Citation

Mills ES. J. Bioeconomics 2009; 11(3): 295-297.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10818-009-9069-6

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

It is common knowledge that deadly violence, whether within or among small groups, tribes, cities or countries, pervades human history. Throughout written history, technology has improved the ability to kill: spears, bows and arrows, guns, tanks, airplanes, atomic bombs and intercontinental missiles have been important contributors. About 60 years ago the Rand Corporation devised the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy for avoiding atomic holocaust between the two atomic powers. The strategy is extremely simple: the US should bury large numbers of atomic missiles in hardened sites, invulnerable to any attack other than a direct hit by an atomic missile. It could announce to all, including the Russians, what it had done, but of course not locations of the hardened sites. The great advantages of the MAD strategy are that it is conceptually simple and can be advantageously implemented by either side without agreement with the other. It certainly provides hope that less violent strategies can be found and adopted even in situations with the most devastating first strike advantage. At a more mundane level, societies employ many strategies to mitigate violence. Laws and honest enforcement are intended to abate domestic violence. Restricting gun ownership helps to reduce guns' enormous first-strike advantage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)