from Congo, Michael Crichton (p293)
“In the 1950s, if the Americans and the Russians launched all the bombers and rockets at the same moment, there would still be no more than 10,000 weapons in the air, attacking and counterattacking Total weapons interaction events would peak at 15,000 in the second hour. This represented the impressive figure of 4 weapons interactions every second around the world.
But … the number of weapons and ‘systems elements’ [has] increased astronomically. Modern [1980] estimates imagine 400 million computers in the field, with total weapons interactions at more than 15 billion in the first half hour of war. This meant there would be 8 millions weapons interactions every second ….
“Such a war would be manageable only by machines. …”
