Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Part I - In the beginning... there was always war...
“Over the
last 5,500 years… about 15,000 wars have taken place on our planet… more than
3.5 billion people have been killed in these wars… there have only been 292
peaceful years in the entire history of mankind.” Pravda, Russian State
Newspaper, Weapons of the Future - Weather, Plasma and Money, 26 September 2003
Estimates of deaths from the two Atomic Bombs range from 115,000 to 340,000. If the latter is correct -- and it is closer to the historical consensus -- the two nuclear devices used by the United States in August 1945, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killed almost as many Japanese as all the Americans killed in all the battles of World War II. It is often thought that these bombs won World War II; that is not true. The Japanese Empire was rapidly spinning out 0f control and basically awaiting collapse. What is true is that these two weapons ended World War II and may have actually saved lives.
Part I - In the beginning... there was always war...
Part II - Never bring a knife to a gunfight...
"The
basic rules to a gun fight are as follows: (1) Never bring a knife to a
gunfight; bring a gun… preferably, bring at least two guns. (2) Bring all of
your friends who have guns. (3) Life is expensive; ammo is cheap… anything
worth shooting is worth shooting twice. (4) Only hits count; the only thing
worse than a miss is a slow miss. (5) If you can choose what to bring to a
gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun. (6) If you are not
shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and moving. (7) Always cheat;
the only unfair fight is the one you lose. (8) Have a plan! (9) Have a backup
plan because the first plan won’t work. (10) The faster you
finish the fight, the less shot you will get." Adapted from Special
Forces List Team House, http://teamhouse.tni.net/Misc/gunfight/rules.htm
What
makes nuclear weapons so different from conventional weapons? That question can
be likened to explaining the difference between night and day. Basically, the
process leading up to detonation is very different, as is the degree of damage
inflicted after detonation. Basically, the difference between nuclear and
conventional weapons is like that of bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Part II - Never bring a knife to a gunfight...
Part III - A place called Trinity... in the Valley of the Dead...
“Thunder is
good. Thunder is impressive. But it is lightning that does the work.” Mark Twain
The test bomb, at the flash point,
reached a temperature of between 2 & 3 million degrees centigrade (conventional
bombs reach 500 degrees C which means the test bomb was between 4000 to 6000
times hotter). The luminosity reached not quite 10 x the brightness of
the sun. (Later, Japanese victims located over a mile from the point of detonation,
had the retinas of their eyes wielded to the pupils causing instant, permanent
blindness.) The flash was visible for approximately 180 miles,
audible for approximately 160 miles, at 120 miles glass panes
broke out of windows, and at 10 miles the heat was like “opening an
oven door”.
All that power was the result of 1/30th of an ounce of P-239, the fissionable material.
All that power was the result of 1/30th of an ounce of P-239, the fissionable material.
Part IV - Tibbets and the Enola Gay ride into history...
"This is
the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." The Hollow Men, T.
S. Eliot
Hiroshima was
a city of approximately 350 to 400,000 people in August of 1945; it was
also headquarters to the Imperial 2nd General Army. When the Atomic bomb
detonated, the fireball from "Little Boy" was 6 football
fields wide; and, at its core, the heat matched that of the surface of the sun.
Within the area on the ground directly under the epicenter (called
the hypocenter) everything was vaporized. Literally, people
burned like tissue paper; nothing was left. There was no pain; there was
no dying process for these people; they simply ceased to exist. There were no
charred remains, no bones, no teeth or dental remains, nothing. This
is the primary reason there remains - and will always remain - such a wide gap
in the estimated total of deaths at Hiroshima... at the hypocenter, very near
the heart of the city, there simply was nothing left to count.
Part V - Burying the dead took too long... Hiroshima is no more...
“I want you
to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He
won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.” Lt. General George S.
Patton, US Army
The attempt to get your mind around the totality of the destruction wrought by
man’s first infantile steps into the Atomic Age is nearly futile. To simply
state that the event was ‘Hellish’ fails to give it the degree of
understanding it deserves. Nonetheless, if mankind has ever developed Hell
on Earth, this event must surely sit atop of that accomplishment-of-misery.
Simply stated, what had happened in July in the desert at Alamogordo with the
test bomb, the Gadget was
unbelievable; but, what happened to Hiroshima with Little Boy... the
terror & destruction of a modern city… was, and remains, beyond human
comprehension. The dead that perished quickly were the most
fortunate.
Part V - Burying the dead took too long... Hiroshima is no more...
Part VI - Why the weapons were used... revisionist speculation...
"Better
an end with terror than a terror without end." (German proverb)
Why the weapons were used... revisionist speculation...
Revisionist historians so often speak to how decimated Japanese war
industries were; and, how by August 1945 Japan’s ability to wage war was
waning to the point of becoming defenseless. Further, their argument goes that
it was not necessary to wipe those cities from the face of the Earth because
the war was substantially already over. However, this argument does
not hold water as just six weeks before the dropping of the A-bombs, over
12,000 American boys had been killed or were missing in action on a spit
of ground in the Pacific called Okinawa.
Revisionist somehow fail to recall that just 6 weeks before we destroyed two
modern Japanese cities with two Atomic bombs, that the battle for Okinawa
proved to be the bloodiest battle of the entire Pacific War.
Thirty-four allied ships and craft of all types had been sunk, mostly
by Kamikazes, and 368 ships and craft damaged. The fleet had also lost 763
aircraft.
Total American casualties in the operation numbered over 12,000 killed and
36,000 wounded. America, from the start of the battle in March through the
end of the fight in June, averaged loosing 440 boys being wounded and
153 boys killed in action, every day, for those 82
days. Over 600 American boys a day were being sacrificed at Okinawa. In
fact, American losses at Okinawa were so heavy as to illicit
Congressional calls for an investigation into the conduct of the US military
commanders.
It is worth noting that had those losses been suffered to a 'defeated' enemy today, the American people would mutiny against the government.
It is worth noting that had those losses been suffered to a 'defeated' enemy today, the American people would mutiny against the government.
Why the weapons were used... revisionist speculation...
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