points by CamperBob2 1 hour ago | 0 comments
It was more humane, whether you like it or not. What if we had waited to learn our lesson until the Korean war, when the yield of the first atomic bomb dropped on people would have been measured in hundreds of kilotons instead of tens, and with a few hundred more bombs where that one came from?
Also, people who are ready to surrender don't need to be nuked twice.
[–] kstenerud 1 hour ago
[–] CamperBob2 51 minutes ago
"I wasn't there."
- kstenerud
[–] defrost 1 hour ago
> people who are ready to surrender don't need to be nuked twice.
The question remains whether in fact Japan "needed" to be nuked even once - it's unknown whether the ongoing city by city destruction would have resolved WWII.
Further, did they "need" to be nuked a second time so quickly (within three days)? That second nuke was not to force a surrender (just as the first wasn't) - the two bombings were two live tests of two separate weapon designs untested in the field of war.
[–] CamperBob2 52 minutes ago
Further, did they "need" to be nuked a second time so quickly (within three days)?
Apparently so. Most people will run up the white flag after being nuked once, you see.
It was important to make them think that we had a whole stockpile of them. Otherwise, twice might not have been enough.
- Heinrich Himmler
“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.”
- Oliver Cromwell
“It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab.”
- Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer