May it never happen again.

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Lemex, Aug 6, 2015.

  1. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Homo homi lupis - Man is a wolf to man.
     
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  2. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    If only that kind of horror was confined to wartime... alas, that same shit is happening right now, somewhere.
     
  3. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    I was watching NHK World last night and they had a lot of 'seventy years after' stuff on, plus the live coverage of Abe's speech. One of the things that really burnt into my mind was a school getting destroyed in the blast, along with dozens of school children.

    Global powers need to understand that atom bombs are not war winning weapons, they are world destroying weapons: just a handful of them being dropped can fuck our atmosphere and ecology for decades.

    The great Carl Sagan sums it up best for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the full 7 minute segment.
     
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  4. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    They do understand this. This reasoning is part of the logic to having them in the first place. They are not meant as war winning weapons, but war avoiding weapons. Not small wars, but large WW2 type wars. They help facilitate diplomacy because the alternative is too severe. The two bombs dropped in 1945 were to said to help win the war, a war they were already winning, but the firebombing of Tokyo a few weeks before actually caused more harm, death and destruction than both the bombs combined. Debate still rages about the necessity of the attacks, which was more about showboating against the Russians than forcing the Japanese surrender. Basically telling the Russsians not to dare start a war against the US... ergo, avoid a war. Not that the victims should be forgotten or the horror downplayed.

    They know that you can't win a nuclear war. There's a reason none of the 16000 current warheads or the >125000 warheads made since 1945 have been detonated in anger, despite several 'small' wars and international tensions between ideologies and superpowers. Who starts a fight they can't possibly win?

    Unfortunatly, it's too late to undo technology and now we are stuck with them.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2015
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  5. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    It's a spiteful and dishonourable strategy: if I can't have it, no one can.

    But this spawns a very complex debate about forcing ideologies on others and the human rights behind them. Atom bombs are nothing more than a checkmate tactic, but that doesn't give them the right to destroy the world for those uninvolved in their conflict. This is exactly why Albert Einstein sent out hundreds of letters in concern about the future implications of the bomb.
     
  6. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    It's not really 'if I can't have it.....' It's more like, don't burn my house down or your house will go down too, and the whole fucking neighbourhood. So don't start shit.

    That's right. If Pakistan and India lose reason and attack out of pride or spite, everyone else suffers. Not as much as a total war between Russia and America, as they only have 100, and there have been some years in the 50s and 60s where more than 100 detonations were made to test the weapons, which as far as we know had no international environmental impact. (over 2000 nuclear weapons have been detonated since 1945)

    Ethically it's totally unfair, but it's a reality. And a nuclear deterrent only works if both sides have it and both sides fear the outcome. So as long as nations fear the outcome we'll be fine. It's only when someone with a death wish gets at the controls that life as we know it reaches the end of the book. And it will probably be about nothing more than an insult.
     
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  7. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    Well atom bombs would only be used as a last resort, which is why it's more of a 'if I can't have you, neither can you' situation. If a country was trying to invade another, they wouldn't just blow the place to hell because that defeats the whole object of taking land. Wars based on ideologies aren't very commonplace in developed countries any more because the average thinking person wouldn't stand for such nonsense, but they are still fought in the lesser developed and still highly religious regions of the world, like the middle-east. Now it's more about land, and land equals resources. To be honest, if there is ever going to be a World War 3, then it's probably going to be over a shortage of resources. Everyone has their eyes on Africa now because it's an easily manipulated, rich in resources continent that America, China, Russia, and other economic powers want to sink their teeth into. Africa is still a hub for the weapons trade, which makes up a large percentage of the participating countries ledgers (heavily manipulated of course), but now it's also becoming a place of investment to establish presence and ideologies.

    The removal of atomic weaponry will ultimately equalise the battlefield. Of course, in this day and age, the word 'battlefield' is shameful anyway. A country or ideology has the right to defend itself, but it doesn't have the right to destroy everyone else in one swift blow. As Carl Sagan said, 'Nuclear arms threaten every person on the Earth.' That video doesn't contain it, but prior to that segment he talks about the after effects of nuclear war. World War 2 ripped across a large portion of the world, but we were able to bounce back and rebuild, but there is no coming back from nuclear war. Removing nuclear arms doesn't mean that wars will end, but it does mean that the world won't end, unless we get hit by a rogue asteroid that is. :p
     
  8. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    This is a crude but scary video made by a Japanese artist showing the location of every single nuclear detonation in history. It starts a bit slow.



    Never again.
     
  9. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Yeah, but the point of a nuclear threat is not about attack, but defence. Attacking a nuclear nation would be self-defeating. That's the point of a nuclear arsenal. If winning a war was simply about having nuclear weapons the US (and all other nuclear nations) wouldn't invest trillions into a conventional military. Nuclear weapons are useless for attack. There have been and will be plenty of small scale wars over all sorts of reasons. But as long as they have the weapons, I doubt anyone would dare attack a nuclear armed nation. The removal of nuclear weapons will make conventional war less risky and probably end up provoking a similar conflict to WW2.

    I hate nuclear weapons, but they do serve a purpose. They do give nations the ability to protect themselves from attack. But, like guns in society, we'd all be much safer in the long term without them.
     
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  10. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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  11. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    I understand what you're saying, and you're right, it does prevent aggression; but in this day and age they are totally unnecessary, and it's burnt into the psyches of those still living in the Cold War era. Not only that, but they are just too dangerous to be a deterrent. A country shouldn't be allowed to possess weaponry that dangerous, even for defensive purposes, because it totally defies the rights of other inhabitants of the planet.

    In the minds of overzealous military leaders and the political elite, nuclear weapons make the world a 'safer place,' but in reality, they make it a very dangerous place. The world would be much safer without them.
     
  12. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Which is why the US has dismantled 59000 warheads and reduced the arsenal to 6000, including the further 4000 set for dismantling. And I wouldn't say they are un-necessary. You could argue we have this current 'day and age' because of them. (I'm not gonna) But just because you are safe and living in peace does not mean you remove the tools that allowed you to be safe and living in peace.

    They're not overzealous or they would have used them. So far they've been used responsibly (i.e. not at all). Yes, the world would be safer in the long run, but the weapons are here to stay, sadly.

    Luckily, one of the good things about a nuclear arsenal, is that you want your enemy to know as much about them as possible- yield, delivery systems, amount. That's why so much is known about international arsenals, except for Isreal and North Korea. In fact, I think many nations exaggerate. They're expensive, and an empty tube on a launcher is cheaper.
     
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  13. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    My son and I went to Nagasaki, saw the ground zero memorial and the museum. Very emotional experience.

    I've not seen the book you are referring to @Link the Writer , but I wonder how this could be given anyone exposed to that much heat directly from the bomb would have died from radiation:
    There were massive fires after the bomb fell, maybe that is what they were referring to. I read an account of people trying to escape the firestorm that followed the bombing.

    The museum has a hand bone fused with glass from a victim.
    [​IMG]
     
  14. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    They say the fireball created by the blast was almost 400 meters across burning at 6000 degrees celcius. That's as hot as the surface of the sun.
     
  15. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    That's really hard to doubt, it burned the shadow of people into the stone around them, and their black outline can still be seen to this day. Imagine actually seeing that! It's as close as anyone can come to a real ghost - at least as far as I know.
     
  16. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Puts it into perspective.

    Another scary fact, the Little Boy bomb was so inefficient that only 1% of the 64 kgs of Uranium went into fission. Of this mass only 0.6 g (0.021 oz) was transformed into a different type of energy, initially kinetic energy, then heat and radiation. The rest was scattered in the explosion.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2015
  17. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    My dad was one of the army personnel sent into Nagasaki, shortly after the bombs fell. I asked him what it was like, and he started to cry. He said it was too terrible to talk about. I was heartbroken on his behalf, never mind on the behalf of the people who died there. My dad was one of the kindest men who ever walked the earth. He didn't have any personal guilt, because his job while he was stationed in the Pacific was as a non-combatant postal employee, which mirrored his civilian job. I think he was able to put the experience of Nagasaki behind him, but he never forgot it.
     
  18. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    I wouldn't like to imagine what he saw.
     
  19. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    I feel sorry for Japan; not only are they the only country to ever suffer the A-Bomb, but they also sit on one of the most unstable parts of the planet.
     
  20. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    They did do some nasty shit in the war though. The innocent victims of the bombings are certainly not to be forgotten, but the fuckheads in charge of their government and military, who not only refused to surrender but were also responsible for some of the most gruesome and horrific crimes against humanity I've ever read about, are not to be forgiven.
     
  21. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    Me neither. Those poor people... :(
     
  22. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    Very true, but every country did some unsavoury shit during the war, and some countries still doing really fucked up stuff still today, at black sites and such.

    However, I think Japan has really changed since world war 2, and I now feel that they are one of the leading countries with the right idea for progressing into the future. Yes, they did some horrific stuff, but they definitely learnt their lesson from it.
     
  23. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    It certainly was a rebirth.
     
  24. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    You ever see that film, Railway Man? That's really good, and based on a true story.
     
  25. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    I can't help but wonder how much of this history is taught to Japanese schoolchildren. I've often wondered the same thing about German schoolchildren.
     

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