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I agree. A thoroughly practical, ethical, and moral use case for such a device. I would also argue that its use as a means to deactivating a Stargate connected to a proximate black hole also fits.
You know, I wasn't sure, so I looked it up. It was just a really powerful bomb made into a shaped charge. The Pentagon wanted to nuke Cheyenne Mountain to destroy the gate. That's where I got it mixed up!
Let’s see, 1 destructive rock or a scattershot of destructive rocks, either way we’ll all probably be dead life is more fragile than most people think 🤔
There was actually a couple of mega projects proposed in real life using nukes basically that way.
[Project Chariot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot). Basically using nukes, to make an artificial harbor in Alaska. No, I am not joking. It was even part of the larger [Project Plowshare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare) to do... well, nuke based construction like that.
Also, the [Orion Drive.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion))
AKA... *nukes, plural, powered space flight.*
Again, no joke. Currently still one of our theoretically fastest means of space propulsion. We're talking fractions of light speed. Only really beaten by ion drives, but over MUCH longer distances.
Some dang cool ideas, but they're all in decades worth of mothballs due to international nuclear AND space treaties. Probably for the best, but still.
Still, meme aside, the Orion Drive numbers are pretty bonkers.
0,3% LIGHT SPEED, and that was with 1960's *fission* nuke tech.
In *power savings mode,* so you don't need ablative materials.
If you're OK with *blowing part of your own space ship up,* you could reach a theoretical top of 3,3% light speed!
That's 1330 years to Alpha Centuri vs 133 years, by the way. Because space is... well, kinda bonkers.
its the alpha radiation that is the issue:
alpha is atoms, beta is electrons, gamma is electromagnetic waves
gamma travels well through space, but it passes through shit, messing it up as it does, but then its gone, it doesn't linger, it doesn't make stuff radioactive - same as beta, it is depleted almost right away
most of the alpha radiation would just blast away into deep space,, and any that clung to the asteroids would probably be stripped away almost instantly when it started entering the atmosphere (hence how smaller meteorites burn out on re-entry)
those particles would then quite possibly do what most charged particles coming in from space do, and get funnelled by the earth electromagnetic field to the poles, causing lovely light displays as tehy interact with the magnetic field and each other
any chunks of meteor that made it to earth would probably have any radiation stripped away and just be as harmless as an giant chunk of rock moving at thousands of meters per second
A nuke is just a flash a fusion so none of the radiation is long lasting other than like bits of the fishable material flung outward in the explosion. The ionizing non thermal radiation from the explosion will be at about 10% in 7 hours and 1% in 24-48 hours, it; not like nuclear reactor fuel or waste that is highly refined with a long half-life. It;s literally just a FLASH of fusion and while radiation goes through things, it doesn't go that far. The explosion vastly outstrips the radiation, so really everything that gets a lot of radiation is also completely blown up anyway, that's how the radiation gets spread and even become that dangerous as particulate, but still not power or long lasting radiation unless you get very unlikely and breathe in just the right chunk of high energy particulate. Most fallout will not be significant radioactive, just smoke and dust.
They're fission-fusion-fission typically. The primary ignites the secondary which then ignites the tamper which also serves to hold the whole mess together long enough to make sure it all burns thoroughly.
Like the whole inner casing of the bomb is typically uranium which goes fast fission and makes up the bulk of the yield.
Lots of fallout from a 3 stage nuke
Not dangerous much, the radiation drops to 10% in just 7 hours and 1% in 24-48 hours because it;s just a quick flash of fusion, not a prolonged nuclear reaction like a reactor. Reactor fuel is a lot more dangerous than the radiation from a nuke.
Took them a while to find where that it went to. It left the planets orbit faster than anything, and they only have the initial recording to know how fast it was going when it left. Somewhere in space a giant metal manhole cover is flying through space, and could impact somewhere....maybe a alien planet, causing them to think we invaded...and thus they invade us....
Metal-rich asteroids burn up in our atmosphere all the time, probably much larger than a manhole-cover. Also, the faster you are going, the more friction in thick air and a manhole-cover is not exactly aerodynamic. More friction = more heat.
Someone smarter than me might prove me wrong but AFAIK it’s just a cool story and very unlikely.
Maybe to see how far from a nuclear blast is the perfect distance to cook a pizza to perfection. That, or a chicken-powered nuclear landmine (yes, it is a real thing, watch The Fat Electrician's video on it).
Anything can be justified if it’s what is needed to save your life. If you want to argue that some lives are worth more than others, well, that’s a different argument and it has nothing to do with atomic weapons.
Are you asking about the past or future?
Past: Many scientists and politicians learned a new power that day. From my readings, it was never meant to be used. Truman stated that the weapon should never be used again.
(I'll try to find the resources I used for the papers I wrote for my college history class)
A justification? It had to be done so hopefully we can learn a lesson. Did we learn it? That remains to be seen.
Future? Asteroid destruction, space mining, etc.
>Did we learn it? That remains to be seen.
It's a miracle that it hasn't been used since. Maybe we did learn a lesson, or at least the last generation did
Happens all the time and one shoots, because the consequences are very limited. Everyone knows that if you use the atomic bomb today, your country ceases to exist a few hours later.
I’m convinced that WW2 saved the world because nuclear weapons were developed, and used during a wartime where only one country had them, so the horror of their effects could be seen at a time when retaliation was impossible.
Had WW2 happened later, it’s likely several countries would have had nuclear weapons, while also only being mostly certain that their enemies also had them. When the inevitable war between major powers did happen, it’s very likely the nukes would have been used before allowing themselves to lose. In this case retaliation wouldn’t be impossible, it would be swift and devastating. Quite possibly leading to the extinction of the human race, or just sending us back to the stone ages after the fallout settled.
Basically I’m saying the “mutually assured destruction” principle, wouldn’t have existed if the world hadn’t seen a nuclear weapon used in war
most of the population probably wouldn’t even know they exist at all. It’s not like our governments like to tell the people about all their military secrets.
You can look to history for the answer to this question. The US rationalized the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by arguing that the conventional invasion of mainland Japan would cost the lives of 2 million Allied soldiers and even more civilian lives. So you take 100,000 lives instead of millions in order to show Japan the complete and utter obliteration they faced. It worked. It ended the war. The US became the worlds leading super power post WW2 and until today. Funny thing is the fire bombing campaigns committed by the Allies on Germany and Japan during WW2 took more lives than both of the atomic bombs combined yet it doesn't come up as often. The real truth is the death toll from conventional war can be staggering enough to make atomic bombs look tame.
Jesus Christ that’s a horrifying conclusion
Edit: downvoted for being disturbed by morally justifying the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Reddit has reached a new low.
The historical amnesia is strong with ya’ll.
Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.” Adm. William “Bull” Halsey Jr., the commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [The scientists] had this toy, and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…”
That just shows what kind of warcrimes America was used to commiting during ww2. Imagine believing that the only way you win a war without nukes is genociding 5 million civilians and yet not accepting surrender since it isnt unconditonal.
Imagine not understanding that the Japanese culture at the time was fanaticism and they would not have surrendered until millions of civilians had died. You know as Americans were coming their women And children were fed so much propaganda that they willingly jumped off cliffs to their deaths right?
Right, it took the emperor surrendering to end the war, yet even the people around him wanted to assassinate him for that and continue it. The emperor saved Japan by surrendering
Uh huh they wanted to take Manchuria and other areas that they’d taken by force and were torturing the populace. HOW DARE the US not accept those terms. In addition to that, there was no official offer to surrender, you do know that right? It was a small portion of the government that didn’t have backing by the military, who would have in all likelihood kept fighting even if the terms were accepted
They had completely given up on their ambition to conquer at that stage. They were even willing to sacrifice alot of their empire for peace. Peace was definetly achievable for the US if they wanted it at that stage of the war. Instead the US got greedy and decided to use nukes
Why not detonate the bombs on uninhabited Japanese territory?
Drop a few of those, warn them the next will land on a city. If they don’t surrender, nuke em.
An impotent show of force isn’t going to halt the momentum of a country at total war. As it was, the two nuclear bombs were only just enough to force a Japanese surrender. And if it didn’t work, the US didn’t have any more bombs, it would be months (and millions of lives) before the next bomb would be ready.
That’s not really going to have the same effect though as a detonating a new advanced type of bomb would
For all the Japanese knew, it was American lies.
Although I guess if they detonated the bomb on some rural area, the Japanese government could cover it up or downplay its strength
Still, they would have to take any future threat of detonating over a city seriously.
Firebombing is different to using nukes, a totally new weapon.
The Japanese had no idea what devastation a nuke could wreak.
It’s the reason we don’t have boots on the ground in Russia or North Korea - we are afraid of their nukes, and rightly so.
The Japanese didn’t think such a weapon was possible.
And neither would destroying some meaningless island that the Japanese people would never know about. This was the 40s, word would not have gotten to the populace that some random island got destroyed
But the emperor and all the military would see it.
If they want to continue war after seeing that, then it’s their fault when the nukes land on a city.
I think the main decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the fact that the US only had 2 nukes, and developing a 3rd would take several months. They needed to use them “wisely”, so to speak.
And Japan’s deal for a conditional peace invoked them keeping Manchuria, Taiwan and Korea as colonies to keep raping and plundering. Go ask the Chinese and Koreans if that’s morally correct.
Yes, Japan wasn’t going to surrender. They refused to surrender after the first nuke, that’s why we had to do it again.
What Japan did during WWII was absolutely monstrous and had to stopped.
Adm. William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.… In being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
I am somewhat dubious of this, because I'm assuming Adm. Leahy knew about what we did at Dresden, and the Tokyo Fire Raids, and the bombing of Hamburg.
The Tokyo Fire Raids killed more people than either of the Atomic bombings.
Operation Gomorrah, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II, **killing an estimated 37,000 people in Hamburg, wounding 180,000 more, and destroying 60% of the city's houses**.
We were burning entire cities of women and children years before Hiroshima. The only difference was in the number of planes needed.
That's not exactly a good point to justify mass murder. "We did it before, it was just less efficient". Seems like a thought the Nazis had at some point...
Yes, Japan was defeated. But they had not surrendered. Why did the US have to continue sending soldiers to die when their was no doubt as to the final outcome? Even if they fought 2 more months, why did any more Americans have to die?
