Humans are prone to mistakes. We have poor security protocols, we lose track of stuff we are never supposed to lose track of, we embed mistakes so that they can take on a life of their own, and we huff and puff when we ought to be quiet and respectful. Even when we create appropriate security processes, we sometimes take shortcuts or decide that they are too cumbersome to execute this one time. We make stuff we don't need.

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It is startling to hear the trash talk coming out of the US State department, the White House, campaign trail and people auditioning for positions.

Human beings make mistakes... and too frequently deadly mistakes. We have the buggy software and endless costly upgrades of our technological systems as proof of how mistake-prone we are - we embed our mistakes in automated systems. At this stage of our evolution, being prone to mistakes is a hallmark of our DNA -

For example, in 2007 US Air Force pilots flew six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with nuclear warheads, from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident).

In a report by GAO (http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/679392.pdf) issued August 16, 2016, the opening letter addressed to Fred Upton Chairman, Frank Pallone, Jr., Ranking Member Committee on Energy and Commerce House of Representatives, and Tim Murphy, Chairman, Diana DeGette, Ranking Member Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Committee on Energy and Commerce House of Representatives, starts off with a bombshell:

"In May 2015, the Department of Defense (DOD) discovered that one of its laboratories inadvertently sent live Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to almost 200 laboratories worldwide over the course of 12 years." The graphic below shows the countries that received these live pathogens.

Also note that the Pentagon "discovered" these two months before House committees initiated inquiries about how well federal agencies were performing their control over inventories of germs, viruses, toxins and other life-destroying agents they are responsible for tracking.

It is very interesting that most of the report seems to me to spend more time on how other federal agencies performed poorly in tracking their inventories of pathogens.

GAO notes: "For the purpose of this report, we focused on inactivation as a process used in laboratories to render pathogens unable to cause disease but retain characteristics of interest for future use, such as for vaccine development.

"The total number of incidents involving incomplete inactivation that occurred from 2003 through 2015 is unknown for several reasons, including the inability to easily identify such incidents in existing databases. For those that are known, incidents occurred at federal, academic, and private high-containment laboratories and involved a range of inactivation methods and pathogens.

"The total number of incidents involving incomplete inactivation that occurred from 2003 through 2015 is unknown for three reasons: (1) the inability to easily identify incidents involving incomplete inactivation within incident databases, (2) the absence of reporting requirements for pathogens that are not select agents or recombinant pathogens, and (3) the absence of a clear, consistent definition of inactivation.

"The Select Agent Program is required to annually report to Congress only on the number and type (e.g., 'theft' or 'release') of all incidents that have occurred involving select agents. Select Agent Program officials initially told us that there were 10 incidents involving incomplete inactivation reported to the program from 2003 through 2015 (see table 2). NIH officials initially told us that they were unaware of any incidents involving incomplete inactivation involving recombinant pathogens that had occurred in that time frame.

"However, upon review of the Select Agent Program's database of reported incidents, we identified another 11 incidents that involved incomplete inactivation from 2003 through 2015, which we confirmed with the Select Agent Program, in addition to the original list of 10 they provided to us (see table 3)."

The current trash talk and action include placing missile systems in Poland (to protect Europe from the Iranians!) and in Romania. Romania? Why? Remember the Cuban missile crisis?

The less time the US/NATO/West, aka The Empire, gives the Russians to sort out whether they are under attack the higher the risk is for the destruction of the human species. Do The Empire groupthink militarists seriously believe that they can destroy Russian missiles before the Russians can launch? Even if 100% of Russia's missiles are not destroyed, a typical mushroom cloud like this one--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba--if it were detonated over Cincinnati, Ohio, could be seen in Des Moines, Iowa, and New York City, basically in two time zones at the same time. All life forms at ground zero would become dust and shadows.

Now imagine that of the 1600 deployed aircraft bombs (http://thebulletin.org/2014/march/russian-nuclear-forces-2014), 99% were destroyed, leaving 16 Satan bombs to manage to hit various population centers of the Great Satan, I believe that every part of the US would be witness to our own destruction but not for more than 30 seconds.

Now imagine that the Russians begin to deploy the estimated 6200 warheads that they have in storage because The Empire's leadership, which is composed of apparently bat-crazy loons, are hell bent on tempting fate by adding destabilizing missile systems at Russia's doorstep.

Authors Bio:

One cannot get away from the clutches of the Man.