HERMANN MULLER versus the LONG LANCE : two failures of MODERNITY

Michael Marshall

During the WWII era, scientist HERMANN MULLER advocated using x-ray beams to create useful human mutations - the accuracy required would be, over a left-right distance, about 40 trillionths of a metre - the width of a hydrogen bond on a strand of DNA.

For that same war, the Japanese Navy created the LONG LANCE torpedo ( and long range naval guns) - expected to be accurate enough to sink a ship 40,000 metres away.

(While Allied bombers, using the NORDEN BOMBSIGHT, were expected to be much, much more accurate ---albeit from about 4000 metres up.)

The two accuracy distances desired ( Japan's & Muller's) were a thousand trillion times different, but neither proven possible in practice.

WWII's military ended up bombing entire metropolitan populations, in the faint hope that the collateral damage might also destroy any military targets within.

Some useful penicillium mutations were achieved during the war in much the same way - by blasting trillions of fungi spores with radiation from above, in the equally faint hope that a few of the survivors might possess useful mutations.

SKY GODS - boys with toys, deadly toys .....