"The entropy produced in World War II was much more widespread and profound than that of World War I. In World War I the action had taken place… entirely on rural terrain, classic battlefields. In World War II, much of the warfare was urban. The long-range bomber had reached a high stage of refinement in the twenty-plus years between world wars. None of the major capitals had been damaged in World War I. In World War II, hundreds of towns and cities were destroyed in Europe and Asia. Berlin was reduced to gravel; London was badly mutilated; and, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became radioactive ashtrays. The casualties of World War I had been enormous, astonishing, [and] appalling beyond civilized peoples’ wildest dreams, but the victims had been overwhelmingly soldiers. The casualties in World War II were overwhelmingly civilians and in much greater aggregate numbers."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 6, pp. 212–213.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Long_Emergency
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
The Long Emergency
95 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by The Long Emergency →
Related Quotes
"Above all, and most immediately, we face the end of the cheap fossil fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that re…"
"What is... not comprehended about this predicament is that the developed world will begin to suffer long before the o…"
"It has been estimated that the world human population stood at about one billion around the early 1800s, which was ro…"
"Malthus… has been the whipping boy of idealists and techno-optimists for two hundred years. His famous essay proposed…"
"Malthus was certainly correct [that demand will outstrip supply], but cheap [and easy-to-find hydrocarbons like coal,…"
"We are already experiencing huge cost externalities from population hypergrowth and profligate fossil fuel use in the…"
"The high tide of the... [industrial] age also happened to be a moment in history when human ingenuity gained an upper…"
"At the same time, the world is overdue for an extreme influenza epidemic. The last major outbreak was the 1918 Spanis…"
"The so-called global economy was not a permanent institution, [...] but a set of transient circumstances peculiar to …"
"It has been... hard... to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life…"