StarTalk Podcast_ Cosmic Queries – The Science of Humans at War

0:00 This is StarTalk. This is StarTalk, and I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium. And today, I have with me my co-host, Chuck. Nice! That's right. Hey, Neil. Chuck.

0:27 Good to be here, man. Always good to have you. It's always my pleasure. And you're wearing your official NASA uniform? Yes, without a doubt.

0:34 You know, I figured this was appropriate attire for what we are doing, you know.

0:39 That, and it's the only clean... Thank you. Making that clear. So this is a Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk. Yes, it is. And in this Cosmic Queries, we're going to be talking about the science of war. Yeah, man. Ooh, science of humans at war. Yeah, and I have to tell you, man, people are obsessed with this subject. I don't understand how, I don't get it. I have never received the breadth of queries. Because you solicited questions on this topic already. Yes, we have solicited questions from all over the internet. I was told this morning that this would be the topic, but you've been scheming all week on this. All week long, we've been receiving questions, and I have to tell you that.

1:23 People are very passionate about it, and they're doing a lot of deep thinking. Some of the questions, I'm like, you were clearly high when.

1:32 You wrote that question.

1:34 You had to be high to write that question.

1:40 You don't get to see the questions. That's true. But though I be a scientist, I have no particular expertise in this topic. So I figured, okay, then they plunked a book down in front of me called Grunt. The Curious Science of Humans at War. So I said, damn, I got to read this book like in the next hour.

1:55 But then they told me, no, Mary Roach, the author of the book, is here with us. Yes. From Oakland, California, Mary Roach. Yes. Thank you, Mary. This is not your first time on StarTalk. No, no. It's like your fourth time or something.

2:07 I think we, yeah, the fourth, yeah.

2:08 Yeah, you've got like the coolest StarTalkian books we could ever find. So great to have you on here. So basically, these questions are going to be from Mary. I'll be Mary's sidecar on this. I could back her up with some physics if we need it. This is her book. Yeah, for the most part, this is what people want to know.

2:24 And Mary, I'm not going to lie to you and say, oh, I read this book and I haven't read it yet. I just saw it like this minute.

2:29 No problem.

2:30 Every other talk show host is lying to you when they said they read your book.

2:32 Oh, I know.

2:33 You know this.

2:33 I know. I haven't read it either. I don't remember what's in it. I wrote it a long time ago. Right. We'll see what these people.

2:40 We'll see what the people say. And listen, you know, like I said, some of the questions are out there.

2:44 But just before you go in... Oh, go ahead. Just an overview. Yeah. What is this subject? Okay.

2:49 So this is military science, but specifically not the weapons and the bombs and the strategy, which you may have a lot of questions there about that. And I will turn those all over to you.

2:59 Okay.

2:59 So this is the human... Right.

3:01 The human condition. Yeah.

3:02 It's an extreme heat and loud noise and fear and panic and... flies and diarrhea and all of the things that people don't necessarily think about, but the military thinks about because it knocks soldiers out of commission. And anyway, so that kind of.

3:15 It's all in here. So this was your next project after all these other completely far-flung places you have been in your book portfolio.

3:24 Yeah, you'd think I would take a body of knowledge that I've worked on and build upon that so that I don't.

3:29 But no.

3:30 No. I'm going to start all over again.

3:32 Start all over.

3:33 Knowing nothing.

3:35 All right, so let's try this. Okay. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait.

3:38 Still before.

3:38 Okay. What is the most weirdest scientific thing you can share with us about military grunts? Okay, here's... Just pull the soil here first.

3:48 The book starts out with the chicken gun, and I love the chicken gun.

3:51 The chicken gun.

3:52 Because I like to say the word chicken whenever possible. Right. The chicken gun.

3:55 I think I know the chicken gun story.

3:57 Do you?

3:57 Yeah, yeah. I have never... I don't think I'm familiar with the chicken gun. You're testing the canopy airplanes of fighter pilots. Okay. Right. So, okay.

4:07 The chicken is a stand-in for your turkey vulture, your Canada goose... You're starling.

4:13 Whatever.

4:14 It's kind of a worst case scenario. Because a chicken, it's kind of an odd choice because a chicken doesn't actually fly.

4:19 They don't fly. They don't fly.

4:19 You're not going to, no matter how long you're a pilot, you are never going to actually hit a chicken.

4:24 But it's a bird and it's readily variable at your groceries.

4:27 It's consistent.

4:27 Right.

4:28 So you take a frozen chicken. You thaw it out. You load the chicken gun and you fire it at the canopy.

4:33 Right. At the same speed that the plane would otherwise encounter it. Flying through the air.

