Yes, we understand that it's unbecoming to gloat over the latest virus to make the rounds and how Wintel users are all scrambling like cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on. And yes, we've heard over and over again how Mac OS X isn't technically that much more resistant to viruses than Windows, and we owe our relatively virus-free existences to little more than the fact that virus-writers haven't actually targeted us yet. But we just can't get past the simple truth that while Wintel users have been putting up with all sorts of malarkey for the past couple of weeks (and as far back as the beginning of time), we Mac users just coast right by while stifling a giggle or two. But that's not to say we aren't affected by these things indirectly, as two frightening incidents have made abundantly clear.

Exhibit A: apparently the Navy, despite having recently purchased 260 Xserves, hasn't fully moved past its ill-advised reliance on Windows that led to that embarrassing dead-in-the-water "smart ship" debacle back in '97. According to PCWorld, "three-quarters of the Navy Marine Corp intranet has lost network capacity" due to worm infestation. Was it Blaster, last week's media darling of the malware circuit? Nope; it seems that Blaster is old news, and the Navy got hit with Welchia, which is apparently-- and we swear we're not making this up-- a worm that propagates all over the 'net deleting Blaster and installing Microsoft's security patch. So it's a benevolent worm, as goofy as that sounds. There's just one problem: reportedly Welchia is kicking up so much 'net traffic as it tries to download the patch to tens of thousands of Navy computers while also scanning for other Wintels to infect, the congestion is so bad that the Navy's integrated voice/video/data communications system "cannot presently be useful for network connections."

Actually, make that two problems: Welchia nuked the Navy LAN in an attempt to eradicate Blaster from the machines of 100,000 users, when reportedly none of the Navy systems was infected with Blaster in the first place. So the fix for a problem that didn't exist broke something else in the process; have you ever heard of a better illustration of life in the Wintel universe?

Wait, don't answer until you've heard this one! Exhibit B: The Register reports that yet another worm, the "Slammer" one that wreaked so much havoc earlier this year, actually infected a network at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio last January and "disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours." Oh, but don't worry, folks; it wasn't a safety hazard, because the plant had been offline anyway ever since they stumbled across a CD-sized hole in the reactor head. At the risk of alienating viewers with two Simpsons references in one episode, just who the hell is running this plant, Montgomery Burns? Oh, wait-- actually, it's FirstEnergy, the same folks whose faulty alarm system purportedly led to last week's mega-blackout. Never mind. Still, the disabling of a safety system at any nuclear power plant, even a downed one, has to make you think a bit.

So let's see, we've got one worm screwing with the U.S. armed forces (gee, when do we see the worm that launches the missiles?) and another that hosed a safety system at a nuclear facility; see what we mean about these worms affecting Mac users indirectly? Having a fully functional Mac may be scant solace when we're being invaded by some seafaring nation and the nuke plant down the street goes all Chernobyl on us. If you ask us, given the apparent inevitability of Windows use pushing us all ever closer to the fiery destruction of civilization as we know it, perhaps Apple should license its next slogan from the Dial soap people: "Aren't you glad you use a Mac? Don't you wish everybody did?"