Stardate 20010921.0849 (Crew, this is the Captain): One of the big problems with the Star Trek series was that it risked its top officers much too much. In particular, in ST:TNG, whenever the ship was at general quarters, Riker would be sitting there right next to the Captain on the bridge. If the bridge were taken out, the ship's command structure would be decapitated. That's not how it is on an actual warship in combat. US ships have a reserve bridge station capable of conning the ship in case the main bridge is taken out. (The fictional
Enterprise D also had a reserve bridge, called the "Battle Bridge".) During general quarters, the duty station for the ship's executive officer is the reserve bridge. He will have with him a cadre of top officers. If the main bridge gets pasted, which has happened many times, he will take over and continue to fight the ship.
Engineers know that in critical systems redundancy is not a luxury. That is also the case in political control systems. Shortly after last week's bombing, Vice President Cheney vanished from the public eye. His location is not now being publicized, and we can expect that to continue for the forseeable future. Whereever he is, he has with him a core group of advisers who amount to a shadow government. Our enemies may have access now or soon to nuclear weapons, and if they managed to use one on Washington DC, they'd take out not just the President and all of his advisers, but also Congress and the Supreme Court. But as long as Cheney and his advisors are still alive, then we would still have a government, and this nation would be able to survive. There would still be continuity; there would be an orderly transition of power. Cheney would be sworn in as President and would begin the long slow job of holding elections and rebuilding the essential bureaucracy, while continuing to fight the war. I don't know where Dick Cheney is, and I neither need nor want to know. (discuss)
Update: You know, we lucked out: Cheney is a good man. We could have done a lot worse than to have him as our VP during this crisis -- it could have been Dan Quayle.