4:38 Right.

4:39 But it was, there were a lot of thought went into this because there's also, because they're like, well, the chicken, this will be, it's very dense. It's a big, heavy thing. That'll be great. But in fact, there's something called, pause for drama, the feathered bullet phenomenon.

4:53 The feathered bullet phenomenon.

4:55 Tiny little bird, you know, starling maybe, you know, hits the windshield, appear just like a bullet right into the pilot.

5:01 Gotcha. Yeah.

5:02 So, you know, you think you have it figured out. Yeah. We'll use a chicken.

5:06 And then all of a sudden a tiny bird comes through and shoots you in the head.

5:11 Well, wait, because the bird appears a tinier hole and it's a different kind of impact, basically, that was not previously considered.

5:17 It's closer to a bullet.

5:19 Okay, so to test this, they should just shoot bullets. They could do that. Chickens. Sit here and let's see if the bullet hits you. Ready?

5:30 Go.

5:30 Or find a finch that's packing.

5:34 Have a bird, fire a gun.

5:35 Right, exactly. Now, just four days ago, I was at Edwards Air Force Base, and I saw the canopy of the F-22 fighter. And it was large and beautiful. It was completely transparent. And what the pilots were telling me is that now it's not just a canopy to their side and to their front. It is completely around them.

5:53 And so they have full, high-quality cameras. visual confirmation of anything that's around them. And I said, shouldn't you be flying with instruments rather than relying on your own damn eyes? Yeah, that's normally the pilot's way. Oh, okay. Rely on instruments. No, if you're a fighter pilot, that's what I thought. But anyhow, let's get to... That's an interesting example.

6:12 Yeah, the chicken gun. The problem I found out is that when birds and planes take off into the wind, so the birds are like, you know, heading along. They're not looking behind, so they don't have a visual awareness to get out of the way. So that was a That's a problem.

6:28 They're not looking at what's coming at them. Right.

6:30 The plane's coming up from behind.

6:31 But for me, that's one of the most beautiful metaphors.

6:36 Do tell.

6:38 It's in life.

6:42 Here we go.

6:43 When the wind is against you. Right. Remember, that is exactly the condition. To take flight. Planes take flight. Wow. And that is a beautiful metaphor. Right. Mine is when the wind is... And Canada geese. I'm sticking with the airplane here. Why did I ruin my metaphor?

7:04 I said chicken. That shows the more lovely Canada goose.

7:08 Yeah. The plane wants the highest speed it can be relative to the air. It's not about the ground. It's about the air. So you take off into the moving air, then you can take off at a lower ground speed because your air speed's higher. That's all. Gotcha.

7:20 And the birds figured that out too.

7:22 Yeah.

7:22 Yeah.

7:23 Very intelligent.

7:24 So let's do this. Chuck, you solicited questions on this topic? And we have them.

7:27 And our first question is a Patreon patrons question, which, of course, if you actually support us on Patreon, then we will put your question to the top of the queue.

7:37 Is that right? Yes, as a matter of fact. They're actually buying their way to the top of the thing?

7:42 I can think of no better way to get people to participate.

7:46 Okay. Or to get votes.

7:48 Okay.

7:48 Okay. By the votes.

7:51 Okay.

7:52 What's your first question?

7:53 This is from Jeff Prime, who is a Patreon patron, and Jeff wants to know this from Omaha, Nebraska. My unit and I were deployed in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. I personally have known several men from my unit that suffer from PTSD while other members do not. With all other variables being equal, is there a biological reason why some soldiers handle war differently in a mental capacity that helps explain why some soldiers suffer PTSD while others do not?

8:24 Good one. Mary, what do you have? That's a very good question. Very good question.

8:27 Yes, and I do not know the answer.

8:28 Cool.

8:29 Yes.

8:29 Okay. There you have it. There you have it. And moving on. No, I'm joking. I can reflect on this fact.

8:34 There's probably... There's probably... A reason.

8:38 I would think that if we knew that definitively, then we would be able to delineate why that is and then look for a cure to PTSD.

8:48 Or keep those people out of combat. One of the things in the book was they were looking at heat injuries, and there's a huge individual variation in who can acclimate to extreme heat, who can start sweating heavy and sooner, and there's like, I can deal with this, and other people can't, and they get heat stroke, and they Sometimes die.

9:06 I'm pretty good in a wide range of temperatures. Yeah. And what I found is, oh, could you put on the heat? And I'm just kind of chilling with the cool. No, I'm just. You're self-regulating. Yeah, kind of. It's not that I don't feel hot or feel cold. It's that I'm okay with it. Now, you have a.

9:25 That's probably psychological. You just roll with everything.

9:28 Maybe it is psychological rather than physiological. In either case, you still want to know who's susceptible to PTSD and who isn't.

9:34 Right.

9:35 Right. And, of course, there's that very famous scene. I only know it from the film. I assume it was true. With Patton walks into an infirmary. And there's these wounded soldiers there, bandits. And there's one soldier who has no wounds at all. He's there in tears at the edge of the bed. He has what they called back then shell shock. Yeah, there was shell shock.

9:57 And then combat fatigue.

9:58 And then it was combat fatigue.

10:00 And now it's PTSD.

10:01 Now it's PTSD. When there wasn't enough syllables. It's more real when you have more syllables.

10:06 Give us an acronym.

10:07 Finally pay attention to it. Give us an acronym, yeah. So he bitch slapped the soldier. Yeah, he did. And this made it to the press, that he had no sort of compassion. No compassion. Yeah. Empathy for this young man. Yeah, and he was saying.

10:25 Didn't bother him, apparently, so he figured everybody else should.

10:27 I guess it was a day when psychological injury was not viewed as the same as physical injury. Whereas today, so often. This is how we do it. Okay. What else you got? That's a great question. It remains a great question without an answer available from this table.

10:44 I don't have an answer.

10:45 There's nothing wrong with that. Okay.

10:47 Now, this one is really for Neil, Mary. And I'm reading it, Neil, because I'm not sure what this guy is talking about.

10:56 Okay. Okay. And this is from Nick. Whew. Zafransky. Zafransky. Do you think that's right? Zafransky, right? Zafransky.

11:08 Zafransky.

11:08 Zafransky. If you start pronouncing names correctly, then we won't know what to do with you. Pronounce it however you want, and that's your thing now. That's my thing. It'd be Zafransky.

11:17 I don't know.

11:17 Zafransky, right? Zafransky.

11:19 Zafransky.

11:19 Okay, here we go.

11:20 I don't know.

11:22 This is what he says.

11:23 I'm a young sci-fi writer and fantasy. I'm currently working on a hard science fiction book. My question is, How much do we understand, here's the thing, Neil, exotic particles, what, if any, effect they do have on the human body? And then he says, if you could put a blurb about my book, I'd really appreciate it. Yeah, so I don't think I'm gonna do the blurb about the.

11:46 Book, but. Well, I think I have a way to link this back to Mary, but we have the portfolio of particles that exist, that have been measured. They have names, they have masses, they have energies in different states and this sort of thing and half-lives. And so some particles just go straight through you like neutrinos. Billions go through you every square centimeter every second from the sun and they do nothing to us. They don't interact. What matters is if they interact with you. That's the difference. And if they interact, they could do damage. And so this is a, so if you want to weaponize a particle, you would make some kind of device that you know contains particles that will interact with your body in some way,

12:29 mess with your DNA, mess with your skin, mess with whatever, and then that becomes a weaponized ray gun, basically.

12:36 So you make the particles a delivery system for some type of debilitation.

12:40 Correct, correct. Now, we do this for electromagnetic energy. So there's a movable microwave device, which is a non-lethal anti-personnel device weapon. It's non-lethal. So if there's a crowd of people, you drive up this truck, you aim this antenna at the people, and it's like you just put them all in a microwave oven. Now, do you first get them to hold a burrito? So they can eat it on the way.

13:09 You've got to take the wrapper off.

13:10 Exactly. So what happens is their skin starts feeling hot and they want to go out of the beam. So they scatter. They scatter. They scatter. So you can decentralize what might be a mob that's coming. Is there any discussion in the military about weapons, the effect of weapons on people that are not just guns that you're traditional?

13:32 Well, there was not in this book, but one of my previous books, there was Infrasound. I don't know which book this was even about.

13:37 They were.

13:38 There was this.

13:38 She's got so many books, she don't remember which book that was in that she wrote. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's badass, actually. That is pretty badass. And some book that I wrote somewhere. I don't know. I believe I said... So.

13:50 What you can all, you can all do is like buy them all.

13:52 Buy them all, lay them out, she's the point to it.

13:55 And you let me know.

13:56 That's it, you buy them all. Exactly.

13:57 So yeah, but Infrasound, there was this talk about that the military was looking for a non-lethal weapon, I think it was. Supposedly it would... No, it's infrasound, and it's like long, slow waves.

14:12 Low-frequency waves.

14:12 Low-frequency, and then it would have the same resonant frequency as some of the internal organs, so it would create fear, nausea, terror, but yeah, never.

14:24 This is like in Jurassic Park.

14:26 Never went anywhere.

14:27 When T-Rex, like the liquid in the.

