THE TALE OF HAPPITON By Douglas Hofstadter, June, 1983

HAPPITON was a happy little town. It had 20,000 inhabitants, give or take 7, and they were productive citizens who mowed their
lawns quite regularly. Folks in Happiton were pretty healthy. They had a life expectancy of 75 years or so, and lots of them
lived to ripe old ages. Down at the town square, there was a nice big courthouse with all sorts of relics from WW II and
monuments to various heroes and whatnot. People were proud, and had the right to be proud, of Happiton.

On the top of the courthouse, there was a big bell that boomed every hour on the hour, and you could hear it far and wide-even as
far out as Shady Oaks Drive, way out nearly in the countryside.

One day at noon, a few people standing near the courthouse noticed that right after the noon bell rang, there was a funny little
sound coming from up in the belfry. And for the next few days, folks noticed that this scratching sound was occurring after every
hour. So on Wednesday, Curt Dempster climbed up into the belfry and took a look. To his surprise, he found a crazy kind of
contraption rigged up to the bell. There was this mechanical hand, sort of a robot arm, and next to it were five weird-looking
dice that it could throw into a little pan. They all had twenty sides on them, but instead of being numbered 1 through 20, they
were just numbered 0 through 9, but with each digit appearing on two opposite sides. There was also a TV camera that pointed at
the pan and it seemed to be attached to a microcomputer or something. That's all Curt could figure out. But then he noticed that
on top of the computer, there was a neat little envelope marked "To the friendly folks of Happiton". Curt decided that he'd take
it downstairs and open it in the presence of his friend the mayor, Janice Fleener. He found Janice easily enough, told her about
what he'd found, and then they opened the envelope. How neatly it was written! It said this:

Grotto 19, Hades June 20, 1983

Dear folks of Happiton,

I've got some bad news and some good news for you. The bad first. You know your bell that rings every hour on the hour? Well,
I've set it up so that each time it rings, there is exactly one chance in a hundred thousand-that is, 1/100,000-that a Very Bad
Thing will occur. The way I determine if that Bad Thing will occur is, I have this robot arm fling its five dice and see if they
all land with `7' on top. Most of the time, they won't. But if they do-and the odds are exactly 1 in 100,000-then great clouds of
an unimaginably revoltingsmelling yellow-green gas called "Retchgoo" will come oozing up from a dense network of underground
pipes that I've recently installed underneath Happiton, and everyone will die an awful, writhing, agonizing death. Well, that's
the bad news.

Now the good news! You all can prevent the Bad Thing from happening, if you send me a bunch of postcards. You see, I happen to
like postcards a whole lot (especially postcards of Happiton), but to tell the truth, it doesn't really much matter what they're
of. I just love postcards! Thing is, they have to be written personally-not typed, and especially not computer-printed or
anything phony like that. The more cards, the better. So how about sending me some postcards-batches, bunches, boxes of them?

Here's the deal. I reckon a typical postcard takes you about 4 minutes to write. Now suppose just one person in all of Happiton
spends 4 minutes one day writing me, so the next day, I get one postcard. Well, then, I'll do you all a favor: I'll slow the
courthouse clock down a bit, for a day. (I realize this is an inconvenience, since a lot of you tell time by the clock, but
believe me, it's a lot more inconvenient to die an agonizing, writhing death from the evil-smelling, yellow-green Retchgoo.) As I
was saying, I'll slow the clock down for one day, and by how much? By a factor of 1.0000

1. Okay, I know that doesn't sound too exciting, but just think if all 20,000 of you send me a card! For each card I get that
day, I'll toss in a slow-up factor of 1.00001, the next day. That means that by sending me 20,000 postcards a day, you all,
working together, can get the clock to slow down by a factor of 1.00001 to the 20, 000th power, which is just a shade over 1.2,
meaning it will ring every 72 minutes.

