Biology of War

The renowned bio-chemist Sir Gorge Porter noted “I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.” While this quote is highly acerbic, it by no means hides the fact that war acts as a catalyst for humans. Just as various enzymes help a certain chemical reaction to occur efficiently in the body, war helps speed up human ingenuity. Many of our finest inventions like nuclear power, the Global Positioning System, ABS, satellite communications, and so on were mere byproducts of wartime research. But why? Does the additional funding for scientific research explain this increase in productivity? No. Just as enzymes are coded into our genetic data, this effect of war is encoded in our will to survive. Evolutionarily speaking, individuals perform tasks in a more expedient manner when their live is on the line. It is this basic instinct to survive, which is threatened by war that helps humans push their minds to the limit to help their country.