14:30 Right, and you see the vibration in the liquid in the glass.

14:33 Right, right, right. That type of deal.

14:35 Yeah, like they would launch a ball of infrasound. But anyway, I could never find it.

14:39 That'd be a knob. T-Rex would be one of the settings. By the way, the military doesn't have to look for that. We already have it. It's called One Direction. They're a boy band.

14:51 Well, there was some concern about, NASA had concerns about, because the engines were putting in a launch, they would be putting out tremendous amounts of infrasound and They were afraid they were going to deliver jelly to the moon. But I think as it turned out, it wasn't.

15:05 But in fact, they do have what they call a sound abatement system. And before every launch, in the seconds before they ignite the engine, you see this basically a swimming pool's worth of water dumped onto the launch pad. And the water absorbs the acoustic reverberations. That's right. They were worried that the acoustic reverberations would just completely tear apart the entire system. bottom half of the rocket.

15:28 Right, like the singer with the glass breaking shower.

15:31 Exactly, yes. So what they do is they put it in the water. That absorbs the energy, and that way the energy doesn't hit the rocket again. So next time, watch very closely every single launch. And they're big tanks surrounding launch pads. They're water tanks. Ba-da-bing! And then the vibrations hit. It vaporizes the water. So some of the smoke you see coming out is steam, basically. That's cool.

15:52 Vaporized by the acoustic energy of vibration. That's amazing. Give me one more question.

15:57 By the way, that is the exact sound that it makes when the water is dumped.

16:02 Ba-da-bing.

16:03 Ba-da-bing.

16:04 Awesome. It's awesome. Ba-da-bing. Three words.

16:07 Give it to us, Chuck. Okay, here's a quick one since we don't have a lot of time. Tech Advancement Through Wars from Maddie Stark on Facebook says this. How do you feel about the idea that war is necessary for technological advancement?

16:25 Ooh, let me cast that in a grunt question, okay? Okay. So how much have we, how much has war advanced medicine?

16:34 A lot in terms of combat trauma. I mean, did stuff like, all right, you've got somebody whose artery is cut and they've got about two minutes. So, you know, get it in terms of getting.

16:42 Two minutes before they're dead.

16:43 Before they bleed out and they're dead. Two minutes to stabilize, stop the bleeding, stabilize them and get them somewhere. They've gotten really good at that. So emergency care, that's been huge.

16:54 And, of course, the whole concept of triage is a war-based thing.

16:58 Also things you wouldn't necessarily think about. There was a Navy guy, Captain Phillips, not that other Captain Phillips, but who came up with this. Discovery that if you... If someone's got extreme diarrhea, like cholera, where you're like losing five gallons of liquid. He even invented this thing, the cholera cot. It's a cot with a hole in a bucket. You're just... And you're going to die quickly because you're just.

17:22 Right. Leaking.

17:23 You're leaking.

17:24 So what does he invent? The bucket?

17:26 What?

17:26 That's not an invention.

17:27 Well, the cholera cot was one invention, but not the important one. The important one was if you add glucose to the rehydration fluids, it enhances absorption of the fluids and the salt. So now... You can drink them rather than hook up an IV. So in a third world country where somebody, they don't have to make their way to a clinic and get hooked up to an IV.

17:45 They can actually drink this stuff and it's saved millions of lives. Because it's still like two, some million people die.

17:50 So here's a morbid question. You ready? I'm ready.

17:52 I'm always ready.

17:53 Have more people, have more lives been saved by the medical advances from war than lives that have been lost from the waging of war itself? Wow.

18:04 Interesting. Well, Dave, you know, okay, well, here's a figure for you.

18:07 This war is good for you people.

18:09 I know.

18:09 We have to kill you in order to save you. Let's go to commercial, and we'll cogitate on that question. When we come back, StarTalk continues with our Cosmic Queries edition with Mary Roach, author of Grunt, The Curious Science of Humans at War. We're back. StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. your host and your personal astrophysicist. We're doing Cosmic Queries.

18:35 Love Cosmic Queries. Chuck, you're helping me out here. Absolutely. Yeah, and you solicited questions from our internet base. Yes, we have. And they knew in advance before I knew even what these questions... Well, you never get to see the questions. I don't even know what... Even though we're not trying to stump you. That's not the point. I get it.

18:51 The point here is not to give you a question that you cannot answer, but it's to.

18:55 I think that might be the point.

18:56 Maybe it's more fun for some people.

18:59 Yeah.

19:00 Not for me. I don't know. So Mary Roach is with us. Yes. And her new book just released. This thing still smells like.

19:08 It's got new book smell.

19:09 New book smell.

19:11 You can buy that and spray it on your old paperbacks.

