Weaponized Seismology

In a 1997 Q&A, Clinton-era Secretary of Defense William Cohen warned that terrorists might someday engage in “an eco-type of terrorism,” as he phrased it, “whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, [and] volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.”

I would love to see whatever “electromagnetic” weapons he was referring to—perhaps not unlike those found in one of these two games—and to wonder aloud what sort of test range such devices might require and what landscape architects might be able to do with such a place.

3 thoughts on “Weaponized Seismology”

  1. This is only tangentially relevant to your comment, Ned, but when my wife and I went to see a movie last week at the Arclight here in Los Angeles, the guy in line in front of us was not only carrying a suspiciously voluminous quantity of plastic shopping bags, each bulging with what appeared to be items picked up from the street, but there was a sheet of aluminum foil clearly visible tucked underneath his baseball cap. It also took him nearly five minutes to purchase his ticket.

    In any case…

  2. Kinda reminds me of the chapter in Superfreakonomics that talks about climate engineering. One question that needs to be answered is who will decide which weather is desirable? If you bring rain down on a famine-stricken region while depriving the farmers downwind, are you an environmentalist or a terrorist? Who decides? How do you punish the person responsible?

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