Spark

Introduction to Spark

What is spark?

To understand spark, we first need to know how impact turns work. An impact turn is an offensive response which concedes the link chain of the opposing argument and advocates for the resulting impact as net beneficial. 

Spark specifically is an impact turn against nuclear war, and advocates for nuclear war to occur because it is net beneficial for humanity. There are many frameworks which these turns can be weighed under, which you can learn about in the framing guide, but for this guide, we will stick to utilitarianism, which says that the side which maximizes the most “good” should be prioritized.

How does it work?

There are two major parts of the spark argument, the defense and the offense. 

The defense portion gives different warrants about why nuclear war does not lead to extinction. Debaters often use an indict of the extinction evidence to start with in order to prove that the opposition’s claim about nuclear war leading to extinction is false. The main way this works is by indicting the study which the evidence is based on. For example, most extinction cards like Starr depend on studies from Robrock and Toon, which the team reading spark will say is flawed because it relies on inaccurate simulations to reach the point of extinction. In addition to this, other pieces of evidence will be read which claim that even post a nuclear war, people will be able to survive and that civilization will be able to bounce back to what we have today.

The offensive portion relies on the idea that soon in the future, humans will develop tech which will lead to suffering risks which the spark team will claim to outweigh death, or this future tech will destroy the universe which outweighs on scope. In order to prove solvency, that is, nuclear war solves this future tech, the spark team will read a piece of evidence saying that nuclear war will lead to either lead to tech being lost forever or that there will be a mindset shift and people will not want to make dangerous tech ever again. The warrant for both of these relies on humans not being able to modernize and reach the society we live in right now because we don’t have the resources to do it, since most of the fossil fuels which we need to make an advanced society have already been used up.

But, the main portion of spark which changes from round to round is the offense proper. The main offense is the different types of dangerous tech. The most common scenario is some sort of killer AI which will upload everyone’s minds to the web and tortures us forever. There are a few other common scenarios like future climate change from tech leading to extinction, or some sort of space exploration attempt leading to the implosion of the universe. The main thing to note is that most of the offense in spark comes from really silly scenarios which is why it can only be read in front of a tech judge who will evaluate EVERYTHING off the flow and not use any of their personal biases.

How do you respond to it?

In order to respond to spark, you need to answer both the defense and the offensive scenarios. It will definitely help to have some pre-written responses, since most spark teams will know their own evidence better than any analytics which can be thought of in a few minutes time. 

First, you will need to prove that nuclear war does actually cause extinction. The best way to do this is to read a piece of evidence which highlights other knock-on effects from nuclear war which will lead to extinction, not just the nukes themselves. For example, some popular extinction cards like Clare 25 and Ruff 25 isolate that even if the nukes do not kill everyone themselves, civilization will be weakened to a point that other things like conventional war and diseases will lead to everyone dying. Ruff is especially good with this since it explicitly says that a nuclear war will lead to radiation being present in the air which will damage our DNA to the point that even if humans survive, their offspring will not be able to sustain life for much longer. Additionally, many spark teams read an overview at the top which says that the opposing team cannot read new extinction evidence in rebuttal. It is extremely important that the team responding to spark responds to it, since that is the only way that they can add new warrants in order to answer all the evidence that nuclear war doesn’t lead to extinction.

Secondly, you need to answer all of the scenarios like the killer AI and nanotech. In order to do this, you can critique the evidence, read pre-written blocks, and think of analytics which respond to them. 

In the back half (summary and final focus), you should make sure to extend your contention since you are ultimately trying to win offense from that with your link into extinction. It is helpful if you have a contention which does NOT have the impact of nuclear war, so then you can cleanly win an extinction impact since most spark teams spend all of their constructive/rebuttal speech reading spark so they don’t have enough time to respond to any of your other link chains.

Resources to get started:

Sample Spark and Answer to Spark Document: This is a great place to get started if you are looking to see how a spark file is framed, however, you should try and make your own scenarios and update the cards if you are looking to read it since it will be more strategic if you are reading new arguments which your opponents won’t expect.

Spark and Wipeout Deep Dive | Ryan Chen, Luke Zhong, and Ben Miyares: This lecture is also useful if you still have questions after reading this article.