All right, I hear you saying, "72 minutes is just barely over an hour!" So I offer you more! Say that one day I get 160,000
postcards (heavenly!). Well then, the very next day I'll show my gratitude by slowing your clock down, all day long, midnight to
midnight, by 1.00001 to the 160,000th power, and that ain't chickenfeed. In fact, it's about 5, and that means the clock will
ring only every 5 hours, meaning those sinister dice will only get rolled about 5 times (instead of the usual 24). Obviously,
it's better for both of us that way. You have to bear in mind that I don't have any personal interest in seeing that awful
Retchgoo come rushing and gushing up out of those pipes and causing every last one of you to perish in grotesque, mouth-foaming,
twitching convulsions. All I care about is getting postcards! And to send me 160,000 a day wouldn't cost you folks that much
effort, being that it's just 8 postcards a day just about a half hour a day for each of you, the way I reckon it.

So my deal is pretty simple. On any given day, I'll make the clock go off once every X hours, where X is given by this simple
formula:

X =1.00001N

Here, N is the number of postcards I received the previous day. If N is 20,000, then X will be 1.2, so the bell would ring 20
times per day, instead of 24. If N is 160,000, then X jumps way up to about 5, so the clock would slow way down just under 5
rings per day. If I get no postcards, then the clock will ring once an hour, just as it does now. The formula reflects that,
since if N is 0, X will be 1. You can work out other figures yourself. Just think how much safer and securer you'd all feel
knowing that your courthouse clock was ticking away so slowly!

I'm looking forward with great enthusiasm to hearing from you all.

Sincerely yours, Demon #3127

The letter was signed with beautiful medieval-looking flourishes, in an unusual shade of deep red ... ink?

"Bunch of hogwash!" spluttered Curt. "Let's go up there and chuck the whole mess down onto the street and see how far it
bounces." While he was saying this, Janice noticed that there was a smaller note clipped onto the back of the last sheet, and
turned it over to read it. It said this:

P. S. -It's really not advisable to try to dismantle my little set-up up there in the belfry: I've got a hair trigger linked to
the gas pipes, and if anyone tries to dismantle it, pssssst! Sorry.

Janice Fleener and Curt Dempster could hardly believe their eyes. What gall! They got straight on the -phone to the Police
Department, and talked to Officer Curran. He sounded poppin' mad when they told him what they'd found, and said he'd do something
about it right quick. So he hightailed it over to the courthouse and ran up those stairs two at a time, and when he reached the
top, a-huffin' and a-puffin', he swung open the belfry door and took a look. To tell the truth, he was a bit ginger in his
inspection, because one thing Officer Curran had learned in his many years of police experience is that an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure. So he cautiously looked over the strange contraption, and then he turned around and quite carefully shut
the door behind him and went down. He called up the town sewer department and asked them if they could check out whether there
was anything funny going on with the pipes underground.

Well, the long and the short of it is that they verified everything in the Demon's letter, and by the time they had done so, the
clock had struck five more times and those five dice had rolled five more times. Janice Fleener had in fact had her
thirteen-year-old daughter Samantha go up and sit in a

wicker chair right next to the microcomputer and watch the robot arm throw those dice. According to Samantha, an occasional 7 had
turned up now and then, but never had two 7's shown up together, let alone 7's on all five of the weird-looking dice!

* * *

The next day, the Happiton Eagle-Telephone came out with a front-page story telling all about the peculiar goings-on. This caused
quite a commotion. People everywhere were talking about it, from Lidden's Burger Stop to Bixbee's Druggery. It was truly the talk
of the town.

When Doc Hazelthorn, the best pediatrician this side of the Cornyawl River, walked into Ernie's Barbershop, corner of Cherry and
Second, the atmosphere was more somber than usual. "Whatcha gonna do, Doc?" said big Ernie, the jovial barber, as he was clipping
the few remaining hairs on old Doc's pate. Doc (who was also head of the Happiton City Council) said the news had come as quite a
shock to him and his family. Red Dulkins, sitting in the next chair over from Doc, said he felt the same way. And then the two
gentlemen waiting to get their hair cut both added their words of agreement. Ernie, summing it up, said the whole town seemed
quite upset. As Ernie removed the white smock from Doc's lap and shook the hairs off it, Doc said that he had just decided to
bring the matter up first thing at the next City Council meeting, Tuesday evening. "Sounds like a good idea, Doc!" said Ernie.
Then Doc told Ernie he couldn't make the usual golf date this weekend, because some friends of his had invited him to go fishing
out at Lazy Lake, and Doc just couldn't resist.

