Atomic Veterans Speak Out 796
GoneGaryT writes "Last night I stumbled across the site for Atomic Veterans, the guys in the forces who were present at the Pacific atmospheric nuclear tests and those who 'cleaned-up' Eniwetok 20 years later. There are scores of testimonies, many from men who have a range of cancers or who have since died from them. The absolute and callous disregard for their health and safety at the time is shocking; I suppose the same kind of thing happened to British, French, Russian and Chinese troops in similar circumstances. The Chernobyl pages discussed here a few months ago were eerie; this site is simply heartbreaking. On the one hand, I hate the idea of this site being Slashdotted, on the other hand, people, you've just got to read some of these testimonies. What happened back then is no joke and I'm not sure if we have half the fallout story even now. For the continental US, see this compilation."
Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the creepiest sections is where chinese troops put gas masks on their horses and charge the mushroom cloud with AK47s blazing. Freaky. It laos has people in lawn chairs watching explosions, and people in trenchs watching explosions, and explosions sinking an entire abandoned Navy and all kinds of crap.
The other cool thing about the movie is this: it's narrated by Captain Kirk himself.
RS
My GrandFather... (Score:5, Interesting)
...has a couple of photos of the first British H-bomb test on Christmas Island in his album. He was in one of the observation planes which recorded the test. Luckily, it appears that he was sufficiently far enough away not to be affected by radiation or fallout -- he is 86, and still going strong.
completely anecdotal (Score:0, Interesting)
Actually i got a true story about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My GrandFather... (Score:5, Interesting)
He was at Bikini helped setup and "clean-up" afterwards. No cancers or other tell-tales.
He does joke why his kids are taller then them though... he 6'2" and kids 6'2" to 6'10". For us it was all the manure between our toes while cleaning the barn.
Re:A map without a key... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Other people keep pictures of their children in their wallets. I keep a small map I've had laminated to protect it from wear. I pull that map out during many conversations to show how far and wide fallout from nuclear testing was scattered. People are always shocked when they see it. Utah and Nevada are almost completely blacked out, and the black ink spreads as far north as Canada and as far east as New York, with heavy patches scattered throughout the country."
Then again we must remember the #1 rule of website design - it's more important for it to look cool than to actually get the information across. So the map was probably reversed for the "cool" factor of having a black background.
Remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A map without a key... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually you could put a lot of informatio into the picture.
1. It was compiled by a civilian because; the DOE/DOD probably didn't care about the topic of continental radiation.
2. If that's correct and credible data on fallout, it might suggest that they _did_ monitor the fallout. Maybe they didn't belive that the fallout were dangerous at that time, maybe they thought that building nukes to fight the commies were more important or maybe someone earned way to much money on money on it.
3. The data was probably classified until late eighties - 1991. So someone decided that some peolpe could die because testing the nukes where more important.
Re:Numerical Data? (Score:5, Interesting)
The kind of doses they're talking about are actually too small to make this work. For instance, this [aracnet.com] guy says "...4 years ago, our Health Physics people told me that I had the highest recorded occupational dose of anyone in Canada," which turns out to be 150 mrem. Well, 150 mrem is on the same order of magnitude as natural background for one year. (It depends on things like whether you live in Denver, and whether you have radon in your basement.) The added cancer risk is simply infinitesimal, and this was apparently an unusually high dose.
People just don't seem to want to admit that radiation exposure is a risk, and that the risk is small and quantifiable. Check out this [wikipedia.org] wikipedia article to learn about the units involved. Most cancer is caused by something other than radiation, and nearly all radiation exposure is natural exposure anyway, at the epidemiologial level.
I'd be more concerned about the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings...or veterans working in shipyards who got exposed to asbestos... or some of the ones who got a case of acute lead poisoning via a bullet.
Re:Actually i got a true story about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am currently in remission after having Acute Myeloblastic Leukaemia for the past couple of months. It's interesting how some people who have been exposed to radiation and all sorts of nasties which could potentially develop into cancer, never get it. Whilst others who have been through nothing of the sort get cancer, like myself.
I live a normal life, the doctors don't know why I got Leukaemia and don't know why lots of other people who come for treatment at the same hospital gets Leukaemia or any other cancer for that matter. There are a lot of people I stayed with who were elderly men and had been exposed to nuclear radiation or war situations where the risk of cells mutating into cancer is higher than the rest of the population.
Sadly, cancer continues to take a hold on the lives of many people and although a cure is bound to occur sometime in the future, our grandfathers and ancestors who put their lives on the line to save their nations or whatever don't get to see that cure.
I'm in remission but that doesn't mean I'm cured. The absolute and callous disregard for their health and safety at the time _is_ definitely shocking and when I see that somebody like me who hasn't done anything as brave and courageous as our forefathers, it kinda makes me feel guilty that I am getting better but they had no chance.
Re:thx for their efforts and sacrifices (Score:3, Interesting)
Many historians also disagree with the assertation that it was required to end the war in the pacific, since the Japanese were already pressing for peace, the Americans were already looking to the next war and needed a way to intimidate the Soviet Union. Instead of linking to a site I'll just link to a Google search Was the Bomb necessary [google.ca].
Re:A map without a key... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Numerical Data? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of the 220 people who worked on location, 91 contracted cancer by the early 1980s and 46 died of it -- including Wayne, co-stars Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. Statistically, only 30 people out of a group that size should have gotten cancer in their lifetimes.
Source: Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope [straightdope.com].
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why to date terrorists haven't gotten a hold of any. They are competing against the worldest biggest economy to get a hold of this material.
Yes, some of the material is missing, but we have tools to find it.
Re:thx for their efforts and sacrifices (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:2, Interesting)
You are taking a common saying that means "A whole lot" literally. In fact there are ways to estimate the number of casualties as we did many amphibious assaults. For instance this document from the cia [cia.gov] discusses such a thing.
The invasion of Okinawa had, at a low count, 122,000 deaths (including Japanese and American). Japan's main island was much more hardened and expected to fight harder over.
From a small search (so it may be off, there were several numbers thrown around so I took the largest) there were estimated 210,000 deaths from the bombs over 5 years.
Well over a million were estimated for just the first few islands around mainland Japan.
There is also the argument that we could starve them from a blockade. Maybe - but it is questionable wich is worse, starving millions or nuking thousands.
There is the argument that Japan was going to surrender anyway. Maybe. Even after the bombs the Emporer had a tough time convincing many in the military to surrender. It would depend on which faction won.
If it was justified more depends on your political views. No, I don't mean conservative or liberal, I mean what you place value on and which way you feel things would go.
"The hardest part, by far, is obtaining enough fissile material. Luckily for terrorists and not so lucky for there targets, the cold war left behing lots of fissile material, some of which has gone missing according to the news."
Another hard part is sneaking it in. It's not something that you put in a 2 litre bottle and drive around with.
A more likely terrorist weapon (the most likely is still conventional stuff though) are some chemical weapons. When a chemical requires
One of the main problems with these is that they require a certain level of sophistication to transport and detonate - usually those people are the leaders and have no intention of putting themselfs in that much harms way. Chemical weapons are generally easier to deal with. Though if any ever gets used in a populated area the destruction would be VERY bad.
Re:Same in UK and China. Any Franch/ USSR example? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically he was told to point the camera at the test site and close his eyes for the flash.
What was done at these testings we now know to be attrocious. Planes were flying through nuclear clouds and after landing were scrubbed clean by soldiers wearing shorts and boots only. (The test were performed in desert like areas.) Hundreds of officers [news.com.au] were ordered to stand there and watch the nuclear blasts. Nuclear clouds floated over and settled on [news.com.au] the nearby major city (Adelaide pop of 800,000 or so at the time.).
Civilians [news.com.au] were held on an oval 40 kilometers from the test site.
"When they went off there would be this almighty flash which could blind you and it was like a hot towel was being put on the back of your neck.
"After that we were actually told it was all right to turn around to look at them. The last one was hotter than the other two, that's how close we were."
Soon after the explosions, the Maralinga Village was hit by strong wind gusts which coated buildings and equipment with contaminated radioactive dust.
Soldiers toured the local test sites within hours of testing.
Unfortunately at the time very little was known about the dangers. Hence why they were testing. even after almost 50 years the sites have been through a complete cleanup (in the last 10 years) but are still radioactive.
Residents would picnic and visit [news.com.au] the areas to watch the nuclear testing.
My friend's grandfather died of cancer. So did many who were at the testing with him. They were exposed to nuclear blasts with out any protections. The worst part is that both the British and Austrlian Governments refuse to have any inquiries into what our Nuclear Veterans suffered, nor will they offer any compensation those those or their families who suffered directly from Nuclear Testing.
Re:Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:3, Interesting)
Scientific American once had a facinating article about the history of radium, how it made the transition from a preciously sought after substance, to a deadly waste.
My father is/was an atomic vet (Score:5, Interesting)
My father participated in about 40 above-ground nuclear test while he was in the Army from 1956-58. Initially trained as a smoke generator - "I tipped up a 55-gallon drum of diesel fuel whenever they called for smoke" he was later trained as a radiological monitor with the 1st Radiological Safety Support Unit - they liked to joke that RSSU was "USSR" spelled backwards. Some of the guys in his unit are quoted on the site mentioned in the
I take great pride in helping my father to arrange a Vegas reunion of the 1st RSSU a few years ago. They weren't your average GI's - most had degrees when they entered the service. To hear them tell stories about getting blown backwards by an H-bomb in the Pacific ("They told us that it'd be bigger than usual") is breathtaking. These guys saw some amazing shit. My father tells about flying with an ignorant chopper pilot who flew them into the edge of the drifting mushroom cloud as they measured radiation levels!
I should write a book about this stuff. Actually, I should get my father to commit his memories to tape/film. He's living back in Vegas and I wish the gov't regulations didn't forbid me to tape his stories while taking the monthly free tour of the Nevada Test Site. He has a fantastic collection of photos, slides and anecdotes that should be preserved.
My father holds no grudge against the government as far as the testing goes. As he says, everyone was learning as they went along. "I'm just glad that I was one of the guys lucky enough to have a lead-lined set of fatigues," he says.
Re:Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:1, Interesting)
You can still buy ww2 aircraft instruments that are painted, and glow in the dark. They're harmless unless the glass is cracked and the paint is flaking off. You dont want to ingest the stuff.
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:1, Interesting)
The two atomic bombs were effective in that the "shock" they created was much greater than their destructiveness. The firebombing of Tokyo on March 9 killed more people than either of the atomic bombs.
Re:not that effective (Score:4, Interesting)
It will render some area more or less unusable for a long period of time (ie, nobody will want to live or work in that region even when the radiative material has been removed).
There's your answer right there. Dirty bombs are of high value in terms of terrorism, rather than creating a body count.
Setting off a "dirty bomb" in a comparatively crowded city is going to cause a (relatively) small number of physical casualties, but as soon as the word "nuclear" is mentioned on Fox News that night you'll see public panic a couple of orders of magnitude greater than 9/11.
Terror, of course, being the object. Not necessarily dead bodies in the streets (though that's a favourable side effect as far as the terrorist is concerned).
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:3, Interesting)
No kidding. I could say that version 1.03.46-r3 of program X had a bug, and someone would chime in telling me I was an idiot and that it was actually 1.03.47-r3 that contained the bug. And that it wasn't really a bug, but a problem that only arose if users of the program were lazy. And that I must be a stupid, lazy retarded Windows user cause I didn't know that.
No seriously
An on-topic note: The people I really feel sorry for are the Russians who had to test nuclear weapons. From what I've heard, safety precautions were atrocious and the radiation was (and is) an extremely bad problem in some parts. Of course we've had similar problems, but I can't imagine they are on the scale of Soviet Russia.
Umm, In Soviet Russia, YOU kill radioactive poison's babies?
Green Run (Score:5, Interesting)
In a three-year period covered by the report, the Hanford iodine-131 emissions totaled 450,000 curies of which 340,000 were released in 1945. The panel had not yet examined releases after 1947 n including the December 1949 "Green Run", a deliberate experiment which released thousands of curies of radioactive iodine and other fission products.
340,000 curies. Let's put that in perspective. How much radioiodine was released during the Three Mile Island incident? I'll tell you. 15 curies. The Green Run story is ready for prime time
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:3, Interesting)
The repeated firebombings of many Japanese cities killed more in each strike than either atomic bomb did. If it didn't get them to surrender the first half dozen or so times, its time to think up a new strategy.
Some historians doubt the Nagasaki bomb was evennecessary,
Said historians are idiots. Sure, Hiroshima was a dramatic blow. But until Nagasaki, the Japanese didn't know if this was a full weapons program or a single bomb that we couldn't make in quantity.
