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United States Science

60th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb 559

Posted by Zonk from the giger-counter-remembers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "On July 16, 1945, the world's first nuclear bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico, marking the beginning of the Nuclear Age. Manhattan Project veteran Herb Lehr has no regrets: 'In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile. I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability.' Lehr will return to Trinity Site for the first time since the explosion. He said, 'I'm just interested in going and seeing it and maybe getting some memories back. Los Alamos was a whole interesting experience. It was something unique. I worked very hard down there.'"
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60th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb More

60th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb

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  • Word on whether the birthday child will attend? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's going to be the bomb!

  • Note (Score:5, Interesting)

    by simonharvey ( 605068 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @04:54AM (#13080308) Homepage
    For thoes people who are interested in building their own, here is a primer [wikipedia.org]

    Good Luck

    • Re:Note (Score:5, Insightful)

      by beacher ( 82033 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:14AM (#13080355) Homepage
      I actually found this atom bomb [winn.com] instruction set to be a little more detailed. Any instructions that include
      "Please remember that Plutonium, especially pure, refined Plutonium, is somewhat dangerous. Wash your hands with soap and warm water after handling the material, and don't allow your children or pets to play in it or eat it."

      or "Now hide the completed device from the neighbors and children. The garage is not recommended because of high humidity and the extreme range of temperatures experienced there. Nuclear devices have been known to spontaneously detonate in these unstable conditions. The hall closet or under the kitchen sink will be perfectly suitable."

      definately have the end user in mind. It's these thoughtful tips that make this probably the best DIY WMD kit! /sarcasm>

      • Re:Note (Score:4, Funny)

        by Elkboy ( 770849 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:56AM (#13080452)
        "If it does detonate, remember to duck and cover." "Afterwards, shadows burned into walls will make great conversation pieces at parties. Arming your car and grow a crazy Mad Max-hairdo will help you and your family prosper in the nuclear wasteland."
      • Come on. The linked article is a joke. It's from "The Journal of Irreproducible Results". At the end, they have a reference to other "instructional articles"

        PREVIOUS MONTH'S COLUMNS

        1. Let's Make Test Tube Babies! May, 1979

        2. Let's Make a Solar System! June, 1979

        3. Let's Make an Economic Recession! July, 1979

        4. Let's Make an Anti-Gravity Machine! August, 1979

        5. Let's Make Contact with an Alien Race! September, 1979

  • End of an era (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LividBlivet ( 898817 )
    In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. JRO
    • "I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability."

      Frequent user on Slashdot PCMANJON was a professional hitman for 20 years, killing over 1024 people before being sent to prison. The slashdot news crew visited him and got some comments:

      "I am in no way ashamed of what I have done in any way shape or form... I mean, I did what I was told to do, right? And I did it to the BEST of my ability."

      Somhow I think most peop
      • I see some merit in your argument, but will respectfully disagree. I fall into the camp that says that building a weapon and using it are two different things. Actually, there are three categories - those who build it, those who use it, and those who order its use. Building a weapon is neither right nor wrong, primarily because any technology can be used for good or evil. Advanced nuclear weapon design has had both positive and negative benefits.

        Those who use weapons bear responsibility for their misu

  • As it hasn't been said yet... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RRRussian ( 893927 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @04:56AM (#13080313)
    WTF!!!

    Lehr said it is unfortunate the bombs were used for war.

    Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?

    Seriously, whenever someone tries to justify something truely horrific, it always comes out as the most asinine comment one could make, under those circumstances.

    Much like this one...

    • Re:As it hasn't been said yet... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They could have put all the politicians and lawyers in one place and used it there.
      • Politicians are compromisers. To get anything done in a democracy requires compromise. If you think compromise is a weakness, go try authoritarianism.

        If everyone just agreed, we wouldn't need lawyers, or politicians.

        • I agree with you. Lately, it seems they have had to compromise their morals:

          Do I stay honorable and defend the public, or do I get insanely wealthy by selling out to the corporations? Well, I think I'll sell out!

          See? There's compromise right there!
    • Most of the people on that team did not want the bomb actually used before Japan was given a chance to see the capability that it gave the United States. The majority believed that this would be the case--the mere display of such power would get Japan to surrender, not getting a firsthand perspective by being hit twice.
      • What planet do you live on? They did see the effects once and still didn't surrender. That's the US had to use a second bomb!
    • unfortunate and unexpected are two totally different things

    • Richard Feynman (Score:5, Insightful)

      by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:15AM (#13080361) Journal
      Lehr said it is unfortunate the bombs were used for war.

