A Chunk of Trinitite Reminds Us of the Power of the Atomic Bomb
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
The sequel, _Dark Sun_, about the making of the hydrogen bomb, is OK but has a lot more Cold War espionage than science.
Both worth a read!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb[0] https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/historyculture/trinity-site.h...
That is, from what I could see, you can almost just turn off the highway the drive to it, and I didn't see any kind of fencing or whatnot; there also seemed to be more than a few "back ways" into it via jeep trails and such.
I've had the idea just to drive out there one weekend, camp overnight, then explore the area for a day or two, then leave. But I don't know if that would be considered trespassing on government property or something?
It just looks like a large collection of space telescopes and mostly empty desert, with a few buildings scattered about, but not much in the way of "people things" - which I doubt are needed except for maintenance purposes (which is probably what few buildings there are there are for).
Other than that, it just looks like a slightly-improved piece of desert landscape - kinda like what wind farms look like and such on the California/Arizona border area (which you can easily drive up to via maintenance roads).
There wouldn't be much for you to see unless you were there for a tour. But there are plenty of public roads where you could totally drive up and see the dishes if you wanted.
This is often discussed, that the tower was turned from solid steel to vapor, but isn't what happened. The tower was no longer standing but was still there to be founud. Many bits were melted and surely some bits disappeared, but the bulk of the metal was still present on the ground after the blast. And this mattered. How close a metal structure could be to the blast was a vital question for project orion (A-bomb powered spacecraft).
This myth about the effect of the atomic bombing of Japan just refuses to die for some reason. The atomic bombing of Japan had literally zero effect on Japanese policymaking. By that point in the war, all of the major cities were rubble already, and only insignificant places in the backwoods of Western Japan like Hiroshima were being bombed for want of fresh targets. The fact that these bombs were "new" didn't mean much, and almost no one in power understood any of their implications (nor could anyone inform anyone since their communication lines were extremely primitive by that point, only covering important things like troop movements, battle readiness, materials, and foreign intelligence).
It was the mobilization of the Russians that prompted a Japanese surrender because, much like the Germans knew, it was FAR, FAR more preferable to be occupied by the Americans than by the Russians. The atomic bombs were just a sideshow, and only became important when revealed to the rest of the world.
Take care not to fall for over-dramatization by people with an agenda. While the atomic bomb is a fearsome weapon, in that specific regard, its effects were not special.
EDIT: A 2015 Japan Times article expresses it well:
"...On March 10, 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers flew over Tokyo in the dead of night, dumping massive payloads of cluster bombs equipped with a then-recent invention: napalm. A fifth of Tokyo was left a vast smoldering expanse of charred bodies and rubble.
Today, a modest floral monument in a downtown park honors the spirits of the 105,400 confirmed dead, many interred in common graves.
It was the deadliest conventional air raid ever, worse than Nagasaki and on a par with Hiroshima. But the attack, and similar ones that followed in more than 60 other Japanese cities, have received little attention, eclipsed by the atomic bombings and Japan’s postwar rush to rebuild..."
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly...
(And if you find yourself recoiling at the brutality visited upon the Japanese, bear in mind the combined death toll from the Japanese occupations across Asia are nearly triple of even that of the German Holocaust. While nobody's hands were clean in WW2, some hands were much, much dirtier than others.)
The WWII city-leveling low-yield atom bombs were delivered by a single aircraft (plus a non-combat escort).
Today's nukes are launched from armoured bunkers or invulnerable submarines, fly without pilot or crew, include multiple reentry warheads, and can devastate multiple cities from a single launch vehicle.
There is no comparision.
B-29s operated with relative impunity over Japan. They had a cruising altitude higher than most Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft guns could reach, could operate at night (Japan had minimal night fighter capability by that point), and only ~150 were lost over Japan to enemy action. (In contrast, the US lost nearly 5,000 B-17s in the war.)
Cost-wise, B-29 design production and production cost $3B. The Manhattan Project cost about $2B.
In the Vietnam war, the US dropped about 3.5x the number of TNT tonnage equivalent bombs than was used in WW2.
Likewise both Iraq wars exceeded WW2 tonnage, even if you include the 2 nukes dropped on Japan.
Part of this is due to advancements in conventional explosives (lighter explosives with more power than TNT) and larger conventional weapons and increased capacity of bombers. Not sure how many MOABs were used in the 2nd Iraq war, but it was more than one, and theyre about a 20k ton TNT equivalent (more powerful than the little boy nuke).
I dont have any handy citations, but the data is easily googled or on wikipedia.
Mainland US flights were unable to reach Japan, even from Hawaii or Alaska. Large-scale effort required control of a large portion of the Pacific and both launch and recovery capabilities.
A significant number of aircraft for the Doolittle raids (early in the war) were ditched before they could reach their designated LZs in China. The aircraft, B25B Mitchell medium bombers, could launch from carriers (easier to arrange for than island occupation), but lacked either the range or raw capability to land on the Hornet. The raids were effective as a shock and demonstration of US reach and capabilities, but had minimal direct military effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
Dresden required nearly 1,300 bombers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...
The ultimately produced bombs were deliverable via B-29, as that aircraft was available. The carrier-launched Mitchell B25B was also available and had a payload capacity of 3,000 lb., though that is 1/3 the weight of Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb). Whether or not a smaller package, or alternative delivery vehicle, could have been provided, I'm not sure. Though the challenge might have been surmountable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_B-25_Mitchell
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
Casualties per mission over the European theatre were tremendous. I don't recall the specific per-mission losses, but overall crew survival over a 25 mission tour was on the order of 50%. Japan's defences were less effective, but again, looking at use of atomic weapons generally, the statistics are relevant, and during the planning of the Manhattan Project, use of the bomb against Germany was considered.
http://www.ww2f.com/threads/bomber-crew-survival-rates-durin...
