Our era of global commensality also brings us EBOLA, CHERNOBYL, and ATMOSPHERIC CO2

In the decades after 1945, it became clear to the entire world that long range bombers and ICBM missiles could deliver near instant nuclear energy death (energy too cheap to meter) to anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world.

Even the wayward winds would help out,  pushing the deadly radioactive fallout clouds hither and yon, willy nilly.

And that supposed boon to Progress , all those post-1945 ultra-fast civilian jets speeding business people and tourists from anywhere to everywhere in a few hours ?

All those jetliner routes also meant that thousands of very recently infected people could leave an area where a deadly infectious outbreak had not yet been medically detected, to make their way forth to innocently (and ultimately) infect the entire world --- all in the course of a day or two.

Gradually , our sense of the security we had always had that our own locality and our own nation-state could be a separate island of calm in a sea of global chaos has evaporated.

My claim that the post-1945 world is in an era of global commensality does not just mean the benign global re-cycling of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus etc for the benefit of all life : it is not all cute lamb lying down with tame lion.

It also means the global re-cycling of radioactive clouds (and of Ebola viruses) to the detriment of all life.

It can mean that the baneful genetic effects of a nuclear explosion in this decade could still be harming our grandchildren in that decade --- for global commensality has a global time spectrum as well as global space spectrum.

It even means that one nation burning coal on this side of the world could raise the ocean waters enough to drown that island nation on the other side of the world.

Global commensality re-affirms that indeed no man, woman, child or beast is an island ....

ICBMs have actually been around for centuries - as have overwrought science journalists with a poor grasp of arithmetic ...

Michael Marshall

It is not really very hard to stand on the edge of one continent and fire a cannon ball at the edge of another continent  - this is all ,technically, that a minimalist Inter-Continental-Ballistic-Missile has to do to qualify.

At their furthest edges, most continents tend to touch (or almost touch) a few of the other continents.

Europe touches Asia at the Urals, and almost touches Africa at the straits of Gibraltar. And North America to Europe is the closest space between Iceland and Greenland.

North America and South America touch at Panama. The westernmost island of Alaska is very close to the easternmost island of Asia.

Africa touches Asia near the Suez canal.

Australia is very close to the closest island of Asia.

Westernmost Africa is relatively close to Easternmost northern Brazil.

South America is even relatively close to Antarctica.

But Australia isn't close to North or South America, Europe or Africa or even Antarctica.

 This is why the famous anti-nuclear novel "ON THE BEACH" gained credibility by setting its only remaining humans alive after a nuclear war on this distant-from-everybody continent.

WWII actually had many intercontinental attacks between warring nations on separate continents.

What was truly new by 1962 was that a missile launched from the middle of any one continent could hit a city in the middle of any other continent.

What for centuries had been safe heartlands, free from initial conquest from a surprise invasion coming across national borders by sea or land, now were as vulnerable as any seaport close to enemy waters.

Chicago - home of some of  WWII's least patriotic Isolationists ( hell lets call them traitor-wannabes - right Colonel McCormick ?) - had had no pity for Warsaw's Poles when they almost instantly fell victim to an sudden invasion.

Now, after 1962, the same thing could also to happen to Chicago.

Who could blame Chicago's large Polish population for feeling that turnaround was fair play .....