Usefulness (or otherwise) of Nuclear weapons

[Orionblamblam]

We don't need nuclear weapons, because we can't use it.

Sure we can. There are lots of uses for nukes apart from laying waste to cities. And even the city-busting aspects of nukes should not be ignored... prior to the advent of nukes, warfare had been on an upward trend of horribleness; since nukes, Earth has been surprisingly peaceful, with only relatively low-level conflicts.

 

[Arjen]

Korea, Darfur, Iran-Iraq war, Vietnam, Cambodia,

Earth has been surprisingly peaceful, with only relatively low-level conflicts.

...relatively low-level conflict still left tens of millions dead.

There are lots of uses for nukes apart from laying waste to cities. And even the city-busting aspects of nukes should not be ignored... prior to the advent of nukes, warfare had been on an upward trend of horribleness

Following this line of reasoning, nerve gas and bio-weapons are other cost-effective ways of getting rid of people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They'll even spare infrastructure. What's stopping us from mass-producing those? Or are they here already? Realism has an ugly face. For some reason, even stockpiling of nerve gas and bio-weapons has run afoul of ethical considerations. Nukes less so, but their environmental impact, when they are used, is much worse.

If anything, you should be happy about the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Site because it reminds people of what actually happens when nukes destroy a city; it serves to raise the bar against using nukes.
A threat will only be taken serious if you convince your opponent you are willing to act on it. You must be willing to send millions to their death, even though they are no military threat to you.

Risk is the product of the chance of something happening AND-WHAT-HAPPENS-NEXT. When you're betting in a casino, betting more than you can afford to lose is stupid. I feel using nukes against cities, knowing what we know now, goes beyond stupid. It's evil.We have arrived in a situation where rational people have set themselves up to do evil on a giant scale, it is a bad place to be and I do not know how we are going to get out of here. But I think we should. Eventually.

 

[bobbymike]

Korea, Darfur, Iran-Iraq war, Vietnam, Cambodia,

Earth has been surprisingly peaceful, with only relatively low-level conflicts.

...relatively low-level conflict still left tens of millions dead.

There are lots of uses for nukes apart from laying waste to cities. And even the city-busting aspects of nukes should not be ignored... prior to the advent of nukes, warfare had been on an upward trend of horribleness

Following this line of reasoning, nerve gas and bio-weapons are other cost-effective ways of getting rid of people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They'll even spare infrastructure. What's stopping us from mass-producing those? Or are they here already? Realism has an ugly face. For some reason, even stockpiling of nerve gas and bio-weapons has run afoul of ethical considerations. Nukes less so, but their environmental impact, when they are used, is much worse.

If anything, you should be happy about the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Site because it reminds people of what actually happens when nukes destroy a city; it serves to raise the bar against using nukes.
A threat will only be taken serious if you convince your opponent you are willing to act on it. You must be willing to send millions to their death, even though they are no military threat to you.

Risk is the product of the chance of something happening AND-WHAT-HAPPENS-NEXT. When you're betting in a casino, betting more than you can afford to lose is stupid. I feel using nukes against cities, knowing what we know now, goes beyond stupid. It's evil.We have arrived in a situation where rational people have set themselves up to do evil on a giant scale, it is a bad place to be and I do not know how we are going to get out of here. But I think we should. Eventually.

Your comments need a thesis length refutation. You realize the world has had nukes for 67 years and they have not been used since WWII, right? Saying 'they still might be' is irrelevant. We know the earth has been struck by giants asteroids and will be again so the we need nukes is about as relevant an argument for me to make (I'm not making it but it would be cool )

Orionblamblam is absolutely correct in terms of people killed per percentage of global population the last 65+ years are some of the lowest on record historically. Maybe tens of millions have died in the last 60 years but that many were dying EVERY YEAR in past wars.

Nuclear weapons are here to stay so we better have the most and the best and the most modern. I sleep better at night knowing the US is very well armed. Dictators and despots do not!

Here is a very important question for you based on a simple assumption, Nukes were never invented and let's even say cannot be created they are no part of the 'military equation' in the world today.

So the question is - Do you believe we would have had another major global war since 1945 on the scale of WWII or WWI?

If your answer is yes than nuclear weapons have saved millions of lives.
If your answer is no then you're saying man has learned the lesson of how destructive wars have become refuting your own worry about the chances of a nuclear war in the future.

 

[blackkite]

Anyway, we have too many nuclear weapons. Very very dangerous. ;D
It's true that we have not experienced world war after WWⅡ. But only 67 years.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Korea, Darfur, Iran-Iraq war, Vietnam, Cambodia,

Earth has been surprisingly peaceful, with only relatively low-level conflicts.

...relatively low-level conflict still left tens of millions dead.

Sure. But the millions dead due to war in the last half of the last century are pretty meager compared to the hundreds of millions dead due to simple social policies (the Holodomir, for example, or the Four Pest thing Mao dreamed up). And the millions dead in the last half of the last century don't really compare all that highly to the annualized dead-per-year due to war from the *first* half of the century.

Following this line of reasoning, nerve gas and bio-weapons are other cost-effective ways of getting rid of people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nah. Chemical weapons are not especially effective militarily, and bio weapons can far too easily turn around and bite you in the ass. Nukes are militarily useful, don't really dirty up the surroundings (apart from fallout from sub-ground bursts), and are nice and showy.

Nukes less so, but their environmental impact, when they are used, is much worse.