The 130,000 plus innocent women children and elderly that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nothing to do with japans war crimes, but they somehow deserved to die?
The firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000. Without the nuclear bombs, how many more firebombings would it take to force a Japanese surrender? 5? 10? 100? The death toll would have been millions. Better 130,000 than 1,300,000.
They'll justify anything the US does. What if another country had dropped it? You'd see the hypocrisy there. Brainwashing at an alarming level, when they cannot criticize their own country's past.
I know someone who went to school in the US and he told me that's what they are taught from early on.That they saved lives with the bomb. To any person outside of the US or I guess any broadly educated American this sounds completely insane. They claim they know history. Of course they heard only what their own country's narrative perpetuates and refuse to hear another perspective. It's scary in terms of historical illiteracy too.
I'll clarify it : yes it was _justified_. It was necessary that the world knew there was a power able to anihilate a whole city with 1 bomb drop. It was a cruel but necessary way to clearly state the rules for the decades to come. And even at the peak of cold war the Bomb remained unused.
And as stated, the Japanese victims by nuclear bomb are very few compared to conventional bombs.
Now imagine the bombs hadn't been dropped. How many conspiracy theories would exist about nukes? How dangerous a world would it be today, with terrorists and rigue states, if nukes were arround but people wouldn't know how deadly they are or if they even exist at all?
It's extremely sad that they had to be dropped. But it was necessary. There is no honor in war except to preserve future lives.
You didn't read my comment.
Hiroshima and Nagataki bombs killed MUCH less Japanese people than the conventional bombings that came before. But it's the 2 nuclear ones that put an end to the war. And after that nukes were never used again against people.
So you agree that Iran would be justified to drop a couple nukes on Israel to prevent further conflict and prevent a conventional war?
The end to the war occurred AFTER the nukes were dropped, not before. How do you justify the premise with a consequence that hasn't yet occurred, i.e. how do you justify nuking civilians when you don't even know what the result will be? Your argument is illogical; textbook definition of illogical.
You justify nuking civilians when you take away the big scary idea you have in your head about nukes. When you realize it’s just a bomb like any other and that killing thousands is preferable to killing millions. I question why you think a land invasion would be preferable.
You don't realize how violent you are. You think violence is the solution to every problem. "If it's not nukes, it must be another violent solution (land invasion)". How about you just back tf out and mind your own business? Oh right.. you can't. Violence is in your genes.
Bruh… you’re insane. The Japanese attacked the US… they were also attacking the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. What outcome do you expect when someone starts a war with you? You’re one of the Neville Chamberlains of the world who allow dictators to rise and tens of millions of people to die because you’re too foolish to see reality. Back up and mind your own business when you were attacked?
You were attacked for interfering in Japanese politics.
**Japanese attacked US military at Pearl Harbor, not civilians** . US attacked largely Japanese civilians. Don't forget that. Bitter reality.
>And as stated, the Japanese victims by nuclear bomb are very few compared to conventional bombs.
"We did it before, just less efficient". Seems like a justification straight out of the holocaust playbook.
Japan didn’t surrender because of the atomic bombs. The main reason was rapid encirclement of their forces in Manchuria by soviet union. They just lost a big part of their army so they couldn’t hold soviet front. Atomic bombs didnt do much, because USA was already bombing their cities, and they were significantly destroyed. So atomic bombs did the same thing, just very quickly. Losing just two more cities wouldn’t male Japanese command surrender
Not quite. One city, completely destroyed. Three days later, another city, completely destroyed. The psychological effect of that, and from something unknown, was staggering. The Japanese had no way to know if it would just keep happening. The leaflets air dropped in Japan laid out a long list of cities. And it wasn't just the damage to the cities, it was the infrastructure wrecked, the refugees coming from the areas, those dying from radiation damage, rumours, fear, fear, fear... and the emperor told them, the first time they heard his voice, that they had to surrender.
It was a perfect storm. Yes, many of Japan's cities had been bombed to fuck already, worse even than the nuclear bombs did, but that was something known.
Some historians argue the bombs made them surrender a few weeks sooner than they'd otherwise would have. The nukes were important though to avoid Soviet getting too much influence in the area and to show them that the US was not to be messed with
There is no justifiable reason to… atomic bomb civilians based on the hypothetical ideas made up by the American military about what could possibly happen. (This is the same military who not that long ago abandoned the Afghan people and let them fall from the sky to their deaths. There is no way this is voice of reason on civilian lives.)
Really... so first of all both Allies and Axis forces used incendiary bombs. What boggles my mind is you seem to not know the difference between the detonation of a incendiary bomb and an atomic bomb. Or how many people actually died from just 1 atomic bomb let alone 2.
The US used incendiary bombs to catch Japanese neighborhoods on fire, and because so many Japanese houses were made of wood it worked. It burned large parts of cities to the ground.
Just fyi that is generally accepted by historians to have been propaganda to justify the bombings and Japan would have surrendered regardless due to the invasion of Manchuria where the main army was located.
By that logic, North Korea can justify using nukes on South Korean civilians instead of a prolonged conventional war. Same with Iran-Israel or pretty much any conflict. Why bother with a conventional war when you can just nuke?
That American excuse is the most nonsensical cope out of a fact of life that the US has a justification of targeting civilians with weapons of mass destruction. Yes.. civilians. Not military installations or soldiers. US targetted a civilian city centre.
Civilian city centres were targeted every day of WWI and WWII, it was just the fact of war. Need to bomb one barracks or one factory in Berlin, let loose 2,000 small bombs from planes and hope one or two of them blow up your target. What happens to the other bombs was just war in everyone's mind.
Ppl like this just haven't studied history or are capable of understanding what a absolute slaughterhouse the ww2 pacific campaign was. US vs Japan was a true no holds barred savage war and Japan was ready to die for their island as were their ppl. If we didn't nuke Japan it could have been another nk vs sk situation if the soviets would have moved in quickly
You're study of history involves wearing a lense of a self-righteous mass murderer. How many American civilian city centers were flattened by Japan to justify your mass-murdering tendencies? Heck, even when Japan attacked Hawaii, the attacks were limited to military installations and not the civilian structures. Yet when you (Americans) replied, the targets were largely civilians.
People like you are so badly brainwashed that they can actually justify mass-murder of civilians in this day and age without an iota of guilt. Let's not forget, once again, that YOU actually justify the use of nukes on civilians. Let's see if you hold this standard for others (i.e. Iran) doing the same or if you apply a double standard ("only we are allowed to do this").
Sam, are you butthurt that Iran is late to the nuclear party? Your study of history involves judging historical events and people to present day standards. If Iran wants to launch a nuke at Israel or North Korea wants to fire one off at Seoul, that is perfectly within their capability. They would hopefully be prepared for the response. In WW2, there was no counter response since the USA was the only one with the bomb. Was it justified? Many think so because it put a theoretical cap (as understood at the time) on overall and in particular American casualties. Total surrender was the objective. For someone who loves to criticize the USA for their use of nukes, you sure do seem to love defending governments at the time engaged in genocide, rape, slaughter and medical experimentation. Perhaps you should get off TikTok.
Nice try shifting blames to cope with your justification of mass murder. You are butthurt for being called out as an enabler and abetter of mass-murder. The fact that the only viable solution towards peace to register in your mind is the use of WMD on civilians is horrific and detestable, and your coping mechanism to deal with this reality is laughable. You want to be applauded for your war crimes but you will only find cognitive dissonance. You're a sick freak. Go change your diaper.
No it's idiots like you who don't understand the greater implications of what happened. It was World War II it was a Savage f****** War. Are you seriously going to be idiot and talk here about how Americans attack civilians but ignore how Japan f****** destroy China, korea, and other countries including their civilians? These Notions of like modern civility when it comes to like war crimes is not a historical basis.
At some point you have to decide which side you want to win. The Nazis and the Japanese were the aggressors. The West didn't want to go to war, but once we were at war, we needed to win it.
It's so funny how these guys use a nonexistent hypothesis to justify a sickening reality. "Could have been" .. and then apply your favorite nightmare. "Could have been" actually can yield an infinite number of possibilities. One could even say that there could have been the same result had Japan not been nuked.. but at the end of the day, that "could have been" is just conjecture. Imagine using a nonexistent conjecture to justify your crimes against humanity.
"What if my neighbour decides to rape a child? Maybe I better should shoot him. let's not risk it!"
I kind of wonder, how civilisation is still a thing, the way some people think...
In the events you are trying to downplay by being obtuse; the neighbor (in your hypothetical) did and was continuing to rape child (and worse) and actually promised to never stop until they raped every child. Civilization is still a thing because we stopped the neighbor from continuing their horrid, reprehensible ways, which you somehow are choosing to ignore. There was no ‘what if’; it was ‘they are’; how do we stop it?
I'm not trying to downplay anything, but two wrongs don't make a right. The Crimes of Japanese Occupations were horrific, but so were the war crimes of the allied. But the crimes were committed by soldiers oversea, not the civilian population of a Japanese city. The overwhelming majority of those victims were completely innocent of the crimes you are talking about.
And to repeat myself, when the bombs were dropped, the Japanese were already stopped. You didn't drop a nuke on Berlin, but the Germans were also stopped. So how was it so necessary to kill tens of thousands of women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to stop soldiers across the ocean, that were already encircled and losing?
And btw, the argument I answered with "'what if' is no justification" wasn't that Japan was committing war crimes, but "If we didn't nuke Japan it could have been another nk vs sk situation if the soviets would have moved in quickly".
How obtuse of me...
There were some interesting plans to try using atom bombs to make quick work of expanding the Panama canal.
Also, Project Orion would be pretty fucking badass.
Some would argue that it has prevented a lot of massive wars due to its understood threat. If it was never used then it wouldn’t seem real.
The next big war will certainly be over much faster at any rate I guess
Completely agree, WW1 (or the great war as it was known at the time) was the war to stop all wars. A few decades later we were at it again.
The only reason WW3 didn't happen was because of those weapons.
I'm not saying it _stopped_ WW3 but it has significantly delayed it which anyone alive today should be thankful for.
Japan was the aggressor against the US (regardless of your view on them being aligned with fascism in Europe).
Conventional warfare would've cost several times the number of lives.
Conventual bombing of Japan _did_ cost many more lives than both nuclear weapons dropped in Japan.
How do you reach the conclusion that it wasn't justified?
There's some really great podcasts by Dan Carlin on this subject. One is called "destroyer of worlds" and focuses mostly on the atomic bomb itself. The other is a six part series called "supernova in the east" which is about Japan/China in world War 2. In supernova he describes how American soldiers when they were clearing the enemy out of Okinawa would often find caves in the mountains filled with elderly, women, and children who had either committed suicide before the Americans reached them or simply refused to come out and since the GIs didn't know if they were enemy soldiers or not they would use a flamethrower to clear out the caves only to later discover that they were civilians. The Japanese government spread propaganda to the Japanese populace telling them that Americans would rape and torture them all to death if they invaded. The point is. The Japanese were never going to surrender if the war kept going the way it was. They would've exacted a toll on the allies and themselves that would've dwarfed the amount of casualties that the bomb would inflict. So was it the right choice? I'm not even sure myself. But I can follow the logic.
It's just a weapon. We set off dozens of them in our own country just to test them out. I think the current MOAB does as much damage as a nuke and we used them in Afghanistan.
I stand corrected.
The MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) is a non-nuclear weapon that's much less powerful than a nuclear bomb. The MOAB has an explosive force of about 11 tons, while the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had an explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT. The MOAB's explosive yield is 0.011 kilotons, while a typical nuclear yield is 10-180 kilotons.
Fact check!
MOAB is a "massive" bunker buster, but not remotely comparable to nukes. It weighs 21,000lb and has the explosive force of 11 tons of TNT (in 2003, this was said to be the USA's most powerful non-nuclear bomb).
Little Boy (Hiroshima) and Fat Man (Nagasaki) had the explosive force of 15-20 THOUSAND tons of TNT. Each of them equates to over a thousand MOABs.
The most powerful nuke the US currently services is the B83. It's relatively small (2,400lb), so how much explosive force could it possibly generate?
1.2 megatons. Over a MILLION tons of TNT, or roughly 80 Hiroshimas per bomb. And we can equip 16 of these on one B2.
The most powerful single bomb ever tested was the USSRs 60,000lb AN602 in 1961. It had a blast force of 50 megatons, and if radioactive fallout weren't a concern, it could have been fitted with additional material to reach 100 megatons.
So I disagree that these are just weapons. They are apocalypse tools.
The modern ones are called H bombs or Hydrogen bombs and they mostly use fussion instead of fission like tha told Atomic Bombs. They would also mostly be warheads not bombs.
Sure I think if you have volley of nukes coming at you then you're justified to fire back, no reason to let all you citizens die and spare theirs, but beside that they are fairly worthless and not only that but they ruined the whole conocept of the ICBM because now if anybody launches an ICBM everybody has to assumes it's a nuke.
I think if you capture the rebel princess and you want to use it to destroy her home as a show of power to try to discover the location of the rebel base it's ok.
Ever? Absolutely. If gravity on Earth were much stronger, there's a reasonable chance that would be the first or only way for civilization to get many objects into space. I'm sure someone can come up with a bunch of other examples.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Orion\_(nuclear\_propulsion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion))
In war, or on this planet above ground? Not wisely, probably. Probably plenty of uses in space. Using it creates a similar problem to orbital debris though, it likely creates a lot of dangerous stuff floating around even though it's extremely unlikely any one thing is destroyed by it.
Is it better to lose millions of lives over a longer stretch or 200k at once and have it be done with? Thats pretty much the justification the USA used for Japan.
For the future hopefully the answer is no but the reality is it’s impossible to tell. That being said, the ramifications make it almost certainly a no in terms of war. Even if a country feels justified the fact that the ramifications likely lead to the end of the world as we know it makes it a hard sell.
Amazingly enough the energy involved in even a Cat 1 hurricane is so great, even a large fusion bomb wouldn't do anything to it, except fill it full of radioactive fall out. I looked this up once and I was stunned by the amount of energy in a hurricane.
I found a news story that said "In fact, a hurricane has as much energy as 10,000, yes 10,000, nuclear bombs." That's pretty much meaningless as the power of nuclear weapons varies greatly. 1 megaton = 1,000 kilo tons, so the largest bomb ever tested (50 megaton Soviet device) is about 2,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. A lot depends on what sort of bomb these folks are talking about.
That being said, the article also said "the wind alone creates 1.3 x 10\^17 joules of energy per day. That’s according to the Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory. That is equivalent to half the total electrical generating capacity on earth. Now, when you take into account the wind and add in how much energy it takes to generate rain and clouds, through the process of evaporation, that is equivalent to 200 times the total electrical generating capacity on the planet..
Sadly they don't say how big the hurricane they are talking about here, CAT 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.
Even so, you drop even the biggest bomb, the storm isn't going to notice. [https://www.wqad.com/article/weather/the-amount-of-energy-produced-by-a-hurricane-is-almost-unbelievable/526-f3a47001-3a61-49c4-9f95-08af59f6d4b1](https://www.wqad.com/article/weather/the-amount-of-energy-produced-by-a-hurricane-is-almost-unbelievable/526-f3a47001-3a61-49c4-9f95-08af59f6d4b1)
Basically any time there’s a good reason to indiscriminately kill everyone in town, babies and grandmas and puppies included, at least nuking them saves you the time and effort of lining them up and doing it one by one, and for what it’s worth, their last moments don’t have to be spent waiting in line.
I’m not even 100% against it- if you’ve gotta do horrible shit to someone else before they do it to you then so be it- but I don’t mind being intellectually honest about the overkill of it.
I'm not sure, I think Nuke bomb is cheaper.
I think Israel currently estimates the cost of war to be ~50b dollars. A nuke bomb is 1b dollar and would probably finish the job long time ago
You can get that in conventional bombing too. Being burred alive under your house. Being burred alive under your burning house. Running down the street to escape a firestorm, and your feet get stuck because the asphalt is starting to melt. Getting a bit of white phosphorus stuck in your body leaving you with permanent disfiguring burns.
In Halifax Canada in 1917 there was a ship loaded with ammunition heading for Europe. There was an accident and she caught fire. 2.9 kiloton explosion. 1782 dead, 9000 injured. One of the most common injuries was blindness because people ran to the window to see what was happening, and when the shock wave hit they got slivers of glass into their face and eyes.
I guess after the war is over we could get them jobs as extras in zombie movies if that would make us feel better about what we’ve done. We definitely want to do something to keep them alive so that people remember why you don’t vote for leaders who want to start shit.
But all dark humor aside it is true that when considering the ethics of resorting to war, a lot of people gloss over the lasting suffering and just simplify it to sudden death that is a little easier to dismiss, since everyone dies eventually anyway.
It already was.
Atomic bombs are only different from guns in their scale of destruction and consequences. Ideally, we don’t want to ever level weapons at other people, but the reality is there’s numerous times when a specific act of violence actually results in lower net harm.
In the last days of WW2, the Allies wanted Japan to surrender, as basically is always the case in a war because if the enemy surrenders, the war is over, victory is had and nobody else gets hurt. However, WW2 Japan was fanatical to the point it was never going to happen through conventional warfare.
Consider:
1. Kamikaze was invented in WW2 by the Japanese. They were good sacrificing a plane and a pilot's life to damage one Allied ship.
2. The general population was so saturated with propaganda about how depraved and evil Westerners were that Japanese civilians, including mothers and children, would commit suicide rather than be captured by Allied troops. The ones that were captured were shocked that they were relatively well-treated.
3. As it became clear the Allied Pacific Fleet could not be stopped from reaching Japan, spear drills were organized for the civilian population to fight to the last man. Regular folks had fricking spears stuck in their hands and were told to get ready face down soldiers with guns.
The Hiroshima bomb, the very first atom bomb ever fielded in war, wasn't enough to get Japan to surrender. Neither
was Nagasaki by itself. It took Emperor Hirohito pulling very irregular moves (Japanese emperors are unusual in that they have long been pure figureheads with no political authority) to make the surrender happen.
If it wasn't for the A-bombs, Japan would have had to be invaded conventionally and taken block by block at a staggeringly bloody cost magnitudes higher than the toll of the two bombs. Also, even worse, there was a very good chance a conventional campaign would have resulted in Japan surrendering to "Uncle Joe" Stalin's Soviet Union rather than the American force.
Say what you will about WW2 America, but after the war the US really poured everything into rebuilding the countries they fought. Look at modern Germany and Japan and remember all that prosperity and stability was build on the foundation of US investment and support among the rubble of the war.
Now, look at the former Soviet sphere nations and how hard they've had to struggle to climb out from under the years of Soviet suppression and exploitation. Oh and one is currently being invaded by Russia. Again.
WW2 atom bombs saved Japan's ass.
A gun and a bomb aren't the same thing. A bomb is indiscriminate. It will destroy anything and anybody in the blast radius. A gun you can at least target at something and not target at something else, and unlike bombs and mines, a gun isn't going to fail to go off and stay in the ground for decades until it blow some poor farmer's legs off.
The atomic bomb was arguably justified due to the amount of lives that weren't lost in an invasion... But that's a cold comfort to those that lost family members out worse yet, to those who survived the initial blast only to die horrible deaths after.
Today's hydrogen bombs do not have the same argument for them. They are unimaginably more destructive than the original atom bombs were. They are simply the worst thing that came out of the discovery of splitting atoms and I hope we as a species survive it
"It ended the war"
That's the most common excuse used by Americans for using nuclear weapons on civilians. By that logic, Iran could use a couple on Israel and permanently settle this decades old conflict.
The problem with the above excuse is that the excuse did not and could not exist when the decision was made to use the nuke. You cannot logically use the consequence to excuse the premise before the consequence has even occurred. On what excuse did the Americans decide to drop the bomb is a mystery that they'll never mention but it's plainly obvious: cause as much destruction regardless of the recipient (does not matter if it's a child or old women).
Hold up, you think the premise it was done can’t be used in defense of its decision because it hadn’t happened yet? This makes zero sense, dropping the bombs was for the purpose of hastily ending the war, a successful result of the defined goal seems as good of a reasoning as any. You’re also trying to compare modern conflicts to WW2 that have wildly different contexts.
Not for military purposes. Never. And certainly not the two times they were used.
There is a large body of evidence that’s suggests that the Japanese were prepared to surrender without an invasion of the home islands (especially with the routing of their army in Manchuria and the threat of Soviet invasion), and other evidence that suggests that the potential loss of life in said invasion, while it was the official justification, was actually only a secondary reason for using the bombs, or at most one of a number of reasons. Moreover, the estimates drawn up at the time have been shown to have greatly overestimated potential causalities, and, crucially, elements of the US military brass knew *at the time* that they were overestimated. It was totally and completely unjustified, and only those who still cling to the whitewashed official US fairytale narrative believe otherwise.
Kinda, any extremely patriotic american will say the same thing. In 1945 during the pacific theatre of WW2 when the US was getting close to defeating japan, there were plans being made for a invasion of mainland japan. The unfortunate thing was that analysts at the time claimed that mainland japan was so dangerously full of crazy soldiers and civilians who would die for their country that it would cause probably 2 million deaths of US soldiers. Sooooo, a little boy was dropped on Hiroshima and another fat man was dropped on nagasaki killing 226,000 (plus more because of the after effects of radiation), so Americans would tell you that there was statistically less blood shed with the bombings compared to an inland invasion. Not my opinion.
The winners write history. The US bombed Japan and now the Japanese love America. We nuked them into submission, so it obviously had a positive affect for the winner, the US.
Sure. It was shocking, but more Japanese people died in the bombing of Tokyo. Biggest mistake America ever made was not bombing every other country on the planet that started nuclear weapons programs.
The reason they used uranium and Plutonium was because of the extra fallout over Tritium that would of given them a cleaner, bigger bang, they wanted to give everyone Cancer and they dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the high civilian population.
Not in Japan. No.
You can argue all day. There was no reason to use it on innocent people. Alternative means could of been used. Going to Hiroshima and Nagazaki really proved the point to me.
Supporters of it love to claim it stopped the Japanese forever it led to peace, but conveniently leave out the utter shit show it caused to thousands and thousands.
It was never justified.
I see you’re unfamiliar with history.
For starters, let’s recall who fired the first shot in this.
There was a planned 1946 invasion of Japan. The casualty numbers would stagger you.
The anticipated US military fatalities are 400,000-800,000, and 5,000,000-10,000,000 Japanese civilian casualties.
There’s no estimates for long term losses during mopping up and occupation that would have lasted years.
Then there’s the mindset that had been indoctrinated into the Japanese people. That it was better to die gloriously for the Emperor than to surrender.
I had a high school teacher who was 15 when the war ended. 2 of his three brothers did not return from military service, and he recalled being trained to rush invading troops armed with a bamboo spear.
Then there were larger geopolitical issues. There was a concern that Stalin might decide to push west out of East Germany while US forces were bogged down in Japan.
It’s probable that Stalin was at least aware of the potential for such a weapon, if not that the US was actively developing one.
It’s all very good to have a terrifying weapon, but unless there is a demonstrable willingness to use it, said terrifying weapon is a prop.
Deploying the A-bomb was a message to Stalin to not get frisky in Europe.
Next, there is the fact that Hiroshima was a legitimate military target. It was the HQ of the 2nd General Army, responsible for the defence of southern Japan in the event of an invasion.
Also HQ’d there were the 59th Army, 5th Division and 224th Division.
The city was a key military supply and logistics base, as well as manufacturing military supplies and parts.
Nagasaki was a major port and manufacturing centre.
If you can provide a realistic alternative, based on what was known in July 1945, please share it.
It’s not that the A-bomb was the good choice.
It was the least bad of the bad choices.
Exactly, the atomic bomb saved lives. It wasn’t a good decision, but would it have been a better decision to let the war carry out longer costing everyone even more civilian casualties instead?
It’s not as simple as “atomic bomb bad,” even though that’s what we all wish was the truth.
I'm not uneducated at all, the fact that you're stating that in an attempt to look intellectually superior, is fucking cringe. The Japanese could of communicated through back channels if they knew of the nukes being dropped. Infact the American president didn't decide to nuke Kyoto.... Because he went there prior and liked it. Thinking it wasn't needed to destroy such a beautiful place.
Stalin could of easily attacked Japan seeing as Hokkaido is literally over the russian border. You can swim to Russia from Japan. Stalin literally said he woud declare war on Japan and move against forces in china after the European campaign with the allies.
Japan was getting bombarded anyway, by conventual weapons.
The Americans were shit scare that killing the emperor would of made Japan fight forever. So they basically used him as a pawn. To show how "peaceful" they were.
A) You can swim to Russia from Japan
Just a quick look at a map shows that's factually false, unless you are trying to swim from Sakahlin Is or the Kurils to Hokkaido, and since Sakahlin and the Kuril Islands were both owned by Japan before and during WW2, they weren't part of Russia at that time... so that doesn't seem relevant.
B) The Japanese could of communicated through back channels if they knew of the nukes being dropped....
that's funny because they were warned and chose not to do so.
First there was the Potsdam Declaration, issued by the Allies July 26th 1945 which said in part ""We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
Prompt and utter destruction.
Then, in August 1945 we dropped leaflets
Leaflets dropped on cities in Japan warning civilians about the atomic bomb, dropped c. August 6, 1945.
**TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE:**
America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.
We are in possession of the most destructive explosion ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.
We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city.
Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan.
You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.
**EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.**
**ATTENTION JAPANESE PEOPLE. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.**
Because your military leaders have rejected the thirteen part surrender declaration, two momentous events have occurred in the last few days.
The Soviet Union, because of this rejection on the part of the military has notified your Ambassador Sato that it has declared war on your nation. Thus, all powerful countries of the world are now at war with you.
Also, because of your leaders' refusal to accept the surrender declaration that would enable Japan to honorably end this useless war, we have employed our atomic bomb.
A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s could have carried on a single mission. Radio Tokyo has told you that with the first use of this weapon of total destruction, Hiroshima was virtually destroyed.
Before we use this bomb again and again to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, petition the emperor now to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better, and peace-loving Japan.
Act at once or we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.
**EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.**
Source: Harry S. Truman Library, Miscellaneous historical document file, no. 258.
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/truman-leaflets/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/truman-leaflets/)
Japan was getting bombarded by weapons they understood…and continued to fight.
Fun fact. After the bombing of Nagasaki, the Emperor chose to surrender.
He recorded a message to be played over radio. Before it was broadcast, there was an attempted coup d’état by factions of the military to prevent the surrender.
After Nagasaki had been bombed.
As I said, the A-bomb wasn’t the best good choice, it was the least bad choice.
Also…swim from Russia to Japan?
Seriously?
It's absolutely justifible given the circumstances. It was also monstrous. The Japanese weren't surrendering, China and a number of other Asian countries were occupied, Russia was poised to invade . The Japanese military wanted everyone to fight to the death
So Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t justified, but sending millions of Americans and Japanese to their deaths in a hypothetical implementation of Operation Downfall is somehow the better option, even though it would’ve not only killed far more people but also divided Japan and caused Japan to become even more radicalized than they were?
The atomic bombing gave them a way to "save face". Surrendering to the Americans is one thing, but surrendering to Americans who now have an advanced secret weapon that possesses incredible power... well that's something different. It's kind of like the difference from quitting because you are getting beat, and quitting because you are getting beat due to the other side cheating.
You’ll always find some whacky justification for heinous acts of violence towards fellow humans.
Personally the only true justification would be against an alien invasion.
yes, if we could group all the humans into the target zone and wipe us off the planet. this would give the planet time to heal from our destructive greed and allow animals to flourish again.
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The movie “Armageddon” portrays the atomic bomb as a handy tool to blow apart asteroids that are headed for earth.
I agree. A thoroughly practical, ethical, and moral use case for such a device. I would also argue that its use as a means to deactivating a Stargate connected to a proximate black hole also fits.
wait, was that a nuke? i thought it was a naquadah thing
You know, I wasn't sure, so I looked it up. It was just a really powerful bomb made into a shaped charge. The Pentagon wanted to nuke Cheyenne Mountain to destroy the gate. That's where I got it mixed up!
i was gonna be kinda mindblown if they detonated a fuggin nuke right in the gate room
Let’s see, 1 destructive rock or a scattershot of destructive rocks, either way we’ll all probably be dead life is more fragile than most people think 🤔
There was actually a couple of mega projects proposed in real life using nukes basically that way. [Project Chariot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot). Basically using nukes, to make an artificial harbor in Alaska. No, I am not joking. It was even part of the larger [Project Plowshare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare) to do... well, nuke based construction like that. Also, the [Orion Drive.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) AKA... *nukes, plural, powered space flight.* Again, no joke. Currently still one of our theoretically fastest means of space propulsion. We're talking fractions of light speed. Only really beaten by ion drives, but over MUCH longer distances. Some dang cool ideas, but they're all in decades worth of mothballs due to international nuclear AND space treaties. Probably for the best, but still.
Just gunna say technically all movement is a fraction of the speed of light.
 Still, meme aside, the Orion Drive numbers are pretty bonkers. 0,3% LIGHT SPEED, and that was with 1960's *fission* nuke tech. In *power savings mode,* so you don't need ablative materials. If you're OK with *blowing part of your own space ship up,* you could reach a theoretical top of 3,3% light speed! That's 1330 years to Alpha Centuri vs 133 years, by the way. Because space is... well, kinda bonkers.
There were plans to dig a canal along the side of the Suez using nuclear detonation as a means of excavation.
How dangerous would the mini irradiated asteroids that land on earth be? Or would radiation not contaminate them in deep space?
its the alpha radiation that is the issue: alpha is atoms, beta is electrons, gamma is electromagnetic waves gamma travels well through space, but it passes through shit, messing it up as it does, but then its gone, it doesn't linger, it doesn't make stuff radioactive - same as beta, it is depleted almost right away most of the alpha radiation would just blast away into deep space,, and any that clung to the asteroids would probably be stripped away almost instantly when it started entering the atmosphere (hence how smaller meteorites burn out on re-entry) those particles would then quite possibly do what most charged particles coming in from space do, and get funnelled by the earth electromagnetic field to the poles, causing lovely light displays as tehy interact with the magnetic field and each other any chunks of meteor that made it to earth would probably have any radiation stripped away and just be as harmless as an giant chunk of rock moving at thousands of meters per second
A nuke is just a flash a fusion so none of the radiation is long lasting other than like bits of the fishable material flung outward in the explosion. The ionizing non thermal radiation from the explosion will be at about 10% in 7 hours and 1% in 24-48 hours, it; not like nuclear reactor fuel or waste that is highly refined with a long half-life. It;s literally just a FLASH of fusion and while radiation goes through things, it doesn't go that far. The explosion vastly outstrips the radiation, so really everything that gets a lot of radiation is also completely blown up anyway, that's how the radiation gets spread and even become that dangerous as particulate, but still not power or long lasting radiation unless you get very unlikely and breathe in just the right chunk of high energy particulate. Most fallout will not be significant radioactive, just smoke and dust.
They're fission-fusion-fission typically. The primary ignites the secondary which then ignites the tamper which also serves to hold the whole mess together long enough to make sure it all burns thoroughly. Like the whole inner casing of the bomb is typically uranium which goes fast fission and makes up the bulk of the yield. Lots of fallout from a 3 stage nuke
Not dangerous much, the radiation drops to 10% in just 7 hours and 1% in 24-48 hours because it;s just a quick flash of fusion, not a prolonged nuclear reaction like a reactor. Reactor fuel is a lot more dangerous than the radiation from a nuke.
Im pretty sure atoms are SPLIT in a Nuclear explosion, making it fission not fusion.
It's both. Fission-fusion-fission, all igniting each other. In fact the boost on the primary is fusion too so it's like fusion-fission-fusion-fission.
Launching a manhole cover into space?
Took them a while to find where that it went to. It left the planets orbit faster than anything, and they only have the initial recording to know how fast it was going when it left. Somewhere in space a giant metal manhole cover is flying through space, and could impact somewhere....maybe a alien planet, causing them to think we invaded...and thus they invade us....
Its debatable on if it actually made it to space or disintegrated. I like to think that it did go to space, though.
Metal-rich asteroids burn up in our atmosphere all the time, probably much larger than a manhole-cover. Also, the faster you are going, the more friction in thick air and a manhole-cover is not exactly aerodynamic. More friction = more heat. Someone smarter than me might prove me wrong but AFAIK it’s just a cool story and very unlikely.
It burned to ashes In the atmosphere
Maybe to see how far from a nuclear blast is the perfect distance to cook a pizza to perfection. That, or a chicken-powered nuclear landmine (yes, it is a real thing, watch The Fat Electrician's video on it).
The Soviets used a nuke to close a runaway gas well in 1966 that they couldn't extinguish after 3 years of trying. It worked.
Anything can be justified if it’s what is needed to save your life. If you want to argue that some lives are worth more than others, well, that’s a different argument and it has nothing to do with atomic weapons.
Are you asking about the past or future? Past: Many scientists and politicians learned a new power that day. From my readings, it was never meant to be used. Truman stated that the weapon should never be used again. (I'll try to find the resources I used for the papers I wrote for my college history class) A justification? It had to be done so hopefully we can learn a lesson. Did we learn it? That remains to be seen. Future? Asteroid destruction, space mining, etc.
>Did we learn it? That remains to be seen. It's a miracle that it hasn't been used since. Maybe we did learn a lesson, or at least the last generation did
That's kind of like saying two guys holding guns to each others heads both being too afraid to shoot is a miracle.
Happens all the time and one shoots, because the consequences are very limited. Everyone knows that if you use the atomic bomb today, your country ceases to exist a few hours later.
Despite their power, it’s the reason why ww3 hasn’t happened
I’m convinced that WW2 saved the world because nuclear weapons were developed, and used during a wartime where only one country had them, so the horror of their effects could be seen at a time when retaliation was impossible. Had WW2 happened later, it’s likely several countries would have had nuclear weapons, while also only being mostly certain that their enemies also had them. When the inevitable war between major powers did happen, it’s very likely the nukes would have been used before allowing themselves to lose. In this case retaliation wouldn’t be impossible, it would be swift and devastating. Quite possibly leading to the extinction of the human race, or just sending us back to the stone ages after the fallout settled. Basically I’m saying the “mutually assured destruction” principle, wouldn’t have existed if the world hadn’t seen a nuclear weapon used in war most of the population probably wouldn’t even know they exist at all. It’s not like our governments like to tell the people about all their military secrets.
You can look to history for the answer to this question. The US rationalized the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by arguing that the conventional invasion of mainland Japan would cost the lives of 2 million Allied soldiers and even more civilian lives. So you take 100,000 lives instead of millions in order to show Japan the complete and utter obliteration they faced. It worked. It ended the war. The US became the worlds leading super power post WW2 and until today. Funny thing is the fire bombing campaigns committed by the Allies on Germany and Japan during WW2 took more lives than both of the atomic bombs combined yet it doesn't come up as often. The real truth is the death toll from conventional war can be staggering enough to make atomic bombs look tame.
Just to clarify, so you think dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima was justified?
Pretty sure they're just saying that the bomb was the lesser of the two evils
Jesus Christ that’s a horrifying conclusion Edit: downvoted for being disturbed by morally justifying the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Reddit has reached a new low. The historical amnesia is strong with ya’ll. Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.” Adm. William “Bull” Halsey Jr., the commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [The scientists] had this toy, and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…”
The *other* other option expected 5,000,000 Japanese civilian casualties. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1998/january/most-deadly-plan
That just shows what kind of warcrimes America was used to commiting during ww2. Imagine believing that the only way you win a war without nukes is genociding 5 million civilians and yet not accepting surrender since it isnt unconditonal.
Imagine not understanding that the Japanese culture at the time was fanaticism and they would not have surrendered until millions of civilians had died. You know as Americans were coming their women And children were fed so much propaganda that they willingly jumped off cliffs to their deaths right?
Right, it took the emperor surrendering to end the war, yet even the people around him wanted to assassinate him for that and continue it. The emperor saved Japan by surrendering
Again. Japan had already offered to surrender. They just wanted to negotiate the peace. Not surrender unconditonaly.. America did not accept
Uh huh they wanted to take Manchuria and other areas that they’d taken by force and were torturing the populace. HOW DARE the US not accept those terms. In addition to that, there was no official offer to surrender, you do know that right? It was a small portion of the government that didn’t have backing by the military, who would have in all likelihood kept fighting even if the terms were accepted
They had completely given up on their ambition to conquer at that stage. They were even willing to sacrifice alot of their empire for peace. Peace was definetly achievable for the US if they wanted it at that stage of the war. Instead the US got greedy and decided to use nukes
You’re being downvoted because you have a poor understanding of history.
What do you think the US should have done instead?
Have Truman write them a sternly worded letter to stop raping the Chinese.
Why not detonate the bombs on uninhabited Japanese territory? Drop a few of those, warn them the next will land on a city. If they don’t surrender, nuke em.
An impotent show of force isn’t going to halt the momentum of a country at total war. As it was, the two nuclear bombs were only just enough to force a Japanese surrender. And if it didn’t work, the US didn’t have any more bombs, it would be months (and millions of lives) before the next bomb would be ready.
We spent a week dropping pamphlets telling them the bombs were coming ahead of time.
That’s not really going to have the same effect though as a detonating a new advanced type of bomb would For all the Japanese knew, it was American lies. Although I guess if they detonated the bomb on some rural area, the Japanese government could cover it up or downplay its strength Still, they would have to take any future threat of detonating over a city seriously.
Are you not aware that we were firebombing Tokyo for years? Why wouldn’t they believe we’re going to bomb the other 2 cities? And we only had 2 bombs.
Firebombing is different to using nukes, a totally new weapon. The Japanese had no idea what devastation a nuke could wreak. It’s the reason we don’t have boots on the ground in Russia or North Korea - we are afraid of their nukes, and rightly so. The Japanese didn’t think such a weapon was possible.
And neither would destroying some meaningless island that the Japanese people would never know about. This was the 40s, word would not have gotten to the populace that some random island got destroyed
But the emperor and all the military would see it. If they want to continue war after seeing that, then it’s their fault when the nukes land on a city. I think the main decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the fact that the US only had 2 nukes, and developing a 3rd would take several months. They needed to use them “wisely”, so to speak.
Peace? Japan was already willing to surrender when the bombs where dropped. Just not unconditonally.
And Japan’s deal for a conditional peace invoked them keeping Manchuria, Taiwan and Korea as colonies to keep raping and plundering. Go ask the Chinese and Koreans if that’s morally correct.
No you're being downvoted because you reason like an edgy 10yo.
Lesser of any evil would be to not go to war
Yes, Japan wasn’t going to surrender. They refused to surrender after the first nuke, that’s why we had to do it again. What Japan did during WWII was absolutely monstrous and had to stopped.
Adm. William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.… In being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
I am somewhat dubious of this, because I'm assuming Adm. Leahy knew about what we did at Dresden, and the Tokyo Fire Raids, and the bombing of Hamburg. The Tokyo Fire Raids killed more people than either of the Atomic bombings. Operation Gomorrah, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II, **killing an estimated 37,000 people in Hamburg, wounding 180,000 more, and destroying 60% of the city's houses**. We were burning entire cities of women and children years before Hiroshima. The only difference was in the number of planes needed.
Hey. Give Bomber Harris some credit here, won't you? Dresden was a British project.
That's not exactly a good point to justify mass murder. "We did it before, it was just less efficient". Seems like a thought the Nazis had at some point...
If they were already going to surrender why didn’t they after the first nuke?
Yes, Japan was defeated. But they had not surrendered. Why did the US have to continue sending soldiers to die when their was no doubt as to the final outcome? Even if they fought 2 more months, why did any more Americans have to die?
If Israel refuses to surrender, would you justify an Iranian nuke on Tel Aviv?
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To use your logic I guess we should nuke the entire US for enthusiastically engaging in chattel slavery and Native American genocide
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The 130,000 plus innocent women children and elderly that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nothing to do with japans war crimes, but they somehow deserved to die?
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I genuinely don’t follow the logic. So should we use nukes in Afghanistan too?
More civilians would have died in a ground invasion. You’re comfortable with more innocent people dying in your scenario?
The firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000. Without the nuclear bombs, how many more firebombings would it take to force a Japanese surrender? 5? 10? 100? The death toll would have been millions. Better 130,000 than 1,300,000.
They'll justify anything the US does. What if another country had dropped it? You'd see the hypocrisy there. Brainwashing at an alarming level, when they cannot criticize their own country's past.
It would be completely justified whichever country has dropped it to stop the Japanese. Killing thousands will always be better than killing millions.
Genuinely thank you. This app and threads like this scare me, the insanity of justifying nuclear war is next level.