The atomic bombs were needed for a simple reason. The Japanese simply do not think like Westerners. True, there were some rumblings prior to Hiroshima leaning towards surrender, but until the US wiped out two cities with single bombs, a force that the Japanese had absolutely zero hope to defend against, the hardcore never surrender crowd could not be overcome. Anything else, be it invasions or massive conventional bombing, would have required that the US virtually wipe out the entire Japanese military, as well as a huge chunk of the civilian population that would have taken up the fight after the army was gone.
Don't forget, on Iwo Jima, out of about 27,000 Japanese troops, around 20,000 fought to the death. The home islands would have been defended far more fiercely. The civilian death toll from invasion(which would eventually be needed to clean up after conventional bombs, even if we bombed the Army out of existence) would be catastrophic, and the military death toll on both sides would also be immense. Compared to the few hundered thousand killed by the bombs and the fallout from them, an invasion of Japan would have made the horrors of all prior wars, put together, look like a schoolyard fistfight.
The two atomic bombs, as terrible as they were, were without a doubt the most merciful way to end the war. The Japanese would not have surrendered if they saw any sliver of hope of survival. Even after Nagasaki, there was a military coup that was very nearly succesful the night prior to the broadcast of the surrender message. Had that coup succeeded, Japan would not have surrendered.
What about the Japanese nuclear veterans? (Score:1, Interesting)
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction." - Harry Truman, August 9, 1945 (three days after Hiroshima, just after Nagasaki)
Interesting that the Pres would lie like that, eh?
Re:You just happen to be on the side that won (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, the Japanese attacked us. That made them the bad guys that time around. We did bad things too, but at least we weren't trying to rule the world.
Situational ethics. Fewer people died that way than if we'd used conventional weapons. It sucks, but it sucks the least of several possible options. That's how people make decisions during wars.
How then shall we compare and evaluate the behaviors of different countries during wartime? Being cynical just obscures the issue. Saying "everyone's a hypocrite" is like giving up.
-jim
This is a myth, I'm afraid. (Score:1, Interesting)
Truman dropped the bomb on a civilian target which had been intentionally left alone during conventional bombing (so refugees from other cities were living there), so that the Japanese spirit would be entirely shattered.
It wasn't about saving millions of lives, it was about total victory in the public eye. It was about propaganda.
Re:Runs in the family (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Numerical Data? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and of course none of those people were heavy smokers. No, not a one of them (that's sarcasm by the way). Dick Powell used to advertise cigarettes, Wayne was a five pack a day smoker and even Agnes Moorehead (now this would be the name of a porno star, interesting how times change, isn't it?) was known to light up now and then. Of course killing yourself with a pack-a-day habit isn't as interesting as a conspiracy theory.
The residents of southwestern Utah are predominantly Mormon and therefore predominantly non-smokers. They also experienced (and continue to experience) cancer rates that are more than triple the norm, and the pattern of increased cancer risk closely correlates to the distance from the blast sites and related common weather patterns. Mormons elsewhere generally experience lower than normal cancer rates.
Also, no "conspiracy theory" is required here: The US government did not truly understand the risks, and neither did the people living downwind. The government was well aware of the short-term dangers of radiation sickness, but didn't really know that lower exposure levels could cause increased cancer risk decades later.
My father used to go out and watch the blasts for fun, and I'm sure I would have done the same; they were pretty impressive even from two hundred miles away. My dad, by the way, has not had any form of cancer and is still quite healthy. His younger brother had leukemia but beat it with a year of intensive chemotherapy.
Re:Perhaps this is true...perhaps it's not (Score:5, Interesting)
First, with so much misinformation floating around about Japan's eagerness to surrender, it's pathetic that a comment like this is modded as "Funny". Pathetic.
First, here's a link to a transcript of the Potsdam Declaration, issued by the Allies on July 26, 1945, calling for Japan's immediate surrender: Potsdam Declaration [ndl.go.jp].
What was Japan's response? The next day, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo advised that "it would [be] extremely impolitic for Japan to reject the Potsdam Declaration", and secured agreement to not publicly dismiss the document. The next day, however, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki did publicly reject the declaration, stating "The government does not regard [the Potsdam Declaration] as a thing of any value; the government will just ignore [mokusatsu] it. We will press forward resolutely to carry the war to a successful conclusion."
Quotes appear in Richard Frank's "Downfall". Frank goes on to comment, "Literally, mokusatsu meant 'kill with silence,' but idiomatically it housed an array of meanings: 'take no notice of it', 'treat with silent contempt', or 'ignore.'"
It doesn't mean "We don't have a decision yet."
Re:new atomic veterans du238 (Score:5, Interesting)
Some general information. Naturally-occurring uranium is composed of three different isotopes. It's 99.2745% U-238,
To use uranium in the production of nuclear power, it must be enriched. The result of the enrichment process is uranium with a U-235 percentage of from 3-5%, if you're talking about a civilian power plant, or upwards of 90%, if you're talking about a naval reactor.
What's left over from this process is the depleted uranium. It's called that because it's been depleted of the U-235. In other words, it's actually less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium, one of the most abundant elements on the planet.
So how radioactive is it? Not very. The measure of radioactivity is the Curie. 1 Ci is equal to 3.7*10^10 radioactive decays per second. In SI units, we use the Becquerel, and 1 Bq is equal to 1 radioactive decay per second, or 1 Bq = 2.703*10^-11 Ci.
Now, plain, natural uranium has an activity level of 25 Bq/kilogram. Consider for a second how amazingly low that is: in one kilogram of natural uranium, there are only 25 radioactive decays each second. That's about 4 moles of uranium, by the way, so that's roughly 2.4*10^24 atoms.
By comparison, the C-14 isotope of carbon is present to such a degree in organic matter that a random block of the stuff has an activity level of 6 pCi/g. Potassium-40 is also present in organic matter, to the tune of 11 pCi/g. Hell, take a 70 kilogram adult, and total up the naturally occurring radioisotopes in his body (the uranium, the thorium, the K-40, the radium, the C-14, the tritium, the polonium), and you'll see that a human being has an activity level of over 19,000 Bq, or 278 Bq/kg.
Human beings are over 11 times as radioactive as natural uranium, and even more radioactive than U-238.
So stop hysteria-mongering.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My GrandFather... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:thx for their efforts and sacrifices (Score:2, Interesting)
LK
Testing in the Pacific (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problems have been from Bikini Atoll, but there's also been a lot of cancer, birth defects etc round Mururoa Atoll (French testing) - which also gets next to no publicity.
Actually, I should start with what I know, for people who have no idea what I'm talking about -
when the bombs were dropped on Bikini Atoll, no one evacuated a nearby atoll despite knowing the windpatterns would drop fallout (there was alot of ignorance about the effects though) nuclear 'snow' or fallout covered the island, in fact, locals, not knowing what it was, went out to 'play' in it. Not to mention, the original inhabitants of Bikini Atoll were relocated *back* to the atoll, where they remained for several years - unknown to them, part of a study on the effects of radiation.
Other than really high rates of cancer etc (among the whole region - 'strange' & deformed fish are found very far from the testing sites after tests), one of the most well known effects has been the so called "Jellyfish babies".
I'm sure you can guess by the name that the effects are quite horrific.
It basically covers a range of deformities, but generally refers to the birth of well, I hesitate to use the word 'children' - with missing limbs and/or heads, often with weird skin colourings (I mean discolourations, but apparently they can be surreally vivid).
Often they're born dead, sometimes they'll survive for a few minutes or hours. Midwives know not to let the mother see them.
As far as I know, there very little official records being kept, and very little investigation.
Oh, great - and now I find a link!
This echo's a lot of what I've heard, with some more detail:
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/374-5/3678.ht
you prove yourself wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Substances don't have to be "processed biologically" or "substitute for any element" in order to be toxic or dangerous. Even something like microscopic gold particles or noble gasses can be toxic.
but don't just take my word for it. try here.
Yes, and that web site states "Extremely small particles of plutonium on the order of micrograms can cause lung cancer if inhaled into the lungs." Whether that makes Plutonium more toxic than botulism toxin or not is a matter of semantics. I suspect a microgram of botulism toxin won't kill you no matter how you are exposed to it.
And the same web site states: "The chemical and radiological toxicity of plutonium should be distinguished from the danger of plutonium." So, contrary to your ramblings, the very web site you point to attributes both chemical and radioactive toxicity to Plutonium.