Incorrect. Japan got two cities nuked by early *filthy* bombs, and both cities were going concerns again in relatively short order. Certainly faster than Chernobyl or Times Beach.

If anything, you should be happy about the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Site because it reminds people of what actually happens when nukes destroy a city; it serves to raise the bar against using nukes.

If it was honest, it would be more of a reminder of what happens when you start stupid wars of conquest against half the planet. The message *should* be "you can screw up so bad that the other guys will find a way to rip a hole in the universe to shut you down." They're lucky we didn't call Cthulhu up from R'lyeh to go stomping around their cities. Maybe that's for next time (though it would've been a dandy way to deal with the Taliban... call down some Eldritch Horror to suck them into a different dimension).

Otherwise, the arguement against nukes it pretty silly, since Tokyo and other Japanese (and German) cities showed that you don't need nukes to completely trash an entire city and kill hundreds of thousands.

A threat will only be taken serious if you convince your opponent you are willing to act on it.

Damned straight.

You must be willing to send millions to their death, even though they are no military threat to you.

That's what happens when you start a total war: the other guy just might total war you right back. Can you imagine the state of Japan today if China had been industrialized as much as America back in the day, and was in a position to land a few million troops in Japan who still remembered the Rape of Nanking? Would there even *be* a Japan?

I feel using nukes against cities, knowing what we know now, goes beyond stupid. It's evil.

Had Truman known what we know today and *not* nuked Japan, *that* would have been stupid and evil. The US would have slaughtered millions of Japanese before they quit... if they ever did. And soon enough the Soviets - and possibly the Chinese - would have marched into the north of Japan and taken over. Given that, IIRC, something like 4 million German POWs died in Soviet gulags after the war, Japan would have been far, far worse off had they not been nuked. This is not a point that can be rationally argued against, only emotionally, and against all evidence.

We have arrived in a situation where rational people have set themselves up to do evil on a giant scale, it is a bad place to be and I do not know how we are going to get out of here.

With atomic weapons. Converted into Orion pulse units. Blam.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Anyway, we have too many nuclear weapons.

Maybe you do. But I could always use more. I have plans.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Here is a very important question for you based on a simple assumption, Nukes were never invented and let's even say cannot be created they are no part of the 'military equation' in the world today.

Uncle Joe would've steamrolled Europe within a few years of the end of WWII... let's say 1950. The US may or may not have had much of a military presence in Europe at the time; without nukes, the war in Japan would have dragged on *years* longer, and with a Soviet invasion of the north of Japan, the country would ahve been split in half like Germany. By 1950, the US would probably still be fighting a Japanese insurgency campaign in South Japan; North Japan under Stalin would almost certainly have been pacified, possibly by Stalin allowing Mao to send a few million Chinese troops to rape and murder their way through the joint, cutting the Japanese population down to, oh, let's say ten percent their pre-war levels.

So with North Japan pacified under Communist control and the US military bottled up in South Japan, western Europe, still largely trashed from the war, and with neither Marshall Plan nor much of a US military presence, wakes up to a Soviet invasion. By this point excess millions of Americans are already dead. Tens of million excess Japanese dead. Millions of Chinese/Soviet dead in North Japan. Millions more are about to die in western Europe. That's 1950.

And then comes 1951...

 

[blackkite]

Here is a very important question for you based on a simple assumption, Nukes were never invented and let's even say cannot be created they are no part of the 'military equation' in the world today.

Uncle Joe would've steamrolled Europe within a few years of the end of WWII... let's say 1950. The US may or may not have had much of a military presence in Europe at the time; without nukes, the war in Japan would have dragged on *years* longer, and with a Soviet invasion of the north of Japan, the country would ahve been split in half like Germany. By 1950, the US would probably still be fighting a Japanese insurgency campaign in South Japan; North Japan under Stalin would almost certainly have been pacified, possibly by Stalin allowing Mao to send a few million Chinese troops to rape and murder their way through the joint, cutting the Japanese population down to, oh, let's say ten percent their pre-war levels.

So with North Japan pacified under Communist control and the US military bottled up in South Japan, western Europe, still largely trashed from the war, and with neither Marshall Plan nor much of a US military presence, wakes up to a Soviet invasion. By this point excess millions of Americans are already dead. Tens of million excess Japanese dead. Millions of Chinese/Soviet dead in North Japan. Millions more are about to die in western Europe. That's 1950.

And then comes 1951...

May be you are correct. But I think it was not necessary to drop atomic bomb to the big cities. America could drop atomic bomb to some Japanese mountain,etc at the day.

 

[Arjen]

Had Truman known what we know today and *not* nuked Japan, *that* would have been stupid and evil. The US would have slaughtered millions of Japanese before they quit... if they ever did. And soon enough the Soviets - and possibly the Chinese - would have marched into the north of Japan and taken over. Given that, IIRC, something like 4 million German POWs died in Soviet gulags after the war, Japan would have been far, far worse off had they not been nuked. This is not a point that can be rationally argued against, only emotionally, and against all evidence.

Truman had a choice of evils. He chose a lesser one and ended a war that could have dragged on for years. I do not know if dropping a nuke on a Japanese mountain would have been enough to force Japan to surrender, I do not know that if only Hiroshima had been destroyed, that would have been enough to end the war. Japan was unable to retaliate in kind. In this context, not dropping any nukes would have been a wrong choice.

But still: evil, even if a lesser one. Like the destruction of cities with conventional bombs.