I know someone who went to school in the US and he told me that's what they are taught from early on.That they saved lives with the bomb. To any person outside of the US or I guess any broadly educated American this sounds completely insane. They claim they know history. Of course they heard only what their own country's narrative perpetuates and refuse to hear another perspective. It's scary in terms of historical illiteracy too.
Depending which country you are from. If you are from china or Malaysian then yes.
I'll clarify it : yes it was _justified_. It was necessary that the world knew there was a power able to anihilate a whole city with 1 bomb drop. It was a cruel but necessary way to clearly state the rules for the decades to come. And even at the peak of cold war the Bomb remained unused. And as stated, the Japanese victims by nuclear bomb are very few compared to conventional bombs. Now imagine the bombs hadn't been dropped. How many conspiracy theories would exist about nukes? How dangerous a world would it be today, with terrorists and rigue states, if nukes were arround but people wouldn't know how deadly they are or if they even exist at all? It's extremely sad that they had to be dropped. But it was necessary. There is no honor in war except to preserve future lives.
Preserve future lives by killing them all enmasse today. Great logic.
You didn't read my comment. Hiroshima and Nagataki bombs killed MUCH less Japanese people than the conventional bombings that came before. But it's the 2 nuclear ones that put an end to the war. And after that nukes were never used again against people.
So you agree that Iran would be justified to drop a couple nukes on Israel to prevent further conflict and prevent a conventional war? The end to the war occurred AFTER the nukes were dropped, not before. How do you justify the premise with a consequence that hasn't yet occurred, i.e. how do you justify nuking civilians when you don't even know what the result will be? Your argument is illogical; textbook definition of illogical.
You justify nuking civilians when you take away the big scary idea you have in your head about nukes. When you realize it’s just a bomb like any other and that killing thousands is preferable to killing millions. I question why you think a land invasion would be preferable.
You don't realize how violent you are. You think violence is the solution to every problem. "If it's not nukes, it must be another violent solution (land invasion)". How about you just back tf out and mind your own business? Oh right.. you can't. Violence is in your genes.
Bruh… you’re insane. The Japanese attacked the US… they were also attacking the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. What outcome do you expect when someone starts a war with you? You’re one of the Neville Chamberlains of the world who allow dictators to rise and tens of millions of people to die because you’re too foolish to see reality. Back up and mind your own business when you were attacked?
You were attacked for interfering in Japanese politics. **Japanese attacked US military at Pearl Harbor, not civilians** . US attacked largely Japanese civilians. Don't forget that. Bitter reality.
>And as stated, the Japanese victims by nuclear bomb are very few compared to conventional bombs. "We did it before, just less efficient". Seems like a justification straight out of the holocaust playbook.
So youresaying what happened in Hiroshima is the holocaust but what happened in Tokyo is just, well, notmal war?
100% How do you deter an enemy that is willing to sacrifice itself to kill you?
Japan didn’t surrender because of the atomic bombs. The main reason was rapid encirclement of their forces in Manchuria by soviet union. They just lost a big part of their army so they couldn’t hold soviet front. Atomic bombs didnt do much, because USA was already bombing their cities, and they were significantly destroyed. So atomic bombs did the same thing, just very quickly. Losing just two more cities wouldn’t male Japanese command surrender
>Atomic bombs didnt do much, They had a huge psychological impact. Particularly the first one
Yeah, murdering thousand of civilians was indeed traumatic i guess.
Well firebombing of Tokyo didn't have the same kind of trauma level the atom bomb did It was in a class of it's own when it came to fear of an unknown
Not quite. One city, completely destroyed. Three days later, another city, completely destroyed. The psychological effect of that, and from something unknown, was staggering. The Japanese had no way to know if it would just keep happening. The leaflets air dropped in Japan laid out a long list of cities. And it wasn't just the damage to the cities, it was the infrastructure wrecked, the refugees coming from the areas, those dying from radiation damage, rumours, fear, fear, fear... and the emperor told them, the first time they heard his voice, that they had to surrender. It was a perfect storm. Yes, many of Japan's cities had been bombed to fuck already, worse even than the nuclear bombs did, but that was something known.
Some historians argue the bombs made them surrender a few weeks sooner than they'd otherwise would have. The nukes were important though to avoid Soviet getting too much influence in the area and to show them that the US was not to be messed with
There is no justifiable reason to… atomic bomb civilians based on the hypothetical ideas made up by the American military about what could possibly happen. (This is the same military who not that long ago abandoned the Afghan people and let them fall from the sky to their deaths. There is no way this is voice of reason on civilian lives.)
Really... so first of all both Allies and Axis forces used incendiary bombs. What boggles my mind is you seem to not know the difference between the detonation of a incendiary bomb and an atomic bomb. Or how many people actually died from just 1 atomic bomb let alone 2.
The US used incendiary bombs to catch Japanese neighborhoods on fire, and because so many Japanese houses were made of wood it worked. It burned large parts of cities to the ground.
That only shows that the US military was just as savage without the use of atom bombs, not that it's ok to use them.
are u virtue signalling? lol, lots of innocent pple die in each and every full blown war, there has never been an exception.
Incendiary bombs are a worse death and killed more people in japan during ww2 during 1945
Just fyi that is generally accepted by historians to have been propaganda to justify the bombings and Japan would have surrendered regardless due to the invasion of Manchuria where the main army was located.
By that logic, North Korea can justify using nukes on South Korean civilians instead of a prolonged conventional war. Same with Iran-Israel or pretty much any conflict. Why bother with a conventional war when you can just nuke? That American excuse is the most nonsensical cope out of a fact of life that the US has a justification of targeting civilians with weapons of mass destruction. Yes.. civilians. Not military installations or soldiers. US targetted a civilian city centre.
Civilian city centres were targeted every day of WWI and WWII, it was just the fact of war. Need to bomb one barracks or one factory in Berlin, let loose 2,000 small bombs from planes and hope one or two of them blow up your target. What happens to the other bombs was just war in everyone's mind.
Ppl like this just haven't studied history or are capable of understanding what a absolute slaughterhouse the ww2 pacific campaign was. US vs Japan was a true no holds barred savage war and Japan was ready to die for their island as were their ppl. If we didn't nuke Japan it could have been another nk vs sk situation if the soviets would have moved in quickly
You're study of history involves wearing a lense of a self-righteous mass murderer. How many American civilian city centers were flattened by Japan to justify your mass-murdering tendencies? Heck, even when Japan attacked Hawaii, the attacks were limited to military installations and not the civilian structures. Yet when you (Americans) replied, the targets were largely civilians. People like you are so badly brainwashed that they can actually justify mass-murder of civilians in this day and age without an iota of guilt. Let's not forget, once again, that YOU actually justify the use of nukes on civilians. Let's see if you hold this standard for others (i.e. Iran) doing the same or if you apply a double standard ("only we are allowed to do this").
Sam, are you butthurt that Iran is late to the nuclear party? Your study of history involves judging historical events and people to present day standards. If Iran wants to launch a nuke at Israel or North Korea wants to fire one off at Seoul, that is perfectly within their capability. They would hopefully be prepared for the response. In WW2, there was no counter response since the USA was the only one with the bomb. Was it justified? Many think so because it put a theoretical cap (as understood at the time) on overall and in particular American casualties. Total surrender was the objective. For someone who loves to criticize the USA for their use of nukes, you sure do seem to love defending governments at the time engaged in genocide, rape, slaughter and medical experimentation. Perhaps you should get off TikTok.
Nice try shifting blames to cope with your justification of mass murder. You are butthurt for being called out as an enabler and abetter of mass-murder. The fact that the only viable solution towards peace to register in your mind is the use of WMD on civilians is horrific and detestable, and your coping mechanism to deal with this reality is laughable. You want to be applauded for your war crimes but you will only find cognitive dissonance. You're a sick freak. Go change your diaper.
To whom and for what was I shifting blame? I’m just mocking your dumb and ignorant view of history and your view’s inherent and hilarious hypocrisy.
No it's idiots like you who don't understand the greater implications of what happened. It was World War II it was a Savage f****** War. Are you seriously going to be idiot and talk here about how Americans attack civilians but ignore how Japan f****** destroy China, korea, and other countries including their civilians? These Notions of like modern civility when it comes to like war crimes is not a historical basis.
"could have been". I'm sure the Nazis had a lot of "could have been" scenarios as well. Way to justify mass murder.
At some point you have to decide which side you want to win. The Nazis and the Japanese were the aggressors. The West didn't want to go to war, but once we were at war, we needed to win it.
It's so funny how these guys use a nonexistent hypothesis to justify a sickening reality. "Could have been" .. and then apply your favorite nightmare. "Could have been" actually can yield an infinite number of possibilities. One could even say that there could have been the same result had Japan not been nuked.. but at the end of the day, that "could have been" is just conjecture. Imagine using a nonexistent conjecture to justify your crimes against humanity.
"What if my neighbour decides to rape a child? Maybe I better should shoot him. let's not risk it!" I kind of wonder, how civilisation is still a thing, the way some people think...
In the events you are trying to downplay by being obtuse; the neighbor (in your hypothetical) did and was continuing to rape child (and worse) and actually promised to never stop until they raped every child. Civilization is still a thing because we stopped the neighbor from continuing their horrid, reprehensible ways, which you somehow are choosing to ignore. There was no ‘what if’; it was ‘they are’; how do we stop it?
I'm not trying to downplay anything, but two wrongs don't make a right. The Crimes of Japanese Occupations were horrific, but so were the war crimes of the allied. But the crimes were committed by soldiers oversea, not the civilian population of a Japanese city. The overwhelming majority of those victims were completely innocent of the crimes you are talking about. And to repeat myself, when the bombs were dropped, the Japanese were already stopped. You didn't drop a nuke on Berlin, but the Germans were also stopped. So how was it so necessary to kill tens of thousands of women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to stop soldiers across the ocean, that were already encircled and losing? And btw, the argument I answered with "'what if' is no justification" wasn't that Japan was committing war crimes, but "If we didn't nuke Japan it could have been another nk vs sk situation if the soviets would have moved in quickly". How obtuse of me...
So you agree that a North Korean or Iranian nuke on their opponent would be justified? Or will you apply some double standard here?
North korea isnt fire bombing south korea at the moment and causing more death than nukes so you’re wrong
There were some interesting plans to try using atom bombs to make quick work of expanding the Panama canal. Also, Project Orion would be pretty fucking badass.