19:12 Get it for a few weeks and then it's old book smell. The Curious Science of Humans at War. And I left you with a question just before the end.

19:21 Yeah.

19:22 I just wanted to know, given how many lives have been saved by medical advances from innovations during war, could one make the case, the morbid case, that the number of people who have died at war is less than the number of lives who have been saved by the medical advances derived from it?

19:38 Probably just from the dysentery and diarrhea statistics alone. I mean, you're telling me, okay, so 2.5 million people a year still there. WHO, that's the figure for deaths.

19:49 World Health Organization.

19:50 Yes.

19:50 To this day.

19:51 Yes.

19:52 A million people die from dehydration, from diarrhea. A lot of them change. Cholera or some other.

19:55 Yeah, in developing nations. So that's a huge.

19:58 Two and a half million a year.

19:59 Two and a half million a year. Yeah, exactly.

20:03 Okay, so 50 million people died in the Second World War. It was the last number I checked. So 25 years of that, that's just the diarrhea alone. But they are dying. We didn't stop them from dying. So I want to know if lives have been saved. Well, no, but she's saying that just the advancements that we've made to combat that.

20:24 may have saved a significant number of lives. Whether or not it balances, we don't know.

20:30 Right, but my statistic, they're still dying.

20:33 They're still dying. So what you're saying, that number could have been much larger. Much, much larger.

20:37 If that's the number they're still dying.

20:38 That's the number they're still dying. It would have been huger. Huge. Huge. It would have been huge.

20:45 Huge.

20:45 Right, right. Just like my hair. Huge. Huge. Huge. Not like my hands. You know what?

20:57 I recently saw a statistic on the number of deaths from car crashes versus the number. Every year that there's been a military conflict, the number of deaths just from car crashes dwarfs the number. from killed in whatever the war that's going on.

21:13 Okay, not the Second World War, but surely since then.

21:16 No, since then.

21:17 Yeah, we lose 100 people a day.

21:19 Now, are they only accounting American deaths or are they counting the number of people? Because we tend to kill a lot more people.

21:25 Yeah, exactly.

21:26 Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I can tell you, it's 100 people a day on the roads. And at the peak of the Vietnam War, we were losing 100 servicemen a week. So it's basically a factor of seven higher in cars than... in military, not the First World War, not the Second World War. But here's something I tweeted recently, the Second World War, you run the math? We were losing 1,000 humans per hour. 1,000 per hour died at the hands of another human being during the six years of the Second World War. That's insane.

22:00 However, the Mexican-American War, seven to one ratio disease to combat injury. Dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, seven to one. Of course, Mexico and diarrhea, they're always going to be linked.

22:14 Wow. I know.

22:16 Poor Mexico, even back then.

22:17 Even back then. Don't drink the water. Back then.

22:19 Yeah. So, yeah, there was that quote, William Osler, dysentery has been more fatal to soldiers than powder or shot.

22:26 Ooh, wow.

22:27 That's even as good as your chicken metaphor that you let loose earlier.

22:32 It was not. I... All right, Chuck, what else you got? Here we go.

22:36 Let's move on. This seems to be a big theme that people want to know about. And this is from Aaron Filth. Okay, that's the name.

22:55 That's how you're pronouncing the name, but go on. No, no. F-I-L-T-H. Let me have fun with how you can't pronounce stuff. Okay. All right, go on.

23:02 Maybe he just wrote it. Maybe they wrote it that way to mess with me.

23:06 All right. Here we go. Hi, Neil. Really love the show. Keep it up.

23:10 My question is, in recent films such as Civil War, we're talking about Marvel Comics Civil War, we see genetically advanced soldiers like Bucky, who is a character, Captain America's friend. I'm sorry, I'm translating as he asked the question. And the Winter Soldiers, also part of the genetically modified soldiers.

23:29 could super soldiers eventually become a reality? If so, what are the biological implications of doing such a thing?

23:37 Greetings from Mexico City. Whoa! Yes.

23:41 This is a show for you.

23:45 Wait, so Mary.

23:45 I want to go to Mexico City. It's supposed to be great.

23:47 So Mary, are there... studies of, have there been attempts to modify the human physiology in war?

23:55 I saw this amazing paper, DARPA. You know DARPA? DARPA is the way outside the box.

24:01 Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.

24:03 Yes, yes. It was a paper, it was speculation. It was not projects that are underway, but they were listing like.

24:08 One of the whole points of DARPA is to have highly speculative research. Yeah. It could break open a whole new field of- of military might. That's cool.

24:16 This was in particular modifications to the human body. What could we do? And inspiration from the animal kingdom. So they were looking at unihemispheric sleep, which you have in marine mammals and in some geese and ducks. Right.

