Cage and his performances at Schizo-Culture and the Nova Convention were attempts to “demilitarize language.” Burroughs, however, avoided the asyntactical experiments of the cut-up method at both events. He instead delivered lectures where he clearly and precisely described the situation of the planet. In his keynote address to the 1978 Nova Convention, Burroughs explained that he was “beginning to realize that the readings [he had] given in the last three years while seemingly apolitical are in many cases very definite political statements.” In his opening remarks, Burroughs invoked the image of Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth before adding that we might also see the planet as a lifeboat. In our lifeboat situation, “it is vital concern for everybody on the boat if the crew or the passengers start polluting the supply of food and water, distributing supplies on a grossly inequitable basis […] or worst of all trying to blow the boat out from under us.”

The nova conspiracies Burroughs identified at the 1978 event concern the potential destruction of the planet from ecological disaster and nuclear war. Burroughs noted later in the convention how a “mediocre elite” caused and accelerated these crises. Yet, as he explained three years earlier in his lecture at the Schizo-Culture conference, there are limits to their control. Burroughs recounted another lifeboat scenario at his 1975 Schizo-Culture talk, where he imagined two armed “self-appointed leaders” force the other eight passengers to do the majority of the work. Burroughs explained how the hostages could easily overtake the two, but the armed “leaders” have found a way to exert effective control despite their weapons. They might make concessions to the eight on the lifeboat like increasing food rations or water. But these concessions, where “force is supplanted with deception and persuasion,” are a means to maintain their control.