US nuclear weapons testing can forever scar a nation.Just ask Marshall Island | Hacker News Reader

US nuclear weapons testing can forever scar a nation.Just ask Marshall Island

cnn.com

41 pointsmethuselah_in62 comments

Restarting testing is a bad idea. However this is a false equivalence. H-Bombing an island nation isn't the same as testing. Underground testing in the middle of nowhere NM has very little consequence to anyone. Restarting testing is unnecessary and a very bad precedent to set, but The Marshall Islands have nothing to do with it.

I think your point is missing the big picture. The US starting testing again -- even underground -- would likely start other countries testing again, at least some of which would happen aboveground.

at least some of which would happen aboveground

No reason to think this is true, All the major powers (US, Russia, China) have extensive underground testing capacity. All the recent powers have only done underground testing (Pakistan, India, North Korea). China was the last country to do an above ground test, in 1980, the 22 tests they've done since then were all underground.

I agree that restarting nuclear weapon testing is a bad idea but Russia has already taken that step by conducting several test flights of the 9M730 Burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile. It isn't a bomb, but flying an unshielded open cycle nuclear engine is in some ways even worse.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-ukraine-nuclear-miss...

How do we know that underground testing has little consequences if all the sites are national security zones. What we do know is that the underground geology is likely permanently compromised, at least within any meaningful time frame, and all nearby aquifers and other water deposits are poisoned for all intents and purposes into the distant future. These tests are ecological horrors that are unnecessary and destructive.

An interesting side effect of the US testing and association with Marshall Islands is that they were offered entry in the compact of free association, allowing Marshalese citizens mostly free travel and work rights to come to the USA and work and reside without a visa. Which offers . And vice versa, US citizen can live and work indefinitely in Majuro without visa.

About as many Marshallese live in USA as on the islands.

This article is in response to Trump's declaration that the USA is starting nuclear weapons testing, the the energy secretary clarified that these are "non-critical" tests, i.e. they are testing the non-nuclear parts of the weapon but will not be causing any nuclear explosions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd26yxxx3lo

"These are not nuclear explosions," Wright told Fox News on Sunday. "These are what we call non-critical explosions."

"Americans near historic test sites such as the Nevada National Security Site have no cause for concern," Wright said. "So you're testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry, and they set up the nuclear explosion."

We've been doing sub-critical component tests at the NNTS since the end of full-scale testing. So Wright is attempting to make it sound like there won't really be a change of policy, but with these guys who knows. It's not like Il Douche has any clue what he's talking about.

Even money that they simply set off some M80 on the White House lawn, and tell him that was a nuke test.

Say and do anything they can think of to delay the Epstein bomb from going off.

From US documentary back in the day: https://youtu.be/wqdRIt1EnkY?si=J3Ntmgyx6P66RpJt&t=217

"The Marshales caught by fallout got 175 wrenchons of radiation. These are fishing people, savages by our standards.

So a cross-section was brought to Chicago for testing. The first was John, the mayor of Rangala Battle. John, as we said, is a savage, but a happy aminable savage."

This is not US specific. Ask the people of French Polynesia how they feel about French nuclear weapons testing etc.

Are the French restarting testing?

I think restarting LIMITED testing is necessary to stay on top of technology and safety. Testing bombs is a BAD idea, but I'm not opposed to affirming the nuclear package and delivery systems are still viable and advancing in safety and all forbid for use.

Map of every nuclear explosion (over 2000) since 1945:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auRQg7AaE-U

The land/water distinction (or lack thereof) could use some work. I spent way too long trying to figure out what I was looking at before I released we were zoomed all the way out and the dark blue was land while the light blue was water.

Reminds me of this scene from Arrested Development https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/28b0326d-cba4-4d26-8c54-977f04b...

US atmospheric testing ended over 60 years ago. Underground testing doesn't "scar a nation". If nuclear deterrence relies on functional weapons, an underground test every few decades seems prudent. The last test was 1992. This article is fearmongering.

> If nuclear deterrence relies on functional weapons

I don't think it does. No one will mess with you if you merely have one bomb let alone the US which has 5k+ warheads and a triad of delivery mechanisms. Blowing up nuclear bombs anywhere for "testing" purposes is stupid.