      Seriously, whenever someone tries to justify something truely horrific, it always comes out as the most asinine comment one could make, under those circumstances.

      This is a question that I have wondered for some time, as I have read his books.

      It seems that many of the people who helped build the atomic bomb were later pushed out of any talk about how the bomb was to be used. Oppenheimer lost his top secret clerance and was labled a communist by the FBI. Some in government wanted to jail or kill him, they were worried he would defect to the Soviet Union in the 1960's. I think Senator McCarthy had public statements about wanting to see Oppenheimer jailed.

      If there is a team of 3 or 4 that is 90% responsible for building the worlds worst weapon, should they have a say if it is used? Or do they lose that right when the finish making it? Without them, the bomb could never have been made. It seems like a huge burden to have for life, knowing your creation killed so many people.

      And why did the USA need to drop 2 bombs on Japan? Didn't the first one do enough to scare the crap out of them? How far was Truman ready to go? Kill every Japanese person on the earth.

      And didn't the USA during WWII jail every American citizen that looked Japanese by force, even if they never broke any laws?

      • Re:Richard Feynman (Score:5, Insightful)

        by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:48AM (#13080434)
        There's is, and there's going to be more here, historical revisionism. Suffice to say there were several reasons:

        1) marianas, iwo jima and okinawa. a friend's dad served on iwo and saipan. hell would be a gentle term. plus, i've read volumes. the fighting was unlike anything in the history of warfare. we'd have had 100X worse on japanese mainland. we expected 1 million allied casualties, and probably 10-20 million japanese. so it's lincoln's "terrible arithmetic" multiplied by 100.

        2) russia. sure, we were their ally, but we all knew what they were, what they were going to do, and we wanted to send a message. if the rosenbergs (yes they were soviet spies) not given up the bomb, we'd have been in a totally different situation. we had to let them know they were well behind the curve. and yes we allowed many nazi scientists off the hook, that's not the point.

        3) japan didn't surrender after bomb #1. and in fact, didn't after bomb #2. remember, the bombs were aug. 6 and aug. 9, they surrendered after the soviets invaded sakhalin and not until aug. 15. in fact, if you check, we actually had a bomber raid on aug. 10, and i believe aug. 12. ironic is that the communications were severed between the emperor (who wanted to surrender) and the military (who didn't). the militray was actualyl coming to the palace to arrest the emp and hold him so he couldn;t surrender. we didn't know this until much later. however, two nukes, two more B29 raids, and still no surrender.

        4) politics. we were getting really tired of the war. europe was well over, domestic life was returning to normal, and yet 10,000 were dying on okinawa. how many more thousands were the public going to send? truman knew the war must end. and soon.

        most of the second guessing has come from succeeding generations that had the luxury of self-relection that on;y peace can bring. like the greeks, it is our freedom that allows to us to be hyper-critical of ourselves (like a sophocles or aristophanes). we did much that we view as oppressive (japanese internement) yet at the time was wholly palatable by the large body of people. times change and so do cultures. but i think it is poor history and a worse morality play to go back and make assumptions about the bomb. look at japan today. not that 2 nukes are a tradeoff for a peaceful and free society (ah moral equivalency), but consider this:

        40 years after the sedan the french were screaming revanche and we got ypres and verdun. 40 years after hiroshima, the japanese were not and we got toyotas.

        • Re:Richard Feynman (Score:5, Informative)

          by learn fast ( 824724 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @09:40AM (#13081088)
          most of the second guessing has come from succeeding generations that had the luxury of self-relection...

