I'd prefer never to have heard about your fetishes, but that's not the world we live in, is it?
Hiroshima
- Thread starter R.N7
- Start date
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Japan lacked the resources to win the war period.
The ABCD embargo ensured that, it also pushed Japan into war.
The Japanese strategy was to crush the American Pacific fleet and then consolidate their holdings and dig in with a barrier defense. Their hope was that the US after losing their Pacific fleet would settle for a negotiated peace.
The Japanese were looking for a conditional surrender.
Emperor not held responsible. No foreign troops on Japanese soil. The doves in the cabinet who WANTED to unconditionally surrender did not have the support they needed. The hawkish elements still ran the show. It was only after the second bomb that the doves gained the support they needed from the more neutral elements in the cabinet to unconditionally surrender. Even AFTER the first bomb was dropped there was an attempted coup to continue the war to the bitter end.
You're not really correct here.
The bombs were not dropped over residential areas. They were dropped as close as possible to the center of the cities. I think you are confused because Nagasaki and Hiroshima were spared conventional bombing for the explicit purpose of a future atomic bomb drop.
What does it matter if you level a city with 500 pounders and incendiary bomblets, or a single atomic bomb? Both achieve the same result.
It is mental to want the war to end as swiftly and with as little loss of life as possible? You are advocating the deaths of millions, perhaps more than 10 million people in place of dropping atomic bombs?
There were all sorts of reasons for dropping the bombs. We can ignore them. Look simply at the lives saved by dropping them. Surely that outweighs any realpolitiking.
What difference does it make if you wife and child is killed by one bomb, or another? I mean really.
It's the fallout and effect of the Nukes - in generations to come. The birth defects, the detahs due to cancer. The same can be said of napalm and its effects well after its use.
Also I beleive once a nuke is launched it's crossing the rubicon into unknown territory which frightens many people.
In the end we can debate about this as long as we like whether it perversely saved more lives in the long run or not.
Indeed, despite the folklore the raid on Pearl Harbor was a failure as soon as the Lexington and Radisson were confirmed to not be in port.
Surely conditions had changed between 1941 and 1944-45?
Russia already controlled most of Europe, and the Americans had already suffered in the Pacific campaign.
By the time of the first atomic bomb test in 1945, the war in Europe was all but over.
There is no debate about it saving more lives.
I think a conservative estimate of JUST Civilian deaths directly and indirectly caused by a land invasion would be 10 million.
My understanding of fallout on this scale is that it is not lasting. The buildings, the ground etc are not contaminated. It is the dust, fine particulate matter that can literally be swept away that becomes contaminated. THIS material can contaminate ground water however, that is where the real danger lies.
Now, if we were talking about a global, thermo-nuclear war, the fall out is different. You will literally have radioactive water falling for weeks, or months.
In one of the bombs, I forget which, there was rain immediately after wards. That rain had mixed with the dust plume which was contaminated and anecdotal reports say that most, if not everyone who drank that blackened rain water died shortly thereafter.
I think the point here, is that there were primitive, small scale bombs compared to the the globe killers we have today. A large scale bomber raid could accomplish the same thing. Dying is dying either way.
I feel like people are applying the same level of horror they have for bombs that could literally end life on this planet as we know it to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. There is no comparison.
If they were dropped callously and needlessly nobody would argue the horror of that, but they saved lives. They expedited the end of the war.
The deliberate targeting of civilian populations had been going on by both sides for years. This was nothing new in that regard. I don't even think anyone has mentioned the allied POW's that the Japanese were going to execute if the land invasion occurred, nor China and South East Asia where (I don't know the exact figures but if you look at total number of dead in China and divide by the number of months of that war you come up with a number) around 200k people were dying every month.
What is more immoral? Allowing perhaps another million Asians die in South East Asia and China while we hoped Japan would surrender before downfall? Directly and indirectly being responsible for conservatively 10 million civilian dead in Japan from an invasion? Or dropping two bombs that killed a combined ~100k?
It is easy to rail from a position of zero responsibility about the 100k who died as a direct result of the detonations. However when you have to weigh the potential for millions vs hundreds of thousands I think the decision is academic. EVEN if the millions isn't a certainty, only a likely chance. You still HAVE to make that decision. It is a big picture decision. It is a faceless decision, but someone still has to make that decision and from here in the peanut gallery where every human life is precious and any loss of life cannot be justified it is easy to call it immoral, or evil or whatever.
