[sacw] India's Nuclear Strategy For Dummies (18 June 00)

[aiindex@mnet.fr]

South Asians Against Nukes - Post
18 June 2000

__________________________

[INDIA's] NUCLEAR STRATEGY FOR DUMMIES-1
__________________________

[From Dr V. P.]

[INDIA's] NUCLEAR STRATEGY FOR DUMMIES-1

Last week, I was at a party where I suffered so much social isolation that I
even had trouble striking up a conversation with myself. This was further
exacerbated by the fact that a group of beautiful women was sitting around a
fairly geeky specimen and lapping him up, er..I mean lapping up his every
word.

After dismissing (a) his balding pate (greased by a whole bottle of hair
oil) (b) the losing battle of his safari suit against his pulao-packed
paunch (c) his gold-rim bifocals and (d) his quadruple chin, as possible
reasons for his sex-appeal, I was forced to conclude that the secret of his
charms lay in his intricate knowledge of such far-out mysteries as
"secondary strike capability" and "ground zero". A realisation so sobering
that I had to instantly down three double vodkas to keep the blood level in
my alcohol stream from soaring into the danger zone.

As a social service, I therefore devised a quiz which will help all those of
you who feel nuclearly challenged to lick this socially embarrassing
handicap once and for all.

Q.1 Ground Zero is:

(a) The cold, hard concrete upon which your backside will suddenly impact if
you're a DAE-employed scientist who has gone and shot his mouth off against
the Indian Nuclear Bomb.

(b) The logical foundation upon which "Deterrence Theory" is premised (see
also Q.6 below).

(c) The maximum cruising altitude of our Light Combat Aircraft prototype.

(d) Any district of Bihar after an election.

Q.2. One kiloton is:

(a) The minimum explosive power needed to rejuvenate the sagging libido of a
senile cabinet minister.

(b) The minimum explosive power needed to arouse Bill Clinton (not his
libido, which already enjoys permanent arousal) from his sleep.

(c) The relativistic mass of one gram rest mass of bullshit from a Nuclear
Draft Doctrine that is flying at nearly the speed of light (in YOUR
direction...so DUCK!!)

(d) The minimum rest mass required of a politician who has to face a dozen
corruption charges, and still have enough surplus kinetic energy left over
to topple governments.

Q.3. One megaton is:

(a) The relativistic mass of any attempter of this quiz (of say rest mass 60
kg.) who is now fleeing for his/her life because he/she failed to heed the
"duck" warning of above Q.2(c) in time.

(b) The amount of pressure (per square inch) that Bill Clinton and his G-8
goons will apply on any juvenile delinquent brownskin who's had the bloody
gall to wake him from his post-coital repose with a one kiloton nuclear
blast.

(c) The actual rest mass of the politician in Q.2(d) above (upto an error of
plus or minus 0.5 milligrams).

Q.4. A Fusion Bomb is:

(a) A jazz band that tries to jam with Carnatic musicians and ends up being
pelted with rotten tomatoes by the audience.

(b) The most destructive weapon known to man, until the invention of Sitaram
Kesri.

(c) What various special court judges will need for personal protection if
they decide to criminally prosecute the politician in Q.2(d) above.

(d) Very expensive Viagra substitute for Sangh Parivar "members".

Q.5. Triad Delivery is:

(a) Gynaecological terminology for the birth of triplets.

(b) The three legally acceptable forms (viz. ordinary post, under
certificate of posting, and registered post) of mailing a disciplinary
show-cause notice from a no-nonsense Director to the renegade DAE employee
of Q.1(a) above, assuming, of course, that he is literate enough to put it
down in writing.

(c) How Federal Express conveys a monogrammed designer trishul to a
hyperpatriotic and God-fearing NRI at his permanent residence in Santa
Clara, California.

(d) The three mutually contradictory speeches you get in response to any
given question on nuclear policy from (i) three distinct government
officials on one distinct occasion, or (ii) one distinct government official
on three distinct occasions or (iii) one Prime Minister (not-so distinct,
due to prolonged whiskey-marination) on one distinct occasion.

Q.6. Deterrence Theory is:

(a) The inordinate fear of grant-slashings and slipping directorships that
causes government employed scientists, however lightweight, to clam up and
toe the Government line on every policy, however hare-brained.

(b) The fear of physical harm from Hindutva goons that causes a Dalit to
scrap the idea of changing his religious faith, and remain to the end a
steadfast Hindu - Proud, Strong and Untouchable.

(c) What the 1-megaton politician of Q.2(d) applies to special court judges
who get too carried away by their fantasies of criminal prosecution.

(d) The only watertight, airtight and surefire guarantee in Today's Unipolar
World that your enemy, having erroneously surmised that you are probably
wise to the fact that he is privy to the possibility that, presumably, you
are secure in the knowledge (under the very plausible assumption that he
did not know it in the first place) that he is possessed of something that
he is also probably aware you know would be really insane of him to deploy
(assuming, of course, that he is sane, which is an absolutely one-hundred
percent certain possibility), had he simultaneously taken the trouble of
previously discerning the implicit fact that you were hitherto NOT privy to
such information, and would therefore (naturally) assume you could, and
therefore would, absolutely almost certainly deploy only PRIOR to such
knowledge, so as not to let him fool himself (i.e. yourself) or, for that
matter, you (i.e. him), into the double jeopardy of assuming that you were
actually bluffing (him, but in effect, yourself) all along, and also, in the
bargain, simultaneously letting you (i.e. it) forfeit every benefit of his
doubts, and your doubts as well (which, you may recall, you had craftily
disguised as his certitudes three sentences ago), so that when he does
actually manifest such knowledge, and it confounds him so totally that he
exercises a preference for going insane and blasting you off the map, thus
forcing you to relax some of of your hypotheses (and all of your
intestinal muscles), ergo also causing you (or your sadder, wiser,
completely relaxed, corpse) to reassess his earlier conjectured sanity in
an altogether fresh light, whithertofore it is incumbent upon you (or your
corpse, whichever is the smarter) to then artfully exploit your (earlier
ipso facto, but now a
posteriori) option, but this time without devolving upon any syllogistic
circularity, to confidently wipe him off the map in a reciprocal gesture of
gratitude, before he does it to himself (out of his hitherto conjectured,
but now established, insanity, or maybe just to spite you and beat you to
it), and having so succeeded in wiping each other off the map, and much of
the map as well, you (or rather, your eerily glowing corpse) will then
definitely emerge from this rather untidy encounter by making him (or
rather, his eerily glowing corpse) look UTTERLY foolish in the estimation of
the aforementioned unipolar world (i.e. its quadripolar radioactive debris),
ensuing from the simple facts that (a) he doesn't believe in re-incarnation
whereas you do, and (b) his corpse will be glowing so much more eerily that
yours.

Q.7 A fission reaction is:

(a) the spontaneous disintegration of one political party into 23 political
parties when hit with high frequency elections, all 23 having combined mass
less than their original combined mass, the mass defect being explained by
the low-IQ negatively-charged morons expelled, plus yet another variable
mass that ends up in one or more numbered bank accounts in Zurich, and the
accompanying intense burst of hot air.

(b) What happens with ruling coalitions when politician of Q.2(d) above
finds out that Government she is supporting has failed in its constitutional
duty of absolving her of all corruption charges, past and future.

(c) the reaction that converts Rajasthan desert sand into holy "prasad" for
the VHP to distribute all over the country (or was it a fusion reaction? The
VHP will get back to you after consulting some objective, apolitical and
dispassionate scientists they have on their rolls.)

Q.8 "No first use" is:

(a) The paragraph in Q.6(d) above, but with every negative replaced by a
double negative, (and every positive with a double positive, I suppose), and
all infinitives split, insofar as they are not conjuncted with an irregular
but transitive verb.

(b) The eventual fate of that rubber contraceptive every male teenager
ceaselessly (and needlessly) carries in his wallet past its expiry date, for
a contingency that never arises.