          "Prof. Albert Einstein... said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate." --Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb, New York Times, 8/19/46, pg. 1

          "...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

          "During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..." -- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change

          "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." -- Dwight Eisenhower, Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

          On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, [Herbert] Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." -- quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

          "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed. ... When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." -- Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

          • Re:Richard Feynman (Score:4, Interesting)

            by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @10:00AM (#13081182)
            From what I've read, Japan was training women and children with wooden spears, farm implements, anything they could get their hands on. They were preparing to wage a guerilla war that would make the insurgency in Iraq look like child's play. Imagine the propects of 19 y/o Marines having to machine gun women and children. Remember the Japanese island straegy after the fall of the marianas and the beginning of bombardment from the 20th AF. It was a fatalistsic, "we can't win, but we can make them bleed dearly for every inch" strategy. The cost in lives was mounting island by island. They were willing to trade life for life. They were planning on making us bleed to death. I'm sorry, I know Ike and many others were squishy over othe bomb, but I still think it was justified.

            consider this as well: we killed far more in March over Tokyo with the firebombings than we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, it was LeMay who said that give him another month or two of bombing and there'd be nothing left in Japan to bomb. Now, we could have conceivably killed another 200,000 or more with more firebombing, and we'd not have the stigma of the atomic bomb. Fine. But I do think it's a little presumptuous for us to think that there lots of alternatives. I just don't there were many. Japan's moved on, perhaps we should too.
        • 1) marianas, iwo jima and okinawa.

          After the battle of Okinawa killed off 30 percent of the civilian population there, the US had already secured Okinawa, marianas, and Iwojima. Dropping the atomic bomb came months afterwards.

          2) russia. sure, we were their ally, but we all knew what they were, what they were going to do, and we wanted to send a message. if the rosenbergs (yes they were soviet spies) not given up the bomb, we'd have been in a totally different situation.

          The rosenburgs could not have be
    • Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?

      How about as a deterrent to war, like they've been since?
    • "Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?"

      Actually, thermonuclear weapons have been considered for use in civil engineering construction (like digging canals, mining, and underground cisterns) to aerospace (like spacecraft propulsion). Of course, that was back in days while the USA was still conducting above ground nuclear tests -- when nuclear radiation was compared to "sunshine units". Uncle Sam had an impressive "spin machine" back then.
    • Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?
      The big debate is example. Imagine if the US had blown up a small ghost town or uninhabited island - maybe even right next to Japan and said "surrender now or this will happen to you." There's a peaeful means to every quetion. Flame me for that if you want, but it's a simple truth.
      • However, doing that would have allowed the Japanese time to prepare to repel the airplanes that dropped the bomb. You have to remember, this is prior to any ICBM's, and the bomb HAD to be dropped directly onto its target by an airplane.

        • Re:As it hasn't been said yet... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @06:42AM (#13080556)
          Nope. B-29 was the first bomber that could fly really high (indeed, USAF discovered jet stream when they first flew at those heights), and japanese had no AA equipment that could deal with them at 30000+ feet.

          Altough, actually most of the air raids with B-29's were done at low altitudes - japanese had 88 mm AA cannons, so they could not turn fast enough for low-altitude bombing. This saved fuel and allowed for higher payloads (and also prevented some engine troubles - flying at high altitudes caused overheating problems).

          So yeah, that demo could have been done without any problems for subsequent real droppings.
      • Imagine if the US had blown up a small ghost town or uninhabited island - maybe even right next to Japan and said "surrender now or this will happen to you."

        This would have almost certainly avoided the cold war and saved millions more lives than the A-Bomb purportedly saved in WWII.

        The cold war might have still happened just because we probably still wouldn't have shared the nuclear info after the USSR saved our asses in WWII. Which was stupid then as now, only lies and trivia can be hidden, physical tru

  • His moral? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by scarlac ( 768893 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @04:56AM (#13080314) Homepage
    It's strange to see how he's arguing that he doesn't feel ashamed (a moral feeling) and he argues that he was instructed to do so, so that makes it morally legitimate? He must be a bureaucrat.

  • Whenever I play a game of Civilization (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @04:58AM (#13080319) Journal
    Whenever any civilization completes the Manhatten project, the game pretty much sucks. Everyone wants to nuke everyone else. It becomes hard to build a nation when every city must hault production on whatever it was doing to build a Star Wars Defense system.

    I wonder what will happen in the next 50 years, as most countries should have nukes by then. It will not matter how wealthy a country is, their diplomats will smile and say "Defended by Nuclear Weapons". We are already there with North Korea, all that is missing for them is long range missles to deliver those Nukes to far away places.

    Imagine smaller nations nuking each other. Does anyone think that Iran and Iraq would not have nuked each other in the 1980's when they had a decade long war? Or what about Israel, how many different nations want to nuke them?? And how would foriegn policy of Israel be different if the palestinians had Nukes? Would the Israeli government treat them any better?