I prefer to call it reality.
Surely it was more - much more who died/suffered as a result of those bombs. These are nuclear bombs; their effects are felt for generations.
Casualties at the time of the bombings were about 100k between both attacks.
It isn't like Nagasaki and Hiroshima were glowing after they were bombed.
New Scientist - Google Books
Basically the idea that an atomic bomb turning land into a radioactive wasteland is bullshit.
Most radiation is soaked up by dust which can literally be brushed off with minimal ill effects. I mean, I personally wouldn't want to roll around in irradiated dust, but I probably wouldn't spontaneously start glowing, grow a third eye, or die from radiation any time soon.
Basically what happens is this. Bomb explodes. A burst of (gamma?) radiation radiates out. It irradiates dust primarily. However the massive explosion consumes all oxygen near the epicenter. This creates a massive void where more air rushes to fill. The intense heat super heats the air and everything is sucked up into the mushroom cloud. Normal circumstances, these particles are distributed into the atmosphere where they settle in virtually harmless quantities around the globe.
Bad situation is, the mushroom cloud mixes with rain clouds and this irradiated dust mixes with the precipitation and falls back in more concentrated quantities to earth. This is bad and it happened at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki I forget which.
Really bad situation, hundreds of thermo-nuclear warheads detonate and we descend into a nuclear winter where the sky is so filled with irradiated dust we basically feck ourselves ;p
This is also why all the media fear mongering about the dirty terrorists getting a "dirty" bomb is complete rubbish.
Your kid might though, especially if your wife was pregnant at the time
Is a dirty bomb one that is delivered through the backdoor?
my father in-law worked on the Enloa Gay (ground crew) , at the time he said it ended the war so he was happy.
fire bombing the islands was doing as much if not more damage. but because it was a single bomb we tend to recoil. dead is dead IMO.
as far as writing history , for years the things japan did in china were never taught in the schools there. so not only do the victors write history the losers can too.
as far as the generations destroyed by the bombs , same could be said about the generations who's families died by any other means. if your dad gets killed and your not born then for generations the death is felt.
war is never clean.
fire bombing the islands was doing as much if not more damage. but because it was a single bomb we tend to recoil. dead is dead IMO.
as far as writing history , for years the things japan did in china were never taught in the schools there. so not only do the victors write history the losers can too.
as far as the generations destroyed by the bombs , same could be said about the generations who's families died by any other means. if your dad gets killed and your not born then for generations the death is felt.
war is never clean.
War is war unfortunately. People will die, and the side that loses will claim the other stepped over the line.
I was watching a program on the nuke testing at Bikini Faso the other day. The bombs that were an option were so much worse. There was a miscalculation on one, causing an explosion 1000 times the force of Hirishima.
Was on History I think, on Sky Anytime. Well worth a watch.
I was watching a program on the nuke testing at Bikini Faso the other day. The bombs that were an option were so much worse. There was a miscalculation on one, causing an explosion 1000 times the force of Hirishima.
Was on History I think, on Sky Anytime. Well worth a watch.
the effect of the A bomb was required in my opinion, however they could have dropped it in a less populated area as a warning to give the japs the opportunity to surrender.....but certainly it may have saved up to 1 million lives of soldiers and civilians alike if an invasion was necessaryYesterday was the 65th anniversary of the bombing.
If USA hadn't dropped the bombs, with an eventual invasion of the Japanese mainland in sight, how long could the war have continued?
Was the Nagasaki bomb really necessary?
Even more in the UK, who had been at it longer, if you read contemporary accounts there was a complete sense of exhaustion - that people couldn't take much more. Which is one of the reasons why it is difficult to judge in hindsight.
Is this a pisstake? - Nuclear winter, anyone?
I exaggerate, since this would require a MAJOR exchange, but so do you in assuming I'm claiming a 'glowing' after the bombings! - Moreoever, I don't recall ever mentionining that N-H were turned into radioactive wastelands!
Anyway, it is well-known that nuclear bombs can turn the land inhospitable. See, for instance, From the Cover: Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict, which considers more than just local effects.
Again, there's no point in exaggeration to try and prove a point. No one is saying people will suddenly start mutating (is such a thing even possible? - the one thing that anyone can guarantee about how Nature behaves is that changes tend to be continuous, not abrupt).
Moreover, I'd take issue with your claim that one can 'soak up' radiation - how exactly? Radiation consists of light and particles, mass-energy which must be conserved. It has to go somewhere! The result is radioactive isotopes!
