US's Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Being Dismantled 299
SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from an AP report:
"The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. ... The weapon is considered dismantled when the roughly 300 pounds of high explosives inside are separated from the special nuclear material, known as the pit. The uranium pits from bombs dismantled at Pantex will be stored on an interim basis at the plant, Cunningham said. The material and components are then processed, which includes sanitizing, recycling and disposal, the National Nuclear Security Administration said last fall when it announced the Texas plant's role in the B53 dismantling."
Oops (Score:5, Funny)
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The final components will be accidentally dropped Tuesday at the Amarillo Crater...
I read an article about the disassembly plant a few years ago; AFAIR they're dismantled inside sealed bunkers underground, so if the HE goes off everyone dies, the bunker collapses and the radioactive materials are safely buried until they can dig them up.
Of course if it did trigger a nuclear explosion that wouldn't help much :).
Re:Oops (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty unlikely to trigger a nuclear explosion considering the requirements to reach criticality in a bomb. In most cases, you'll have explosives go off by accident on such a bomb, they don't do enough compression to cause criticality and end up being essentially a dirty bomb scattering highly enriched uranium or plutonium around.
Which is what bunker is designed to protect against.
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Re:Oops (Score:4, Informative)
Oops, you mis-used a word there. You mean a 'critical mass' would not be caused and no nuclear detonation would result. The much more likely 'criticality' condition is a non-critical mass that causes the thermal explosion that has the same effect as a 'dirty' bomb.
Criticality -- the point at which a fuel assembly can sustain a nuclear chain reaction by itself.
Critical mass -- the smallest mass of fuel for which the criticality is reached; depends on geometry, density, temperature etc.
So the GP's usage is correct. To be really precise, one could note that weapon fuel should go from subcritical to prompt critical to achieve explosion, but that would be nitpicking in this context.
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I have no idea what the B53 bomb is -- if it is a BIG bomb and it DOES have Uranium in it it might not be a Pu implosion core.
Its a two stage thermonuclear using an implosion primary fueled by highly enriched uranium. The secondary uses the standard magic for implosion with lithium-6 deuteride fuel. The HE initiator is sensitive to shocks, so if someone were to shoot at the warhead, the HE could go off, but the primary probably wouldn't achieve criticality due to asymmetrical compression. If you're close enough for it to be a problem, you probably won't even notice the uranium. The secondary has probably long since been removed
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I don't know about that, but I have a feeling the US will activate its emergency broadcast system in the near future...
9 Megatons (Score:5, Informative)
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Thank you, you beat me to it. I know that Hiroshimas are the standard unit of explosive force, but it's nice to state TNT equivalent just in case there happen to be any nerds reading this site.
Re:9 Megatons (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, I thought our standard unit of measurement around here was the LOC?
So, just how much damage does a LOC, when dropped from a great height, do to an urban area? Anyone know? This is Slashdot... someone knows.
Re:9 Megatons (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, I thought our standard unit of measurement around here was the LOC? So, just how much damage does a LOC, when dropped from a great height, do to an urban area? Anyone know? This is Slashdot... someone knows.
p. Depends on how high the swallows were when they dropped it. And if they were African or European swallows. Also, are you including the bricks and stone, or just the books?
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Also, are you including the bricks and stone, or just the books?
Actually, a unit of LoC refers only to the books, not to the bricks, stone, librarians, or other building materials. Just as a can of tuna refers to the fish inside but not to the tin.
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That can't be, since the LoC is also a standard unit of distance and volume, both of which refer to the building itself.
Hmm, if we knew the mass of the LoC, we could calculate it's equivalent megatonnage on impact using one of those asteroid impact calculators ...
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Well, the LOC has 147 million items, 33 million of them books. At, say an average of 1kg each, that would be, say 40 million kilos? Probably more. Lets say 50 million kg, falling from infinity to the Earth's surface gives a total energy of 3.14*10^15 joules, at 4.184Gj/ton of TNT gives a total of 750kilotons of TNT. That would be about 57 Hiroshimas. Note that the LOC probably weighs at least 2-3 times that, but Google doesn't seem to know, so whatever.
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Well, the LOC has 147 million items, 33 million of them books. At, say an average of 1kg each, that would be, say 40 million kilos? Probably more. Lets say 50 million kg, falling from infinity to the Earth's surface gives a total energy of 3.14*10^15 joules, at 4.184Gj/ton of TNT gives a total of 750kilotons of TNT. That would be about 57 Hiroshimas. Note that the LOC probably weighs at least 2-3 times that, but Google doesn't seem to know, so whatever.
Of course, most of that would be dissipated as heat as the books/films etc. burned on the way down; very little of it would actually be translated into destructive force on impact.
Re:9 Megatons (Score:4, Funny)
So, just how much damage does a LOC, when dropped from a great height, do to an urban area?
One line of code? Not much, but you better make sure that line is appropriately licensed or the damage done by thousands of lawyers descending on your location will be devastating. :)
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Hiroshima is a terrible standard of explosive force since thermonuclear weapons are much more efficient than Hiroshima or Nagasaki devices.
Plus more modern aiming, delivery and detonation techniques make even a similar yield device more destructive.
Grable shot showed the destructive power of the precursor wave against drag sensitive objects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upshot-Knothole_Grable [wikipedia.org]
So rather than detonate at 580 meters (Little Boy/Hiroshima), Grable is a similar yield and detonates at 160 meters and
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Like any of this talk about megatons means much of anything. After a certain point, the extra energy just goes up into the sky. Tis the reason why missiles contain multiple warheads instead of a single large one.
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Large bombs were designed to crack enemy missile silos from a distance, at a time when our missiles weren't very accurate. I believe the optimal bang for the buck for attacking cities and such is around 800 KT. Muke scale very poorly, with various destructive effects rising with the third root to the tenth root of yield, so the big bombs are fairly pointless except as buker busters.
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After I read about the aftermath of the Tsar Bomba, I would think another concern would be cracking the fucking crust of the fucking planet [nuclearweaponarchive.org].
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After I read about the aftermath of the Tsar Bomba, I would think another concern would be cracking the fucking crust of the fucking planet.
Don't know why that would be a concern. 100 megatons isn't that much energy geologically. It's somewhere between 8.5 and 9 moment magnitude as an earthquake. In other words, the recent Japanese quake or the similar quake in Indonesia of several years ago, were larger in terms of energy released than Tsar Bomba would have been, even at full yield.
And frankly so is anyone who is still toying with nuclear weapons. There are no upsides to their use.
An upside to their "use" (or more accurately, lack thereof) has been about 65 years and counting of global peace. There's still the occasional large war (such as th
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Nuclear weapons are used every day, and the result is fewer war casualties planet-wide per capita in the nuclear age than any other time since accurate records were kept. MAD is mad, but it does seem to work.
9 megatons (Score:3)
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Any projections of the casualties in megadeaths based on potential drop locations? You know, for the binder.
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According to wikipedia, this bomb causes a fireball 5km wide with a lethal heat-blast of 29km wide...
The number of people killed depends entirely on where you drop it...
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The biggest portion causing fatalities would probably be heat emission and kinetic shockwave following it. Rather hard to say which one would demand more casualties, as it will depend on where it is dropped. Steel frame buildings will most likely protect from the heat of the blast outside epicenter at the very least though.
And of course, at epicenter you're going to be fucked even if you're in a bunker. That caliber of a bomb is the type that can change the maps.
Re:9 megatons (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting that it pales in comparison to the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the 50 megaton Tsar Bomba [wikipedia.org]. However, the Soviets only made one of those while the Americans has 50 B53s, so what they lacked in tonnage they made up for in volume.
Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
While the logical part of me is glad this is gone, the engineering part of my brain is sad. :)
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While the logical part of me is glad this is gone, the engineering part of my brain is sad. :)
They should have detonated them and charged for tickets; there's lots of space for grandstands at the Nevada Test Site.
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Should detonate it on Mars, to uncover some fresh soil.you know, for science...you monster.
Ar the moon, because it would be coll to watch if the did it while the moon was in the Earth's shadow.
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Pah! 9 Megatons to the moon as a zit is to an elephants ass. Nothing.
Next you're going to tell him that Armageddon had really bad (no) science in it.
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Should detonate it on Mars,
Should detonate it on the moon. [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
B61 Mod 11
Doesn't that make it the B6?
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Not B6, just 6 by rather remarkable coincidence...
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1 in 17, actually.
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Which is why we didn't have it at a touch of a button.
And there are perfectly valid scenarios for this weapon. Reduce navel forces, remove coastal facilities, and so on.
Of course you would never use it anyplace you wanted to use again for 100 years.
We don't seem to be living in the large countries at war world anymore. And that always causes me to be a little giddy.
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I for one am glad I have only existed (for all intents and purposes) post cold war, which does make me a young-ling compared to some of you lot, but everyone should know about what co
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I wasn't quite being as literal with the touch of a button statement, just the idea that it can be used is terrifying enough. You could probably drop it in the sea and create a tidal wave so big it would cover a medium sized country. It wouldn't just reduce navies near by, it would eradicate anything near the entire ocean.
You seriously underestimate what is needed to cause a decent tidal wave.
If used as a "wave generator", this bomb could cause wet feet in a single harbour,
and only if detonated close enough (under 20km, lets say. It probably even needs
to be closer than that, I haven't done the math) but that's pretty much all.
Earthquakes triggering big tsunamis are vastly more powerful, and also work differently:
Big submarine earthquakes permanently displace huge amounts of water - in the case
of the Japan tsunami, ov
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You're correct, these are the part of strategic rather then tactical arsenal, and are a part of MAD deterrent far more then a bunker buster (though they could probably remove Ural mountains when needed). But these are old, and as ballistic missile deterrent came a bit later, it was upgraded to have MIRV payload where smaller bombs were scattered from a single warhead over larger kill zone.
They are far more efficient when it comes to MAD scenario then a single huge bomb.
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A bunker buster, providing your bunker is within a few hundred miles or so.
Nonsense. I find it astounding how people can find ways to exaggerate the firepower of a nuclear bomb. For example, an airburst 9 megaton warhead centered on Manhattan Island in New York City would kill most people in NYC. According to Wikipedia, it'd cause lethal burns to any exposed people within 18 miles (incidentally including all of the city) of ground zero. But if you're in a bunker a hundred miles away? You won't even notice, aside possibly from some noise.
It was also laydown (Score:2)
It would land with parachutes, wait for the dropping plane to clear the area, and explode. This would send a shock wave through the ground to the bunker.
Even the new B61 has an airburst option, and dial-a-yield too (actually, even some older warheads had dial-a-yield, such as the Lance).
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This is a good thing, the B53 was a last ditch weapon intended to take out the hardened bunkers of the Soviet leadership, except it was air burst which is a highly, highly ineffective was to take out a bunker.
The B53 had a reinforced nose that (along with parachutes) allowed it to be detonated on the ground, which should have been fairly effective.
But, I'm getting the mental picture of such a bomb lying there while the bomb squad attempts to disarm it.
And imagine if they succeeded... (Score:2)
Me too, except I was imagining the Soviet bomb squad de-activating it, and some US general going loopy as he realises that's the only one they've got and the danged Russkies have just switched it off... "... so whadda we going to do now?!"
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But, I'm getting the mental picture of such a bomb lying there while the bomb squad attempts to disarm it.
There'd be no time for that. It would probably set to go off within a minute or two at the most. Your only hope to survive would be to start shooting at it.
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Maybe, but it's more likely that's an excuse spun by the big cable news channels after the realized in hindsight just how overt their bais was in covering that group. Of course, once they were caught doing stuff like photoshopping out black Tea Partiers from rally photos so they could claim the movement was racist, there was little point in pretending.
Rather unfair (Score:5, Funny)
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Does it still work ? (Score:3)
They should try it first, see if all the mechanisms still work after all these years.
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Hmmm disassemble, remove the core, install dummy core, then re-assemble and drop. That would test everything but the actual nuclear bits.
Warning to trick-or-treaters issued. (Score:2)
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Have you ever seen Pantex ? It is rather... large.
It was designed to handle kilotons of chemical explosives at a time, and those just might go boom, so each building is separated by a very wide gap to the next. Even if trick or treat in Amarillo Texas involves hundreds of pounds of dynamite, I doubt the workers would hear it.
amusing quote (Score:2, Informative)
From the article:
Today's bombs are smaller but more precise, reducing the amount of collateral damage, Kristensen said.
Amusing, considering that he is talking about bombs tens of thousand times more powerful than the largest non-nuclear munitions.
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True, non the less. And I' not sure that statement refers only to nuclear weapons.
If I did it over again, I would choose weaponeering.
WE have bombs that are self guided, can go through several stories, and only explode 4 nano seconds after they hit the ground. This bomb destroying the inside of a building, while only shaking the windows of building across the street. How fucking cool is that?
We can look at a naval ship yard, cripple it my destroying only a few specific buildings.
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9 Megatons (Score:3)
Or, roughly 200 grams of antimatter...
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Titan II Missles (Score:3)
The warhead on a Titan II missle was also 9 megatons, just for reference. Not sure if it was the same design, but 9 megatons wasn't really all that large a weapon. While it may be the largest weapon deployed, the Russians had a test device that would have yielded 100 megatons.
I suspect a far more interesting value for nuclear weapon ratings would be the effective blast radius, both as an airburst and at ground level. 9 megatons might be something that would wipe out an entire large metropolitan area, or it might be something that would just take out a city center. The difference is significant.
In today's climate, it is unlikely any state-level actor would really want to take out an entire metropolitan area. And certainly, anything that would be able to be moved by non-state-level actors would be unlikely to have a yield big enough to do that.
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Try the following link, it doesn't have the 9MT though
http://www.carloslabs.com/projects/200712B/GroundZero.html [carloslabs.com]
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While it may be the largest weapon deployed...
You be wanting the B41 [wikipedia.org], at 25 megatons.
I suspect a far more interesting value for nuclear weapon ratings would be the effective blast radius, both as an airburst and at ground level. 9 megatons might be something that would wipe out an entire large metropolitan area, or it might be something that would just take out a city center. The difference is significant.
It is more efficient to use a bunch of "small" bombs than one monster one if you want to take out a ci
Wish granted. (Score:4, Informative)
Here. http://www.carloslabs.com/node/20 [carloslabs.com]
An approximation of thermal pulse radius, overpressure, and fallout drift for several bomb yields, including Ivy Mike (10 Mt), overlaid on Google Maps.
All the money they used to spend on Nukes (Score:2)
When government's don't need to worry about each other they have more time to worry about their citizens!
I love you big brother, can I borrow your car? I'll spy on your GF (Canada) and report back to you I promise!
Not the most powerful (Score:2)
What happen??? (Score:2)
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All I was wondering was if U2 was called in to discuss the proceedings...
recycle the plutonium to NASA (Score:2)
NASA is running out of plutonium for RTG electric generators for deep space probes. They should recycle the weapons grade plutonium to make RTG fuel.
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And nothing... (Score:2)
The last of the nation's most powerful bombs? (Score:3)
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Is this implying there is a more powerful nuclear weapon or is this speaking in the tense that they have been disabled and no longer exist?
Western nukes have been shrinking for years; there just isn't much use for a really big nuke other than destroying cities. A small one with precision guidance is much more useful if you actually intend to fight a nuclear war.
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All nukes have. Ever since ballistic missiles have formed the backbone of MAD for both sides, it was judged that having MIRV warhead with a large amount of smaller yield bombs was far more destructive then a single huge bomb that can do more damage at its single hit site, but the total kill area is far smaller.
This is the same for USA, USSR/Russia, China, GB and France. Can't really speak for India and Pakistan as I haven't looked at their arsenals much, but logic would suggest that they would want small ta
Re:Most Powerful? (Score:5, Informative)
More to the point, having a big ass nuke like this thing requires a big ass rocket to lift it. There are no countermeasures to prevent someone from shooting your one big ass nuke into bits before it can deliver it's yield; and it costs more to build and maintain than more modern designs.
Oh, and putting 3 to 10 smaller nukes on top of a smaller rocket with better guidance packages and available space for dummy warheads delivers way more destruction for way less money. Capitalism at it's finest!
See:
inverse cube law, as it applies to expanding spheres
Titan-II ICBM
Minuteman-III ICBM
Trident D3 SLBM
Peacekeeper/MX ICBM (though these have since been retired as well)
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Oh yes, at least one bomb more powerful than that existed: the Tsar Bomba. Designed for 100 Mtons, detonated at 50 Mtons, and then cancelled.
It was the cleanest nuclear explosion ever, since over 90% of its power was generated by nuclear fusion.
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this was the largest that is currently in service but by no means the largest we ever made.. that falls to
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/B41.html [nuclearweaponarchive.org]
where this one is a mear 9 Mt.. the B41 was a 25 Mt weapon. i do wonder about the people who where building these things.. and what was going through their minds.. from the person who signed the checks/orders to the guy who was tightening the bolts.
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How does this help our nation? Oops I said the N-word, my apologies to the offended parties.
By recycling it into something useful (weapons into plowshares and all that) instead of it sitting around costing money through expensive guarding, monitoring and maintenance not to mention Russia under the treaty dismantling nuclear warheads that were meant for killing us. Oh, and 0% chance of it accidentally going off once it's dismantled versus the extremely small percentage chance beforehand.
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He who beats his swords into plowshares plows for the one that did not.
If you wish for peace, prepare for war.
That's a couple sound bites that describe a complex situation in an overly simplistic fashion. They do get real close to the real point though. We cannot dismantle ALL of our weapons and turn them into something useful. We cannot get rid of ALL of our nuclear weapons either. I do see the point in dismantling these old and, with current military thinking, exceedingly large warheads.
This dismantli
How this is in the USA's Interests (Score:2)
How does this help our nation?
I know you're trolling but ask a semi-legitimate question. A better question is what value is there in keeping it around? And the answer is none, it's been replaced and we can't afford to keep it around. Fortunately neither can the Russians, thus the New START treaty enables both sides to get rid of their warheads, whilst inspecting that the other side got rid of theirs. This means it's in America's national interest for the warheads that are active to be the most useful ones, and that's not necessarily
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Same way it helps your "N-word" when you scrap old aircraft carriers in favor of new ones. You don't have to pay upkeep costs for weapon system that is utterly outdated and unlikely to ever get used (as ballistic missile arsenal has long picked up that slack).
Granted it's pretty damn scary when idiots who honestly think that bigger nuclear explosion is better, and it should be "dropped on [x]" as there have been multiple suggestions in this discussion, which rather efficiently dispels the question marks ove
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This helps our nation because this weapon was doing nothing but spending money for the last 50 years. It will never be used - you can do much more destruction with a modern Minuteman-III than you could ever do with this thing; and cheaper too.
There's a reason why our nuclear weapons propellerheads started going for less yield rather than more in the late '50s. Big explosions are neat, and all that; but you can blow up a lot more shit with MIRV, it's easier to maintain, costs way less to manufacture, and a
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Re:Notable part of American history here. (Score:5, Interesting)
"I was a child when the Cold War ended but even a decade and a half later it seems so pointless."