    And I can see former soviet union states getting Nukes. It could get to be messy. What country keeps setting off bombs in Moscow? Uzbekestan or is it Checkizstan. The Chenyans I think. I am too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I believe they are the ones who took a theater filled with people hostage and then killed a bunch of them, and the same people who took a school of 1000+ hostage and killed half the elementary school kids. They held a bunch of 6 to 11 year olds for 4 or 5 days without water or food. If someone can torture another human like that, setting off a nuke probably would make them loose sleep.

    Will there be no wars in the future if everyone has nukes, because everyone will be scared of starting a major conflict? Or will it be like the game Civilization where as soon as everyone has nukes, they use them?? At least our leaders have deep bunkers. In 20 years when the radiation clears, they can come out of the bunkers and start the game all over.

    • At least our leaders have deep bunkers. In 20 years when the radiation clears, they can come out of the bunkers and start the game all over.

      One can hide from one's war, but there's no hiding from one's Hereafter.

    • "Defended by Nuclear Weapons"
      Which are absolutely bloody useless against terrorists.

      Anyway, who is to blame nasty places like North Korea being desperate to get nukes? As far as they are concerned they need your proposed sign on the border to keep the US out.

      Anyway, I only posted so someone can comment on my .sig.
    • "What country keeps setting off bombs in Moscow? Uzbekestan or is it Checkizstan. The Chenyans I think. I am too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I believe they are the ones who took a theater filled with people hostage and then killed a bunch of them"

      Chechnya
    • What country keeps setting off bombs in Moscow? Uzbekestan or is it Checkizstan. The Chenyans I think.

      You have a point, but the above quote says a lot too. Even for someone who presumably has some interest in history and international politics (you are playing Civilization), these conflicts are just vague blips on your radar.

      The Chechens in Chechnya don't have it easy, and the kind of sick extremist terrorism that gave us the school bombing in Russia is the only thing you (sort of) remember.

      This is unf
    • Typical American view on 'conflicts that don't involve me'. While the terrorist acts committed by the Chechen rebels are certainly monstrous, you must consider that the Russian forces in Chechnya a re no better. Of course, systematic abuse by Russian forces doesn't get on to prime time TV, but that doesn't make it any less horrific. The real terrorists are the Russian forces and Russian society that is unable and/or unwilling to oppose the government and defy their bullshit propaganda.

      http://www.fidh.org/ [fidh.org]

  • Lehr is right (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Travoltus ( 110240 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @04:59AM (#13080321) Journal
    Had the US not developed and deployed the bomb, someone else would have been the first to use it.

    Questions about our righteousness in nuking Japan (who themselves slaughtered even more civilians in Nanking than we killed with 2 A-bombs) will never die, but I'm confident that the US getting the bomb before China, the USSR and other nations, made it possible for us to scare everyone into not using them again.

    We sure as heck could not have ended the war with harsh insults in Japanese... a direct invasion would have cost millions of lives and left Russia open to join in. Ask the Germans what happened when the Soviet men came into Berlin, and overlay that disaster onto Tokyo...

    This isn't meant as a troll or flamebait, seriously, I think millions of lives were saved, perhaps billions.
    • 1. Set off bomb in an unpopulated area where it will be seen but not kill so many people.
      2. Explain to emperor hirohito that he has to cut this shit out or the next one is dropping on a city.

      I don't understand why it was necessary to actually kill all those civilians. The whole point was to make a show of force, wasn't it? I think a warning shot would've been enough.

    • But you are wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Knome_fan ( 898727 )
      "Had the US not developed and deployed the bomb, someone else would have been the first to use it."

      Ah, what a nice "argument". You can't of course know if someone else would have used it, but stating it as a fact seems such a great justification for US action, doesn't it?

      Besides, I hope you never have to stand before a court of law, because believe me, these hypothetical arguments are not going to impress the judge.

      "Questions about our righteousness in nuking Japan (who themselves slaughtered even more c

  • Recommended books (Score:2, Informative)

    by October_30th ( 531777 )
    To anyone who is interested in the history of the atomic and hydrogen bomb, I'd recommend the following books by Richard Rhodes:

    "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" ISBN 0-684-81378-5

    and

    "Dark Sun - The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" ISBN 0-684-82414-0

    Both books are fascinating, containing depictions of both human elements and the physics/engineering side of the atomic weapons. As an example of the former, I found it very interesting to read about SAC nuts like LeMay and his concept of a Sunday Punch str

    • "100 Suns" by Michael Light (ISBN 1400041139) is an excellent collection of "terrifyingly beautiful" nuclear test photographs.