In fact, the developers of the first bombs were unsure, till the very moment of the first test detonation, whether or not a chain-reaction might be set off in the atmosphere, precisely because one is seeding the environment with fast-moving (sub-)nuclear particles and high-energy rays which have to dissipate their energy somewhere!
Then, of course, there is debris from the radioactive remains of fissionable materials, which, being mass-energy, cannot simply 'be disappeared'.
The question becomes instead how long these will linger (short-lived, short-term-dangerous isotopes, or longer-lived, more insidious but as-deadly isotopes?); and therefore to what extent they are exposure-risks for people in the area.
I read of a study carried out by the Japan Radiation Effects Research Foundations on around 40 000 Hiroshima survivors in which almost 15% had developed thyroid-related cancers. This is a greater incidence than in the general population. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in around 2006.
Certainly not three-eyes, but I'm willing to bet, given the choice, the ones with the malignant tumours would go for an extra eye right about now!
Note also that these effects showed up upwards of 40-50 years later! Certainly confirming your statement: 'won't die from radiation any time soon', though I think not in the way you meant it.
Another point: as far as I know, there were only localised pockets of radiation from the WWII bombs, but it would not be accurate to claim that this would be true of all nuclear bombs (see below). Or to claim that radiation is essentially a non-factor.
The dynamics of the detonation, and its aftermath depend on what altitude the bomb is dropped, as well as the yield of the bomb. It even depends on what type of day it is (dry, hazy, windy etc).
It isn't as simple as you're making out.
See here
Why?
very true - on all points.
my question is always what nation wouldn't have used such a weapon?
Japan
USA
Britain
Germany
USSR
Most radiation is captured in dust. Hence the term fallout.
There are some issues with exposure to radioactivity, I believe the link I pasted discussed the reality and the bullshit pretty well. Many fetus's ended up aborted. Those who were far enough along suffered varying problems.
Basically what happens is this. Any child born in Hiroshima or Nagasaki with any sort of disability, it is blamed on the bombs. Reality is unless they were exposed to those bombs in utero the evidence suggests those bombs had very minimal impact on future genetic problems.
I really wasn't talking about modern world killing bombs. We were talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those two bombs. Two bombs that are about as alike a 500 pound bomb, as modern thermo-nuclear devices are to Fat Man and Little Boy.
The problem as I see it is this. Many people treat Fat Man and Little Boy like modern weapons. Weapons of such horrific power that to use them is unfathomable. They shouldn't.
Reality is that they were small weapons. I doubt most people even know what the actual casualties were. I am sure most people think hundreds of thousands of people died instantly, when it was actually ~39k and ~60k, and they were not all instantly vaporized.
I don't know where you live, but the media loves to talk about the "terrorists" getting a dirty bomb. Then they put forth the idea that such a bomb would irradiate whatever location it was detonated in, rendering it unlivable.
If we want to talk about how inhospitable nuclear weapons can make a region, let's look at the Bikini Atoll. Life is thriving there. Now, don't get me wrong, a modern global thermo-nuclear war is going to ruin this planet, but we'd REALLY have to try. With bombs the size of H-N, being atomic in origin is about the only similarity they share with modern weapons.
At the time, they were just another weapon, no more or less devastating that the potential capabilities of the US at the time. I'm not even sure we could argue they were more economical given the cost of the project.
I think really the impasse here is over scale. The HN bombs were not large enough to leave the land an irradiated waste. I've made that point several times. We're not talking about a modern nuclear holocaust. We're talking about primitive atomic bombs.
I don't refute the existence of fallout. It would be difficult to refute it's existence, you know, when I am talking about dust being the primary collecting agent of said radiation. We don't need to talk about aerial bursts and all that, as the variations are as many as the day is long. We can just focus on what actually happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Detonations in which dust and debris were sucked into the mushroom cloud, this loose material is where the majority of the radiation settled.
This is off topic anyways. Dropping the bombs ended the war sooner, saved millions of lives. Loss of 100k people in the initial blasts and immediate aftermath and the problems that resulted afterwards are a drop in the bucket compared to the bloodbath and humanitarian crisis that would have resulted from an invasion.
For the record, my Grandfather fought on Okinawa, and was in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki a few weeks after the bombs were dropped as part of an occupation clean up force. He died at 44 of some sort of cancer, I don't recall which. The possibility that he developed said cancer due to his deployment was not lost on the family, nor the government.