Today, nuclear conflict is unlikely to be that one-sided. What *is* likely is that nuclear weapons will not end a war by forcing surrender of one side to the other, but war ends because there is nobody left to fight.

I believe the threat of nuclear retaliation has probably averted some major wars, but the price we are paying is the existence of a very real possibility of immediate, man-made, global destruction. In the long run, I think we would be better off without that possibility.

 

[sferrin]

but the price we are paying is the existence of a very real possibility of immediate, man-made, global destruction. In the long run, I think we would be better off without that possibility.

You do realize there have been over 500 open-air nuclear tests, including some of the biggest nukes ever produced? World's still here. I'd rather we kept nukes to avoid the possibility of full-scale war.

 

[Arjen]

You do realize there have been over 500 open-air nuclear tests, including some of the biggest nukes ever produced? World's still here.

That is somewhat short of nuclear conflict.

 

[sferrin]

You do realize there have been over 500 open-air nuclear tests, including some of the biggest nukes ever produced? World's still here.

That is somewhat short of nuclear conflict.

Those 500 tests included more aggregate megatonage than most nations nuclear arsenals.

 

[Arjen]

Again.

Risk is the product of the chance of something happening AND-WHAT-HAPPENS-NEXT. When you're betting in a casino, betting more than you can afford to lose is stupid. I feel using nukes against cities, knowing what we know now, goes beyond stupid. It's evil.We have arrived in a situation where rational people have set themselves up to do evil on a giant scale, it is a bad place to be and I do not know how we are going to get out of here. But I think we should. Eventually.

World leaders might just be rational enough not to get us into a nuclear conflict. For now.

I quote Murphy: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Sometime in the future, with irrational, stupid, deluded people at the helm at the wrong time, in the wrong place. An accident waiting to happen.

 

[Orionblamblam]

But I think it was not necessary to drop atomic bomb to the big cities. America could drop atomic bomb to some Japanese mountain,etc at the day.

Seems at best dubious. Let's face it... two cities got vaporized by something that most people of the time would only have understood as magic, and it still took that genetic defective Hirohito several days to man up and surrender. And even then his own military tried a coup to keep the war going.

A demonstration nuking may well have not had the same shock effect that wiping out a city would have. And then what would we have? The war would continue. The nukes would have been wasted, and it would have been months before we had more. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have continued their military/industrial/transportation roles, and the US would have had to invade. And I suspect that if the US had invaded, that would have so annoyed the Japanese military and civilians that damn near *nothing* would have caused them to surrender. Given the experiences at places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where the Japanese military forces fought virtually to their own extinction, and the local Japanese civilians would throw themselves off cliffs for no good reason, the US civilian and military leadership concluded that the Japanese were *InSaNe.*

Without nukes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been just as dead. It would have come in the form of rains of incendiary bombs from fleets of B-29's, but the death tolls would likely have been just as high (and very likely much higher in Nagasaki... the local terrain protected many from the direct blast of the nuke, but would have done nothing to protect people from carpet bombings).

Without nukes, chemical and/or biological weapons may have been employed. There were many in the military who wanted to do so, and who were pressuring Truman to unleash such weapons to soften up the Japanese home island prior to an invasion. Given that Japan had happily used such weapons against Chinese civilians, they'd hardly have cause for complaint were such weapons turned on *them.* Additionally, defoliants (early forms of something like Agent Orange) were discussed as a means of wiping out the farmlands of Japan. So... no food, blistering agents (and very likely Nazi nerve agents) raining from the sky, and people dropping dead of horrible nightmarish diseases. *Nationwide.* Nuking seems a better way to go.



The idea of repeatedly nuking Mt. Fuji was bandied about. The problem: the nukes of the time were air-burst only. They weren't ground penetrators; certainly not solid-rock penetrators. So the best that would have happened is enveloping the peak of the mountain in a nuclear fireball. This would have melted a good chunk of the snow and ice, causing some avalanches and floods and such, but it would not have much permanently alltered the profile of the mountain. For that you'd have to land a group of US Army Corps of Engineers or Sea Bees or something to dig a ways into the mountaintop, plant a bomb, and then cover it over with concrete. *That* would allow a small nuke to do some real damage to Mt. Fuji. But I suspect that such an operation would be virtually impossible... no helicopter of the time would have been capable, and I doubt a cargo plane could have landed there. Still, it remains an interesting notion, and one that may have led to a very different view of the world. "If you attack the US, we will not only reduce your cities to rubble, we will take you most cherished religious sites and symbols from you and melt them down into pools of liquid hot magma." 9/11/2001 might well have been *very* different had the threat of turning, say, Mecca into a crater been foremost in Al Queda's mind.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I quote Murphy: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Sometime in the future, with irrational, stupid, deluded people at the helm at the wrong time, in the wrong place. An accident waiting to happen.

That's why the US took down Saddam. But somehow *we're* the badguys.

 

[Arjen]

irrational, check.
stupid, check.
deluded, check.

Saddam fits the bill.

 

[BAROBA]

Here is a very important question for you based on a simple assumption, Nukes were never invented and let's even say cannot be created they are no part of the 'military equation' in the world today.

Uncle Joe would've steamrolled Europe within a few years of the end of WWII... let's say 1950. The US may or may not have had much of a military presence in Europe at the time; without nukes, the war in Japan would have dragged on *years* longer, and with a Soviet invasion of the north of Japan, the country would ahve been split in half like Germany. By 1950, the US would probably still be fighting a Japanese insurgency campaign in South Japan; North Japan under Stalin would almost certainly have been pacified, possibly by Stalin allowing Mao to send a few million Chinese troops to rape and murder their way through the joint, cutting the Japanese population down to, oh, let's say ten percent their pre-war levels.

So with North Japan pacified under Communist control and the US military bottled up in South Japan, western Europe, still largely trashed from the war, and with neither Marshall Plan nor much of a US military presence, wakes up to a Soviet invasion. By this point excess millions of Americans are already dead. Tens of million excess Japanese dead. Millions of Chinese/Soviet dead in North Japan. Millions more are about to die in western Europe. That's 1950.

And then comes 1951...

Hi Scott/OBB,

Usually I agree with your observations or remarks, but this time you are a bit off the mark..
A world without A/H/N-bombs wouldn't been that different then it was then.
Germany has been defeating using conventional means, the A-bomb wasn't needed.

Japan did already propose a peace-treaty in January 1945 to the Allies, which rejected it. Mainly because the Japanese wanted some conditions being met. The Allies only wanted unconditional surrender from the Japanese.
Also the Japanese were highly dependent on import of raw-materials from other territories, by 1945 Japan was in a dire need of ALL raw-materials. The Japanese Navy couldn't even leave their own ports because of fuel-shortages.
Japan could have have starved to death through a blockage of its ports. In short, if the USA didn't have the A-bomb, they would have come up with their terms earlier or waited until Stalin would have giving the attack order. This would have forced the Japanese into surrendering unconditionally.
I do however agree with you that the Soviets would massacre the Japanese. But luckily that didn't happen.

Cheers,

Rob

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

 

[sferrin]

Here is a very important question for you based on a simple assumption, Nukes were never invented and let's even say cannot be created they are no part of the 'military equation' in the world today.

Uncle Joe would've steamrolled Europe within a few years of the end of WWII... let's say 1950. The US may or may not have had much of a military presence in Europe at the time; without nukes, the war in Japan would have dragged on *years* longer, and with a Soviet invasion of the north of Japan, the country would ahve been split in half like Germany. By 1950, the US would probably still be fighting a Japanese insurgency campaign in South Japan; North Japan under Stalin would almost certainly have been pacified, possibly by Stalin allowing Mao to send a few million Chinese troops to rape and murder their way through the joint, cutting the Japanese population down to, oh, let's say ten percent their pre-war levels.

So with North Japan pacified under Communist control and the US military bottled up in South Japan, western Europe, still largely trashed from the war, and with neither Marshall Plan nor much of a US military presence, wakes up to a Soviet invasion. By this point excess millions of Americans are already dead. Tens of million excess Japanese dead. Millions of Chinese/Soviet dead in North Japan. Millions more are about to die in western Europe. That's 1950.

And then comes 1951...

Hi Scott/OBB,

Usually I agree with your observations or remarks, but this time you are a bit off the mark..
A world without A/H/N-bombs wouldn't been that different then it was then.
Germany has been defeating using conventional means, the A-bomb wasn't needed.

Japan did already propose a peace-treaty in January 1945 to the Allies, which rejected it. Mainly because the Japanese wanted some conditions being met. The Allies only wanted unconditional surrender from the Japanese.
Also the Japanese were highly dependent on import of raw-materials from other territories, by 1945 Japan was in a dire need of ALL raw-materials. The Japanese Navy couldn't even leave their own ports because of fuel-shortages.
Japan could have have starved to death through a blockage of its ports. In short, if the USA didn't have the A-bomb, they would have come up with their terms earlier or waited until Stalin would have giving the attack order. This would have forced the Japanese into surrendering unconditionally.
I do however agree with you that the Soviets would massacre the Japanese. But luckily that didn't happen.

Cheers,

Rob

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

In short, nukes were a good thing.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Usually I agree with your observations or remarks

A wise policy.

A world without A/H/N-bombs wouldn't been that different then it was then.
Germany has been defeating using conventional means, the A-bomb wasn't needed.

We're talking about how the world would have been different if nukes didn't exist. Events from *before* nukes are obviously irrelevant.

Japan did already propose a peace-treaty in January 1945 to the Allies, which rejected it. Mainly because the Japanese wanted some conditions being met. The Allies only wanted unconditional surrender from the Japanese.

Damned straight!

Japan could have have starved to death through a blockage of its ports. In short, if the USA didn't have the A-bomb, they would have come up with their terms earlier or waited until Stalin would have giving the attack order. This would have forced the Japanese into surrendering unconditionally.

When the Japanese directly faced enemy troops, whether on the Asian mainland or on Pacific islands, they very, very rarely surrendered. Instead they fought to the death. When Americans landed on islands with significant Japanese civilian populations, the Japanese civilians not only picked up pointy sticks to fight to the last, they sometimes killed their own children to prevent them being captured by the Americans.

Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDUy0uzmaU4

Japanese civilians chucking themselves off a cliff on Saipan, choosing suicide over surrender. About a thousand of 'em did this or something like it. This was just some small island. What makes you think that Japanese civilians on the "holy" home islands would have done any less?

By the time the decision to drop the bomb had to be made, the complete fanatacism of the Japanese people was on display to the Truman administration. What can men do against such reckless hate? The prospect of invading a nation full of the type of people found at Saipan was a nightmare. We have the benefit of hindsight. The Truman administration had films like those above. If that's what you've got, that's what you base your decisions upon. And given the defenses that the Japanese were setting up against an invasion, Truman made the right call.

Put it in a modern perspective: Al Queda was PO'ed at the US for, in part, setting up shop on "holy ground." This didn't mean bulldozing a mosque and erecting a latrine; this meant building runways and bases simply on the Arabian peninsula. if they were ready to be that ticked off about some infrastructure improvments in the middle of nowhere, imagine how angry they'd be if the US Marines invaded, conquered and occupied Mecca. *THAT* is approximately how upset the Imperial Japanese would have been had foreign troops invaded the Home Islands.

If a sizable invasion force hand landed before the Emperor finally gave in, that war might *never* freakin' end. In the end, the Japanese were faced with a science fiction weapon they simply couldn't even adequately *explain,* an invasion would be something really quite mundane in comparison. Had Hirohito tried to surrender to a mere invasion, his military would've rebelled.

 

[BAROBA]

The fanaticism of the Japanese during ww2 is not something to doubt about.
( Killing their children is in part the result of the image that was created of the Americans, (they were going to eat them according to their own government,) so that was the more humane thing to do according to the parents.)
But it would have been the government that would have surrendered, if the Americans didn't have the A-bomb and wanted to field-test it ( in part to impress the Soviets), they might have solved it all diplomatically. It would have extended the war maybe a year more, but as soon the Allies noticed that the Japanese were pretty much out of resources, they could have starved it to death through blockades and fire-bombing every rice-field they could find. Putting even more stress on the government to accept defeat the Allied-way.

Do have A-bombs saved the world from more wars? I think it did. I think the cycle of large scale-conflict wouldn't have been broken by any other means ( like the UN, or the powerblocks NATO vs Warshawpact). The conflicts would only have grown larger and may have included other continents that weren't involved as much in WW2.
Just my two cents.
Rob

 

[Orionblamblam]

But it would have been the government that would have surrendered, if the Americans didn't have the A-bomb and wanted to field-test it ( in part to impress the Soviets), they might have solved it all diplomatically. It would have extended the war maybe a year more...

By which time Japan would be swarming with Communists. It was not exactly a blinding revelation that Communism was every bit the threat that Fascism had been; thus it was important to end the war agaisnt Japan in a way that helped hold off the threat of a followup war in the region against the Commies.

Do have A-bombs saved the world from more wars? I think it did. I think the cycle of large scale-conflict wouldn't have been broken by any other means

Indeed. For the first time in history, there was a major power that had the ability to reach every single nation on the planet and lay a major smackdown on 'em if they pissed that major power off. The world lucked out in that that major power was the USA; no other nation has ever had such power... and such restraint. Even though the Soviets demonstrated a bomb in 1948, the US could have easily nuked them into oblivion with relative impunity into the 1950's. And yet the US did no such thing. Can anyone *seriously* imagine any other major nation in world history having that kind of power and *not* using it? For the better part of a thousand years, had the English nukes, France would have shortly become a smoking ruin (and vice versa). Every Asian power would have nuked its neighbors. Africa is loaded with tribes (Hutus, Tutsis, etc) who would have merrily vaporized their neighbors. The Incas woulda nuked the Aztecs. The Romans would've glassed the Celts. And the middle east... yeesh, they'd nuke themselves, just to prove how hard-core they are. And don't get me started on the Canadians. They're shifty. Sure, they look all polite and friendly, but we all know it's just a guise to mask their genocidal urge for conquest and domination, eh.

 

[blackkite]

Hi!
http://www.nukestrat.com/nukestatus.htm

 

[Triton]

Wasn't the use of atomic weapons considered by the United States during the Korean War?

 

[UpForce]

A lot of conjecture and speculation in this discussion. That is sort of antithetically apt as the actual use of WMDs effectively depletes the options of the parties to a conflict. Merely having WMDs effectively depletes many of those options already. This reminds me of the "Stockholm syndrome" where one's captor becomes the only constant, the evil that one knows and what one clings to. That is a severely compromised, stagnant and ultimately untenable World view, though.

The only time nuclear weapons have been used in anger was when only one nation had them. That rubicon hasn't been crossed in two opposing directions since, as per the tortured logic of a beautiful mind (perhaps not so coincidentally from that very same nation). Game theory has evolved a bit since then, so the truths we've held self-evident may have shifted somewhat. We've certainly been found wanting in practicing those truths.

In any case I very much doubt there's a statistically significant cultural or geographical majority for whom the active use of nuclear weapons by anyone could be, or ever appear to be, even remotely rational given any conceivable cost/benefit analysis. (We'll forgo the first or second use tit-for-tat logic here since once you - in all probability a mostly passive participant - are (theoretically) incinerated it is of quite insignificant personal Earthly significance, consolation or indignity to have been right or wrong in your allegiances and actions in comparison to the event and its inescapable ramifications.) Merely due to the necessary command and control structures WMDs are fundamentally totalitarian tools and symmetrically tools for totalitarianism. This goes for ostensibly democratic nuclear equipped societies as well, something which should not be lost on anyone.