There's also the possibility that smaller flights might escape detection (smaller radar target).
Seven planes took part in the bombing of Hiroshima, six in that of Nagasaki. That means that we can’t say those raids were less risky for US soldiers than conventional bombing.
Also “tremendous cost” applies to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too, perhaps even more so.
Or drone bombers, if you prefer.
Those are enabled by nuclear weapons. Firebombing via drones would still be tremendously expensive.
Firebombing of European cities (constructed, generally, of much less flammable material than Japanese cities) took more work and was (thankfully) less successful. Dresden notably excepted.
Who's talking about the present situation? The OP was comparing the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese to the use of conventional weapons against the Japanese in the same war. The bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are sometimes treated as being qualitatively different from the firebombings of other cities because of the use of nuclear bombs and the OP was disagreeing with that sentiment. Obviously WWII era bombers don't compare with modern ICBMs but no one was saying otherwise.
The parents comment was that the suffering caused by the atomic bombs wasn’t that different than that caused by the fire bombing.
What do drone bombers have to do with that?
Costs matter. See the Jevons Paradox. And, as I've said before, scale matters (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13542735#13548498) (and more: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dredmorbius%20"scale%20matters...).
It matters more than very nearly anything else.
There were no medium or large cities left to flatten in August 1946.
I've read before, and I believe, that the Japanese military leaders and emperor were not that impressed with the A-bomb. And why should they have been? They already were ready for a one-condition surrender, and the U.S. did accept it (calling it unconditional, but the U.S. adhered to the one condition).
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/debate-over-japanese-...
- the motives for dropping the bombs were various, and it depends on whom you asked, but also dropping the bombs was not that significant a thing to the Japanese (for reasons given above),
- wanting an unconditional surrender seems like a legitimate or plausibly legitimate motive,
- and the Soviet entrance in the war definitely sharpened minds all around.
Any more complex ethical framework is inevitably only ethical in anyone's judgement until such time as it leads to a bad enough effect that nobody would countenance.
For example bombing cities is a horror whether its with nuclear or conventional weapons. If you could reliably predict that refraining from such unethical behavior would lead to an allied loss would you say that it remained the ethical choice knowing that it led to a greater evil end result?
I would say that any strategy however ethical that led to a Nazi/Imperial Japanese empire across the world would have been an unforgivable evil no matter how high minded.
Logically there is no just reason to desire the suffering of the Japanese people. A solution that also preserved the lives of the Japanese people would be most ethical but what if you have to pick?
Even if the end result is not on net evil like Nazi domination of the globe those whose responsibility is the lives of say the English people seem duty bound to consider the needs of their charges over a foreign power. Is this not ethical too? How does that interact with your ethical framework or utilitarians?
It seems more apt to suppose that a grand unified theory of ethics just doesn't exist. Its always more complicated than you think. It seems that in some cases refusing to sacrifice your personal ethics to prevent greater evil would itself be evil. Shitty right.
The last bit is, frankly, nonsense. If sound moral judgement is how one determines what is good or evil, then how does the suspension of that moral judgement (what you quaintly and confusingly refer to as "sacrific[ing] your personal ethics") allow you to judge which evil is greater, or what is evil in the first place?
And we're claiming that you're wrong. The doctrine of double effect is not the be-all and end-all of ethical thinking, either among theoretical ethicists nor among people wrestling with an ethical dilemma.
You seem to think that dogmatically stating your position proves the point. It doesn't.
[Edit: On re-reading, you stated that this is what you are claiming, not that this is true, so I was a bit harsh. You may have gotten some spill-over from a completely different topic, where a completely different poster was stating the conclusions of a non-mainstream theory as if merely stating them clinched the matter. It's a bit unfair to you that you get the shorter fuse for someone doing that, when you aren't quite doing so.]
While I disagreed with the substance of your post, it was the form that most annoyed me. (You could say I should focus on the substance, and you'd be right, but... I didn't.) Saying "theory X (that most people don't agree with) says Y about this subject, which supports my position" isn't a very effective argument unless you give reason why people should believe or trust X. As I said, I would hopefully have been less annoyed by it, except that I just ran into the same form on a completely different topic.
[1] Here I am presuming that the doctrine of double effect does not absolutely and automatically follow from natural law. I suspect that natural law is not unambiguous enough for that. I am not an expert, though; feel free to disagree if you think I'm wrong.
I myself do not accept the doctrine of double effect. When faced with a "do I or don't I" decision, inaction is just as much a choice as action, and you're also responsible for the (foreseeable) consequences of the inaction. If Truman had not dropped the bomb, and the US had not invaded, Truman would have borne some responsibility for the continued deaths in China, which his inaction allowed to continue.
Or, to use a different example, if you see the crime happening and you do nothing, you are to some degree complicit. You're not in the same category as the person who commits the crime, but you still have some responsibility.
(Hey, look, I'm giving unsupported assertions too! It's really hard not to, because nobody's got time to go back to first principles, agree on them, and then derive conclusions.)
Note I am not making this claim just asking the hypothetical.
The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous.
Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things.
The Japanese military was, clearly since they went so far as to attempt a coup against the emperor to prevent his surrender[0]. I don't know that the Japanese population at large shared the same sentiment by the end of the war. They didn't exactly fight to the death as expected during the occupation.
>The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous.
That interpretation would seem to come from the modern, postwar Japanese constitution, in which the emperor is just a figurehead without real power.
At the time, however, the emperor derived power from a claim of divine lineage from the sun goddess Amaterasu.
>Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things.
Not by much. The whole country was essentially a military dictatorship run by a religious cult overseen by a god-king. Common people tend not to have much influence over the policies of such regimes.
https://books.google.com/books?id=iuA-ZOCpTfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT...