Cluster bombs have such blatant propaganda spread against them by well-meaning but naive individuals. Don't be fooled - look at all their positive uses!
I knew a guy who was a chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons guy in the army. He took bomb diffusal training, studied old soviet missiles, the lot. What did he do on a day to day basis? Mostly blew up grenades that didn't blow up on their own. Apparently it was super boring.
> You could teach how to build a bomb or how to cook meth…
Professionals legally create explosives (military, demolition, mining etc) and literally “cook” meth (the brand name for legal prescription methamphetamine is Desoxyn in the US). These necessary and legitimate jobs require educated individuals.
Cluster munitions are bad, but you have to consider that people often try to hide in houses, in cellars during air raids in the city. Cluster munition will not do much to those people, other than being insanely noisy and terrifying. What will kill those people is a bomb that will drop the house on them.
Indiscriminate killing is a function of decision making process, not the munition itself.
I designed parts for the cluster-bombs that ultimately were dropped on Libyan beaches and when I saw them "staked" into the ground, my hope was that they'd prove their worth as a deterrent - and that the beaches would remain empty of humans until they had all "gone safe".
Yeah, I wanted to be a "nuclear physicist" because I thought explosions were cool, and obviously nuclear explosions were the biggest kind. So obviously a nuclear physicist will be researching how to be able to make even bigger explosions!
Obviously as I grew up, knowing that a) ostensibly the point of being able to make those explosions is to ensure they don't actually happen and b) knowing what we'd use that deterrence power for really took the wind out of my sails. Plus somehow it pays less than software, which I actually had more of a passion for than explosions (though I still respect a good explosion to this day). So yeah. Kids will give pretty arbitrary answers to this question even if they think they do have one.
reply