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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Heinlein's panegyric for the Bomb
Message-ID: <977@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Sep-86 09:15:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuts.977
Posted: Thu Sep 11 09:15:26 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Sep-86 09:48:40 EDT
References: <1071@hoptoad.uucp> <776@mtung.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 71
Xref: mnetor net.sf-lovers:8399 talk.politics.misc:62

> > First, from "Pie in the Sky":
> >	There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of
> >	ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the
> >	Hiroshima treatment.
> 
> > Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold",
> > a post-holocaust novel of which Michael Moorcock wrote in the
> > critical/political essay "Starship Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big
> > step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* to Hitler's *Lebensraum*."
> >
> > [ followed by the "typically didactic monologue" ]
> 
> I can't believe this!  The entire book catalogs, in detail, exactly what
> the horrors associated with a nuclear war would be.  In the scenario
> in the book this includes having one's hometown (near Cheyenne Mtn in
> Colorado) smashed by an A-bomb, and, in life after the attack, the
> hero's daughter dies in childbirth because the civilization you accuse
> Heinlein of sneering at (above) is missing.  I won't spoil any more,
> but only a complete *idiot* would call the post-war life in _Farnham's
> Freehold_ a cakewalk.  Hardly a close step to "Lebensraum."
> 
> OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO      S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj)

I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of
a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in
the first place.  The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up
with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath
of World War Last.   His major concern is protecting his survivalist
fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth.
But that's OK, because we know that it should be "every *MAN* for himself"
after any disaster, right?
 
"Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of
nuclear war whatsoever.  For example, because an all-out nuclear war
would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their
eyes shielded would soon be blinded.  Then of course there is the 
likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect.  Heinlein could be excused
for not mentioning these since both were just discovered in the past decade.
But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which
he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism".
Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to
massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold"
to be either cooked alive like those in Dresden, or else suffocated by
the lack of oxygen consumed by such torrential flames.
It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also
don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity-
in the region around Chernobyl, a minscule incident compared to the
effects of an all-out nuclear war, they have to strip off the top
inches of thousands of acres of topsoil because it is excessively 
radioactive.  If you strip off the top inches of fertile topsoil to
avoid radioactivity, the soil left will be practically useless for
growing crops.  Nor do I recall Heinlein talking much at all about
radiation sickness, leukemia, cancer, etc.
The whole impression I recall from "Farnham's Freehold" was that
nuclear war involved big terrific explosions but if you prepared
your own survivalist holdout for yourself and you alone, that
you could make it.  Of course a required part of your survivalist
gear is at least one gun, if not several, so you can shoot the few
surviving humans left and assure your own survival.
I.e. maintain the same idiotic mentality which has placed us in the
current position of facing the imminent extinction of the human race
at any time!
I would say that as I recall Heinlein's story in "Farnham's Freehold"
that it more closely resembles Reagan's Undersecretary of Defense,
T.K. Jones statement that 
"we can survive nuclear war with enough shovels.  Just dig a hole
a few feet thick and jump in it."
than any statement by pacifists or even people like Eisenhower
or Khruschev ('the living will envy the dead')

                     tim sevener  whuxn!orb