      • Re:Recommended books (Score:3, Informative)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 )
        >> To anyone who is interested in the history of the atomic and hydrogen bomb, I'd recommend the following books by Richard Rhodes:
        >>
        >>"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" ISBN 0-684-81378-5
        >>and
        >>"Dark Sun - The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" ISBN 0-684-82414-0
        >
        >"100 Suns" by Michael Light (ISBN 1400041139) is an excellent collection of "terrifyingly beautiful" nuclear test photographs.

        I'll see you those three books and raise you one museum.

        The next time you're in Las V

  • obligatory Ozzy quote (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@noSPAM.hotmail.com> on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:00AM (#13080325) Homepage
    "Thank God for the Bomb"
    Ozzy Osbourne

    --------------------

    Like moths to a flame
    Is man never gonna change
    Time's seen untold aggression
    And infliction of pain
    If that's the only thing that's stopping war

    Then thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb

    Nuke ya nuke ya

    War is just another game
    Tailor made for the insane
    But make a threat of their annihilation
    And nobody wants to play
    If that's the only thing that keeps the peace

    Then thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb

    Nuke ya nuke ya

    Today was tommorow yesterday
    It's funny how the time can slip away
    The face of the doomsday clock
    Has launched a thousand wars
    As we near the final hour
    Time is the only foe we have

    When war is obsolete
    I'll thank God for war's defeat
    But any talk about hell freezing over
    Is all said with tongue in cheek
    Until the day the war drums beat no more

    I'll thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb
    Thank God for the bomb

    Nuke ya nuke ya

    --------------------

    (Ozzy Osbourne/Jake E. Lee)

  • Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Malfourmed ( 633699 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:00AM (#13080326) Homepage
    Herb Lehr has no regrets, which is his right. On the other hand Einstein said
    "I made one great mistake in my life... when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made."
    and
    "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

  • Do what you are told to do (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:01AM (#13080329)
    How I hate the sentence "I did what I was told to do". Everybody should check the orders against his conscience, no matter where they come from.

    It is this attitude that made WWII, or better the nazi regime, possible in the first place. And everyone living with that attitude is, in my eyes, a coward, who is too afraid to think for himself.

    How else could you explain that, by order of the DOD, soldiers were forced to remain close to the detonation to check for its impact on human beeings, while it was well known for years that there were long-term illnesses caused by it.

    • How I hate the sentence "I did what I was told to do". Everybody should check the orders against his conscience, no matter where they come from.

      It's easy to get self-righteous when you have the benefit of 60 years hindsight.

      • It's also easy to say "I can't know for sure that my decision not to participate in these things is 100% right, so I'll do it anyway".

        What exactly did he think would happen? If you work on any bomb, atomic or not, then you'll have to expect that it'll get used, and in the case of an atomic bomb, there are no civil uses (as is the case with conventional explosives), so it's hard to justify what you're doing.

        The only actual attempts at justification I've ever seen are along the lines of "sure, we'll kill a

  • "I did what I was told to do." (Score:4, Insightful)

    by under_score ( 65824 ) <mishkin.berteig@com> on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:07AM (#13080343) Homepage
    Poor excuse, not acceptable in war crimes trials. Read some of the quotes here [umkc.edu].

  • One Big Birthday Candle (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @05:21AM (#13080375) Homepage Journal

    They have set us up the bomb all your base are belong to us

  • oh no! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Jetboy01 ( 550638 )
    Herb Lehr set up us the bomb!

  • Sounds familiar (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I believe many Nazi officers commiting war crimes answered exactly the same, amazing that such a clever man cannot think for himself:

    I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do.

  • Ok, before everyone goes bashing him for saying that he doesn't feel bad, lets think. The Manhattan Project gave way to tons of other discoveries, discoveries that have saved many more lives than were lost to nuclear attack. The concepts of using radiation in medicine, in power generation, etc, were born from the Manhattan project. So yes, while the direct result of these technologies and discoveries were the deaths of millions of Japanese civilians, many more people have been saved by technology behind th

  • "Projections" .... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kronocide ( 209440 )
    Every defense of the use of the atom bomb is built on "projections" of how many soldiers and civilians would have died otherwise, and on hypotheses about what the Japanese would have done.