24:30 One eye open.

24:31 Yeah, exactly. So they funded some research, some basic research into marine biologists and bird people. Ornithologists would be, I guess, the word.

24:42 I call them bird people. Bug people, I call them bug people.

24:46 Yeah, the bug people have probably been doing some work too. But just looking into how does this work and could we foster this and somehow make our soldiers able to sleep? Because sleep deprivation is huge and it affects your performance, your military performance. So if there were a way to sleep with one half, the brain and keep the other eye open and make sure nobody's sneaking up.

25:07 Then you swap brain halves. Yeah. Presumably both halves need sharks. Right.

25:12 So, so is that, there was an, it was an amazing list. There were things like, you know, the human llamas or, or could you, you know, somehow I have more hemoglobin for mountain warfare. Could you make somebody able to kind of Sherpa eyes them quickly to be able to breathe, you know, to, to function better at high altitudes.

25:29 I do remember, um, Surgically installed gills was on the list.

25:34 Wow.

25:36 Okay.

25:36 That'd be like Waterworld right there. Yeah, exactly. Does Kevin Costner know about this? That's right.

25:42 We're going to try him out first.

25:44 When he came around his neck and you saw the gills in the movie. So here's my take on that. Not that anybody asked, but I'll tell you my take. In the early days of space exploration, there was all this talk about modifying the human physiology to accommodate the stress and strain of on our body in space. And in almost every case, they came up with an engineering solution to the problem rather than a biological one, where it therefore was not invasive to the human body. They would talk about is there some pill you can take where the brain would not require as much oxygen when you do a high G-turn out from a, you know, as a fighter pilot might when they're turning around. And that way your brain wouldn't need as much oxygen. And

26:27 then the engineers just developed these suits. Right, where they just squeeze your leg. Squeeze your leg. Blood ain't got no way to go. Right, right. So many of these are, how about one where you don't feel nauseous and feel nausea in zero G? Or you can just spin up the space station and create one G. So my, oh, do you want to make bulletproof skin? Or just make Kevlar and wear a bulletproof vest? Right. So I want the bulletproof skin. Just saying. You're just saying.

26:58 I'm just going to go on record and say the bulletproof skin is what I would go for.

27:01 So I'm more Tony Stark on this. Give me the give me the suit. Give me the power, the money and the brains. And we'll make we'll make anything we need. I will be able to fly. That's cool. That's cool. What else you got? All right.

27:15 Johnny Glasgow from Facebook says.

27:18 Hi, Neil. It would be Facebook. Our followers on Facebook. Our followers on Facebook. On Facebook headquarters. Right, exactly. Right. He's not actually having coffee with Zuckerberg right now. He says, hi, Neil. Hi, Mary.

27:32 What scientific advances made during wartime have the biggest positive effect on our civilian lives today?

27:41 I'm going to have to go with the medical stuff.

27:44 The medical stuff.

27:45 Yeah. the stuff we were talking about earlier.

27:47 The stuff we were talking about earlier. That is the most positive effect.

27:50 Positive effect, yeah.

27:52 Right.

27:52 I mean, I guess you could talk about, I mean, like. Taking forward the whole notion of drones completely taking humans out of the equation, but that's, you know, it's got other issues, but.

28:02 The whole episode on Star Trek.

28:05 That was indeed where they fought the war through mathematical calculations.

28:09 Right.

28:10 And then people reported to a chamber for annihilation.

28:14 Because the calculations showed that you would have been killed. You would have been killed in the battle. They just walked in and they took him out. Right, exactly. And that, which is. Captain Kirk said, no, no. can't do that way. That is not war. War is ugly and bloody.

28:31 Spock said, actually, though, statistically, I can see the merit to this particular approach.

28:39 Well, that's cool. Yeah, so definitely the medical advancements.

28:44 That's what comes to mind in terms of a positive, yeah, positive.

28:46 Okay, I would say, are there any technological advancements? I would say one thing. Go ahead. The V2 rocket. was the very first intercontinental ballistic missile, which became the foundation of our entire space arsenal. So everything that we know and love about space, including where you get your your weather maps from the weather channel. You get people saying, what do I need space for? I have my GPS and the weather channel, that's all I need. That's like, get your government hands off my Medicare. That's what that statement is. Exactly what that is.

29:20 Yeah, but no, NASA, I mean, Anything that's miniaturized, fireproof.

29:25 Oh yeah, the entire miniaturized.

29:26 Lightweight.

29:27 Well, that was NASA, not war. That's NASA, I know.

29:29 There's probably a, yeah, there's probably.

29:32 War didn't have to miniaturize the way NASA did. No, no, no. You have to launch it, you know. Every ounce cost you money. There's a war thing, though. By the way, it's $ 10, 000 a pound to orbit. So if you got a little extra gut, I ain't flying that in space. You go get back on a treadmill. So how about this?

29:49 I believe the first computers were used to calculate the trajectory of mortar shells.

29:56 That is true.

29:57 Is that correct?

29:58 That is true.

29:58 Okay. Yes. Yep. And now we have computers. I mean, we know what they do now. Yeah. So, in fact, the military led the development of supercomputing. Yes. That's right. Nowadays, it's commercially driven because the demand is there. But in the day... Yeah. Back in the day.

30:13 Right.

30:14 There you go. All right.

30:15 All right.

30:15 Well, not bad. Not bad at all. Okay. What else you got? Here we go. Okay. Here we go. Well, you know what? This is kind of the same question, so I'm going to skip that. I'm sorry.

30:30 Do vets of armed combat face a disproportionate... I'm sorry.

30:35 Christian... Your last name, I tried to get away without this, but I'm going to try it. Here we go. This is from Christian Prisblick. Prisblick. Okay, here you go, Mary. Take a look. Now they're just messing with you, Chuck. They're just messing with you.

30:49 I know.

30:49 Christian, right? Where are the Joe Smiths out there? Prisblick? Next time, can a Joe Smith please ask Chuck a question? I know.

30:57 Where's Joe Smith when I need him? Okay, Christian Prisbelek from Twitter says this. Do vets of armed combat face a disproportionate number of chronic health issues and does race play a role or as well as class? So class and race, do they play a role in the chronic health issues that vets face? And do vets face more chronic health issues than anyone else by virtue of being a vet?

31:29 Yeah, there's a tremendous amount. Just starting with the number one VA expense, hearing loss.

31:38 Really?

31:38 It's not just bombs going off and rifle fire. It's steady state noise. You're in a Blackhawk helicopter, which is like 106 decibels. And they have hearing protection.

31:51 Chuck's imitating a helicopter. You like that? I like that, yeah.

31:54 Can you do an M16?

31:57 Well, M16 is a little bit more staccato, so it's... The.

32:04 M16, the rifle.

32:05 Sounds like a duck.

32:06 Yeah, I do. But then there's the Huey from Vietnam. It's like it was a pulsing sound. So you're saying the consistent.

32:20 Oh, right.

32:23 Being persistently bathed in high decibel sound Even beyond just whether you were near an explosion. Right.

32:29 And the other problem is that when the noise... When things go kinetic, when there's fire, you know, when there's like, there's no warning. You don't have time to go, roll down my foam earplug and pull my outer ear back and put that, you know, there's just not time. And they're not going to wear that stuff all the time because you lose your situational awareness. You can't hear somebody shouting, get down, somebody over there. So they.

32:51 They've tried to do that in some movies.

32:52 Well, they have. Yeah, they have special operations. This is really cool. Bionic hearing. It's so cool. This is a headset and it. attenuates the loud noises.

33:01 So it changes the range.

33:02 Right, so the loud stuff gets quieter and the quiet stuff is amplified. So you're like the bionic. I was like, so you could hear across the room.

33:12 Yeah, that was the eye, what you're doing.

33:14 Oh, was that the eye?

33:15 That was the eye.

33:17 That was the ear?

33:18 That was the ear. Okay, I think you're right, yeah. Amy Summers had the ear.

33:22 Now she's selling mattresses. Late night TV.

33:27 Can you hear me now? So, okay, so that's interesting.

33:32 Anyway, yeah, but that's the biggest one. But then, yeah, you've got a traumatic brain injury and orthopedic stuff. I mean, if you're in a vehicle that is designed to withstand an IED going off, I mean, you'll survive. But the bottom of it would come up and slam into the foot and the pelvis and the spines.

33:53 Speaking of that.

33:54 Just wear and tear on your body, even if you're not blown up.

33:57 So speaking of that, and this question is from... So these are veterans that have been in combat, right? Yes. Not just... veterans, generic veteran. Because most veterans have not been in combat.

34:08 Oh, so do they have more? Well, I don't know.

34:11 We presume it's combat veterans.

34:14 We would have to assume because, I mean, I'm going to say carpal tunnel doesn't count. I've been sitting at this desk filling out these reports for weeks. My wrists are killing me.

34:25 Actually, I have this book called Dear America, which is a collection of letters home from Vietnam, that was collected before they made a Vietnam memorial here in lower Manhattan. And so on the memorial are subsets of these letters. The book is all of them. And just to your point, Mary, these are letters from all manner of servicemen serving in Vietnam.

