08/05/08: Nuke 'em

I was telling my husband about this cool article I read: http://www.schneier.com/essay-155.html. I was asking him about the following two scenarios:

There are 600 people. You have two choices:
A. Save 200 people
B. Take a 2/3rds chance that 200 people will live or 2/3rd chance that 600 people will die.

There are 600 people. You have two choices:
A. Kill 400 people
B. Take a 1/3rd chance that 600 live or 2/3rd chance that 600 people will live.

He selected A/B respectively.

HOOK LINE AND SINKER! Both A scenarios are the same thing and ditto for B. So much for being a smarty pants!

I mentioned the 9/11 scenario: Simple solution to avoiding the situation from ever happening again: ground all air traffic. Simple, easy to enforce, and we already did it after 9/11 happened. His response? "It will never happen...My solution is NUKE 'EM. Nuke all Middle Eastern countries."

Not so certain I agree with that but an interesting perspective from a government man.