This is precisely why I posted the comment re: the study published in peer-reviewed literature. Statistics can be a tricky business, and anecdotal evidence, while not necessarily wrong, even trickier. If you recall, the study was conducted on Hiroshima survivors, a significant fraction of whom developed tumours, sometimes malignant, decades after exposure.
This is what you said: "Basically, the idea of an atomic bomb turning land into a radioactive wasteland is bullshit". From which I naturally inferred you were speaking of all atomic weapons, including the modern monstrosities (I'm looking at you, Tsar Bomba).
A major nuclear exchange has the potential to make the world unliveable for us (though I'd lay a heavy wager that life will survive). Whether or not radioactivity persists is only a function of the initial blast, where and under what conditions it occurred and the resulting isotopes (how long-lived, etc). But there's a complex series of events involved.
I was just wondering, since your statement didn't seem to follow from what had gone on before. I needed context.
I don't think 'really try' is right. Things are linked. I've already pointed to a link on the effects of about 100 Hiroshima bombs on the ozone layer; as usual, it isn't the bombing itself, but the complex network of interconnected events that leads to the problem.
Like I mentioned above, my feeling is life will survive (if it survived Chicxulub, which makes even the Tsar Bomba look like a pea-shooter, it can survive this), but not under conditions that will make us comfortable. Or indeed that will allow us to thrive for long.
Regarding the Bikini Islands, I'd beg to differ. I base my comments on this report by the IAEA. Save time and scroll down to the conclusions, where:
Now, I'm not aware of whether or not there is a consensus on accepted levels of radiation for a human being. But then my knowledge of biology and medicine is pretty much at the junior college level.
This was 13 years ago, btw.
Life may be able to thrive, but not us, and, forgive me for being racist/specist, but we're what counts, right?
I never claimed that the land would be a 'radioactive waste'. However, radiation did play and continued to play a role in the aftermath, as the incidences of cancer attest. Like I said, mine was a physics issue: you can't 'disappear' all that mass-energy. It then becomes a question of how localised it is and for how long it stays so.
To reiterate, you made a general statement regarding the dynamics of a bomb in the immediate aftermath of detonation; hence my general reply.
So we are assured by propaganda. But is it true? I could certainly buy the first bomb serving your stated ends, but the second?
As I've stated elsewhere, one seldom goes wrong taking the cynical/realistic view of politicians. Billions of dollars in 40's money spent on this thing, and it wouldn't even be deployed? I doubt that very much.
That said, taking into account the war-weariness and the horrors of rooting out the Japs island-by-island, I could see myself making the same decision; but that doesn't make it the morally correct one, seeing as the hypothetical alternative is untested. War truly is a zero-sum game.
Speaking of which, the fact that one might admit that it was deployed to end the war means it was more than simply another bomb, as toyish as it seems compared to modern weapons.
Sorry about that.
Really? The average woman and child living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved a nuke dropped on them because of the horrendous acts of its military? I guess then the United States and Germany deserve the same since both of it's forces have committed similar atrocities throughout history. I wouldn't wish a nuke dropped on my worst enemy.
I watched this film a few days ago without knowing that the anniversary was the day after.
Really harrowing stuff.
Really harrowing stuff.
was having this dicussion with my daughter who had to do a paper on this and she contends strongly that we need not have dropped the bombs.
While I disagreed, especially with the first bomb, I have read elsewhere that the atom bombs were in retaliation for Pearl Harbour.
While I disagreed, especially with the first bomb, I have read elsewhere that the atom bombs were in retaliation for Pearl Harbour.
Fighting the Japanese until their unconditional surrender was revenge for Pearl Harbour.
The bombs saved millions of lives as the Japanese would have fought invasion until every single Japanese person was dead.
Given that the Japanese didn't immediately surrender after the first bomb you can see how many more lives would have been lost.
Well some people have boiled the entire war in the Pacific down to Japan bombs Pearl Harbor then the US drops the A-Bombs on Japan.
In a way yes it was retaliation, in the same way the many other bombing raids and battles fought vs the Japanese were retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
Once the attack on Pearl Harbor happened every action by the US in the Pacific War was tied to that moment.
Similar to how you can not seperate the Civil War from the issue of slavery but at the same time you can not with 100% accuracy claim that the Civil War was about slavery only.
I saw one documentary about the survivors of the bombs....it was haunting.
...and there is still so much nuclear weapons out there in so many hands....
...and there is still so much nuclear weapons out there in so many hands....
A study of the Battle of Okinawa (the last major battle in the Pacific before the A-Bombs were dropped) will give you a good insight into what fears the US leadership had about the proposed invasion of Japan.
As a side note, something of course the decisions makers at the time did not know but interesting.
Depending on which figures you believe the Civilian death toll in the Battle of Okinawa was the same as the mid range of death estimates in Hiroshima from the bomb and its after effects in the first year after the bombing and exceeded those of the same time frame in Nagaski.
As a side note, something of course the decisions makers at the time did not know but interesting.
Depending on which figures you believe the Civilian death toll in the Battle of Okinawa was the same as the mid range of death estimates in Hiroshima from the bomb and its after effects in the first year after the bombing and exceeded those of the same time frame in Nagaski.
Well you could argue the bombs were not 100% necessary to end the war BUT what would have cost more in terms of lives and destruction though?
Some of the bombing raids in the final few weeks of the war were killing thousands a night, plus the thousands dieing daily in various battles. Not to mention the very high likelihood the Japanese would have executed all the remaining POWs.
Sometimes you have to take the lesser of two evils, and the right decision was made IMO.
Alternatively, it was all about sending a message to Stalin & his mob. Truman was never fit to consider a decision of this magnitude. If one follows the logical line of "the bombing saved countless soldiers' lives" perhaps, in future, we should send civilians to war instead of troops...y'know, to protect soldiers from the results of combat? And so deny them them the very thing - soldiering - which is their duty?
An utterly horrific crime committed against innocents. And since when, in the modern era, have governments given a feck about 'revenge'? On the contrary, politicians are too pragmatic, expedient and cold-hearted to care about the vengeful longings of the electorate. Any purported notion of 'revenge for Pearl Harbour' is merely a convenient narrative, to be used accordingly.
An utterly horrific crime committed against innocents. And since when, in the modern era, have governments given a feck about 'revenge'? On the contrary, politicians are too pragmatic, expedient and cold-hearted to care about the vengeful longings of the electorate. Any purported notion of 'revenge for Pearl Harbour' is merely a convenient narrative, to be used accordingly.
Remember that the vast majority of "soldiers" who served for countries like the US during WW2, were in fact civilians who only became soldiers because their nations were attacked. So one should be able to understand how the leaders of the US might want to give consideration to saving their lives.
Also, it was not just US war dead they were concerned about the same estimates that were saying between 500,000 and 1,000,000 US Casualties during an invasion of the main islands, were also estimating several million civilian casualties. Then add in whatever Japanese military casualties would have been and well it adds up doesn't it.
Ok then, I'll rephrase: since when have governments given a feck about soldiers?
By that logic, we should always aim for maxiumum civilian destruction right away. You know, to break their spirit. After all, think of how many soldiers and civilians might get killed if we have to send the troops in, and the war lasts a while.
Well it seems in WW2 it was at least part of the equation for the US.
Remember also, that the people of the nation knew the end of the war was near, and were getting a bit worn down by the casualties and wanted their sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, daughters, etc home and home soon and home safe. The politicians in charge at that moment knew this and were well aware of the need to bring things to an end with as few a casualties as possible.
there is no denying that relations with the Soviet Union played some part in the whole decision process, but it is a bit silly to pretend that was all anyone cared about. Things are seldom that cut and dry.
You have to consider that point in the war things were at. You can't just look at the decision as if it were made out of the blue. Many things went into that decision and concerns for the ongoing casualties , as I stated earlier the same reports that estimated US and allied casualties also estimated millions of Japanese civilian casualties in any invasion of the main Japanese islands.
It was the nature of the beast that was war at that time. Which of the major combatants didn't inflict massive civilian casualties?
The bit about showing the Soviets we had this horrific new weapon does make sense Steve.
I have read that elswhere too.
just too awful to think that may have been the case.
I have read that elswhere too.
just too awful to think that may have been the case.
No doubt that was part of the decision, but not the only part. Same as the Russians late entry in the war against Japan had nothing to do with wanting to defeat Japan but in being able to extend influence in the region. Geo-politics, go figure.
There even had been discussions of doing a test off the coast of Japan but in full view of say Tokyo. Or even in a less populated area near some major city. But for a variety of reasons those ideas were decided against.
I can't help but remember how I read of Truman practically tripping over his own feet (at the Potsdam Conference) in his rush to tell Stalin about the new weapon, mate.