Missiles and iPads

I would like my son to experience being in the wild for days on end...I would also like him to learn to exert himself, in whatever activity he strives to do well; exert himself to the point where he loses track of himself and of time.  I've gotten there sometimes when playing the piano, sometimes when writing.  That's what "wild" means to me, in any pursuit.  You lose track of yourself, yet you're in perfect control; you are the activity, at least for a short span of time.

I was going to write about missiles and iPads...

Today we visited the old Nike missile launch site, SF-88, out in the Marin Headlands.  It's the only restored Nike missile site in the country...and we stumbled upon the guided tour, purely by accident, and so were able to descend into the concrete bunker where the missiles are still stored.  It was a remarkable experience for my son, for each of us, in fact, to walk down that steep metal staircase and see those four white missiles, about twenty-five feet long and five feet wide.  Because he was one of only three children on the tour, our son was selected by the volunteer, a former missile site worker and Air Force veteran, to come forward and push one of the missiles a few feet down a track; then the crowd of about 40 tourists went back upstairs to see one of them hoisted up out of the ground and positioned so it was pointing about 85 degrees, almost straight up into the sky.

It was a strange site for me, as a participant in many anti-first-strike demonstrations in the 80s and early 90s, to see this old missile base.  They were planning to launch these Nike Hercules missiles, carrying a payload of about 1.2 kilotons of nuclear material, to blow up incoming Soviet bombers.  A remarkably crude Cold War defense tactic that, according to the Air Force veteran, worked, in the sense that World War III never occurred...it's chilling, however, when you read about how many false warnings and near-launches did occur during the Cold War.  Operating under the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) strategy can only succeed if each player is completely sane and never makes a single mistake.

The Air Force veteran and tour guide argued that MAD would not work today, because of ISIS and other terrorist groups...I would argue that we should not assume it would have continued to work indefinitely under the old system of the two superpowers...nor that it will continue to work today (we still have a simplified MAD system in place after all).  Also, the conflict between those superpowers helped give rise to some of the most corrupt, authoritarian political systems in the Middle East in the sixties and seventies.  I'm not saying that the MAD regime led directly to ISIS; it's obviously not as simple as that. My central point here is that we should never assume, in any situation, that all players will act rationally.  People go off the rails all the time.

What to do then?  First, be aware of what's happening...which brings me to iPads.

My son didn't want to go to the Nike Missile site.  We had just toured the Marine Mammal Center, about a mile away, and he thought it was time to go home.  "I hate Nike Missile sites," he announced. I told him we were going to the missile site anyway.  Once we were in the car (I'd wanted to hike over to the missile site from the Marine Mammal Center, but he would not) he asked for the iPad; I told him I didn't bring it.  "Could I have the iPhone?"

I understand the lure of the i-devices.  They create perfect worlds, where missiles and tanks blow up people but no one is injured.  I detest the amount of violence and fantasy available at the App Store, much of it free of charge.  Then--we go to a real missile site...where the fantasy, in some ways, is even more intense.  Sending nuclear bombs to blow up incoming Soviet bombers; and if even one of those bombers gets through, that's probably enough firepower to destroy one-third of the United States...it all makes sense?

I don't know if my son will remember this visit to the missile site; and, was the sight of that one 30-foot missile pointing almost straight upward, with the cloudy Marin sky as a backdrop, enough of a dose of reality to counteract the painless, flowery explosions of all the missiles on his iPad?  I doubt it very much.