(c) A gentlemanly undertaking between Bill Clinton and Special Prosecutors
to keep his hands off any female White House interns that, by some oversight
of his, still happen to remain virgins.

(d) A gentlemanly undertaking that Bill Clinton refuses to give anybody
about keeping his bombers off any country that, by some oversight of his,
still happens to remain unbombed.

Q.9 A primary strike is:

(a) The mass sick-leave by all schoolkids aged less than ten, on the day of
the algebra test.

(b) The air dash to Bellary, and subsequent immediate spouting of Kannada,
by Sonia Gandhi to her constituents, even before her opponent could say
"Ondu Nimmsha.."

(c) When the input coil of your neighbourhood line transformer short
circuits, for even though it belongs to the State Electricity Board, nobody
bothered to bribe it before turning it on. The output coil usually follows
suit for similar reasons, resulting in a "secondary strike", and a whopping
double bribe for the lucky line-man, who is then interrupted from spending
it on a good bottle of country hooch by an unscheduled "nuclear strike".

(d) What your enemy assumes you will engage in, if you happen to have
nuclear weapons, and stops you in your tracks from doing by doing it
himself.

Q.10 A warhead is:

(a) L.K. Advani

(b) L.K. Advani

(c) L.K. Advani

(d) A triad delivery system of (a), (b) and (c) above (see Q.5 for
notation).

(e) George Fernandes (Hint: please don't confuse here between "warhead" and
"airhead", which sound alike, but have quite distinct technical meanings).

Q.11 The "Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty" is:

(a) The deal hammered out by Principal Chutneymary D'Souza with the
under-ten school brats of Q.9(a), to get them back to the classroom.

(b) The agreement between the governments of India and Pakistan to suspend
cricket tests between the two countries because they are at peace, and
cricket will necessarily precipitate war.

(c)The agreement between the governments of India and Pakistan to suspend
cricket tests between the two countries because they are at war, and cricket
will unnecessarily precipitate peace.

(d) A legal document which binds you not to conduct any nuclear tests in
future, but has no objections if you go ahead and conduct them in the past.

Q.12 The "Non-Proliferation Treaty" is:

(a) A gentlemanly agreement between Bill Clinton and his female White House
subordinates that he will be responsible for all the necessary
contraception, to avoid getting bogged down later with dozens of inheritance
and paternity lawsuits.

(b) A gentlemanly agreement between white and yellow-skinned people that
brownskins and blackskins are genetically incapable of using nuclear weapons
in a hygienic manner.

(c) A gentlemanly agreement between white and yellow-skinned people that a
lot of brownskins and blackskins desperately want to sign, in the hope of
turning white, or maybe even yellow, oh alright, so what the hell, so OK,
polka-dotted, SO WHAT?!?

Q.12 A Minimum Credible Deterrent is:

(a) The 6 nuclear warheads we must have in order to prevent a mean, nasty
country with 60 warheads from trying anything funny.

(b) The 60 nuclear warheads we must have in order to prevent a mean, nasty
country (not the same mean nasty country as in (a) above) with 600 warheads
from trying anything even funnier.

(c) The 600 nuclear warheads we absolutely must have, to prevent yet another
mean, nasty country with 20,000 warheads (no, not the ones in (a) or (b))
from trying anything downright hilarious.

(d) The 20,000 nuclear warheads we must get, right this minute, to emerge as
the undisputed Global Kings of Comedy.

SCORES: The Bulletin of Strategic Hindsight and Intelligence Theory (known
to insiders in the business as Bull. S.H.I.T.) promised to publish the right
answers in its next issue, but has now classified them in the national
interest. So if you do crack this quiz, please lock up the solution in your
bank locker, or better yet, eat up your work and try never to purge it from
your system (again in the national interest, you understand).

And to those of you who couldn't crack it...sorry fellas, for wasting your
time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The first two of the three split personalities of V. Pati
would like to thank the third-named one for valuable discussions and
generous use of unpublished angst.

______________________________________________
South Asians Against Nukes Post is distributed
by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
since 1998.
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL