The main part of the presentation was designed to get a reaction out of the group and too see what that reaction was. I had predicted that no one in the class would be aware of the SUBROC or HAARP projects. I had also predicted that very few people would be aware of the atmospherance disturbaces that HAARP had created in the past. My predictions were correct and the reaction of the group was at first in bewilderment that things like the creation of new Van Allen belts had happened. As I continued the presentation, the group's reaction soon rose to a skeptical view of that while many of these tests were very harmful, they were done in the historical framework of the cold war and that such tests did not occur today. Professor Carr Everbach added that it should be a good sign that none of the weapons that were tested have ever been used.

As people inquired as to what possible projects the defense industry might presently be doing that is harmful to the environment I could present no evidence of any major disturbances on the scale of thermonuclear atmospheric testing. I tried to show that while there wasn't any evidence of any recent environmentally dangerous projects, public information is very out of date when talking about secret government projects and for obvious reasons. This doesn't say that there are projects currently underway, but is meant to state there could be and the public would not know about it.

The closest modern example of very harmful weapons was the case of the depleted uranium shells which I added was very much up for debate. It was stated by many in the group that they had heard or read that depleted uranium shells had caused the increases in birth defects and disease in Iraq. I answered that while there was definitely an increase in health problems in Iraq, there isn't significant statistical evidence to infer that the depleted uranium shells were somehow related to the increases after the Gulf War. Also, looking at the areas where combat operations took place and where the depleted uranium shells could possibly have been used it would be extremely hard to justify how an entire country could be affected. Still, a debate over the issue remained because most people did not trust the Pentagon's information and did not believe that proper environmental tests were done. The Pentagon's long history of mistakes and lies were mostly the cause of this lack of confidence using the example of Agent Orange usage during the Vietnam war. The scandals that have plagued the little oversight the defense industry does have, discouraged the group that any type of change would occur.

The US military's pledge, development, and now usage of environmentally friendly bullets caught some people by surprise. It was mostly seen as a victory for pro-environmental change and a possible indicator that the military was indeed becoming more environmentally aware.

A decent amount of time was also spent on the discussion of ABM (Anti Ballistic Missile) technology. One of the topics was whether or not ABMs could be viewed as an environmentally friendly tech fix idea, where using the missiles was directly stopping potentially catastrophic environmental damage. The idea of a missile shield over the Earth was dismissed as being very useful because of the many different ways that a nuclear attack could occur and that the attacks thought most likely to occur would not be in the form of an ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile). I also tried to address the issue of whether or not defense spending and the tests the defense projects undertake were beneficial to society because of their later impacts. The group’s opinion was that while there were spillovers into the public sector, if the money had been spent on civilian projects the rewards to society as a whole would be greater.

Overall the presentation served to inform some people about the harmful effects of past defense testing on the environment and to include some modern day examples to be concerned about. I hoped that the presentation got more people into thinking about what potential harm the defense sector could do in the future and how the public is not well informed about what exactly is going on, hindering any efforts to test and prevent environmental damage. The result of the discussion was that it was seen as very unlikely that the defense sector was carrying out environmentally hazardous projects, if they were it would be very hard to rectify, and that there really isn't much that can currently be done to address a possible problem.