I don't know the actual danger from ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise coming in contact with Plutonium. But neither do you, nor anybody else. What I do know is that ignorant fools like you are responsible for exposing people to risks that people never agreed to being exposed to willingly. You seem think that just because you are unimaginative and stupid enough to figure out how something could be dangerous, it's OK to dump the stuff on the world. That kind of hubris is why so many people distrust science and scientists so much.
The conservative and prudent thing to do is that, when we have a choice, and we do when it comes to weapons, energy, and products, we don't risk exposing people to substances unless those substances have been proven safe beyond a reasonable doubt.
Re:My GrandFather... (Score:2, Interesting)
Scott Thomas
No way! (Score:2, Interesting)
No way! To the contrary!
I have talked to Josef Rotblat [nobel.se] (who was among the advocates to get the Manhattan Project started), and he said that the reason why he thought it would be critical to start was that he realized how easy it was going to be. Surely, he said, anybody could do it, and seeing what Hitler had been capable of doing, it was critical that he didn't get it first. Later, he said, he understood how wrong he had been: You can't deter a madman (the argument is of course much longer and deeper than that, but that's the one-liner).
Also, in late 1941, (Bohr came on board much later IIRC), the other scientist you mention felt they had most of the stuff ready. They were allready certain how the bomb was going to be built. The rest was mere engineering to them. Sustained and controlled fission was a much more interesting problem, which they pretty much devoted all their attention to at that point, the question is if they really needed to do that to build a bomb....? Fermi was bored out of his mind by simply working on the bomb... I believe the reason why the got sustained fission is not because it was necessary for building the bomb, but because it was a much more interesting problem.
The bomb was no scientific achievement, it was a simple application of some trivial theory from contemporary science.
Re:Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:3, Interesting)
For reference, 100Mt would have been roughly enough to cause 3rd degree burns to everyone inside of West Germany. Except for the ones within 60km of ground zero, who would have just been vaporized.
The neutron bomb (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The neutron bomb (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But these (Score:3, Interesting)
Name a single Japanese person over the age of two who, in 1945, did not know that their country was in a war, one which they declared and fired the first shot against people who didn't know what was coming, and under aerial bombardment.
How many of the Oregonians killed by a Japanese bomb knew what was coming?
Since they were still, in fact, shooting at us, name a viable alternative to shooting back that would have ended the war without their explicit surrender.
Did not the Germans surrender unconditionally, but did we not have to take Berlin before they did so? Did we not bomb the shit out of it daily before we took it? Did they not bomb us previous to that? Did they not continue shooting at us until the moment of their surrender?
Invading soldiers at least know what they're dealing with, one would hope.
You have left the invaded out of that equation.
It was a war of the 'good old fashioned' kind. They shoot at us. We shoot at them. It continues until one side says "enough already."
I don't happen to agree that that's a very good way to go about things. I'm a nonviolent pacifist and all that shit. But it's still a historical fact.
KFG
Re:Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:3, Interesting)
My parents would never let me use those machines. I remember other parents would let their kids use the machines for minutes on end, until the shop assistant was available - Ireally feel sorry for them now.
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hide it in a barge full of coal. Coal is radioactive (slightly, but enough to hide a bomb, especially since the coal also shields the bomb's emissions).
The suitcase thing is exagerated, even a 44 gallon drum or 'fridge is a bit small. The material needed to create an uncontrolled nuclear reaction is fairly large, or if small, very detectable by several means. We have a nuke that we fire out of a 105mm howitzer. That's just over 4" in diameter, for those who don't do metric. The Poseidon missile carries 14 (or more) nuclear weapons was 54" in diameter, so guesstimate its warheads were no more than 15" in diameter (and made a much bigger kaboom than a 105 nuclear shell).
It doesn't take much to make a nuclear weapon. Though a crude nuke is quite large. Minimum size has been going down ever since we learned how to do it.
Re:The flip side of the coin. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. Sure did. Doesn't actually change much about how hard a fight it will be that the lads on the other side of the hill are conscripts. Or do you assume that European armies (which are essentially conscript armies) are inherently inferior to the US Army (which is a long-service professional army)?
I don't buy that myself. Conscription doesn't imply lack of patriotism/zeal/skill. It just implies an opinion of the government as to the best way to prepare for a future war.
So what is it you're saying these people don't have the right to fight for there country Only America has the right.
Of course they have the right to fight for their country. But their right to fight doesn't excuse them from being killed if they fight and lose. If Japan had actually fought as hard protecting the Home Islands as they did on Guam or Okinawa, the Americans might have lost a million men. Or not. But the Japanese would have lost pretty much their entire population.
You're country bombed two cities full of civilians!!!
Please learn to spell "your". Reading this was painful. Trivial grammatical quibbles aside, the USA bombed a great many more than two cities. As did the British, the Germans, and the Soviets. Well, the Soviets mostly used artillery rather than aerial bombs, but dead is dead.
I have always found it curious that people objected more to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (both of which had military bases and industries, just like the other cities bombed/shelled by either side) than to, say, Tokyo, or Berlin. Both of which were pounded repeatedly.
I also should add, for those who haven't read General Arnold's autobiography, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and four other cities) were deliberately removed from the list of cities to be bombed conventionally. This was to allow for a more accurate determination of the effects of the atomic bombs, if and when they were used. So the use of nuclear weapons against those two cities spared (as a minimum) four other cities from aerial attack, and delayed the aerial attacks on those two cities till the last days of the war. Unlike, say, Berlin, which was bombed regularly thoughout the war.
Re:The great scientific irony.. (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, you're separating a compound of the substance, not raw metal. In the Oak Ridge plant, they used uranium hexafluoride. Still nasty, but won't burst into flame on contact with air (it's already effectively been "burned" with fluorine).
Second of all, the Oak Ridge plant used effusion membranes as a separation method, not centrifuges.
Third of all, you're both being silly. The mass-based separation methods are fairly straightforward - not much beyond undergrad science needed to come up with them. _Implementing_ them was a huge engineering challenge, a highly non-trivial effort. Implementing them in a way that wouldn't cause accidents required considerable _scientific_ knowledge (Feynman's memoirs talk about this; they'd have had steam explosions carting around uranium in aqueous solution without someone realizing they needed a neutron absorber).
It was a monumental challenge for both the scientists and the engineers, and it is indeed impressive that they went from "what's a neutron?" to both controlled and runaway fission devices in a handful of years.
Re:Additional myth... (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Like I said, there are lots of theories. The only thing we know is that dropping the bombs did indeed end the war immediately. I personally don't think a test site would have done the trick: it would have just said "Hey look, we have a super weapon, but we won't actually use it." Just like the Soviets' test of the 50 Mt "Tsar Bomba" did not end the Cold War. Again, that's just theory. We only know one thing for sure (i.e., what happened happened). As far as keeping the Emporer, they were allowed to keep a basically castrated ceremonial Emporer who had to admit in front of Gen. MacArthur and the whole Japanese population that he was not, in fact, a deity. After that, he had about as much actual power as the British royalty.
As for your last point, the only thing that I argue for the two bombings is that they ended the war. I don't know that they were necessary to keep the Cold War Cold. We had a pretty good idea of what they could do, and as long as two parties had them, nobody was going to use them. Also, I don't argue that nuclear weapons are "good" or "evil." They just are. Once they were discovered it was inevitable that somebody would build one. If the net result of that was to keep two mutually mistrusting bitter enemies at bay from one another for 50 years, then I would call the result good.
Re:Additional myth... (Score:3, Interesting)
2) We know *one heck of a lot* more than just "dropping the bombs ended the war". We know very well what the Japanese government had been discussing, and what was being discussed in our own government about the Japanese, and in both cases, it was preparations for surrender. I can go on into many more people who have discussed this - for example the National Security Advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, who wrote "Hiroshima alone was enough to bring the Russians in; these two events together brought the crucial imperial decision for surrender, just before the second bomb was dropped.".
> It would have just said "Hey look, we have a super weapon, but we won't actually use it."
Apart from people as high ranking as the Undersecretary of the Navy in WWII completely disagreeing with you, what sort of logic is that? It states that it's a demonstration, and that the next time, it will not be. Anyone who thought otherwise would be an idiot. Furthermore, the demonstration need not be on some barren location - it could have been on, for example, a *military target*.
What on earth was the Soviets' test of the Tsar Bomba supposed to mean? How is that at all relevant? Both sides had nukes. It was MAD. A new nuke doesn't change MAD, it just adds to the fears of the other side.
In case you didn't know, the Emperor didn't have much of any power during the war, either, so that wasn't much changed.
Re:Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:3, Interesting)