ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1992 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, is it true that the First World's winning of the Cold War, the Peace Dividend assuring prosperity for all, and President Bush's New World Order enforcing a kinder and gentler future for everyone, are all contingent upon a new weapon recently evolved from within Department of Defense Black Labs? International intelligence operatives, adept hirelings of the most powerful and pervasive media, and fourteen year old computer hackers have for years luxuriated in the revelations of Top Secret/Lotus Eater-classified Pentagon research documentation. Calling a Bulgarian peasant a techno-spy rarely generated the desired bottom line, so official Pentagon leaks were frequent and voluminous, filling pages of "The Enquirer," "Popular Science," and even some technical journals. Courtesy of public domain disclosures, we now read between the lines to voyage beyond tomorrow to "Science" 256(5063) 1531 (1992) and the lethal wizardry of the Stellar Insurferator. A 2000 pound blockbuster is a half ton of military high explosive in a half ton steel casing. In pursuing this route we soon design a bomb too heavy to be delivered. The violence of chemistry is superseded by the devastation of physics, hence the fission bomb. The mechanism of fission warheads limits their yield to that of a few hundred thousand tons of TNT, hence the progression to fusion warheads. Hydrogen bombs have been formed to one hundred million tons TNT equivalent - the weight of an ice cube 1660 feet long, wide and high. Boom! Ocean water is loaded with hydrogen and touches all but about ten of the almost 200 nations of this planet. Would it not make more sense to selectively turn the ocean into a weapon of mass destruction instead of weathering all the noisome complications attendant to manufacturing, storing, and accurately delivering an infernal device? Imagine the opportunities for meaningful diplomacy and international blackmail! America's destiny was clearly delineated. Pentagon managers collected their most extreme nerds, geeks and propellerheads; fueled them with pizza and beer; threw in a handful of adult magazines; and sent them on a mission to preserve truth, justice and the American way! Money went in, progress reports came out, and nothing much happened. The violent convulsions of a pulsating star's atmosphere, Mach 8 shockwaves boosting tortured matter to temperatures of 100,000 degrees and higher, are described by a surprisingly spare set of equations. Horizontal velocity, surface elevation, normalized density, pressure, and propagation speed permute and combine to describe these spatially stupendous and most violent of phenomena with remarkable accuracy and predictive power. Ocean waves impinging upon a beach are similarly modeled with horizontal velocity, surface elevation, normalized depth, pressure, and propagation speed. It was close enough for Dr. Milton Poswilly. Milton Poswilly was a skinny astrophysicist under DoD contract in La Jolla, California who had embezzled eight years of research grants for supercomputer modeling of the perfect wave in pursuit of his surfing passions. An FBI subpoena was delivered charging him with felonies and misdemeanors sufficient to contain the rest of his life within a Federal penitentiary. The sudden surge of his adrenal glands screaming in the night as the working end of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic was shoved into his mouth forged the connection between stellar atmospheric density and ocean wave depth. The equations of state for pulsating white hot stars and salt water lazily lapping upon sandy beaches were identical! Twist this coefficient and twiddle with that one. Renormalize density to depth. Use the Lax-Wendroff numerical method of shock capture to invert energy dissipation to uncontrolled exponential growth. Do not hang ten toes. Hang ten gigatons! The TNT ice cube was now 7708 feet long, wide and high. This was christened the Stellar Insurferator. This was gnarly progress! (Poswilly was gang-raped to death in Joliet.) Physicists wondered what would control the Stellar Insurferator once it began to shoot the tube. Those who wondered too loudly evaporated in the interests of National Security. A brief meeting was held with Russian representatives after the Stellar Insurferator was demonstrated using a single human tear at Chernoble. The Russian Empire toppled. Environmentalists were livid with rage! Would vaporizing India from Bombay to Hyderabad hurt dolphins? President Bush journeyed to the Rio de Janeiro Environmental Conference and stared down lawmakers empowered to oppress five billion people, telling them to go gargle with salt water. Danny Quayle shot three under par! When next you vacation at the seashore, contemplate the exquisite wonder of two thirds the Earth's surface abruptly transforming into a howling thermonuclear firestorm. One day surf may be up to Mach 8 and 100,000 degrees. Remember to wear your sunscreen!