Imagine you are a common laborer in some mythical land. Your life revolves around providing crops to your Zaibatsu for the honor of your Shogun, or perhaps Emperor or Chairman or what have you. By and large, you are unaware of his or her’s on-doings beyond the shiredom of your inhabitance. For you, life is simple. Though like many others, your simple life is oft-disrupted by rumors of wars and earthquakes. For the most part, these things are by word of mouth, or perhaps occasionally by a state sponsored mouthpiece who goes place to place to remind you who you serve.
One day, you hear a most peculiar announcement in the shire’s center. One of your Lord’s enemies far away has had some kind of incident-an explosion- at some Merlinesque laboratory in a desert somewhere. Though enemies, he is an honorable one - You’re not at war with him at this time, at least. He is happy to tell your Lord that the incident was a completely natural phenomenon, and the Lord who seeks the comfort and peace of his people sets about this official notice, least any rebellious factors take advantage of such rumors. Indeed, he assures you that while such explosions are rare and haven’t occurred for at least a century, it is perfectly ordinary. And so you, with perhaps some ire at this disruption of fear over nothing, go back to your crops.
Some time later - perhaps months later - an announcement is made. Another natural explosion has occurred-bigger…much bigger…but still natural. There were some deaths and unexpected fires, but nothing outside of the control of the foreigner’s hands. The announcer adds in some peculiar jabs to remind you he is still the enemy, even if not currently in an active war. You take in the information with a bit more fear, but you trust your lord.
Some years pass now. There were several theatre performances around the topic of natural explosions. A few fun songs were made. An old geezer joked that he’d wish a natural explosion would occur in the poorer parts of the shire, make some breathing room. But by and large, you have started to forget about natural explosions. Just on the cusp of their return to mythology, in marches in a well-clad battalion of knights with a wealthy looking announcer. He calls the whole town in an announces the fear of the past decade: There was a natural explosion in the Empire! A whole city was devastated! Thousands dead! The cynics amongst you make up reasons why your gods acted justly. The religious wonder what they did wrong. All performances of the natural explosion paly are canceled for being in poor taste! Instead they will perform about years of bountiful harvests. The knights take out chests and begin handing out metal-clad blankets and glasses that they say can help resist a natural explosion if one happen near you. The whole town is ablaze, none too ironically, over the fear of natural explosions. The older geezer says it was the Lord’s enemies. Says he must have figured out how to make a natural explosion happen. The leader of the soldiers arrests the man and whips him. Can’t have rumors question authority!
For many weeks, rumors spring up none the less. The Riverfolk report seeing fire in the distance at night-surely a natural explosion afoot! the Merchants claim three mountains over the north, a natural explosion hit one of the towns they sell wares to. Very soon, the knights have to clamp down and institute more rules to prevent panic. They demand you wear the metal blankets and glasses all the time just in case.
You go home, not sure of anything. Who is right? Who is telling the truth? You fall asleep in your fears, when suddenly. a great rumbling wakes. You look out your window and see a massive mushroom cloud in the distance, scouring parts of the town. A natural explosion!
Unnatural
The natural explosion was a nuclear warhead, obviously. But how would you know? If the enemy government let a bomb go off in its own territory, and quickly recover from it, would everyone else just believe them? And if that government decided to set a few bombs off on their enemies, would they believe it was natural too? Would the speculative government just assume their rival was telling the truth? Fundamentally, how could they know? How could the villager know? How could the Lord of Shiredom know? Suppose the explosions started being evaluated and categorized? Maybe the Delta Explosion would be hydrogen, and the Lambda Explosion would be a neutron bomb? And what if all the scientists of Shiredom’s Lord, convinced the explosions were natural, simply assumed categorizing them would help them specialize in saving lives when they happened. How would any of these people know it was a form of warfare? Especially considering one went off in the enemy’s lands too? So long they believed the explosions were natural, all the tinkering and adjustments happening at a peculiarly unnatural pace would be assumed natural divergences and variations of the very unnatural atom bomb. Indeed, the foreigner government could conduct whole-sale tests and scientifically theories around the technology by simply calling it natural and getting everyone to believe it was.
…and suppose Shiredom’s emperor was in on it? How would you, the farmer, ever know.
Things to consider, next time you see an explosion…