Two days after the Demon's note, the Eagle-Telephone ran a feature article in which many residents of Happiton, some prominent,
some not so prominent, voiced their opinions. For instance, eleven-year-old Wally Thurston said he'd gone out and bought up the
whole supply of picture postcards at the 88-Cent Store, $14.22 worth of postcards, and he'd already started writing a few. Andrea
McKenzie, sophomore at Happiton High, said she was really worried and had had nightmares about the gas, but her parents told her
not to worry, things had a way of working out. Andrea said maybe her parents weren't taking it so seriously because they were a
generation older and didn't have as long to look forward to anyway. She said she was spending an hour each day writing postcards.
That came to 15 or 16 cards each day. Hank Hoople, a janitor at Happiton High, sounded rather glum: "It's all fate. If the bullet
has your name on it, it's going to happen, whether you like it or not." Many other citizens voiced concern and even alarm about
the recent developments.

But some voiced rather different feelings. Ned Furdy, who as far as anyone could tell didn't do much other than hang around
Simpson's bar all day (and most of the night) and buttonhole anyone he could, said, "Yeah, it's a problem, all right, but I don't
know nothin' about gas and statistics and such.

It should all be left to the mayor and the Town Council, to take care of. They know what they're doin'. Meanwhile, eat, drink,
and be merry!" And Lulu Smyth, 77-year¥old. proprietor of Lulu's Thread 'N Needles Shop, said "I think it's all a ruckus in a
teapot, in my opinion. Far as I'm concerned, I'm gonna keep on sellin' thread 'n needles, and playin' gin rummy every third
Wednesday."

* * *

When Doc Hazelthorn came back from his fishing weekend at Lazy Lake, he had some surprising news to report. "Seems there's a
demon left a similar set-up in the church steeple down in Dwaynesville", he said. (Dwaynesville was the next town down the road,
and the arch-rival of Happiton High in football.) "The Dwaynesville demon isn't threatening them with gas, but with radioactive
water. Takes a little longer to die, but it's just as bad. And I hear tell there's a demon with a subterranean volcano up at New
Athens." (New Athens was the larger town twenty miles up the Cornyawl from Dwaynesville, and the regional center of commerce.)

A lot of people were clearly quite alarmed by all this, and there was plenty of arguing on the streets about how it had all
happened without anyone knowing. One thing that was pretty universally agreed on was that a commission should be set up as soon
as possible, charged from here on out with keeping close tabs on all subterranean activity within the city limits, so that this
sort of outrage could never happen again. It appeared probable that Curt Dempster, who was the moving force behind this idea,
would be appointed its first head.

Ed Thurston (Wally's father) proposed to the Jaycees (of which he was a member in good standing) that they donate $1,000 to
support a postcard-writing campaign by town kids. But Enoch Swale, owner of Swale's Pharmacy and the Sleepgood Motel, protested.
He had never liked Ed much, and said Ed was proposing it simply because his son would gain status that way. (It was true that
Wally had recruited a few kids and that they spent an hour each afternoon after school writing cards. There had been a small
article in the paper about it once.) After considerable debate, Ed's motion was narrowly defeated. Enoch had a lot of friends on
the City Council.

Nellie Doobar, the math teacher at High, was about the only one who checked out the Demon's math. "Seems right to me", she said
to the reporter who called her about it. But this set her to thinking about a few things. In an hour or two, she called back the
paper and said, "I figured something out. Right now, the clock is still ringing very close to once every hour. Now there are
about 720 hours per month, and so that means there are 720 chances each month for the gas to get out. Since each chance is 1 in
100,000, it turns out that each month, there's a bit less than a 1-in-100 chance that Happiton will get gassed. At that rate,
there's about 11 chances in 12 that Happiton will make it through each year. That may sound pretty

good, but the chances we'll make it through any 8-year period are almost exactly 50¥50, exactly the same as tossing a coin. So we
can't really count on very many years ..."

This made big headlines in the next afternoon's Eagle-Telephone-in fact, even bigger than the plans for the County Fair! Some
folks started calling up Mrs. Doobar anonymously and telling her she'd better watch out what she was saying if she didn't want to
wind up with a puffy face or a fat lip. Seems like they couldn't quite keep it straight that Mrs. Doobar wasn't the one who'd set
the thing up in the first place.

After a few days, though, the nasty calls died down pretty much. Then Mrs. Doobar called up the paper again and told the
reporter, "I've been calculating a bit more here, and I've come up with the following, and they're facts every last one of them.
If all 20,000 of us were to spend half an hour a day writing postcards to the Demon, that would amount to 160,000 postcards a
day, and just as the Demon said, the bell would ring pretty near every five hours instead of every hour, and that would mean that
the chances of us getting wiped out each month would go down considerable. In fact, there would only be about 1 chance in 700
that we'd go down the tubes in any given month, and only about a chance in 60 that we'd get zapped each year. Now I'd say that's
a darn sight better than 1 chance in 12 per year, which is what it is if we don't write any postcards (as is more or less the
case now, except for Wally Thurston and Andrea McKenzie and a few other kids I heard of). And for every 8¥year period, we'd only
be running a 13 percent risk instead of a 50 percent risk."

"That sounds pretty good", said the reporter cheerfully.

"Well," replied Mrs. Doobar, "it's not too bad, but we can get a whole lot better by doublin' the number of postcards."

"How's that, Mrs. Doobar?" asked the reporter. "Wouldn't it just get twice as good?"

"No, you see, it's an exponential curve," said Mrs. Doobar, "which means that if you double N, you square X. "

"That's Greek to me", quipped the reporter.

"N is the number of postcards and X is the time between rings", she replied quite patiently. "If we all write a half hour a day,
X is 5 hours. But that means that if we all write a whole hour a day, like Andrea McKenzie in my algebra class, X jumps up to 25
hours, meaning that the clock would ring only about once a day, and obviously, that would reduce the danger a lot. Chances are,
hundreds of years would pass before five 7's would turn up together on those infernal dice. Seems to me that under those
circumstances, we could pretty much live our lives without worrying about the gas at all. And that's for writing about an hour a
day, each one of us."

The reporter wanted some more figures detailing how much different amounts of postcard-writing by the populace would pay off, so
Mrs. Doobar obliged by going back and doing some more figuring. She figured out that if 10,000 people-half the population of
Happiton-did 2 hours a day for

the year, they could get the same result-one ring ever)' 25 hours. If only 5,000 people spent 2 hours a day, or if 10,000 people
spent one hour a day, then it would go back to one ring every 5 hours (still a lot safer than one every hour). Or, still another
way of looking at it, if just 1250 of them worked full-time (8 hours a day), they could achieve the same thing.

"What about if we all pitch in and do 4 minutes a day, Mrs. Doobar?" asked the reporter.

"Fact is, 'twouldn't be worth a damn thing! (Pardon my French.)" she replied. "N is 20,000 that way, and even though that sounds
pretty big, X works out to be just 1.2, meaning one ring every 1.2 hours, or 72 minutes. That way, we still have about a chance
of 1 in 166 every month of getting wiped out, and 1 in 14 every year of getting it. Now that's real scary, in my book. Writing
cards only starts making a noticeable difference at about 15 minutes a day per person."

* * *

By this time, several weeks had passed, and summer was getting into full swing. The County Fair was buzzing with activity, and
each evening after folks came home, they could see loads of fireflies flickering around the trees in their yards. Evenings were
peaceful and relaxed. Doc'Hazelthorn was playing golf every weekend, and his scores were getting down into the low 90's. He was
feeling pretty good. Once in a while he remembered the Demon, especially when he walked downtown and passed the courthouse tower,
and every so often he would shudder. But he wasn't sure what he and the City Council could do about it.

The Demon and the gas still made for interesting talk, but were`no longer such big news. Mrs. Doobar's latest revelations made
the paper, but. were. relegated this time to the second section, two pages before the comics, right next to the daily horoscope
column. Andrea McKenzie read the article avidly, and showed it to a lot of her school friends, but to her surprise, it didn't
seem to stir up much interest in them. At first, her best friend, Kathi Hamilton, a very bright girl who had plans to go to State
and major in history, enthusiastically joined Andrea and wrote quite a few cards each day. But after a few days, Kathi's
enthusiasm began to wane.

"What's the point, Andrea?" Kathi asked. "A handful of postcards from me isn't going to make. the slightest bit of difference.
Didn't you read Mrs. Doobar's article? There have got to be 160,000 a day to make a big difference."

"That's just the point, Kath!" replied Andrea exasperatedly. "If you and everyone else will just do your part, we'll reach that
number-but you can't cop out!" Kathi didn't see the logic, and spent most of her time doing her homework for the summer school
course in World History she was taking. After all, how could she get into State if she flunked World History?

Andrea just couldn't figure out how come Kathi, of all people, so interested in history and the flow of time and world-events,
could not see her own life being touched by such factors, so she asked Kathi, "How do you know there will be any you-left to go
to State, if you don't write postcards? Each year, there's a 1-in-12 chance of you and me and all of us being wiped out! Don't
you even want to work against that? If people would just care, they could change things! An hour a day! Half an hour a day!
Fifteen minutes a day!"

"Oh, come on, Andrea!" said Kathi annoyedly, "Be realistic."

"Darn it all, I'm the one who's being realistic", said Andrea. "If you don't help out, you're adding to the burden of someone
else."

"For Pete's sake, Andrea", Kathi protested angrily, "I'm not adding to anyone else's burden. Everyone can help out as much as
they want, and no one's obliged to do anything at all. Sure, I'd like it if everyone were helping, but you can see for yourself,
practically nobody is. So I'm not going to waste my time. I need to pass World History."

And sure enough, Andrea had to do no more than listen each hour, right on the hour, to hear that bell ring to realize that nobody
was doing much. It once had sounded so pleasant and reassuring, and now it sounded creepy and ominous to her, just like the
fireflies and the barbecues. Those fireflies and barbecues really bugged Andrea, because they seemed so normal, so much like any
other summer-only this summer was not like any other summer. Yet nobody seemed to realize that. Or, ' rather, there was an
undercurrent that things were not quite as they should be, but nothing was being done ...

. One Saturday, Mr. Hobbs, the electrician, came around to fix a broken refrigerator at the McKenzies' house. Andrea talked to
him about writing postcards to the Demon. Mr. Hobbs said to her, "No time, no time! Too busy fixin' air conditioners! In this
heat wave, they been breakin' down all over town. I-work a 10¥hour day as it is, and now it's up to 11, 12 hours a day, includin'
weekends. I got no time for postcards, Andrea." And Andrea .saw that for Mr. Hobbs, it was true. He had a big family and his
children went to parochial school, and he had to pay for them all, and ...

Andrea's older sister's boyfriend, Wayne, was a star halfback at Happiton High. One evening he was over and teased Andrea about
her postcards. She asked him, "Why don't you write any, Wayne?".

"I'm out lifeguardin' every day, and the rest of the time I got scrimmages - for the fall season."

"But you could take some time out just 15 minutes a day-and write a few postcards!" she argued. He just laughed and looked a
little fidgety. "I don't know, Andrea",-he said. "Anyway, me 'n Ellen have got better things to do-huh, Ellen?" Ellen giggled and
blushed a little. Then they ran out of the house and jumped into Wayne's sports car to go bowling at the Happi-Bowl.

* * *

Andrea was puzzled by all her friends' attitudes. She couldn't understand why everyone had started out so concerned but then
their concern had fizzled,, as if the problem had gone away. One day when she was walking home from school, she saw old Granny
Sparks out watering her garden. Granny, as everyone called her, lived kitty-corner from the McKenzies and was always chatty, so
Andrea stopped and asked Granny Sparks what she thought of all this. "Pshaw! Fiddlesticks!" said Granny indignantly. "Now Andrea,
don't you go around believin' all that malarkey they print in the newspapers! Things are the same here as they always been. I
oughta know -I've been livin' here nigh on 85 years!

Indeed, that was what bothered Andrea. Everything seemed so annoyingly normal. The teenagers with their cruising cars and loud
motorcycles. The usual boring horror movies at the Key Theater down on the square across from the courthouse. The band in the
park. The parades. And especially, the damn fireflies! Practically nobody seemed moved or affected by what to her seemed the most
overwhelming news she'd ever heard. The only other truly sane person she could think of was little Wally Thurston, that
elevenyear-old from across town. What a ridiculous irony, that an eleven-year-old was saner than all the adults!

Long about August 1, there was an editorial in the paper that gave Andrea a real lift. It came from out of the blue. It was
written by the paper's chief editor, "Buttons" Brown. He was an old-time journalist from St. Jo, Missouri. His editorial was real
short. It went like this:

The Disobedi-Ant

The story of the Disobedi-Ant is very short. It refused to believe that its

powerful impulses to play instead of work were anything but unique

expressions of its very unique self, and it went its merry way, singing, "What I

choose to do has nothing to do with what any-ant else chooses to do! What

could be more self-evident?"

Coincidentally enough, so went the reasoning of all its colony-mates. In

fact, , the same refrain was independently invented by every last ant in the

colony, and each ant thought it original. It echoed throughout the colony, even

with the same melody.

The colony perished.

Andrea thought this was a terrific allegory, and showed it to all her friends. They mostly liked it, but to her surprise, not one
of them started writing postcards.

All in all, folks were pretty much back to daily life. After all, nothing much - seemed really to have changed. The weather had
turned real hot, and folks congregated around the various swimming pools in town. There were lots of barbecues in the evenings,
and, every once in a while somebody'd make a joke or two about the Demon and the postcards. Folks would chuckle and

then change the topic. Mostly, people spent their time doing what they'd always done, and enjoying the blue skies. And mowing
their lawns regularly, since they wanted the town to look nice.

Post Scriptum

The atomic bomb has changed everything except our way of thinking. And so we drift helplessly towards unparalleled disaster.
-Albert Einstein

People of every era always feel that their era has the severest problems that people have ever faced. At first this sounds silly.
How can every era be the toughest? But it's not silly. Things can be getting constantly more dangerous and frightful, and that
would mean that each new generation truly is facing unprecedentedly serious problems. As for us, we have the problem of
extinction on our hands.

Someone once said that our current situation vis-a-vis the Soviet Union is like two people standing knee-deep in a room filled
with gasoline. Both hold open matchbooks in their hands. One person is jeering at the other:.. "Ha ha ha! My matchbook is full,
and yours is only half full! Ha ha ha!"

The reality of our situation is about that simple. The vast majority of people, however, refuse to let this reality seep into
their systems and change their day-to-day behaviors. And thus the validity of Einstein's gloomy utterance.

* * *

I remember many years ago reading an estimate that the famous geneticist George Wald had made about nuclear war. He said he
figured there was a two percent chance per year of a nuclear war taking place. This amounts to throwing one 50-sided die (or a
couple of seven-sided dice) once a year, and hoping that it doesn't come up on the bad side. How Wald arrived at his figure of
two percent per year, I don't know. But it was vivid. The figure has stuck with me for a couple of decades. I tend to think that
the chances are greater nowadays than they were back then: maybe about five percent per year. But who can say?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists features a clock on its cover. This clock doesn't tick, it just hovers. It hovers near
midnight, sometimes getting closer, sometimes receding a bit. Right now, it's at three minutes to midnight. Back at the signing
of SALT I, it was at twelve minutes before midnight. The closest it ever came was two minutes before midnight, and I think that
was at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

The purpose of the clock is to symbolize the current danger of a nuclear holocaust. It's a little like those "Danger of Eire
Today" signs that Smokey the Bear holds up for you as you enter a national forest in the summer. It is a subjective estimate,
made by the magazine's board of directors. Now what is the meaning of "danger", if not probability of disaster per unit time?
Surely, the more dangerous a place or situation, the faster you want to get out of it, for, just that reason. Therefore, it
seemed to me that the Bulletin's number of minutes before midnight, B, was really a coded way of expressing a Wald number, W-a
probability of nuclear war per year. And so I decided to make a subjective table, matching up the values of B that I knew about
with my own best estimates of W. After a bit of experimentation, I came up with the following table:

Bulletin Clock Wald's percentage

(minutes before midnight) (probability per year)

1 min ............. 20 percent

2 mins ............. 10 percent

3 rains ............. 7 percent

4 mins ............. 5 percent

5 mins ............. 4 percent

7 mins ............. 3 percent

10 mins : 2 percent

12 mins ............. 1.5 percent

20 mins ............. 1 percent

A fairly accurate summary of this subjective correspondence is given by the following simple equation:

W = 20/B

This estimates for you the holocaust danger per orbit of the earth, as a function of the current setting of the Bulletin's clock.

W and B may not be estimable in any truly scientific way, but there is a definite reality behind them, even if not. so simple as
that of N and X in Happiton. Obviously it is not a "random'." dicelike process that will determine whether nuclear war erupts in
any given year. Nonetheless, it makes good sense to think of it in terms of a probability per year, since what actually does
determine history is a lot of things that are in effect random, from the point of view of any less-than-omniscient being. What
other people (or countries) do is unpredictable and uncontrollable: it might as well be random.

If tensions get unbearably high in the Middle East or in Central America, that is not something that we could have predicted or
forestalled. If some terrorist group manufactures and uses or threatens to use -a nuclear bomb, that is essentially a "random"
event. If overpopulation in Asia or starvation In Africa or crop failures in the Soviet Union or oil gluts or shortages create
huge tensions between nations, that is like a random variable, like a throw of dice. Who could have predicted the crazy flareup
between Britain and Argentina over the silly Falkland Islands? Who knows where the next hot spot will turn out to be? The global
temperature can change as swiftly and capriciously as a bright summer day can turn sultry and menacing-even in Happiton.

* * *

It is the vivid imagery behind the Wald number and the Bulletin clock that first got me thinking in terms of the Happiton
metaphor. The story was pretty easy to write, once the metaphor had been concocted. I had to work out the mathematics as I went
along, but otherwise it flowed easily. It was crucial to me that the numbers in. the allegory seem realistic. The most important
numbers were: (1) the chance of devastation per year, which came out about right, as I see it; and (2) the amount of time per day
that I think would begin to make a significant difference if devoted by a typical person to some sort of activity geared toward
the right ends. In Happiton, that threshold turned out to be about fifteen minutes per day per person. Fifteen minutes a day is
just about the amount of time that I think would begin to make a real difference in the real world, but there are two ways that
one might draw a distinction between the situation in Happiton and the actual case.

Firstly, some people say that the situation in Happiton is much simpler than that of global competition and potential nuclear
war. In Happiton, it's obvious that writing postcards will do some good, whereas it's not so obvious (they claim) what kind of
action will do any good in the real world. Working hard for a freeze or for a reduction of US-SU tensions might even be harmful,
they claim! The situation is so complex that nothing corresponds to the simplistic and sure-fire recipe of writing postcards.

Ah, but there is a big fallacy here. Writing postcards in Happiton is not sure¥fire. The gas could still come oozing up at any
time. All that changes is the odds. Now in the real world, we must follow our own best estimates, in the absence of perfect
information, as to what actions are likely to be positive andd what ones to be negative. You can only follow your nose. You can
never be sure that any action, no matter how well intended, is going to improve. the situation. That's just the way life is.

I happen to believe that the odds of a holocaust will be reduced (perhaps by a factor of 1.0000001-) by writing to my
representatives and senators fairly regularly, by attending local freeze meetings, by contributing to various organizations, by
giving lectures here and there on the topic, and by writing articles like this. How can I know that it will do any good? I can't,
of course. And it's no different in Happiton. The best of intentions can backfire for totally unforeseeable reasons. It might
turn out that little Wally Thurston, by moving his pencil in a certain graceful curlicue motion one

afternoon while writing his 1,000th postcard to the Demon, stirs up certain air molecules which, by bouncing and jouncing against
other ones helter-skelter, wind up giving that tiny last push to the caroming icosahedral dice atop the belfry, and bang! They
all come up '7'! Wally, oh Wally, why such folly? Why did you ever write those postcards?

Those who would caution people that it might be counter-productive to work against the arms race-unless they believe one should
work for the arms race-are in effect counseling paralysis. But would they do so in other areas of life? You never know if that
car trip to the grocery store won't be the last thing you do in your life. All life is a gamble.

The second distinction between Happiton and reality is this. In Happiton, for fifteen minutes a day to make a noticeable dent, it
would have had to be donated by all 20,000 citizens, adults and children. Obviously I do not think that is realistic in our
country. The fifteen minutes a day per person that I would like to see spent by real people in this country is limited to adults
(or at least people of high-school age), and I don't even include most adults in this. I cannot realistically hope that everyone
will be motivated to become politically active. Perhaps a highly active minority of five percent would be enough. It is amazing
how visible and influential an articulate and vocal minority of,that size can be! So, being realistic, I limit 'my desires to an
average of fifteen minutes of activity per day for five percent of the adult American population. I sincerely believe that with
about this much work, a kind of turning point would be reached-and that at 30 minutes or 60 minutes per day (exactly as in
Happiton), truly significant changes in the national mood (and hence in the global danger level) could be effected.

* * *

I think I have explained what Happiton was written for. Trigger activity it may not. I'm growing a little more realistic, and I
don't expect much of anything. But I would like to understand human nature. better, to understand what it is that makes us so
much like stupid gnats dully buzzing above a freeway, unable to see the onrushing truck, 100 yards down the road, against whose
windshield we are about to be smashed.

One last thought: Although to me it seems that nuclear war is the gravest threat before us, I would grant that to other people it
might appear otherwise. I don't care so much what kinds of efforts people invest their time in, as long as they do something. The
exact thing that corresponds to the threat to Happiton doesn't much matter. It could be nuclear weapons, chemical or biological
weapons, the population explosion, the U.S.'s ever-deepening involvement in Central America, or even something more contained,
like the environmental devastation inside the U.S. What it seems to me is needed is a healthy dose of indignation: a spark, a
flame, a fire inside. Until that happens, that courthouse clock'll be tickin' away, once every hour, on the hour, until ...

Post Post Scriptum.

Two magazines are devoted to the prevention of nuclear war. They are: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Nuclear Times.
The Bulletin, founded in 1945, aims to forestall nuclear holocaust by promoting awareness and understanding of the issues
involved. It describes itself as "a magazine of science and world affairs". Its address is: 5801 South Kenwood Avenue, Chicago,
Illinois 60637.

Nuclear Times is a more recent arrival, and calls itself "the news magazine of the antinuclear weapons movement". Its articles
are shorter and lighter than those of the Bulletin, but it keeps you up to date on what's happening all over the country and the
world. Its address is: Room 512, 298 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10001.

The following organizations are effective and important forces in the attempt to slow down the arms race and to reduce global
tensions. Most of them put out excellent literature, which is available in, large quantities at low prices (sometimes free) for
distribution. Needless to say, they can always use more members and more funding. Many have local chapters.

The Council for a Livable World

11 Beacon Street Boston,

Massachusetts 02108

SANE

711 G Street, S.E. Washington,

D.C. 20003

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign 4144 Lindell Boulevard, Suite 404 St. Louis, Missouri 63108

The Center for Defense Information 303 Capital Gallery West 600 Maryland Avenue, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20024

Physicians for Social Responsibility, 639 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War 225 Longwood Avenue, Room 200 Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Union of Concerned Scientists 1384 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238