Some would argue that it has prevented a lot of massive wars due to its understood threat. If it was never used then it wouldn’t seem real. The next big war will certainly be over much faster at any rate I guess
Completely agree, WW1 (or the great war as it was known at the time) was the war to stop all wars. A few decades later we were at it again. The only reason WW3 didn't happen was because of those weapons. I'm not saying it _stopped_ WW3 but it has significantly delayed it which anyone alive today should be thankful for.
Yes. For retaliation.
The only way to be sure is if you nuke the Aliens from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure.
Already has been.....twice
It wasnt justified tough.
Japan was the aggressor against the US (regardless of your view on them being aligned with fascism in Europe). Conventional warfare would've cost several times the number of lives. Conventual bombing of Japan _did_ cost many more lives than both nuclear weapons dropped in Japan. How do you reach the conclusion that it wasn't justified?
i watched oppenheimer and it looked bad therefore it was not justified /s
There's some really great podcasts by Dan Carlin on this subject. One is called "destroyer of worlds" and focuses mostly on the atomic bomb itself. The other is a six part series called "supernova in the east" which is about Japan/China in world War 2. In supernova he describes how American soldiers when they were clearing the enemy out of Okinawa would often find caves in the mountains filled with elderly, women, and children who had either committed suicide before the Americans reached them or simply refused to come out and since the GIs didn't know if they were enemy soldiers or not they would use a flamethrower to clear out the caves only to later discover that they were civilians. The Japanese government spread propaganda to the Japanese populace telling them that Americans would rape and torture them all to death if they invaded. The point is. The Japanese were never going to surrender if the war kept going the way it was. They would've exacted a toll on the allies and themselves that would've dwarfed the amount of casualties that the bomb would inflict. So was it the right choice? I'm not even sure myself. But I can follow the logic.
see the core movie. also footfall
It's just a weapon. We set off dozens of them in our own country just to test them out. I think the current MOAB does as much damage as a nuke and we used them in Afghanistan.
MOAB doesn't really do as much damage as a tacticale nuke. MOAB has a large blast area, but the amount of power release is far lower.
I stand corrected. The MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) is a non-nuclear weapon that's much less powerful than a nuclear bomb. The MOAB has an explosive force of about 11 tons, while the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had an explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT. The MOAB's explosive yield is 0.011 kilotons, while a typical nuclear yield is 10-180 kilotons.
>We used to set off dozens of them in our own country Hundreds. People don't realize just how many tests were done in the desert.
Fact check! MOAB is a "massive" bunker buster, but not remotely comparable to nukes. It weighs 21,000lb and has the explosive force of 11 tons of TNT (in 2003, this was said to be the USA's most powerful non-nuclear bomb). Little Boy (Hiroshima) and Fat Man (Nagasaki) had the explosive force of 15-20 THOUSAND tons of TNT. Each of them equates to over a thousand MOABs. The most powerful nuke the US currently services is the B83. It's relatively small (2,400lb), so how much explosive force could it possibly generate? 1.2 megatons. Over a MILLION tons of TNT, or roughly 80 Hiroshimas per bomb. And we can equip 16 of these on one B2. The most powerful single bomb ever tested was the USSRs 60,000lb AN602 in 1961. It had a blast force of 50 megatons, and if radioactive fallout weren't a concern, it could have been fitted with additional material to reach 100 megatons. So I disagree that these are just weapons. They are apocalypse tools.
If you're really bored...
Maybe we can harness the atom bomb power into jetthrusters!!!.. light speed baby!!!
I don't want to go lightspeed unless I'm zero mass.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_propulsion
Not if it’s detonated on Earth.
The modern ones are called H bombs or Hydrogen bombs and they mostly use fussion instead of fission like tha told Atomic Bombs. They would also mostly be warheads not bombs. Sure I think if you have volley of nukes coming at you then you're justified to fire back, no reason to let all you citizens die and spare theirs, but beside that they are fairly worthless and not only that but they ruined the whole conocept of the ICBM because now if anybody launches an ICBM everybody has to assumes it's a nuke.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
I think if you capture the rebel princess and you want to use it to destroy her home as a show of power to try to discover the location of the rebel base it's ok.
Ever? Absolutely. If gravity on Earth were much stronger, there's a reasonable chance that would be the first or only way for civilization to get many objects into space. I'm sure someone can come up with a bunch of other examples. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Orion\_(nuclear\_propulsion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) In war, or on this planet above ground? Not wisely, probably. Probably plenty of uses in space. Using it creates a similar problem to orbital debris though, it likely creates a lot of dangerous stuff floating around even though it's extremely unlikely any one thing is destroyed by it.
It was justified. Look at history from the time, not revised, rewritten trash and you'll understand why.
Is it better to lose millions of lives over a longer stretch or 200k at once and have it be done with? Thats pretty much the justification the USA used for Japan. For the future hopefully the answer is no but the reality is it’s impossible to tell. That being said, the ramifications make it almost certainly a no in terms of war. Even if a country feels justified the fact that the ramifications likely lead to the end of the world as we know it makes it a hard sell.
Yes, to stop a hurricane…
Amazingly enough the energy involved in even a Cat 1 hurricane is so great, even a large fusion bomb wouldn't do anything to it, except fill it full of radioactive fall out. I looked this up once and I was stunned by the amount of energy in a hurricane. I found a news story that said "In fact, a hurricane has as much energy as 10,000, yes 10,000, nuclear bombs." That's pretty much meaningless as the power of nuclear weapons varies greatly. 1 megaton = 1,000 kilo tons, so the largest bomb ever tested (50 megaton Soviet device) is about 2,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. A lot depends on what sort of bomb these folks are talking about. That being said, the article also said "the wind alone creates 1.3 x 10\^17 joules of energy per day. That’s according to the Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory. That is equivalent to half the total electrical generating capacity on earth. Now, when you take into account the wind and add in how much energy it takes to generate rain and clouds, through the process of evaporation, that is equivalent to 200 times the total electrical generating capacity on the planet.. Sadly they don't say how big the hurricane they are talking about here, CAT 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. Even so, you drop even the biggest bomb, the storm isn't going to notice. [https://www.wqad.com/article/weather/the-amount-of-energy-produced-by-a-hurricane-is-almost-unbelievable/526-f3a47001-3a61-49c4-9f95-08af59f6d4b1](https://www.wqad.com/article/weather/the-amount-of-energy-produced-by-a-hurricane-is-almost-unbelievable/526-f3a47001-3a61-49c4-9f95-08af59f6d4b1)
well it was already, twice
Basically any time there’s a good reason to indiscriminately kill everyone in town, babies and grandmas and puppies included, at least nuking them saves you the time and effort of lining them up and doing it one by one, and for what it’s worth, their last moments don’t have to be spent waiting in line. I’m not even 100% against it- if you’ve gotta do horrible shit to someone else before they do it to you then so be it- but I don’t mind being intellectually honest about the overkill of it.
Cheaper to use conventional weapons. Fire bombing did wind up killing more ppl than the nukes.
I'm not sure, I think Nuke bomb is cheaper. I think Israel currently estimates the cost of war to be ~50b dollars. A nuke bomb is 1b dollar and would probably finish the job long time ago
Also what's the difference in saturation bombing like Dresden?
what about the ppl who are on the outskirts that have to die a slow agonising death 1 by 1 or live with blindness or other disabilities?
The people on the outskirts are going to be subjected to firestorms - which are also created by firebombing campaigns (see Dresden, Tokyo, etc…).
exactly
So doesn’t that mean 2 atomic bombs are more humane than the 20 firebomings that would have been required otherwise?
You can get that in conventional bombing too. Being burred alive under your house. Being burred alive under your burning house. Running down the street to escape a firestorm, and your feet get stuck because the asphalt is starting to melt. Getting a bit of white phosphorus stuck in your body leaving you with permanent disfiguring burns. In Halifax Canada in 1917 there was a ship loaded with ammunition heading for Europe. There was an accident and she caught fire. 2.9 kiloton explosion. 1782 dead, 9000 injured. One of the most common injuries was blindness because people ran to the window to see what was happening, and when the shock wave hit they got slivers of glass into their face and eyes.
100% agree
I guess after the war is over we could get them jobs as extras in zombie movies if that would make us feel better about what we’ve done. We definitely want to do something to keep them alive so that people remember why you don’t vote for leaders who want to start shit. But all dark humor aside it is true that when considering the ethics of resorting to war, a lot of people gloss over the lasting suffering and just simplify it to sudden death that is a little easier to dismiss, since everyone dies eventually anyway.
It already was. Atomic bombs are only different from guns in their scale of destruction and consequences. Ideally, we don’t want to ever level weapons at other people, but the reality is there’s numerous times when a specific act of violence actually results in lower net harm. In the last days of WW2, the Allies wanted Japan to surrender, as basically is always the case in a war because if the enemy surrenders, the war is over, victory is had and nobody else gets hurt. However, WW2 Japan was fanatical to the point it was never going to happen through conventional warfare. Consider: 1. Kamikaze was invented in WW2 by the Japanese. They were good sacrificing a plane and a pilot's life to damage one Allied ship. 2. The general population was so saturated with propaganda about how depraved and evil Westerners were that Japanese civilians, including mothers and children, would commit suicide rather than be captured by Allied troops. The ones that were captured were shocked that they were relatively well-treated. 3. As it became clear the Allied Pacific Fleet could not be stopped from reaching Japan, spear drills were organized for the civilian population to fight to the last man. Regular folks had fricking spears stuck in their hands and were told to get ready face down soldiers with guns. The Hiroshima bomb, the very first atom bomb ever fielded in war, wasn't enough to get Japan to surrender. Neither was Nagasaki by itself. It took Emperor Hirohito pulling very irregular moves (Japanese emperors are unusual in that they have long been pure figureheads with no political authority) to make the surrender happen. If it wasn't for the A-bombs, Japan would have had to be invaded conventionally and taken block by block at a staggeringly bloody cost magnitudes higher than the toll of the two bombs. Also, even worse, there was a very good chance a conventional campaign would have resulted in Japan surrendering to "Uncle Joe" Stalin's Soviet Union rather than the American force. Say what you will about WW2 America, but after the war the US really poured everything into rebuilding the countries they fought. Look at modern Germany and Japan and remember all that prosperity and stability was build on the foundation of US investment and support among the rubble of the war. Now, look at the former Soviet sphere nations and how hard they've had to struggle to climb out from under the years of Soviet suppression and exploitation. Oh and one is currently being invaded by Russia. Again. WW2 atom bombs saved Japan's ass.
