In the 1964 movie classic, Failsafe, American bombers are accidentally dispatched to drop nuclear bombs on Moscow. (If you haven’t seen the film—spoiler alert!)
When the bombers cannot be recalled, the president of the United States provides the Russians with information to shoot down the planes. But one of them gets through. To prevent a massive Russian counterattack, the president orders an American bomber to drop a nuclear bomb on New York City at the same time the rogue bomb detonates over Moscow.
Grapple with the Gray
List two or three reasons why the president made the right decision.
List two or three reasons why the president made the wrong decision.
Was there another alternative?
Having weighed the options, what would you do if you were president?
Gray Matters
Some scenarios are too horrific to contemplate, which doesn’t prevent us from pondering the unthinkable. Do you sacrifice millions of innocents who would later die anyway to save hundreds of millions more? The simple arithmetic favors the president’s choice. But does that make it ethical?
What if an invading army demands that a city send out 10 citizens to be executed or it will kill everyone in the city? Should the citizens vote which 10 to send out? Should they choose their sacrificial lambs by lot, or ask for volunteers and hope to get some?
Even by the logic that a few lives must be forfeited to save the many, the many do not have the right to sacrifice the few. If 10 individuals want to volunteer, they may give up their lives to save others—even according to a philosophy that forbids suicide—since through no action at all they are already condemned to die. Similarly, it would be acceptable if the citizens agree unanimously on a lottery to choose the victims.
However, for a majority of citizens to hand over 10 individuals who neither volunteered nor agreed to some form of random selection would be murder, notwithstanding the inevitable murder of those same individuals by the surrounding army. No one has the right to take a life, even to save others.
For the president to order the murder of innocents, therefore, even to save the entire planet, would be immoral. The most he would be allowed to do—perhaps—would be to allow the Russians to bomb a major U.S. city without interference. The difference between passive and active taking of life will figure in the next scenario as well.