How do you know they work? We haven't tested one in 33 years. Are you still confident after 50 years? 75 years? We all see the problems with aging physical infrastructure - bridges collapsing, dams failing. If you are relying on nuclear weapons as the primary deterrent to stop major wars, they need to work, and people need to know and believe they work. The cost is negligible.

What does testing one nuke say about the thousands of nukes you have stockpiled? The point is: having a nuclear weapon is already a major deterrent and no one is going to poke your buttons to find out if they work or not. Doing a test detonation doesn't move the needle at all.

> The cost is negligible

Environmentally, not at all neglible. Financially, probably since we fund our military more than anyone else.

I guess it depends on what you mean by 'scar'. Certainly the NNTS looks plenty scarred by the hundreds of subsidence craters left behind by the tests. Only once in a while would there be a leak like the Baneberry test in 1970. And plenty of the folks working in the test area were 'scarred', by radiation sickness, leukemia, etc.

> This article is fearmongering

of course it is, it's CNN

Just ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ask the orders of magnitude more of Americans and Japanese people who weren't slaughtered in a ground invasion. Or starved to death in the mass famines a blockade would have caused. And all their descendants. Sometimes wars require the least shitty of a menu of shitty choices.

The "ground invasion/famine due to blockade" are hypotheticals. They don't have the same weight as 2 real atomic bombs that killed real people. Evidence of plans for those could have been easily fabricated. Even if the plans were real, they could have been cancelled, or not worked.

I do agree that this costed less American lives than other options, and that in war most options are shitty. Inevitably, most involve civilian deaths. But the guy who picks the "let's mass kill civilians" is not going to get sympathy from me.

So no, I don't accept the "more people would have died" argument. Less US soldiers, yes. And it's not like the other side wasn't committing war crimes anyway.

Orders of magnitude more Japanese people would have died, but I guess you can just handwave that away as "fabricated evidence" because it supports your priors.

I didn't drive my car into a brick wall yesterday, but just because it didn't happen doesn't make it "fabricated evidence" that it was a much better choice for me not to drive my car into a brick wall.

> it supports your priors.

I know my priors. Do you know yours?

Here's another hypothetical: "We wanted to limit future soviet influence in Japan and were willing to flatten two cities full of civilians in order to do that"

There is ample data that says Japan was on the verge of surrendering before the US dropped atom bombs on them. If you doubt it, ask yourself why the US rushed to drop a second bomb only three days after the first. It was in our interest to intimidate the USSR before Japan had a chance to surrender.

https://time.com/6297240/atomic-bomb-expert-oppenheimer-inte...

I don’t see how that link could support your contention any less.

You're right. I apologize for using a link that did not support my argument.

The Wikipedia page on the debate about the bombings is very informative. I've seen what I consider to be strong arguments that the Soviet invasion of the Sakhalin Islands and potential invasion and occupation of Hokkaido.

I'm also disappointed that the critics to my original post failed to engage with the central question: What was the rush to bomb Nagasaki if not to ensure the US got to further intimidate Russia? (and test both a uranium-based bomb and a plutonium-based one)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing...

From the above Wikipedia page:

Ward Wilson wrote that "after Nagasaki was bombed only four major cities remained which could readily have been hit with atomic weapons", and that the Japanese Supreme Council did not bother to convene after the atomic bombings because they were barely more destructive than previous bombings. He wrote that instead, the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and South Sakhalin removed Japan's last diplomatic and military options for negotiating a conditional surrender, and this is what prompted Japan's surrender. He wrote that attributing Japan's surrender to a "miracle weapon", instead of the start of the Soviet invasion, saved face for Japan and enhanced the United States' world standing.[120]

Prime Minister Suzuki said in August 1945 that Japan surrendered as quickly as possible to the United States because Japan expected the Soviet Union to invade and hold Hokkaido, an action which would "destroy the foundation of Japan".[121][122]

I have never before seen someone so amply and reliably document their own wrongness.

Literally the exact quote of the historian in the article you're linking:

"Any myths about this history you want to debunk or set the record straight on?"

"The big one was that the Japanese were ready to surrender and would have surrendered even if we had not dropped those bombs. I think that is a myth. Oppenheimer seems to have believed that the weapon was used against a country that was about to surrender—as he puts it, essentially defeated. The Japanese were essentially defeated—that’s true. Their fleet had been sunk and their cities had been burned. But they were not ready to surrender."

