60 years ago to day - Why do we have nuclear bombs?

"Oh my god, what have we done???"
cried second pilot Robert Lewis, when the plane he was in was filled with incredible bright light.

At 8:15:17, morning on the 6th of august 1945, Lewis and the rest of the crew on the B-29 bomber "Enola Gay" a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima...
43 seconds later, the city was gone..

A number between 60 - 144.000 died from the inital blast..
Thousand later of the radiation..
ALL INNOCENT....

How on earth is these sort of actions defendable?
What drove Usa to this terrible and completely [censored] up act?

In my video President Truman, makes the statement that they destroyed Hiroshima's "usefulness to the enemy"... God, it makes me sick...

Sorry for this, just had to get it out..
The world was [censored] up then, and get's more and more [censored] up each day..
Bah...

FC

It was america flexing it's ego against an enemy that dared invade and challenge it. It worked too

Good question as to why we still have them today. It's not like they actually serve any purpose. Western countries will never use them because they'd never get the support of their population. Any other country won't use them because they'd get battered by America and Europe. Conventional wars don't even exist any more, its all about bombing people to pieces then sending in infantry to pick up the pieces. Either that, or suicide bombs and guerilla warfare. Where, exactly, do Nukes fit in?

And they said the cold war was dead.. bullshit..
I guess they have them "just in case"...

What happened to the good old fashion war?
The one including two armies and a large open field.
They battled each other, and then went home (those who could)..
Winner declared..
Nothing of killing innocents civilians claiming to battle the enemy..

Well, not sure about not harming innocents, but I hate the fact that you can kill somone by pushing a button on a screen, rather than facing them in combat. It means that no-one really appreciates the horror of war anymore.

i know im probabily gonna get flamed for this bigtime, but i feel sorry for the pilots too,yes they dropped the thing, but they ahd no idea what it was gonna do, and after they pressed that button, they had to live with all those innocent lives on their minds for the rest of their lives. just another piece of proof that science isnt all its cracked up to be (im quite anti technology....yet i love my computer, yes im a big contradiction, but a lot of the problems in the world are caused by technology)

Nukes are more a political weapon than a weapon of war. They give a country status and power, they show a country is not to be provoked.
The idea of nuclear bombs is everyone has them. America and other large powerful countries wont use theirs because their population wont support it.
And small countries wont use theirs because by the time they push the button the larger country will have a misile going back in their direction.

But if large western countries decided to give theirs up they would be vunerable to weak countries who havnt given them up.

Small weak countries feel they need nuclear weapons, not for use but just to show they shouldnt be attacked. So in turn western countries must keep theirs.

Unless everyone decides to trust each other nuclear weapons are here to stay.

A little off topic but it doesnt make much sense that America is starting wars to stop the use of " weapons of mass destruction " and America dont want any more countries to have them.
And yet they were the only who ever used one in a war.

if any uk people are interested (or those in countries that steal our channels and don't pay tv licenses ), there's a documentary on hiroshima at 9pm till 10.30pm tonight on BBC1

Do you really think people don't set their nukes off because they wouldn't get the support of the population? Can't imagine that to be a main reason.

On the very very tiny positive side, I think without nuclear weapons my country (Germany) would've been a site of old, conventional, honorable (??? Sethis, people have been cheating, lying and inventing new technology to have advantages over the other side forever!) war for decades. It was only the bombs that kept Russia from claiming it, and I don't think US/UK/France would've agreed with that. There may be more situations where only the threat of the opponent having nukes has led to an agreement without violence.

Having said that, I don't support the use and possession of them and didn't mean to give anyone that idea.

I see what you mean, Birgit..
That nuclear power has it own "preventing war"-function because at the moment someone use them, the whole world is gonna fry...
And all of a sudden we have Mad Max, Fallout and all the other post-nuclear scenarios..

But what if something happened by accident?
The world has been on the verge of destruction several times, due to misunderstandings..
This scares me shitless..
Mankind is not qualified for this sort of power...
Yes, maybe we can deal with it by not using it, but what if something happens by accident...
The thought of earth being destroyed because of a error and mistake is really bad..
I'd rather go down in a blaze of glory with a huge meteor crushing the earth.
Not by some idiots that pressed the wrong button..

We actually had an incident here in Norway 10 years ago..
On January 25, 1995, a signal appeared on Russian military radars indicating that a missile had been launched from off the coast of Norway.
The Russian military suspected that it might be a nuclear missile from a US submarine aimed at Moscow.
The alarm reached president Yeltsin, who for the first time activated the “nuclear case” that contains the launch codes. Within a matter of minutes, he had to decide whether or not to order the launch of nuclear missiles.
After about eight minutes, the missile had clearly entered a less threatening trajectory and the alarm was called off.
Further investigation revealed that the missile had been launched for scientific purposes. Information about the planned launch had been given but had failed to reach the right people.


I've been trying to find that cartoon, to illustrate my point, of a washing-lady in Pentagon late at night, brushing away at a keyboard, and at the screen behind her the text saying: "Launch nukes, press yes" shows..
Perhaps someone can post it.. It quite humorus and at the same time scary..

Well i aint gona go into as much detail as the rest of you fine people. but Nuclear bombs serve no purpose. They are mostly just a detaerant. No contry wants to have to use them are a nuclear war would break out. Thus the world gets destroyed people die.....etc etc, you get the gist of things. So in my eyes they just serve as a political deterant.

Peace out

i think that the point about countries not using nuclear missiles due to the population not agreeing makes sense, but also if someone fires a missile in the direction of one country, and it's path is over a different country with nuclear weapons they might think that someones firing at them, and the first country doesn't want to be responsible for either the destruction of the world, or a nuclear fallout of 35 years.

i know that countries use the excuse of having nuclear weapons for defence, but why does the US need so many? i remember reading in a history book that the US has or had 2500 more nuclear missiles than anyone else. if one can flatten a city in under a minute...

My father fought in WWII.

The problem with a nuclear bomb is that it's so amazingly destructive that it would be impossible to use it against a military target.

You have to realize that the Japanese military in WWII was a truly vicious force. They took prisoners...and tortured them to death. They used Kamikaze bombers. They were out to conquer the entire world.

I've read John Hersey's Hiroshima and I am very familiar with the horrors that happened there that day. I believe that had the US not dropped that bomb, many more would have died in general. After all, dying in a nuclear explosion doesn't make you any deader than being blown to bits by tons of conventional explosion.

The only thing I wish they'd done was to have dropped it on a Japanese military installation.

The Bomb was coming. Germany was working on it, too.

Birgit, I didn't mean that warfare hasn't changed over the years, but I think after the Vietnam war, then people no longer seem to notice the suffering that it causes.

Also it means that people can get into the army who have no comprehension of who or how they are killing. I think it was better when you could actually fight the person trying to kill you, rather than being bombed from 8 miles away, or aeroplanes. And then you weren't being wiped out by this pasty faced young ensign who flips a switch on a Destroyer, and bang, your village is wiped out.

Call me old fashioned, but it just seems more sporting to me...

It just ain't good warmanship.. :P
But how do you people think the world would be without the weight of nuclear-war on the scale?

More or less war?

Perhaps we could sanction it, so each country could have maximum one nuke-head..
US have enough nukes to demolish the earth 5 times..

Yeah, but it's OK if *WE* have them because we have the good sense not to use them.

Right?



(Excuse me while I go find a surgeon to remove my tongue from my cheek)

Focusing on the 2 WW2 bombings of Japan with nuclear weapons you have to ask what would have happened if the bombs hadn't been dropped. There are theories that Japan was about to surrender, or was prepared to fight to the last man. The later is seen as more likely and at the time people couldn't see the Japanese surrendering. So, what's preferable? A long, drawn out invasion of Japan costing millions of lives, or the result we had?

The problem with 2 armies and a field in-between is that it's just the same as hi-tech or nuclear war. The leaders will never have to face hardship and danger and the people will die will be civilians or drafted men thinking they're ding what's best for their country.

It may have been better for the US to bomb a smaller city or a lonely military base (although almost all military bases are in a city - I believe Hiroshima was a military port). But the US needed to show that it was actually prepared to use these bombs to full effect. If they'd just bombed an island off the coast of Japan killing a couple of guards on an outpost then Japan may have taken that as a sign of weakness by the US.

And now nuclear weapons are here to stay. Now they exist they can never be uninvented and so countries will always have to develop nuclear weapons to stop threats from those that do. For example, whilst not supporting the governments of Iran, North Korea, etc... I can completely see why they should develop nuclear weapons. There’ll never be a unanimous consensus on which countries should be trusted with nuclear technology so only through equality in armament can we be secure against each others untrustworthiness.

Unfortunately the way the current world order is unfolding we will likely have a small & limited nuclear exchange within the next 60 years. There’s a flame in Hiroshima’s peace park that will only be extinguished when there are no more nuclear weapons. Sadly I think that flame will be eternal.

Dom, know the story about Pandora's Box?

Yeah...

Yeah, but if you use the excuse "Using the bombs saved lives" then you justify using nukes in every conflict, and everything else is just arguing about the price.

So, what, if 100,000 soldiers don't die, it's OK to kill 140,000 civilians? Does that mean if 99,999 soldiers don't die, can you still use the nuke?

The nuke has no place in normal conventional warfare..
No matter how you look at it, it will always always have innocent victims.
Yes, you may say that they targeted military target, but for fucks sake, when the target lies in the middle of a city with 100 000s of innocent civilans common sense should say that this is madness.
Some say that the target justifies the means... bullshit..

The Hiroshima bomb is execuseable, because they really didn't know how it was gonna work... They knew on paper, but never in real life..
BUT, three days later they dropped ANOTHER bomb on Nagasaki..
And the worst is that Nagasaki wasn't their original target.
The real target was so clouded up, that they could'nt see it, so they kept going until they did find a hole in clouds..
How is this explanable??
That crushes the claim that they'd only use it on military targets..

But again, now that they know how this horrific weapon works, no one dares use it..
But what if it would happen by accident?
Man is not perfect, therefore not qualified to weild such a terrible power..
Much like the one ring in Lord Of the Rings..
The heart of man is easily corrupted.. :P

Yeah they are here to stay. But here's something else

Nuclear fission releases power with 1. 5% efficiency. If that wasnt powerful enough Antimatter releases it with 100% efficiency.
And just like nukes, as soon as one country has antimatter weapons every other country will want to develop them.

The problem is it ignites when it comes in contact with any substance.

An idiot with his finger on the button of a nuclear bomb = bad

An idiot with his finger on the button of a nuclear bomb =


But it probably wont happen in my lifetime.


The bomb on Hiroshima was not excusable. After the bomb was dropped the americans commented the blast was smaller than expected.
They knew too well what it would do.

Anyone read the book about the Illuminati by Dan Brown? "Angels and Demons"? Anti-Matter bomb...

Anyone watch the Nagasaki program on the BBC?

No and No.

And to flamechild yeah i suppose they wanted photos for propeganda and for research reasons.

btw are any of Dan Browns books good? Everyone says they are but people say alot of things.

Yeah i did watch the program. It was excelent.

And dan Browns book "angels and demons" Is fantastic. the best read in a long time. And antimatter is as real as anything. Its is in development as we speak. Unfortunatly with technology being as fast as it it chances are we shall see it in my life time.

Peace out

Of course the good thing about anti-matter is that it can be used to fuel 'warp engine' technology; enabling mankind to cover the vast distances of interstellar space.

Then humanity can at last be unified, put aside its differences, and come together in the common purpose of making war on alien races

lol. id love to see that happen.

*alien race lands outside* WTF............