MACHINE CIVILIZATION
PAGE 13
NICHOLAS M. SOLOVIOFF (1959)
uranium and thorium is equivalent to the energy released by
burning approximately fifty tons of coal. The actual processing
of the rock can be accomplished at an energy expenditure
considerably smaller than fifty tons of coal, with the result that
it is possible to obtain a net energy profit from average rock and
at the same time obtain a variety of metals that are essential to
the operation of an industrial society.
The basic raw materials for the industries of the future
thus will be seawater, air. ordinary rock, sedimentary deposits of
limestone and phosphate rock, and sunlight. All the ingredients
essential to a highly industrialized society are present in the
combination of those substances.
A great deal of water will be distilled from the sea for
agricultural and industrial purposes, and most food will be grown
using artificial fertilizers. Metals such as iron, aluminum, titan
ium, manganese, copper, tungsten, and lead will be obtained
from rock, which raw matenal will also provide the major source
of phosphorous. The waters of the seas will provide magnesium,
chlorine, bromine, iodine, and sulfur. Energy will be provided by
the uranium and thorium of rocks, by the rays of the sun, and
conceivably by controlled thermonuclear reactions utilizing deu
terium extracted from the oceans. Liquid fuels and the whole
complex of organic chemicals and plastics will be produced from
the carbon of limestone, utilizing either atomic energy or control
led photosynthesis — probably both
The industries of the future will be far more complex
and highly integrated than those of today As time goes on it is
likely that the single-purpose plant will diminish in importance,
eventually to disappear from the scene. Increased automation
will produce far-reaching effects. Unskilled and semiskilled labor
will disappear. The highly trained engineer will become the
"laboring man." Human supervisors will be replaced by auto
matic computers. The man-hour requirements per unit of
production might decrease to as little as one-tenth those of
the present
To many, these changes may seem fantastic — perhaps
even impossible. But when we view the future in the perspective
of both the present and the past, it seems clear the die has been
cast. We are already well along the road and it is too late to turn
back. There is no way, except by the development of machine
civilization, that the rapidly increasing population of the world
can be supported
World population jumped from about 500 million per
sons in 1650 to about 2,700 million persons in 1958 Human
numbers are still increasing rapidly, but even more significant
is the fact that the rate of increase of population is climbing
rapidly as well. In the absence of a major catastrophe there does
not appear to be the slightest possibility the world population
will level off much below 7 billion persons * As industrialization
spreads throughout the world and if our ability to produce food is
indeed the population-determining factor, the number of human
beings might eventually exceed even that high figure Ten billion
persons could, if necessary, be supported, but only within the
framework of a culture that most of us would be reluctant to
consider
As our resources diminish in abundance and in grade,
as machine civilization spreads over the world, and as human
numbers continue to increase, industrial society will be confront
ed by a variety of problems of great complexity Perhaps the
most difficult of these problems involves the perpetuation of that
society.
The vast network of mines, factories, and communicat
ion systems upon which we have become dependent is extreme
ly sensitive to disruption. So interdependent are the components
of the netwDrk that the sudden failure of but a relatively small
section of it could result in a breakdown of the entire system.
It is for this reason that machine civilization is probably far more
vulnerable to disruption from nuclear attack than most persons
suspect. For example, not many well-placed hydrogen bombs
would be required to destroy the productive capacity of a large
country such as the United States. Indeed it is quite possible that
far more persons would die in the chaotic aftermath of a nuclear
war as a result of the breakdown of the industrial network than
would be killed directly by nuclear explosions.
Once a machine civilization has been in operation for
some time, the lives of the people within the society become
dependent upon the machines The vast interlocking industnal
network provides them with food, vaccines, antibiotics, and
hospitals. If such a population should suddenly be deprived of
a substantial fraction of its machines and forced to revert to an
agrarian society the resultant havoc would be enormous. Indeed,
it is quite possible that a society within which there has been
little natural selection based upon disease resistance for several
generations, a society in which the people have come to depend
increasingly upon surgery for repairs during early life and where
there is little natural selection operating among women relative
to the ability to bear children — such a society could easily
become extinct in a relatively short time following the disruption
of the machine network
Indeed, a society such as the United States is far more
vulnerable to disruption than is an agrarian society such as that
of India. Most of the people of India live in small villages, each
an independent economic unit producing most of the necessities
of life. Cloth is woven, simple tools are manufactured, and food
is produced in the surrounding countryside Were the major cities
of India to be destroyed a large number of the villages would not
be seriously affected For this reason, should a great catastro
phe strike mankind, the agrarian societies that exist at the time
will clearly stand the greatest chance of inheriting the earth.**
However, the underdeveloped areas of the world are
themselves rapidly becoming vulnerable to disruption, for the
reason that they are becoming increasingly dependent upon
certain Western products for continued low mortality. Were a
country such as Ceylon suddenly find that (it) could no longer
obtain DDT. for example, the resultant epidemic of disease
would cause a burst in death rate which would almost certainly
be disastrous And as the new inexpensive techniques for
control of disease spread still further, to countries such as India
and China, the vulnerabilities of these areas to disruption will in
turn grow
It is quite possible that, so long as high-grade resources
remain available in some quantity, the West itself would recover
from a major war. although recovery would be a much slower
process than it was after World War II But once industrial civili-
zation has used up those high-grade resources and has become
worldwide, it will be far more vulnerable.
One thing is certain: if destroyed on a wjridwide basis,
civilization could never be started up again by the same steps
our ancestors took. Originally the spread of industrialization was
facilitated by the fact that man was easily able to find vast beds
of iron ore and coal, rich crystals of copper, huge deposits of
petroleum, sulfur, and a variety of useful substances But these
deposits one day will be gone
It is of course possible that, starting from a base of
knowledge accumulated by a previous society and the abilities
to utilize water power and to extract magnesium from seawater,
man might once again learn to process rock, harness solar
power, and extract energy from uranium. In such an eventuality
a worldwide industrial civilization would rise once again and
cover the earth But the probabilities of a second emergence
would be remote. The advantages gained by the existence of a
previously accumulated knowledge would probably be offset by
the scarcity of the raw materials
The situation is a little like that of a child vMro has been
given a set of simple blocks — all the blocks of one type wtiich
exist — with which to leam to build and to make the foundation
for a structure, the upper reaches of which must consist of more
intricate, more difficult-to-handle forms, themselves quite unsuit
ed for the base. If, when the foundation is built, he conserved it,
he could on building But if he wasted and destroyed the founda
tion blocks he would have "had it," as the British Royal Air Force
would say. His one chance wuld have been squandered. His
structure of the future would be a vanished dream because there
would be nothing left with which to rebuild the foundation.
Our present industrialization, itself the result of a com
bination of no longer existent circumstances, is the only found
ation on which it seems possible that a future civilization capa
ble of utilizing the vast resources of energy now hidden in rocks
and seawater and unutilized in the sun. can be built. If this foun
dation is destroyed, in all probability the human race has "had
it."
With the consumption of each additional barrel of oil
and ton of coal, with the addition of each new mouth to be fed,
with the loss of each additional foot of topsoil, the situation
becomes more inflexible and difficult to resolve If we continue
to think only of the present and ignore the future, it is quite likely
that we shall paint ourselves into a comer from which it will be
impossible to extricate ourselves.
Yet the unpleasant outcomes that are indicated by the
existing trends are by no means inevitable. If we make full use
of the powers of conceptual thought with vtfiich we are endowed,
we should be able to avoid catastrophe We have seen that in
spite of the fact that our high-grade resources are disappeanng,
given adequate energy resources we can live comfortably on
low-grade resources. Further, it seems clear that man has avail
able potential sources of energy w4iich are sufficient to satisfy
his needs for a very long time in the future We have also seen
that although a large fraction of the world's population is starving
there appear to be no technological barriers to the feeding of a
stable world population several times the present size We know
that, although world populations are increasing rapidly, populat
ion growth can in principle be stopped Indeed, it is amply clear
that man can, if he wills it. create a wrld in vtfiich human beings
can live comfortably and in peace with each other
If we fail this challenge there is every likelihood that our
civilization will pensh — never to reappear
*World human population reached the 6 billion mark on
October 12 (Columbus Day) 1999
“However, India and its agrarian neighbor and foremost
adversary Pakistan both exploded nuclear devices in 1998
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