Carson High grad speaks at international war conference

Though he has strong roots in the West, a Carson High alumnus recently made his mark a bit farther east.

Seth Scott, a 1991 graduate of Carson High School, was one of several speakers at a recent conference on war in Budapest, Hungary.

The east European capital hosted the conference on "War, Virtual War and Human Security" for four days at the beginning of May.

Participants came from around the globe, according to Scott.

He presented the conference with his essay, "The Killers and the Dead: An Exploration of the Viability of and Alternatives to Lethal Warfare."

"My topic was on non-lethal weapons," Scott said from his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his wife, Tanya. His essay argues that wars can be fought without fatalities through the use of weapons that incapacitate, but do not permanently injure the enemy.

"The idea is that you can take out the enemy soldiers but not kill them," says Scott. "Everybody lives at the end of the war."

In addition to being more humane, he argues, this is also better for post-war economies.

Scott was invited to participate in the conference after submitting his eight-page essay to a call for papers on interdisciplinary.net.

The conference, he said, was "uplifting because everyone there is pretty much dedicated to trying to resolve issues, to make the world a safer place."

He added, "Plus it's just a bunch of nice people and we got to hang out. But that's also the important part of it - here you are with all these international people; none of these people are your personal enemy."

He said, "I think that just having international conferences like this is a step in the right direction."

Scott graduated in 1997 with a degree in international relations from the University of Nevada, Reno and currently works as an architect in New Jersey.

"I never stopped being interested in these things or asking the big questions," he said.

Actually, he says, architecture is "not that far of a stretch" from international relations.

"In architecture you must think about larger issues; a lot of architects spend a lot of time philosophizing."

Fifteen of the essays presented at the conference will be published, according to Scott, who hopes to be one of the lucky authors. Scott plans to continue researching the topic of non-lethal weapons and write a book on the subject.

Scott's parents, Richard and Nancy, live in Carson City. Richard Scott is a retired seventh-grade English teacher; he taught at Eagle Valley Middle School for 24 years. Nancy Scott teaches first grade at Sutro Elementary School in Dayton.

Scott's essay can be downloaded from interdisciplinary.net at www.inter-disciplinary.net/ptb/wvw/wvw4/s10.html.