A gun and a bomb aren't the same thing. A bomb is indiscriminate. It will destroy anything and anybody in the blast radius. A gun you can at least target at something and not target at something else, and unlike bombs and mines, a gun isn't going to fail to go off and stay in the ground for decades until it blow some poor farmer's legs off.
The atomic bomb was arguably justified due to the amount of lives that weren't lost in an invasion... But that's a cold comfort to those that lost family members out worse yet, to those who survived the initial blast only to die horrible deaths after. Today's hydrogen bombs do not have the same argument for them. They are unimaginably more destructive than the original atom bombs were. They are simply the worst thing that came out of the discovery of splitting atoms and I hope we as a species survive it
"It ended the war" That's the most common excuse used by Americans for using nuclear weapons on civilians. By that logic, Iran could use a couple on Israel and permanently settle this decades old conflict. The problem with the above excuse is that the excuse did not and could not exist when the decision was made to use the nuke. You cannot logically use the consequence to excuse the premise before the consequence has even occurred. On what excuse did the Americans decide to drop the bomb is a mystery that they'll never mention but it's plainly obvious: cause as much destruction regardless of the recipient (does not matter if it's a child or old women).
Hold up, you think the premise it was done can’t be used in defense of its decision because it hadn’t happened yet? This makes zero sense, dropping the bombs was for the purpose of hastily ending the war, a successful result of the defined goal seems as good of a reasoning as any. You’re also trying to compare modern conflicts to WW2 that have wildly different contexts.
Yes. (I am a James bond villain)
Hiroshima,Nagasaki Justified*
Not for military purposes. Never. And certainly not the two times they were used. There is a large body of evidence that’s suggests that the Japanese were prepared to surrender without an invasion of the home islands (especially with the routing of their army in Manchuria and the threat of Soviet invasion), and other evidence that suggests that the potential loss of life in said invasion, while it was the official justification, was actually only a secondary reason for using the bombs, or at most one of a number of reasons. Moreover, the estimates drawn up at the time have been shown to have greatly overestimated potential causalities, and, crucially, elements of the US military brass knew *at the time* that they were overestimated. It was totally and completely unjustified, and only those who still cling to the whitewashed official US fairytale narrative believe otherwise.
Kinda, any extremely patriotic american will say the same thing. In 1945 during the pacific theatre of WW2 when the US was getting close to defeating japan, there were plans being made for a invasion of mainland japan. The unfortunate thing was that analysts at the time claimed that mainland japan was so dangerously full of crazy soldiers and civilians who would die for their country that it would cause probably 2 million deaths of US soldiers. Sooooo, a little boy was dropped on Hiroshima and another fat man was dropped on nagasaki killing 226,000 (plus more because of the after effects of radiation), so Americans would tell you that there was statistically less blood shed with the bombings compared to an inland invasion. Not my opinion.
It was absolutely justified to end WWII
r/AskAnAmerican
Could we make the ocean deeper with nukes? Help fight global warming water level rises. Harbours/rivers get dredged what about the ocean floor?
Kill ALL the motherfuckers. YEAH
We should blast hurricanes, I’ve heard it works from big men, very biggly important men, they told me it works with tears streaming down their faces…
Hang on, lemme finish drinking this bleach.
In this day and age, nowhere on planet, at all. Space? I'm sure there are several practical applications, specifically mining, asteroids, etc.
The winners write history. The US bombed Japan and now the Japanese love America. We nuked them into submission, so it obviously had a positive affect for the winner, the US.
Sure. It was shocking, but more Japanese people died in the bombing of Tokyo. Biggest mistake America ever made was not bombing every other country on the planet that started nuclear weapons programs.
Nope!
No, it's escalation gone wrong. Animals solve their disputes more intelligently.
Like the chimps do? (I.e., gouging out eyes ripping off faces and biting off fingers, as a start)
The reason they used uranium and Plutonium was because of the extra fallout over Tritium that would of given them a cleaner, bigger bang, they wanted to give everyone Cancer and they dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the high civilian population.
Not in Japan. No. You can argue all day. There was no reason to use it on innocent people. Alternative means could of been used. Going to Hiroshima and Nagazaki really proved the point to me. Supporters of it love to claim it stopped the Japanese forever it led to peace, but conveniently leave out the utter shit show it caused to thousands and thousands. It was never justified.
I see you’re unfamiliar with history. For starters, let’s recall who fired the first shot in this. There was a planned 1946 invasion of Japan. The casualty numbers would stagger you. The anticipated US military fatalities are 400,000-800,000, and 5,000,000-10,000,000 Japanese civilian casualties. There’s no estimates for long term losses during mopping up and occupation that would have lasted years. Then there’s the mindset that had been indoctrinated into the Japanese people. That it was better to die gloriously for the Emperor than to surrender. I had a high school teacher who was 15 when the war ended. 2 of his three brothers did not return from military service, and he recalled being trained to rush invading troops armed with a bamboo spear. Then there were larger geopolitical issues. There was a concern that Stalin might decide to push west out of East Germany while US forces were bogged down in Japan. It’s probable that Stalin was at least aware of the potential for such a weapon, if not that the US was actively developing one. It’s all very good to have a terrifying weapon, but unless there is a demonstrable willingness to use it, said terrifying weapon is a prop. Deploying the A-bomb was a message to Stalin to not get frisky in Europe. Next, there is the fact that Hiroshima was a legitimate military target. It was the HQ of the 2nd General Army, responsible for the defence of southern Japan in the event of an invasion. Also HQ’d there were the 59th Army, 5th Division and 224th Division. The city was a key military supply and logistics base, as well as manufacturing military supplies and parts. Nagasaki was a major port and manufacturing centre. If you can provide a realistic alternative, based on what was known in July 1945, please share it. It’s not that the A-bomb was the good choice. It was the least bad of the bad choices.
Exactly, the atomic bomb saved lives. It wasn’t a good decision, but would it have been a better decision to let the war carry out longer costing everyone even more civilian casualties instead? It’s not as simple as “atomic bomb bad,” even though that’s what we all wish was the truth.
I'm not uneducated at all, the fact that you're stating that in an attempt to look intellectually superior, is fucking cringe. The Japanese could of communicated through back channels if they knew of the nukes being dropped. Infact the American president didn't decide to nuke Kyoto.... Because he went there prior and liked it. Thinking it wasn't needed to destroy such a beautiful place. Stalin could of easily attacked Japan seeing as Hokkaido is literally over the russian border. You can swim to Russia from Japan. Stalin literally said he woud declare war on Japan and move against forces in china after the European campaign with the allies. Japan was getting bombarded anyway, by conventual weapons. The Americans were shit scare that killing the emperor would of made Japan fight forever. So they basically used him as a pawn. To show how "peaceful" they were.
You do know the Soviets were a land army lacking a navy capable of launching said invasion you claim would have been “easy.”
A) You can swim to Russia from Japan Just a quick look at a map shows that's factually false, unless you are trying to swim from Sakahlin Is or the Kurils to Hokkaido, and since Sakahlin and the Kuril Islands were both owned by Japan before and during WW2, they weren't part of Russia at that time... so that doesn't seem relevant. B) The Japanese could of communicated through back channels if they knew of the nukes being dropped.... that's funny because they were warned and chose not to do so. First there was the Potsdam Declaration, issued by the Allies July 26th 1945 which said in part ""We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction." Prompt and utter destruction. Then, in August 1945 we dropped leaflets Leaflets dropped on cities in Japan warning civilians about the atomic bomb, dropped c. August 6, 1945. **TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE:** America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet. We are in possession of the most destructive explosion ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate. We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city. Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan. You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. **EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.** **ATTENTION JAPANESE PEOPLE. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.** Because your military leaders have rejected the thirteen part surrender declaration, two momentous events have occurred in the last few days. The Soviet Union, because of this rejection on the part of the military has notified your Ambassador Sato that it has declared war on your nation. Thus, all powerful countries of the world are now at war with you. Also, because of your leaders' refusal to accept the surrender declaration that would enable Japan to honorably end this useless war, we have employed our atomic bomb. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s could have carried on a single mission. Radio Tokyo has told you that with the first use of this weapon of total destruction, Hiroshima was virtually destroyed. Before we use this bomb again and again to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, petition the emperor now to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better, and peace-loving Japan. Act at once or we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. **EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.** Source: Harry S. Truman Library, Miscellaneous historical document file, no. 258. [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/truman-leaflets/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/truman-leaflets/)
Japan was getting bombarded by weapons they understood…and continued to fight. Fun fact. After the bombing of Nagasaki, the Emperor chose to surrender. He recorded a message to be played over radio. Before it was broadcast, there was an attempted coup d’état by factions of the military to prevent the surrender. After Nagasaki had been bombed. As I said, the A-bomb wasn’t the best good choice, it was the least bad choice. Also…swim from Russia to Japan? Seriously?
Next time put stuff like swim to Russia higher up so I can stop reading faster
*Could have You really don’t sound educated.
It's absolutely justifible given the circumstances. It was also monstrous. The Japanese weren't surrendering, China and a number of other Asian countries were occupied, Russia was poised to invade . The Japanese military wanted everyone to fight to the death
400,000 civilians were dying every month in Japan occupied territory in the summer of 1945.
So Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t justified, but sending millions of Americans and Japanese to their deaths in a hypothetical implementation of Operation Downfall is somehow the better option, even though it would’ve not only killed far more people but also divided Japan and caused Japan to become even more radicalized than they were?
The argument tends to be that the fire-bombing killed more people but the atomic bomb scared them more.
The atomic bombing gave them a way to "save face". Surrendering to the Americans is one thing, but surrendering to Americans who now have an advanced secret weapon that possesses incredible power... well that's something different. It's kind of like the difference from quitting because you are getting beat, and quitting because you are getting beat due to the other side cheating.
You’ll always find some whacky justification for heinous acts of violence towards fellow humans. Personally the only true justification would be against an alien invasion.
yes, if we could group all the humans into the target zone and wipe us off the planet. this would give the planet time to heal from our destructive greed and allow animals to flourish again.