Is this the end?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Sooner or later all type of weapons will be used, if not by states then by suicide terrorists getting weapons from corrupted or chaotic countries. Does not mean that fission bombs would be a favorite weapon of a terrorist group - might create too much furious criticism from potential supporters.

Sometimes I have been thinking of what Revelation tells about wars and things that will happen. John told that he reported what he saw. He tried to describe things using words and concepts that were common almost 2000 years ago. The descriptions may be symbolic pictures but if he really saw wars happening in the future, he could not have described them using the words we might use from technology. You might identify some kind of war machines and possibly biological or chemical weapons from the descriptions but there is less suggesting the use of fission bombs.

What sounds more like near future is fires and sun scorching people with fierce heat.

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That is good - and I think data is encouraging, as you’ve suggested. Click-bait news feeds can always make sure we have nothing but disaster front-and-center in our attentions, but the world is less violent than it ever has been. So the violence that remains can be seen (accurately I think) as more extreme, fanatical, and rare. Hopefully nations that fund or promote war will increasingly have populations that have lost the political will to pursue violence as any live option.

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There may be less wars but iniquity is in abundance. God is constantly rebelled against and hated. Righteouness is mocked and shunned. But the Lord knows those who are His and let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord depart from doing evil.

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Is there a century in the last 2,000 years where someone did not make the same claim?

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Your statement misses the point of mine. Sin is the enemy of mankind and the only way to be free is to be in Christ. It’s been that way from the beginning and still is. That is why the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus must be constantly proclaimed and trusted in. He alone is our only hope and safety.

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And unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short

One reason I think this is it, the final curtain, is based on this verse. Mankind has the capacity to destroy every human being on earth–and we will, unless He intervenes. Never before that I know of, have we been in this position: to annihilate everyone.

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POPULAR MECHANICS
What If We Blew Up All The World’s Nukes at Once?
For starters, it would be a very, very bad day for mankind.

BY KYLE MIZOKAMI
APR 1, 2019

Sometimes it’s best not to think about just how many nukes are out there.

Nuclear weapons are enormously destructive devices capable of leveling entire cities, and arguably ending human civilization in the case of an all-out nuclear exchange. But what if humankind, for some bizarre reason, decided to set all of them off at once?
The explosive yield of nuclear weapons is typically measured in kilotons, or thousand tons of TNT. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima is typically calculated at 16 kilotons, or 16,000 tons of TNT. The W-87 warhead carried by the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile has a yield of 300 kilotons. The B83 nuclear freefall bomb, carried by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, has a yield of up to 1.2 megatons, or 1,200 kilotons. or 1,200,000 tons of TNT

Besides the huge Cold War arsenals in United States and Russia, nukes are owned by China, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. Altogether, there are an estimated 15,000 nuclear weapons worldwide.
Individually, each of these weapons could do incredible damage. Kurzgesagt estimates that if the world’s supply of nukes were used evenly on its large cities, the global arsenal would be enough to kill three billion people, with 1,500 nukes left over. Packed inside a single, sprawling warehouse in the South American jungle, as Kurzgesagt imagines, they collectively have the power of up to 15 Krakatoa-style volcanic eruptions.

The detonation of this super warehouse would create a fireball 31 miles across, flattening 1,864 square miles surrounding it. A mushroom cloud 30 miles high would follow. The nuclear firestorm would expand in all directions across South America (ironic and a bit unfair, considering South America is one of the few continents without nuclear weapons). It would also be followed by a nuclear winter scenario, in which particles of dust and ash sent skyward would enter the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and lowering temperatures globally for several years.

stealth (4) p

The Stealth carrying 1.2 megatons of TNT power

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That’s why the only way to win at global thermonuclear war is to not play. The only time nuclear weapons have been used in combat is when just one country had them.

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As a former complete nutjob, I had no doubts whatsoever that mankind would engage in an all out effort to destroy everything.

During the Cuban MC General LeMay taunted JFK.

President Kennedy speaking with General Curtis LeMay and General Thomas S. Power as LeMay famously told him: “You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mr President”

LeMay wanted to begin bombing yesterday. Wouldn’t it be nice to have rational people in charge all the time?

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Sadly that only works for people who hold the survival of mankind above helping to bring about what they think is prophecized in their holy book. Many Christians are better than that but I worry about the number who aren’t. On this site no long time regulars are in the worrisome category but there are too many out there who seem genuinely to pine for tossing this world into the waste bin. I’m not down on Christianity but I’m critical of that.

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152

Experts are warning us that terrorists out of the Middle East have the means to acquire and to use a thermonuclear weapon to reap devastation here and in Israel. A great many terrorists have already died and many more will gladly commit suicide for the chance to kill their enemies simultaneously. They have access to fissile material, the means to incorporate it into a functional weapon, and an oversupply of eager volunteers to deploy it.

Let’s try to keep in mind that there are many, very real, desperate, dangerous terrorists positioned around the world who are dying for the chance to inflict widespread destruction and mass murder on Israel and America, who don’t pretend to be born again Christians.

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We couldn’t retaliate very well because the perps were pulverized. (They delighted in taking a little boy who was afraid to fly, aiming their jet, and ramming his body into steel girders 1,700 feet in the air.)

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There are also people willing to commit extended suicide, killing as many as they can before they die. They may be politically motivated but not necessarily even that. What seems to be common is that they have lost hope of something better and, for some reason, glamorize violence. These distorted persons are using the weapons they can get. A good reason to keep the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of those who don’t have acceptable needs for these weapons.

I hope we could tell these persons that there is hope. What is not possible for men is possible for God.

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I agree with quite a bit of what you say. I do believe that the terrorists I’m discussing feed off of their primary motivation which is their hatred for Israel. Their lives revolve around their hatred. They love to hate. They live to hate. Their greatest joy derives from harming Israel and the U.S.

As I said, they are patient. I think we are feeling pretty darn good about the decrease in terrorism these days. What we perceive as our efficacious policies curbing terrorism is merely their behind the scenes plans to commit mass murder with a nuke.

As long as Israel exists where it is presently located, there will be no peace. Her enemies will never stop fighting, ever.

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The reasons behind their actions are more complicated than just hatred.

One important point is lack of hope, lack of jobs. When a young man feels that his possibilities to thrive in life is close to zero, the life does not feel worth living. When someone tells there is a possibility to become respected and remembered by sacrificing your life in our fight, it sounds better than hopeless future.
When there are no jobs available and fighters of an organization get a monthly salary, many join just because of the salary. Suicide candidates may be promised that their family will be taken care as a reward for the act.

Another point is the will to be saved. If you have to earn your salvation by living a good life, that is difficult. It may feel tempting when somebody tells that no matter how you have lived, you get a shortcut to paradise by dying in jihad. The next step is to tell that jihad is what we do, where we fight.
In other words, people are deceived by leaders of the organizations. They try to do the good thing but do the opposite because they trust the leaders that lie. Even the leaders may be deceived persons as they are living how their former leaders told they should live.

An important background is the indocrination of children. Children are told how they are expected to behave. They may be told that being a martyr is a great honor. So the children grow trying to do what is expected, showing the feelings that are expected, violence that is expected. If the leaders tell that Israel and USA are the bad people, devil, that is how the society responds.
If there happens a change in policy, former ‘devils’ become allies, it takes some time before the attitudes change from hostile to tolerant.

There are also other reasons, such as revenge or the will to drive foreign soldiers from the country, but I guess those mentioned above are among the key reasons why there are so many terrorists that hate Israel and USA.

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Agreed. Buutt from the other hand how could you not?

Lets say you were at the middle ages during the Black Plague. Or anywhere in the middke ages. Wars ,famines,corruption,greed etc etc. Surely you would gave made tge same claim

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Why is it that this fear plays so well in the U.S. driving us to permanently inflated war budgets and actions far beyond what our economy can sustain and the sacrificial service of our young to protect us against even just the possibility of future terroristic action; and yet the simple prudence of getting a vaccine against an already existing pandemic is suddenly beyond so many of us?

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Cant believe you guys forgot 9/11 so easily

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Forgot!? Are you kidding? The now deceased Bid Laden is still kicking our butts and wiping the floor with us! We now live in constant fear to the point of staggering debt expenditure over even just what might happen - which was exactly his goal still bearing rich fruit for him today among fear-mongers and hawks in this country. They continue to play right into his hands. We’ve been played and are still playing his tune for him. It’s embarrassing.

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You let an entire nation beign overun by the same exremist people you trained to stop the Soviets and you are talking about debt etc etc?

Everybody got its dues in life to pay Mervin. And the US has A LOT OF THEM. I dont feel pitty