Possession of such technology isn't really a choice though, something that the militarization of such knowledge tends to occlude. Everyone is a party to this, to variable degree. We have come to this point due to curiosity, imagination and the meticulous application of the scientific method to the World we aspire to perceive. The motivation, always necessarily incomplete as true discovery and the exploration of true unknowns are involved, has been overwhelmingly to improve the human (and perhaps even the Universal) condition. To make the absolute most of this (oftentimes paradoxical) knowledge in the service and benefit of mankind has at the very least the potential to make a single unthinkable - as in the purposeful human causation of that unthinkable - even more starkly so.

Existential nihilists may disagree, but even they should have no rationale to impede the effort as for them it'd surely appear to be for naught anyway.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Reads like someone trying to impress a philosophy major. What's her name? Go get 'em, tiger!

 

[UpForce]

Reads like someone trying to impress a philosophy major. What's her name? Go get 'em, tiger!

Uh ... I think that needs to be severely abridged to work as a pick-up line.

"Let's do like an atom and split for a bang!"

A bit quaint and grossly inaccurate to the original intent, but might actually work for the purpose.

 

[uk 75]

This discussion reminds me of the discussion between Hitler and Chamberlain in 1938 at Bad Godesberg ( I think) where Chamberlain who had made his first flight in an aeroplane was so impressed by the fragility of the little houses he saw from the air that he wanted to convey some of this to the German Leader. In the same discussion Hitler told Chamberlain that just because Britain had 15 capital ships it did not give Chamberlain the right to determine the fate of Germany.
Deterrence in its primitive form worked on the rational Chamberlain who had lost brothers in World War 1 and assumed mistakenly that Hitler shared his rational fear of a re-run. Sadly, German civilians learnt the truth of Chamberlain's warnings at the hands of Bomber Command, just as Allied civilans in Europe learnt it at the hands of the Luftwaffe.
I have often wondered what would have happened if instead of the Home Fleet Chamberlain had had at his disposal a Bomber Command equipped with fully operational Lancasters and Halifaxes, or better yet, Valiants with Blue Danubes. Unfortunately given the irrational nature of Hitler and the greater fear of the consequences for both Britain and Germany on the part of Chamberlain (Churchill on the other hand...)
Fast forward this to the Cold War. Both Kruschev and Kennedy had experienced war and even though they did not understand fully the technical capabilities of their arsenals they both grasped the rational reaction to the irrational phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction". Their successors had a similar respect, even in the case of the cynical Nixon and the senile Breshnev. Reasonable men were deterred by nuclear war in a way that no conventional war could deter them.
Less certain, however, as the reaction of Mao Tse Tung. The risk of a Soviet pre-emptive strike on China to stop a war with China was probably the greatest nuclear danger of the Cold War years. We shall not know how close Russia and China came to conflict until China releases its accounts of those years. The danger was sufficient to get the Nixon White House to put pressure on the Soviets.
That leaves us with the world after the Cold War. Fortunately Saddam did not have the bomb. Kim Jong Il is the first Post War dictator to have the weapon. Whether his successor, Kim Jong Un, or in the case of Iran, the Council of Ayatollahs in Gom (rather than the President or Prime Minister) will be restrained by their rationality and humanity we do not know. On the other side, Israel lives in the shadow of the Holocaust, which erradicated more human beings than any nuclear war so far. Knowing that Israel faces total destruction in even some conventional conflict let alone one involving nuclear weapons, ensures that no sane Israeli can give up a means of avoiding a second Holocaust however slender than means may be.

 

[uk 75]

I have just noticed a silly error in my reply above this should have read

"Kim Jong Il is the first Post War dictator outside the big Five Nuclear powers to have the bomb"

 

[BAROBA]

I have just noticed a silly error in my reply above this should have read

"Kim Jong Il is the first Post War dictator outside the big Five Nuclear powers to have the bomb"

It was pretty clear, unless you call the big Five Nuclear powers dictators too Then this is much clearer

 

[Triton]

I wonder if there is a threat of a fifth Indo-Pakastani War, perhaps again over Kashmir, that could escalate from a conventional conflict into a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. Two countries that are considered allies to the United States and the West.

With the arms build-up currently going on in Asia, there might be tensions between India and the People's Republic of China, both nuclear armed states.

There is also the risk that one or more of Pakistan's nuclear may get in the hands of jihadists, such as Al Qaeda, or those with jihadist sympathies. Further what of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) who have historically supported the Taliban?

 

[uk 75]

Triton

I had not included India and Pakistan in my comments because I was trying to contrast the rational with the irrational in demonstrating the limitations of nuclear deterrence. However, so far I would say that the possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan has kept their still rational governments from embarking on a war which might escalate to nuclear exchange.

Speculating about the future in a country as complex as Pakistan is hard to do with any accuracy.
Pakistan would have little to gain and much to lose by passing on actual nuclear warheads to a third party. Retaliation in kind from the United States against its military and political elite would be certain and swift.

India is developing and deploying a submarine based nuclear deterrent which must be aimed more widely than Pakistan. Given its poor performance in conventional military exchanges in the 60s with China, India might be forgiven for wanting a minimum deterrent of its own to match China's carefully limited nuclear arsenal. As long as both countries continue to be ruled by politicians with some rationality the nuclear deterrent should function.

Fortunately, our age has produced no irrational dictators of the magnitude of a Hitler. Both Stalin and Mao may have been dictators and capable of great cruelty, notably to their own people, but they were rational in their calculations and use of power. The lesser dictators who shared Hitler's capriciousness like Saddam have so far not had access to the power of the atom. I would argue that others like Milosevic, the Kims, Mugabe and even the Ayatollahs in Gom are concerned with a rational if criminal use of power. Nontheless the warning of Chamberlain's exchanges with Hitler are clear, there may come a time when another monster ego will not be deterred by the threat to erase his (or her) country from the face of the Earth.

How to deal with the conundrum is the nightmare that haunted Tony Blair and George Bush and led to their ill advised adventure in Iraq. If Chamberlain and Daladier had stood up to Hitler at Munich and plunged Europe into a stalemate rerun of World War 1 they too might have been pilloried by a liberal media that has never had to face such terrible decisions. Churchill had a clear answer to the conundrum but even he at the end of his life tried desperately to get the Soviet Union and the USA to row back from the nuclear brink.

 

[Grey Havoc]

A Center for Naval Analyses paper from 1987: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a184910.pdf

 

[topspeed3]

Watch this video:



Japanese civilians chucking themselves off a cliff on Saipan, choosing suicide over surrender. About a thousand of 'em did this or something like it. This was just some small island. What makes you think that Japanese civilians on the "holy" home islands would have done any less?

By the time the decision to drop the bomb had to be made, the complete fanatacism of the Japanese people was on display to the Truman administration. What can men do against such reckless hate? The prospect of invading a nation full of the type of people found at Saipan was a nightmare. We have the benefit of hindsight. The Truman administration had films like those above. If that's what you've got, that's what you base your decisions upon. And given the defenses that the Japanese were setting up against an invasion, Truman made the right call.

But they had lost the war by then already ( and nazis surrendered )...why just leave them there on the Island on their own...and not nuke them..why they had to nuke them..little children and most doctors too etc. It is horrifying...even to think about it.

 

[TaiidanTomcat]

Watch this video:



Japanese civilians chucking themselves off a cliff on Saipan, choosing suicide over surrender. About a thousand of 'em did this or something like it. This was just some small island. What makes you think that Japanese civilians on the "holy" home islands would have done any less?

By the time the decision to drop the bomb had to be made, the complete fanatacism of the Japanese people was on display to the Truman administration. What can men do against such reckless hate? The prospect of invading a nation full of the type of people found at Saipan was a nightmare. We have the benefit of hindsight. The Truman administration had films like those above. If that's what you've got, that's what you base your decisions upon. And given the defenses that the Japanese were setting up against an invasion, Truman made the right call.

But they had lost the war by then already ( and nazis surrendered )...why just leave them there on the Island on their own...and not nuke them..why they had to nuke them..little children and most doctors too etc. It is horrifying...even to think about it.

Because they brought the United States into a world war via a sneak attack and the alternative was a full scale invasion that was expected to kill millions and take 2 years?

We were already bombing the crap out of them and they weren't surrendering as it was, a fire raid killed 90,000 in Tokyo. It wasn't an atom bomb but it killed more than the Hiroshima attack. As people we tend to have this bizarre quirk, where killing 65,000 with an atom bomb is "less humane" than killing 90,000 with fire storms. No one remembers that Tokyo attack but Hiroshima and Nagasaki are infamous.

The atom bomb snapped Japan out of a plan for national suicide. Scott in his original post is right, Atom bombs have saved lives, as counter intuitive as it sounds. The great gamble of course is that deterrence failed, but that has yet to happen.

The last thing I will add is yes, nuclear weapons will be used if that is the option that makes the most sense. In Japans case that was the option was that deemed to end the war the fastest with the least amount of bloodshed. as opposed to full scale in invasion or a blockade that would have starved the entire population.

 

[topspeed3]

Then I have ask why two nukes..why not just one and then ask...will you surrender or we throw in few more ? ???

 

[bobbymike]

Watch this video:



Japanese civilians chucking themselves off a cliff on Saipan, choosing suicide over surrender. About a thousand of 'em did this or something like it. This was just some small island. What makes you think that Japanese civilians on the "holy" home islands would have done any less?

By the time the decision to drop the bomb had to be made, the complete fanatacism of the Japanese people was on display to the Truman administration. What can men do against such reckless hate? The prospect of invading a nation full of the type of people found at Saipan was a nightmare. We have the benefit of hindsight. The Truman administration had films like those above. If that's what you've got, that's what you base your decisions upon. And given the defenses that the Japanese were setting up against an invasion, Truman made the right call.

But they had lost the war by then already ( and nazis surrendered )...why just leave them there on the Island on their own...and not nuke them..why they had to nuke them..little children and most doctors too etc. It is horrifying...even to think about it.

Because they brought the United States into a world war via a sneak attack and the alternative was a full scale invasion that was expected to kill millions and take 2 years?

We were already bombing the crap out of them and they weren't surrendering as it was, a fire raid killed 90,000 in Tokyo. It wasn't an atom bomb but it killed more than the Hiroshima attack. As people we tend to have this bizarre quirk, where killing 65,000 with an atom bomb is "less humane" than killing 90,000 with fire storms. No one remembers that Tokyo attack but Hiroshima and Nagasaki are infamous.

The atom bomb snapped Japan out of a plan for national suicide. Scott in his original post is right, Atom bombs have saved lives, as counter intuitive as it sounds. The great gamble of course is that deterrence failed, but that has yet to happen.

The last thing I will add is yes, nuclear weapons will be used if that is the option that makes the most sense. In Japans case that was the option was that deemed to end the war the fastest with the least amount of bloodshed. as opposed to full scale in invasion or a blockade that would have starved the entire population.