    These projections are made from unpublished source material, use unknown models, and those who make them have a strong need to publish projections that are at least a little worse than the actual reality that they themselves created (while sometimes not reminding people of the details of that reality).

    The success of thes
  • Yeah let's UNINVENT all sorts of things we don't like because that will be like, you know, cool.
  • J Robert Oppenheimer was interviewed years later, and he talked about how everyone reacted differently. Some people cheered, others began to cry, but most stood in stunned silence over the aftermath of the detonation. Oppenheimer himself was very disturbed, recalling the Hindu scripture which states "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

    In one of his memoirs, Richard Feynman recalled learning from John Von Neumann the notion that you are not responsible for the world you're in. That sustained him during the Manhatten Project years, but after he returned to civilian life as an instructor for Cornell, he went into a nihilistic type of depression:

    "I can't understand it anymore, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began thinking, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth ... How far from here was 34th Street? ... All those buildings, all smashed -and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't undersand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless." "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feinman", p 136


    The best quote comes from Kenneth T. Bainbridge on the morning of the Trinity test. After congratulating project leader Oppenheimer on the spectacular success of the project, he then stated "Now we are all sons of bitches."

  • Everyone likes atom bombs now? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kronocide ( 209440 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @08:56AM (#13080934) Homepage Journal
    Almost every post here is a defense of the nuclear attack on Japan or of atom bombs in general (while almost every one is written as if this was a very radical and unique position). It gets me a little worried. Slashdoters used to be computer nerds and computer nerds used to be humanitarians. Does everyone also believe that making "small, tactical nukes" is a good idea? After all, terrorists could make a devastating attack on a major city and kill millions, so according to that projection, killing a few tens of thousands of people to prevent that would be more than worth it. You can always conjure up some "projection" to defend any number of casualties...

  • Comparison to Auschwitz (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sephiro444 ( 624651 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @09:30AM (#13081041) Homepage

    Link. [nathanmallory.com]

    Man can render unspeakably terrible things to his own kind. Death walls and gas chambers are only ghastly instruments that remind us of what mankind is capable. Is it some twisted part of the human condition? Is our psychology so simple to manipulate? Is this capacity for moral distortion within each of us?

    Atrocities are not unique to the Nazis. My father likes to remind me of Japanese war crimes committed against POWs. There is no cause so noble or philosophy so infallible that human cruelty has not made a foundation from it. Even today well meaning people of conscience are drawn to polar opposites and debate whether President Bush is a righteous man or a war criminal.

    The scale and efficency of the Nazi killing machine is what shocks us so, but it reenforces what we already know: this kind of holocaust can never happen again. Even though it does, and like lemmings we turn a blind eye. Rwanda? Somalia? And how many people are unconsciously hardening their hearts against Americans on one side and Arabs on the other, or the Israelis against the Palestineans? If the dam were to break, would we again see organized slaughter of the Nazi kind?

    I think far more dangerous than the mind-numbing horrors of which the preserved Nazi implements of death remind us are the horrors that even reasonable men justify. One and a half million people died in Auschwitz and Birkenau, but more than four hundred thousand human beings died in blast and fallout from the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is tragedy in every life lost, but where they differ is in how they are both seen fifty years later.

    Aside from a few isolated fools, the Holocaust is condemned by every soul the world over. But sentiment on the two bombings remains divided, even met with passioned approval by entirely reasonable people. War is a harsh thing, and military strategy is a long way from genocide. But tell me, were the women in line at the bank in Hiroshima and the children in the schoolhouse in Nagasaki any less innocent than those who perished in the gas chambers?

  • W5MPZ (Score:3, Informative)

    by leighklotz ( 192300 ) on Saturday July 16, 2005 @02:14PM (#13082616) Homepage
    The Sandia National Laboratories ham club is operating a special event station from the site. I just talked to them using 35 watts.

    See here [zianet.com].

  • Recent Interview with someone who worked on it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope.gmail@com> on Saturday July 16, 2005 @11:04PM (#13084956) Journal
    I recently heard an interview with the youngest person on the manhatten project (he's now 85). Reminds me of hearing techno-babble on Star Trek except this stuff is real.

    It can be found here [npr.org]

    There's also a legnthy discussion [npr.org] about the life of times of the father of the A-bomb, Oppenheimer.

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