Word: scenario
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While supertech subs were once an integral part of a cold war blueprint that included deadly superpower showdowns on the high seas, few planners can describe a credible scenario in which that kind of naval engagement would now take place. For all their gritty romantic lore, the days of battleships and cruisers slugging it out as submarines stealthily lurked below the surface have gone the way of Admiral Chester Nimitz. But many in the American submarine community continue to believe--or at least to argue--that a massive undersea force is still an essential part of American security...
...ducks. Nonetheless, Navy planners repeatedly cite the possibility that Iran's three Russian-made Kilo subs could bottle up the mouth of the Persian Gulf in a time of crisis, picking off thin-skinned oil tankers like marksmen at a state fair. But few believe that even this scary scenario would be much more than a 48-hour headache for the Pentagon...
...Every now and again, we'd think, "What if we did do that?" You're in that After M*A*S*H scenario. Guys are in a meeting saying, "I think people would care about Radar and Klinger in Iowa." We saved ourselves from that...
...Huxley's scenario made sense back in 1932. Some American states were forcibly sterilizing the "feebleminded," and Hitler had praised these policies in Mein Kampf. But the biotech revolution that Huxley dimly foresaw has turned the logic of eugenics inside out. It lets parents choose genetic traits, whether by selective abortion, selective reimplanting of eggs fertilized in vitro or--in perhaps just a few years--injecting genes into fertilized eggs. In Huxley's day eugenics happened only by government mandate; now it will take government mandate--a ban on genetic tinkering--to prevent...
...That scenario is not as farfetched as it sounds. Talk to anyone in the pharmaceutical industry, and you'll soon discover that genetics is the biggest thing to hit drug research since a penicillium mold floated into Alexander Fleming's petri dish. Sure, scientists have long known genes play a role in almost every ailment from Alzheimer's to yellow fever. But it is only in the past few years that they've learned how to use that information to identify a multitude of new targets and pathways for drug design. Let's count the ways...