Humans VS Nature

Medicine, Science, and the Environment in Modern War

War is usually seen as a human vs human contest, but armed conflicts are more than battles, and even more than rationing, speeches, propaganda, and memorials. War is also a struggle between people and nature as humans work to adapt, conquer, or combat nature to fight war successfully. Sometimes there are benefits that last beyond the war, such as vaccines or weather forecasting. Sometimes there are costs that linger, such as radiation and scarred landscapes. How and why do humans incorporate, conquer, ignore, or abuse nature as they fight wars? By studying examples from the fields of medicine, science, and the environment around the world on homefronts and battlefronts, we will see major conflicts of the twentieth century as struggles that involves humans and nature, not just people themselves.