"Did the bombs lead to the Japanese surrender on Sep. 2?"

"Two atomic bombs forced them to. The dominant reason [the U.S.] used the bomb was to end the war. [The U.S.] thought the only way to end the war was to use these two terrible weapons."

>"[The U.S.] thought the only way to end the war was to use these two terrible weapons."'

Sounds like a good recipe for all current and future wars. /s

> only three days after the first

Maybe, just maybe because Japan was so close to surrender that there even was a coup attempt to prevent him from surrendering?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

very simplistic to characterize the decision as a trolley problem. lots of factors went into it, not least of which wanting to scare the USSR into the cold war

Japan war was ended because of USSR won the war. US slaughtering civilians was just that - slaughter of civilians. They should be ashamed of this war crime for hundreds of years to come.

Sure. Let's go with that, and assume every historian and member of the Japanese Imperial government consorted to lying about it.

Every historian paid by the West? Sure thing.

Would you support Russia flattening few Ukrainian cities with nuclear warheads in 2022 to finish this war early? Or "it is different"?

The USSR had just taken Manchuria (Korea) and the US wanted Japan in our pocket and to intimidate the USSR. No need to repeat atrocity apologia. Japan in that era was evil af, kind of like Israel today (but in sheer numbers, Japan killed way more people), but that doesn't mean they should be nuked.

After the US took Japan, we reinstated the emperor, wrote their constitution, and used Japan as an imperial outpost to threaten Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and Russia, which we do to this day. In the case of Korea, we invaded in the 1950s and never left, setting up a puppet state. Okinawans and many Koreans want the US military out of their countries.

This was an acceptable trade to the Japanese elite, because the communists would have removed their monarch in the name of liberty!

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

Didn’t have to do that either Japan would’ve capitulated. But cute to dredge up old excuses for mass killing.

An invasion by US forces was planned, with expected US losses to dwarf those on Normandy by an order of magnitude. Japanese losses would dwarf those, in turn.

The invasion likely would have been stalled, and the alternate plan was blockade of the islands to interdict food supplies, and Hirohito is on the record after the war as saying he feared a Lord of the Flies-style mass breakdown of society after famine.

But the reason an invasion was planned rather than waiting for starvation was that Stalin was planning to invade. I.e, if the US had been OK with Japan's ending up in the Soviet orbit, both a nuclear attack and an invasion could have been avoided.

There are all sorts of reasons why Hokkaido or all of Japan ending up in the Soviet orbit would have been a Very Bad Thing.

Im not sure Japan would have surrendered. The real question is: why was total surrender the only acceptable outcome to the FDR admin? To the point that mass killing civilians was preferred over a negotiated peace.

Could take this a couple different ways. Aren't those cities flourishing today?

Sure but it scarred the Japanese culture permanently.

Could you expand on what exactly you mean by “scarring” a culture?

It seems young Japanese doesn't even know who bombed their country. US controls most of the world media: they can highlight or hide any fact, or inculcate whatever interpretation.

US media doesn't particularly hide the fact of the US bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer was released just two years ago, to pick one recent and prominent example of the US not hiding the facts.

the big, obvious distinction is that those weren't tests. "test" implies that what happened to the Marshall Islands should have been prevented.

How about asking Las Vegas instead? It's pretty close to Nevada Test Site, isn't it?

In the sense that there's pictures of the skyline of Las Vegas with the plumes on the background, yes.

Upwind, which matters a lot. Nebraska is more affected.

*the Marshall Islands

*nation. Just

while we're at it

That's shocking. Nuclear fallout must have been well understood by the 1950s. Back then people in general were far more ignorant of risks and assessing potential risks then today but they weren't foolish. How could they have been so negligent?

I don't think the US should test nuclear weapons unless other countries do first, but this is pointless fearmongering. The tests are all underground now! There are no scars!

Even underground tests executed _with the explicit intention_ of improving PR for nukes polluted groundwater and vented rads to the atmosphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

By that logic we have crossed that point visa-via North Korea.

> this is pointless fearmongering

of course it is, it's CNN

We don’t know what will be done but this is scary . We don’t like it. Content of article behind a paywall

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