75 years since the bomb

MonkeyLove said:
The entire theory behind MAD worked relatively well when dealing with a system of rationale actors. Not so much when in the hands of dictators, despots and religious fanatics.

North Korea are apparently now there according to the UN the other day and the Saudis and Iran are not far behind.

I get the feeling the next major weapons advances will be defensive.
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Good points but remember that India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers and they detest each other.

Plus there are valid arguments to suggest that western leaders can be fruit loops too.
 


MonkeyLove said:
I meant defensive more in the terms of missile defence tools.
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That’s really got to be the next step. Take us for example, would only take a few bombs to remove us from existence, so no matter what offensive capability we might have we could be gone in the blink of an eye and there’s nothing we could do about it if someone wanted to fire at us today.
 
TravellingMackem said:
That’s really got to be the next step. Take us for example, would only take a few bombs to remove us from existence, so no matter what offensive capability we might have we could be gone in the blink of an eye and there’s nothing we could do about it if someone wanted to fire at us today.
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Yep. The West has now lost the first battle which is to stop the proliferation of regimes they didn’t want to acquire them. Too late on North Korea, almost too late on Iran and the Saudis have apparently got an agreement with China to just buy the science and tech when they want it.

The second battle is how do you defend against a threat that we couldn’t prevent and now exists
 
buster said:
They weren’t essentially beaten though,look at the resistance the Japanese gave during the war in the Pacific , the next option was an invasion of Japan.

The potential losses of US/ allied forces were incalculable if they succeeded at all.

The bombs were the only option to get the Japanese to surrender , they should have capitulated after the first one.
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Their fleet was destroyed. They had no air force. We could easily have just stopped anything getting in or out of Japan and starved them out. An invasion wasn't required. It's history now do done and dusted but in no way did we have to drop the bomb imo.
 
buster said:
They weren’t essentially beaten though,look at the resistance the Japanese gave during the war in the Pacific , the next option was an invasion of Japan.

The potential losses of US/ allied forces were incalculable if they succeeded at all.

The bombs were the only option to get the Japanese to surrender , they should have capitulated after the first one.
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There is a school of thought that the bombs didn't cause the Japanese surrender, it had much more to do with the soviet union declaring war on them on 8th August and sending 1 million troops into Japanese occupied Manchuria.
 
buster said:
They weren’t essentially beaten though,look at the resistance the Japanese gave during the war in the Pacific , the next option was an invasion of Japan.

The potential losses of US/ allied forces were incalculable if they succeeded at all.

The bombs were the only option to get the Japanese to surrender , they should have capitulated after the first one.
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That was certainly the argument for unleashing the Bombs, but it is far from an undebateable fact. The Japanese were beaten and they knew it. The Soviets had joined the war against them and invaded Manchuria. The war in Germany had ended so the Japanese would now be facing the combined military strength of all of the allies. There is certainly a fair argument to say that they weren't far away and that a simple naval blockade would have ended it.

The fact is that we will never know as that was the way that the USA chose to end the war, the alternative is that the Japanese may have fought on for a year or they may have surrendered 2 weeks later anyway. We'll never know.

It was probably as much a demonstration of power to the USSR as it was a coupe de grace to Japan, in fairness.
 
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maghater said:
There is a school of thought that the bombs didn't cause the Japanese surrender, it had much more to do with the soviet union declaring war on them on 8th August and sending 1 million troops into Japanese occupied Manchuria.
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That also points towards why nukes were used by the Americans too.
 
OOOSH YEAH said:
In hindsight it was the best thing that could have been done. Imagine a land invasion of Japan? Doesn’t bare thinking about. They had been warned and took no notice.
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America could have used the first bomb and a threat of a second to force Japan to surrender.

Instead they rushed in with the plutonium bomb, desperate to test it and show it off. If the motive was to force Japan into surrender without losing enormous numbers of ground troops in a land assault then the second bomb was unnecessary.
 
Let's be honest here there was no need to use them. The yanks committed a horrific war crime they just wanted to show off their new toy to the world.

Nothing much has changed since then either.
 
Pseudonym Number 1 said:
Let's be honest here there was no need to use them. The yanks committed a horrific war crime they just wanted to show off their new toy to the world.

Nothing much has changed since then either.
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What was the alternative though? Everyone was past the point where we could just down tools.

I disagree on your second point. We live in the safest times ever in human existence. You could even argue that having such awful weaponry has gone some way to achieving that too.
 
Aituk7 said:
I don't blame the U.S for using the bomb at all.

Hindsight is a lovely thing.

The Japanese were a theocratic nation resorting to such extreme measures as suicide attacks.

Imagine at the time if the public found out about the bomb and trying to explain why they didn't drop it but instead thought it better to let hundreds of thousands more of their countrymen be slaughtered on the mainland.
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I generally agree, although I would quibble with the theocracy bit. Shinto was essentially co-opted as a tool of nationalism and absolute monarchy and controlled by the state, rather than the other way round
 
TravellingMackem said:
That’s really got to be the next step. Take us for example, would only take a few bombs to remove us from existence, so no matter what offensive capability we might have we could be gone in the blink of an eye and there’s nothing we could do about it if someone wanted to fire at us today.
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I hate nuclear weapons. I wish they had never existed. I wish every country would multilaterally get rid of every single one but that is never going to happen.

I suppose the argument is that our constant at-sea deterrent would ensure that whoever bombed us would be disadvantage more than any advantage they’d gain from bombing us. In other words, why bother bombing us?

Which has worked so far but we haven’t had religious nut job dictators, who believe in alsorts if crazy shit about being rewarded in the “after life”, in charge of nuclear weapons...... yet. When Iran gets nuclear weapons all bets are off in rationality. Which is why Israel and USA would disable Iran before that day came. Not a great future ahead for our species I’m afraid.

(and people say religious is harmless and no threat)
 
Cockney Mackem said:
I generally agree, although I would quibble with the theocracy bit. Shinto was essentially co-opted as a tool of nationalism and absolute monarchy and controlled by the state, rather than the other way round
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Very fair point however I would quibble the other way and say that quite a lot of extreme nationalist movements such as fascism are incredibly religious in the way they operate anyway.
 
I visited Hiroshima a few year ago. Apart from the famous ruined building left standing in the centre and a couple of monuments, you would never begin to imagine that an atom bomb had dropped there.
 

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