34:46 And there's some talking about their friends getting blown up in front of them and wading through the muck and mire and the mosquitoes. And then there's another letter of someone who's in a in an office in Vietnam saying, I can't, you know, I don't want to laugh, but it's so hot in here. It's almost 94 degrees and the fan doesn't work. These working conditions are unbearable. It's like, do you have any fucking idea what's going on? Is that around you? Around you?

35:18 My typewriter keys are sticking.

35:22 The humidity. So I think your biggest problem is your biggest problem. That's really what that is. Whatever your biggest problem is, that's your biggest problem. Wow, that's cool. We got two and a half minutes. How many questions can you squeeze into this? All right. You know what? Go. Here's the deal. We're going to go philosophical.

35:38 Les Ollenhauser says, do you think there can be or ever has been something that can unite humans so effectively as war?

35:51 What a profound question.

35:53 Mars mission.

35:55 Ooh, look at you with the Mars mission.

35:57 Landing a human Mars mission. Everybody's going to tune in to that, right?

36:02 Don't you think? I don't know. Well, so let me agree to that. So I've thought a lot about things that unite humanity. Okay. So one of them is war, which is the largest organized unification of humans ever. that we experience. Nothing mobilizes us like a good war. Exactly. And what odd thing is it immobilizes us against one another, but it's nonetheless mobilizing. Another one is the Olympics. True.

36:29 And another is the World Cup. Which, by the way, is a metaphor for war. Yes, it is, actually. And so, too, is the World Cup. Exactly. Except you don't end up dead at the end of it. Right. So, the World Cup, the Olympics, and the International Space Station. When you look at the cost of the International Space Station and the number of countries involved, It is the greatest collaboration of nations outside of the waging of war.

36:54 Really?

36:54 You look at just the total investment that has gone in it, basically $ 3 billion a year plus. So, yeah, yes. So I agree landing on Mars could do that if it's done as a multi-national consortium. Which it would be, wouldn't it?

37:06 I mean, don't you think?

37:07 It can be, but I don't have enough confidence in the human species to think that we wouldn't do it. out of competitive urges rather than cooperative urges.

37:15 So you're saying that if we make it a reality show competition between countries, we're more apt to go to Mars than if we were just to wait for us to finally come together.

37:26 My feeling is that your urge to be innovative is greater stimulated when you're in competition than when you're in cooperation. That's my feeling here. Okay. As capitalism at its best reveals, where you want to, you want, I want your money. I don't want you to give your money to the other person. So now that competition drives me to be better.

37:44 There it is. There it is. Gotcha. There it is. I think we're out of time. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Well, let me just, so, so, so Mary, let me, let me, let me break ranks here and pull away from Chuck's questions. Okay. Is there one other thing you want us to know about your book before we, before we end, end StarTalk today?

38:05 Oh, gee, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a dark topic, but it's an, interesting quirky fun read i don't want people to get it i mean it's you mean war is serious but they're the people people in the military have a good sense of.

38:16 Humor and it's you have to i think you have.

38:18 To anytime there's death involved in life and death and all that so it's so it's um it's fun it's a.

38:24 Fun did you interviewed you interviewed servicemen i.

38:26 Was i was on a nuclear sub i was in camp lemony let you in it took me a year and a half to get on yeah.

38:32 I know i know yeah yeah that's pretty cool that's.

38:35 Cool you know it's cool so So I was all over the place. It's an interesting, it's a foreign culture. And like any foreign culture, it's just a really interesting place to go and to learn about.

38:47 Cool. Mary, thanks again for being on StarTalk. Thanks.

38:49 Thank you.

38:50 And so we'll just, I want to be on your tour list every single time. Oh, you bet. Okay.

38:56 Oh, yeah. You'll never get rid of me.

38:57 I want to be like the only show that had every one of their damn books. Right here. We get them all.

39:02 We're six for six, so.

39:05 Well, we got to close out this part of the show. When StarTalk returns, Chuck Nice and Bill Nye take over the studio for a segment of maker-themed cosmic queries. Yes. Brought to you by Google. That's right. Maker-themed. That's a whole new thing people are getting into.

39:22 Yeah, you know, and it's kind of cool because they're encouraging people to be makers.

39:28 You know, to innovators, inventors, you know. I think we had lost some of that over the last couple of decades.

39:34 Yes.

39:34 And nice to bring it back. And now it's technologically, it's IT-based for a lot of it. Absolutely.

39:40 Yeah.

39:40 All right, Chuck, I'll look forward to that segment. I'm out of here. We'll see you guys next time on StarTalk. This is StarTalk.