The Survivalist Pledge:

To help all that can be helped,
To defend all that can be defended,
To save all that can be saved,
To free all that seek freedom,
To stay alive as long as I can and stay free as long as I live.

US scientists working on the SDI program have recently created a "brilliant pebble" rocket. Designed to kill ballistic missiles, these rockets are each shorter than a man and have no warheads. Each does have a small on-board computer and a lens system capable of "seeing" a ballistic missile as it is launched. This would allow the space-based missile to find its target while its computer calculates which ballistic missile it should go after (so that all the brilliant pebbles don't head for the same target!). Initial testing has been quite successful in the brilliant pebble program. In addition to being effective, the small brilliant pebble rockets would be relatively inexpensive to produce and place in space orbit. This gives the defender using such a system a definite advantage: it would be cheaper to add more brilliant pebbles to the a defense screen than it would be for an enemy to add more ballistic missiles to his system to attempt to overwhelm the brilliant pebbles.

Additionally, the brilliant pebbles promise to be technically within the grasp of current technology and considerably less expensive than original detractors of the "Star Wars" SDI program have maintained it would cost. Nevertheless, several newspapers and services have carried articles suggesting that SDI is not practical or that the idea has somehow been repudiated. Refuting these articles, Jane M. Orient, MD, editor of Arizona's DDP Newsletter, was recently quoted in the JOURNAL OF CIVIL DEFENSE as saying:

"The US no longer has a credible deterrent. The ratio of military targets to warheads capable of destroying such targets stands at 1 to 3 for US targets covered by Soviet warheads and 8 to 1 for Soviet targets to US warheads. Still more ominously, the Soviets are relentlessly building defenses, both passive and active, while most US forces are deployed in instant annihilation mode. (Submarines are an exception--until advancing technology strips them of their cloak of invisibility.)

"Our present strategy relies on the threat of vengeance from the grave--killing civilians as at Dresden. That is both immoral and irrational. "Recent developments such as 'brilliant pebbles' make it possible for us to change our strategy to one of assured survival. A defense that includes a space-based layer is imperative because it makes it impossible to overcome the defenses by 'laddering down.'

"It would be a tragic error to forego this possibility in favor of a system such as the Stealth bomber, which is easily visible to space-based radars. "The cost of a kinetic energy system based on brilliant pebbles is quite economical, if compared with the MX-racetrack or with the $80-plus billion federal aid to highways bill.

"I sincerely hope that the newspaper headlines [are]... wrong. A 'repudiation' of 'Star Wars' may be the death knell for the Unites States as a free nation." 

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