Moderate nuclear wars were and remain quite practical. That was proven by atmospheric testing. Militaries on both sides developed procedures for continuing the fight near areas which had been nuked, including driving through them buttoned up in APCs and tanks.
Given the context of Total War which was fought in WWII, destroying enemy nations was a very reasonable option to have in the toolbox. Japan and Germany had, LITERALLY, tried to destroy many of the Allies. This wasn't some game of Risk, it was real. In that context, being able to obliterate similar threats was flawlessly RATIONAL.
Had Imperial Japan refused to surrender, it was reasonable to keep striking it until there were no more Japanese. The entire population was a weapon. The current geek weaboo view of Japan has nothing to do with the reality of what Imperial Japanese Army did to much of Asia. Japan worked long and hard to deserve every casualty it sustained, and don't forget it. The Japanese people pretend differently, but their victim neighbors are under no such delusions.
Nuclear weapons finished WWII, and deterred nuclear war thereafter.
That's a pretty good record. Don't use current PC fashion to judge history. Learn the details of why things came to be that you might better understand. Because the Cold War was fought "well enough", you enjoy tasty freedom and so does much of the former Soviet Union. Detente worked (praise be to Nixon!) and China is far freer than under Mao.
Willingness to kill billions coupled with restraint and diplomacy over time worked. Apart from a few minor scuffles the Cold War was quite peaceful. Thank atomic weapons in the hands of RATIONAL, not "insane" actors.
Without the power to kill, diplomacy means nothing because enemy power can dictate terms.
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"Minor scuffles"? You mean, like the one that killed my grandfather and two to four million other people [wikipedia.org]? Or the one that killed upwards of a million [wikipedia.org]? Or the one that killed anywhere from 800,000 to 3,000,000 [wikipedia.org]? Or...
The Cold War was not particularly peaceful. I suspect that if you add up all the proxy wars, you'll get a death toll that easily exceeds that of World War I.
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I can't believe I just read that.
Yeah, those subhumans in less affluent nations don't count for squat -- which is also, coincidentally, what they get paid for assembling your consumer electronics and running shoes.
Re:Notable part of American history here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Will people then truly understand the insanity that led a democracy to create war machines powerful enough to end all life on this planet?
Why this focus on the US? Where's the USSR in your narrative? Will people then truly understand the insanity that led to the USSR? The subjugation of perhaps a quarter of the world's population to a brutal and soulless ideology? The creation of an even larger nuclear force than the US had in the late 70s and early 80s in terms of raw destructive power?
The history of the USSR is one of conquest and expansion from the end of the Russian Civil War in 1923 through to the end of 1945. After the demonstration of the US atomic bombs and the end of the Second World War, the USSR switched to a strategy of war via proxies. They managed to install communist governments in China, various places in south Asia, and a number of other places. The nuclear bomb forced them to cut back on their approach to global conquest and may have saved hundreds of millions of peoples' lives and billions of people from slavery in the process.
I think there's a good chance that the world of 50 to 100 years from now may well envy the stability and peace of the Cold War era. The current proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East (by Pakistan and Iran) may well cause arms races not just in the Middle East, but in Africa, Europe, and South America as well. We might start seeing nuclear weapons in the hands of small groups.
And we may see a new Cold War start between China and the US. The future may not just understand us, but go through the same thing we went through a few decades ago.
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The B41 was 25 megatons and the largest bomb we deployed.
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I don't get that one either. In the case of teabagging, it's definitely better to be the "er" than the "ee". Then there's Douchebagging, which I just don't want to go into right now (if ever).
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Pantex has been doing this sort of stuff since World War II. I suspect anyone who cares knows about it.
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http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v122/smadurski/toons/?action=view¤t=farside-nuclr-boom-paperbag.gif&newest=1 [photobucket.com]
And in color (on a mug):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VTG-Far-Side-1983-mug-Larson-bomb-paper-bag-popping-/320716382907 [ebay.com]