It's not worth much when even a fraction of what is still on hand would destroy everything. It really is crazy that we are basically holding our own planet hostage to avoid being bombed by ourselves.
Like what in the serious f***?
No kidding.
Oh the US "only" has 5000 nukes? Oh well that's good, we're all safe.
I notice there is a slight uptick in the US numbers at the end of the graph...
If a nuclear war were to start it will probably start in Pakistan and India.
I'm also not too worried about North Korea using nuclear weapons as a first strike, but rather that they could proliferate them since they are always looking for ways to extort money.
I also recall during the Bush administration, some of the people around him openly discussed using "tactical nukes", but thankfully that stopped for now. There seemed to be a movement to remove the taboo, and that was scary.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
I would recommend "The Fog of War", a documentary by Errol Morris, that presents 11 "life lessons" from Robert McNamara. Enlightening discussion of the need to drop the nukes, as he was a statistician with the USAF during WWII, and directly disagreed with LeMay's tactics. This is ironic as his statistical analysis, is actually what justified using the B-29s at a lower altitude, dropping incendiary bombs and torching Japan's cities.
Japan was in smoldering ruins before Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
McNamara also states that had the allies not won WWII, he would have fully expected that US officials would have been convicted of war crimes, for both the fire bombings, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki
One of my all time favourite docs. Here is the clip where he mentions that:
I've always wondered why they didn't first drop a bomb on some uninhabited part of Japan as a demonstration/warning of their power and resolve.
One of my all time favourite docs. Here is the clip where he mentions that:
I've always wondered why they didn't first drop a bomb on some uninhabited part of Japan as a demonstration/warning of their power and resolve.
It was discussed. But it was decided it wouldn't be effective enough. They decided they had to show a willingness to use it, and that they could do it again to demonstrate they had more. The latter being a bluff, the Nagasaki bomb was the last one they had at the time.
Yeah. They had two reactors producing Plutonium at the end of WW2. It was just a matter of time until they had enough for a third bomb, and fourth, and fifth. Probably not even that much time.
It was discussed. But it was decided it wouldn't be effective enough. They decided they had to show a willingness to use it, and that they could do it again to demonstrate they had more. The latter being a bluff, the Nagasaki bomb was the last one they had at the time.
I would also argue that there wasn't a large supply of materials and the manufacturing of both the materials and the Bombs at the time was a murderous and expensive exercise
Remember that the US at the time also felt it was in a race with Russia in terms of the bomb, so they wanted to make sure to use what they had to maximum effect. They also looked at the mind set of the Japanese leadership at the time and decided that a demonstration would actually be perceived as a sign of weakness, that the US wasn't willing to prosecute the war all the way with them, and it could have strengthened Japanese resolve to fight it out to the bitter end.
As a side effect they hoped that they would be able to gain an upper edge in the up coming cold war that everyone knew was coming with the Russians.
They knew that when they slipped the leash on Stalin in the Far East that they also had to stop his expansion in its tracks by ending the Second world War.
If they had gotten into a conventional invasion of the home islands, and Russia had gobbled up part of Japan it would have given Stalin a fairly strong foothold in the pacific with warmer water ports.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
But I think there's a silver lining. This has been an entertaining, yet also highly instructive, public demonstration of the importance of epistemic humility.
Oh, the irony. If we were only half as smart as you think you are.
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Anyway, here's some of the reasoning on why a demonstration wasn't done, from Arthur Compton, a Manhattan Project physicist.
Quote:
It was evident that everyone would suspect trickery. If a bomb were exploded in Japan with previous notice, the Japanese air power was still adequate to give serious interference. An atomic bomb was an intricate device, still in the developmental stage. Its operation would be far from routine. If during the final adjustments of the bomb the Japanese defenders should attack, a faulty move might easily result in some kind of failure. Such an end to an advertised demonstration of power would be much worse than if the attempt had not been made. It was now evident that when the time came for the bombs to be used we should have only one of them available, followed afterwards by others at all-too-long intervals. We could not afford the chance that one of them might be a dud. If the test were made on some neutral territory, it was hard to believe that Japan's determined and fanatical military men would be impressed. If such an open test were made first and failed to bring surrender, the chance would be gone to give the shock of surprise that proved so effective. On the contrary, it would make the Japanese ready to interfere with an atomic attack if they could. Though the possibility of a demonstration that would not destroy human lives was attractive, no one could suggest a way in which it could be made so convincing that it would be likely to stop the war.
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Johnny eats garbage and isn’t 100% committed.
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I would also argue that there wasn't a large supply of materials and the manufacturing of both the materials and the Bombs at the time was a murderous and expensive exercise
Remember that the US at the time also felt it was in a race with Russia in terms of the bomb, so they wanted to make sure to use what they had to maximum effect. They also looked at the mind set of the Japanese leadership at the time and decided that a demonstration would actually be perceived as a sign of weakness, that the US wasn't willing to prosecute the war all the way with them, and it could have strengthened Japanese resolve to fight it out to the bitter end.
As a side effect they hoped that they would be able to gain an upper edge in the up coming cold war that everyone knew was coming with the Russians.
They knew that when they slipped the leash on Stalin in the Far East that they also had to stop his expansion in its tracks by ending the Second world War.
If they had gotten into a conventional invasion of the home islands, and Russia had gobbled up part of Japan it would have given Stalin a fairly strong foothold in the pacific with warmer water ports.
And yeah, by no means do I downplay that the US knew that a massive side effect of this was flexing for the Russians.
It's just an easy, yet horrific, decision if you're a military commander. X number of people are going to die, X will likely be higher total in a land invasion. X with the A-bomb will likely be lower, and will be mainly the "enemy". At the end of a war which was the most horrific in history, what leader doesn't make that choice.
So Germany surrendered in May 1945 but the bombs were dropped in August of 45. Hmmm, I always thought it was the bombs came first, then Japan surrender and then the end of the war after that. I need to revisit my WW2 history.
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Anyway, here's some of the reasoning on why a demonstration wasn't done, from Arthur Compton, a Manhattan Project physicist.
I think you really have to look no further than Gen. Curtis Lemay as to why the bomb was used, and why the second one was dropped. The guy had a boner for the bomb and wanted to use it at every turn, right up until he ushered out of service. Really strange duck that had an incredible amount of power and sway over decisions that impacted millions of people. That is the part of nuclear weapons that scares me. The nut bars that have access to the launch mechanisms. It's not guns that kill people. It's the people that have guns that kill people that is the problem.
The other part of the 11 life lessons doc I like was the meeting he had with Castro decades after the crisis. It's odd that a war didn't start considering all the factors, but perhaps with nuclear weapons being part of the formula both sides decided the risk was too great to be the first to fire. Except Castro, he recommended a nuclear first strike.
Has lots of quotes from those invoked that admit Japan was ready to surrender without the use of the bomb. There is a lot of support to the theory that the bombs were dropped to show the Soviets the US had a tactical advantage and they were not afraid to use it.
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Has lots of quotes from those invoked that admit Japan was ready to surrender without the use of the bomb. There is a lot of support to the theory that the bombs were dropped to show the Soviets the US had a tactical advantage and they were not afraid to use it.
Yup. There are a lot of people, in hindsight, who thought it wasn't necessary. That Ike quote is almost 20 years later. It's pretty easy to take decades of sober reflection and make a proclamation, but a lot of people thought about this problem when the dilemma was current. Including scientists who, other than maybe Edward Teller who actually seemed a little crazy, weren't about the geopolitical aims.
There is a chance they didn't need to use it, that the Russians declaring war on the Japanese was the last straw and they were going to surrender or that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway. However they couldn't be sure, and a lot of the lives of their men were at risk as a result.
Basically the last input on the willingness of the Japanese to surrender was Okinawa. Japanese soldiers alone killed there matched the number of people killed in Nagasaki. Not including civilians and not including Americans. The KIA rate was like 80% And it wasn't even a home island. The home islands had millions of soldiers waiting to defend it, plus thousands of artillery pieces, thousands of tanks, millions of rifles. Add to that, multiple millions of civilians, seemingly fanatical about their emperor.
It's not like their estimation of casualties and willingness to fight of the Japanese was totally out to lunch here.