Bolded section - That was Sam Cohen's great argument about development of the neutron bomb. So you'd rather lay waste to Europe and make it uninhabitable with 'dirty' nukes than use an 'evil' neutron bomb

 

[sferrin]

Then I have ask why two nukes..why not just one and then ask...will you surrender or we throw in few more ? ???

They had several days to surrender between the 1st and 2nd. They didn't.

 

[topspeed3]

Then I have ask why two nukes..why not just one and then ask...will you surrender or we throw in few more ? ???

They had several days to surrender between the 1st and 2nd. They didn't.

But they had no idea what had happened since the whole city was blown away and all communications etc..and people. I bet nobody in Japan knew what had happened. Single plane flew over.

Bolded section - That was Sam Cohen's great argument about development of the neutron bomb. So you'd rather lay waste to Europe and make it uninhabitable with 'dirty' nukes than use an 'evil' neutron bomb

Yeah really great !
Finland and Sweden did already receive dirty bomb from Chernobyl in 1986.

 

[TaiidanTomcat]

I bet nobody in Japan knew what had happened.

You'd bet wrong then. The Japanese weren't simpletons.

since the whole city was blown away and all communications

If that is true then it just proves that yes, the Americans were using a weapon that could wipe out a whole city. So:

Option A. The city is nearly annihilated and word is passed of what happened or

Option B. The city is completely gone including communications, which says the exact same thing without need for words.

The US was not trying to "keep it a secret" they wanted Japan to know what was coming. They wanted Japan to see what had come. And then they told Japan it would happen again if they didn't surrender. They did everything short of putting a neon flashing sign on Mt. Fuji.

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 explosive 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.

On December 7th 1941 Japan initiated a sneak attack that would lead to atomic destruction on their homeland. Imperial Japan is not a victim-- they allied Nazi Germany and went to war with the free world.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

 

[RanulfC]

But they had lost the war by then already ( and Nazis surrendered )...why just leave them there on the Island on their own...and not nuke them..why they had to nuke them..little children and most doctors too etc. It is horrifying...even to think about it.

You have that wrong. Japan had not "lost" the war, in fact they (mostly the military but a majority of the government too) seriously planned on continuing to fight no matter what. The Allies had already agreed and informed Japan that nothing less than total surrender was possible, and the Japanese military and government had made it known that was unacceptable.

Add to this the fact that America in general was still upset about Pearl Harbor and both the government and civilians were becoming increasingly aware of the atrocities that Japan had wreaked in captured territory. The mounting casualties of the Pacific war were not deterring Americans but were in fact increasing their anger. And then there was the "examples" of Siapan and Okinawa and the fanatical, suicidal actions carried out by both Japanese soldiers and civilians.

An invasion of the Japanese home islands would have cost millions of Allied soldiers lives, and probably ten times that in Japanese civilian and military casualties.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall)

After we dropped the A-bombs on Japan it became clear that the Allies (especially America) could now do with ONE aircraft what had taken squadrons of bombers before then. ONE bomber could destroy ONE city, and the Japanese were well aware that we had HUNDREDS of B-29s. There was clearly no way they could find an "honorable" way to die in a fight like that, they had no idea how many of these bombs we had but they knew that they had no defense against it. In a conventional war of attrition like the invasion they expected to fight it was possible they could have inflicted enough casualties to bring the war to a stand still and make America (and the Allies) back off and re-think the terms of surrender. (This was another "failure" of cultural understanding similar to the that which lead to Pearl Harbor. Such casualties would have hardened the Allies to do whatever needed to be done to eliminate the "threat" of Japan instead of making them pause. It helps here to recall that the "original" Allied postwar plan for Germany was to turn it into a low population agrarian society without the capability or will to ever make war again. The plan for postwar Japan was less defined but similar, and such a 'cost' would surely have made postwar conditions much, much worse. At the time at least 13% of the people in the United States were in FAVOR of total annihilation of the Japanese, and there was a very wide tolerance for extremism against the Japanese.)

As it was the Japanese military was ready and willing to continue the war despite the A-Bomb, and if need be drag the rest of Japan to destruction as well. They planned a "coup" and to isolate the Emperor to insure that the war continued and had the Emperor not taken the totally unprecedented and unexpected step of directly addressing the people of Japan they probably would have gotten away with it.

Why two bombs? Japan was invited to surrender after the first bomb, they ignored the offer, just like every previous offer. Two bombs had been assembled and shipped, one a Uranium bomb the other a Plutonium bomb. The former was dropped on Hiroshima the latter on Nagasaki. Again the Japanese were invited to surrender and spare themselves more bombings, they STILL took three days to "decide" and it was a pretty much unilateral decision by the Emperor himself. (And again, the military was ready to "kidnap" their own Emperor in order to continue the war)

As it was had the Emperor NOT surrendered on August 12th another A-Bomb was due to arrive for use around the 19th and probably would have been used as soon as possible.
There was an ongoing debate on whether to use the bombs as they became available or "save them" for a pre-invasion preparatory bombing campaign, but the "schedule" was planned as arrival and storage of at least three bombs per month starting in September. That was about six bombs available for Operation Olympic planned in October with up to 15 bombs for use during Operation Coronet in the spring of 1946. Given the predisposition against Japan prior to the invasion one could easily foresee Operation Coronet being postponed and the go ahead given to A-Bomb the majority of Japan once casualty figures began to be received from Operation Olympic.

Randy