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A POSSIBLE REASON FOR COMMEMORATING HIGHWAY SIGNS - PART 4
by Ming Zhen Shakya
Wallace/LeMay got 14% of the vote, the rest nearly evenly split between Nixon and Humphrey; but with the slight edge to Nixon.)
But LeMay's remark lingered in the mind of the electorate.
SAC's fleet of 650 B-52 bombers could easily deliver the heaviest weapons we had ever developed. The U.S. bomb of choice was the Mark 41, a bomb that exploded with the force of 25,000,000 tons of TNT. Between 1960 and 1962 we produced 500 of these bombs, which were only one of many nuclear weapons in the arsenal. Aside from the SAC bombers that were airborne, 24 hours a day, (capable of midair refueling), 7 days a week, 365 days a year, we had some 1100 ICBM sites on U.S. soil and an uncounted number of SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missiles) prowling the oceans, even under the Arctic ice cap.
The Russians had their own nuclear weapons in their own ICBM silos and their own SLBMs in their own subs. By 1968 it was estimated that between these two arsenals the planet earth could be destroyed 37 times.
The total tonnage of explosives used in WWII by all the allies combined was two and a half million tons. One Mark 41 delivered 25 million tons. And we had 500 of them. The damage done to Hiroshima was accomplished with a tiny fifteen thousand ton A-bomb.
Religion offered none of its hot war spiritual nostrums... no prayer for an end. An end to what? We didn't know. The moral staples that had once filled our pantries were used up in better days. "Is God Dead?" Time Magazine in its first non-photo cover asked in April 8, 1966.
The operative doctrine - the one that governed our lives - was MAD which stood for Mutual Assured Destruction. Those Soviet weapons were not pointed at Tierra del Fuego... they were pointed at us. But we knew that even if the Soviets and the Chinese and every other country in the world launched every missile they owned at US territory the radioactive fallout would kill them soon enough - if, of course, the Strategic Air Command, our ICBMs, and our fleet of Nuclear Submarines didn't get them all first.
But these weapons were all over the world and perhaps only the Soviet and American and British high commands understood the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction. What if a terrorist group got its hands on a nuclear weapon? What if there was a computer error? What if someone in authority had a nervous breakdown... or was a victim of misinformation. what if one of those SAC bombers crashed? There had been numerous nuclear mishaps, called "Broken Arrows" - none of which, however, had as yet started a war... but we didn't know what would happen tomorrow... assuming there was one.
It is now impossible to imagine the fear that so thoroughly saturated our lives. There was no way to measure it... to compare it to anything else. The scenario was called "Doomsday." There wouldn't be any survivors anywhere.
There was no place on the globe that was free of hostility and intrigue and psychotic desire for revenge... of people who were so filled with rage that the concept of collateral damage or suicide was meaningless. Let the world perish... just so their hatred found its target.
And then... in the newspaper on November 8, 1968, in the midst of all the dark despair and fear that there would never be peace again, that Nuclear Winter and Mutual Assured Destruction and the complete poisoning of the environment were simply humanity's much deserved destiny... there appeared a little flicker of light, a tiny hope that maybe... just maybe.. we still might salvage enough sanity to change our fate.. that the horrible end was not inevitable.
There was a brief announcement in the newspaper that delegates from all the countries in the world had met in Vienna and, under the improbable heading of Crisis Management, had agreed to make all of their highway road signs uniform. China signed. We signed. India signed. Pakistan signed. Brazil signed. The Soviets signed. And Israel. Iran. Ireland. And England... and Nigeria... and well, everybody.
Normally, we'd get the morning paper and have chaos with our coffee. I read the article and remember looking up quizzically at some neighbors and showing it to them. They couldn't understand it either. How was it possible that countries that were on the brink of annihilation were yet so civilized that they concerned themselves with highway safety? For days it was all we talked about.
It was absolutely unbelievable. The world had taken a step back from disaster. There may have been blood in the streets and poisoned air and water and inner-cites burning and armies clashing and assassinations and mass starvation and nuclear weapons pointed at each other so that one mistake... only one.... would bring the end of earthly existence. But yet.. yet.. if we could all agree on highway signs, who knew but that maybe... just maybe... we could bring the robins back... and then maybe.. just maybe.. we could find something else to agree about...
And in that whole insane year of 1968 there was only that one tiny indication that the countries of the world..... all of them.... could sit as a group and, without any intrigue or deceit or coercion, agree on something.
I don't know if Don Knuth photographs diamond shaped highway signs because somebody dared him to. I don't know if he photographs them because he likes the shape... but maybe... just maybe... something in his mind prompts him to pay homage to that bright moment in a bleak time in 1968 when friends and enemies met in Vienna, and then, after obtaining ratification at home, met again in Geneva in 197l to sign their agreement into law, giving rich and poor alike the necessary years' time to manufacture and install the signs.
There are 24 pages of signs: To this day I find it beyond comprehension that in a world in which the threat of mass-murder was the everyday norm, people were still sufficiently civilized to want to indicate which places were wheelchair accessible.
Professor Knuth's sign photographs can be seen at:
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/diamondsigns/diam.html
