorism can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated
completely, provided the root causes of conflicts - political, social and economic - are addressed. The conventional illusion is that terrorism
must be justified by oppressed people seeking to achieve their goals and consequently the argument advanced by "freedom fighters"
anywhere, "give me liberty and I will give you death," should be tolerated if not glorified. This traditional rationalization of "sacred"
violence often conceals that the real purpose of terrorist groups is to gain political power through the barrel of the gun, in violation of
fundamental human rights of the noncombatant segment of societies. For instance, Palestinians religious movements [e.g., Hamas, Islamic
Jihad] and secular entities [such as Fatah's Tanzim and Aqsa Martyr Brigades]] wish not only to resolve national grievances [such as Jewish
settlements, right of return, Jerusalem] but primarily to destroy the Jewish state. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's international network not only
opposes the presence of American military in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, but its stated objective is to "unite all Muslims and establish a
government that follows the rule of the Caliphs." The second myth is that strong action against terrorist infrastructure [leaders, recruitment,
funding, propaganda, training, weapons, operational command and control] will only increase terrorism. The argument here is that lawenforcement efforts and military retaliation inevitably will fuel more brutal acts of violent revenge. Clearly, if this perception continues to
prevail, particularly in democratic societies, there is the danger it will paralyze governments and thereby encourage further terrorist attacks.
In sum, past experience provides useful lessons for a realistic future strategy. The prudent application of force has been demonstrated to be an
effective tool for short- and long-term deterrence of terrorism. For example, Israel's targeted killing of Mohammed Sider, the Hebron
commander of the Islamic Jihad, defused a "ticking bomb." The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab - a top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip
who was directly responsible for several suicide bombings including the latest bus attack in Jerusalem - disrupted potential terrorist
operations. Similarly, the U.S. military operation in Iraq eliminated Saddam Hussein's regime as a state sponsor of terror. Thus, it behooves
those countries victimized by terrorism to understand a cardinal message communicated by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on
May 13, 1940: "Victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: For without victory,
there is no survival."

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SDI 2010
DUFFY JOHNSON LAB
IMPACT CALC

TYRANNY
Tyranny outweighs full scale nuclear war
R.J Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science @ U of Hawaii, 1994 Death by Government
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Power kills, absolute Power kills absolutely. This new Power Principle is the message emerging from my previous work on the
causes of war1 and this book on genocide and government mass murder--what I call democide--in this century. The more power a
government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it
will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of
governments, the more it is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit
democide. At the extremes of Power2, totalitarian communist governments slaughter their people by the tens of
millions, while many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers. [HE
CONTINUES] Consider also that library stacks have been written on the possible nature and consequences of
nuclear war and how it might be avoided. Yet, in the life of some still living we have experienced in the toll
from democide (and related destruction and misery among the survivors) the equivalent of a nuclear war, especially at the
high near 360,000,000 end of the estimates. It is as though one had already occurred! Yet to my knowledge, there is only one book dealing
with the overall human cost of this "nuclear war"--Gil Elliot's Twentieth Century Book of the Dead.

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SDI 2010
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IMPACT CALC

US-CHINA WAR
US/China war over Taiwan causes extinction.
Straits Times -2K (Straits Times, June, 25, 2000, No one gains in war over Taiwan] (PDNSS2115)
THE DOOMSDAY SCENARIO -THE

high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale

war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its
national interests, then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other
countries far and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibilityof a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US
and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties
open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate,
east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world
order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be
similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a
new and dangerous phase: Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US
Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save
the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its
implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which
could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar
capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China
possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese
military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General
Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for
Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He
said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention.
Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilization. There would be no victors in such a war. While
the prospect of a nuclear Annaggedon over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it cannot be ruled out entirely, for
China puts sovereignty above everything else.

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US-RUSSIAN WAR
US Russia war causes extinction --- outweighs other wars

Bostrom2NickBostrom,.ProfessorofPhilosophyandGlobalStudiesatYale."ExistentialRisks:Analyzing
HumanExtinctionScenariosandRelatedHazards,"38,www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html

A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An
all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probabilityand with consequences that might
have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted
with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our
species orpermanently destroy human civilization. Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that
could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately . There is also a risk that other states
may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however thata smaller nuclear exchange, between India and
Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankinds potential
permanently.

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SDI 2010
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IMPACT CALC

WARMING
THE IMPACT IS EXTINCTION.
Tickell 08 [Oliver, On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction]
We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Gurdian last week. At first
sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra . But the idea that we could adapt to a
4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean , in
the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for
humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps would become

inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost,
complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive
farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea
levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather
would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes.
The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.

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WATER WARS
Water Wars cause nuclear conflict
Weiner, Prof. At Princeton 1990 (Jonathan, The Next 100 Years p. 270)
If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, then we may destroy ourselves with the C-bomb, the Change Bomb. And in a
world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the other. Already in the Middle East, from North Africa to the
Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over dwindling water supplies and rising populations are reaching what
many experts describe as a flashpoint. A climate shift in that single battle-scarred nexus might trigger international
tensions that will unleash some of the 60,000 nuclear warheads the world has stockpiled since Trinity.

30