civilisation-scale effort

i am going to be talking about two things here. the manhattan project and the wallfacer project. and a third one at the end

manhattan project was created because of the arms race against the germans. because of some physics breakthrough, it became obvious to few smart people all over the world that a nuclear bomb can be built. no one wanted the germans to have it. so the americans thought that they should build it first.

even though mostly americans were involved in it, i still consider it a civilisation scale effort cause the opposite outcome (hitler and his team having the bomb) seemed worse in theory. they did it fast

as per the tales that have been told, they took 3-4 years to build it. and they did it way more efficiently than they thought possible. they made a secret city. recruited the best persons they could. and they got something out of it by making the theoretical into an absolute reality.

the second was the wallfacer project. it lasted roughly 400 years and its main purpose was to stop invasion of earth by extraterrestials.

it was the most inefficient thing. even though it is fiction, but that made me think how prepared we are for truly large civilisation scale efforts. or we just hope and pray as often as possible.