Gladys Hobby, the 1940s penicillin pioneer, was a mere bacteriologist, albeit with an excellent grasp of elementary school arithmetic but not someone with the higher math that qualifies one to 'plan' (sic) the world's nuclear weaponry levels.
By contrast, the nuclear boys all seemed to have had excellent higher math skills but to have no intuitive sense of elementary school arithmetic at all !
While part of Henry Dawson's pioneering 1940s penicillin team, Hobby was the first to notice that no matter how long or how much of that wonderful bacteria killer was poured upon them, a few bacteria always lived to fight another day ( ie return to kill us in round two, unless we are carefully watched by our doctors and nurses.)
She called these relatively few surviving bacteria (conventionally taken to be only 1% or less of the total) "persisters" and she worried that even a 99% plus kill rate wasn't good enough when dealing with hundreds of millions of bacteria in a general infection.
(One percent of 100 million bacteria still means 1 million surviving bacteria to attack us anew.)
Now kill 99 out of 100 rampaging elephants charging your village and the village population will likely mostly survive the one remaining attacker - but if there are 20,000 coming at your village and 1% survive , then that is 200 elephants destroying your village's entire population.
In the early 1950s the USA and the USSR had about 100 bombs each and each figured a First Strike would destroy all but 5% of the atomic bombs of their enemy - so what could 5 small atomic bombs do to either vast country ?
Perhaps kill 1% - or less - of the population.
Bad - but endurable.
Flash forward a few years and both nations now felt much much much safer because each was now armed with 20,000 huge H Bombs and talking of a improved first strike capability destroying much more of their opponents' nukes.
Except of course now even at 1% persisting rate that meant 200 H-bombs raining down on each other's cities - enough to kill most of each nation's population !
It was the arithmetic of Hobby's bacterial persisters all over - but seemingly the nuke boys had never read the medical journals.
Or spent much time using common sense and not so common elementary arithmetic skills ....
By contrast, the nuclear boys all seemed to have had excellent higher math skills but to have no intuitive sense of elementary school arithmetic at all !
While part of Henry Dawson's pioneering 1940s penicillin team, Hobby was the first to notice that no matter how long or how much of that wonderful bacteria killer was poured upon them, a few bacteria always lived to fight another day ( ie return to kill us in round two, unless we are carefully watched by our doctors and nurses.)
She called these relatively few surviving bacteria (conventionally taken to be only 1% or less of the total) "persisters" and she worried that even a 99% plus kill rate wasn't good enough when dealing with hundreds of millions of bacteria in a general infection.
(One percent of 100 million bacteria still means 1 million surviving bacteria to attack us anew.)
Now kill 99 out of 100 rampaging elephants charging your village and the village population will likely mostly survive the one remaining attacker - but if there are 20,000 coming at your village and 1% survive , then that is 200 elephants destroying your village's entire population.
FIRST STRIKE : 'Pearl Harbouring' enemies of America in a 'sneak attack' : a doctrine conceived in infamy
In the early 1950s the USA and the USSR had about 100 bombs each and each figured a First Strike would destroy all but 5% of the atomic bombs of their enemy - so what could 5 small atomic bombs do to either vast country ?
Perhaps kill 1% - or less - of the population.
Bad - but endurable.
Flash forward a few years and both nations now felt much much much safer because each was now armed with 20,000 huge H Bombs and talking of a improved first strike capability destroying much more of their opponents' nukes.
Except of course now even at 1% persisting rate that meant 200 H-bombs raining down on each other's cities - enough to kill most of each nation's population !
It was the arithmetic of Hobby's bacterial persisters all over - but seemingly the nuke boys had never read the medical journals.
Or spent much time using common sense and not so common elementary arithmetic skills ....
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