The only real rules of war are, sadly, those which the winners choose to enforce.
I am now known as Flyboy.Same Wikipedia page, same Wikipedia channel.
Also for reference, the page about the nukes themselves.
The blockade would have been just as bad. Starving them death in a slow agonizing fashion vs their nation surrendering Gee which is the lesser of two evils.
Also we realized that slowly carpet bombing every inch of Japanese resistance would have been as devastating as invasion.
Once again the nukes saved lives of military on both sides and the Japanese civilians.
Who watches the watchmen?Fallout, primarily.
Nuclear winter is a myth, but you can seriously fuck up the ecosystem of a large area...
And, you know, the whole "city vaporization" means that you aren't exactly able to tell between soldier and civilian, or industrial target and civilian...
I am now known as Flyboy.
"Gobal average surface cooling of –7°C to –8°C persists for years, and after a decade the cooling is still –4°C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last ice age 18,000 yr ago was about –5°C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land ... Cooling of more than –20°C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than –30°C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions."
Sure sounds like nuclear winter to me.
edited 4th Sep '11 3:21:23 PM by Baff
I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.Oh, it'll cause problems, but unless you ground burst it there will be no nuclear winter. Nuclear winter is caused by the ash, and if it doesn't touch the ground (i.e. airburst), there will be minimal ash. Since we never use ground burst—only waterburst and airburst—there is no real chance of nuclear winter...
I am now known as Flyboy.Radiation is simply the long-term problem. Short-term problem is the "indiscriminate" bit.
When we attacked H&N, we intended for them to be devoid of human life. It hangs on the head of the Japanese Government for them not being so. Today... well... there would be a lot of craters instead of cities in the event of nuclear war, because such a courtesy would not be extended...
I am now known as Flyboy.I actually do think that hydrogen-based fission-fired fusion weaponry is cleaner than old-style atomic weaponry.
I believe this is negated by it being a whole order of magnitude larger in terms of area covered, meaning that the (still more than lethal) radiation is spread over a wider area, though.
We actually have methods of stopping radiation from killing people today. The efficiency of deploying this is dubious, though, and it would still ruin the surrounding environment, so, as Baff noted, we may not die directly from the radiation (though the heat and air pressure wave will get you, as can the blindness...), but the lack of food will be rather... bad...
edited 4th Sep '11 3:32:50 PM by USAF713
I am now known as Flyboy.Ugh. I was looking over the Wikipedia page I linked earlier, and read something even worse. Kyoto was considered as a target for nuking, but dismissed because the U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson had his honeymoon there years before. I kid you not.
So much for choosing these targets for strategic reasons, huh?
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)Even the more powerful nukes are nasty. Even a airburst will throw up a lot of fallout. We do use ground bursts. They are used to take missile silos, subpens, and bunkers underground.
Fires, destruction of structures, radiation both long and short term varieties, and the incredibly destructive blast wave are highly devastating.
Who watches the watchmen?Ground burst is only ever done with bunker-buster nukes to destroy silos and whatnot, which isn't going to throw up a lot of ash since, you know, it goes off underground.
Yeah... that's a really dumb reason to change targets. At least we didn't hit a much more populated city, though, I guess...
I am now known as Flyboy.@OP: I think it was a brutal yet necessary decision, for reasons that have already been stated here (invasion would have been more costly being the primary one). Historians with far more qualifications than we here possess have gone back and repeatedly decided that Truman's decision to drop the bombs was the correct one.
It wasn't a good thing to do, and I think everyone agrees on that point. IIRC, Truman really didn't want to do it but after reading casualty projections (based off the reports from Iwo Jima, Wake, Tarawa, and the rest of the island-hopping campaign) and the OSS intercepts that the Japanese were planning on resisting an invasion by handing women and children bamboo spears (or suicide bombs) and throwing them at our Marines, he decided nukes were the lesser of two very big evils.
Also, the Japanese were warned; leaflets were dropped on both cities with a statement to the effect of "your city will be obliterated unless your government surrenders" and a missive was dispatched to the Imperial government that basically said the same thing. Japan got the message and chose to ignore it.
The second bomb was dropped simply to prove that we had the ability to repeat the effect as many times as we wanted. After that, Japan decided they'd had enough. Afterwards, we spent about 20 years (and who knows how many dollars) helping them rebuild.
Again, not a good thing to do. But it was a necessary thing.
edited 4th Sep '11 3:40:58 PM by drunkscriblerian
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~For those wondering here is a neat little simulator Here
Remember to zoom it out to see the blast in comparison to the cities size and then the countries size. It has a selector that includes Little boy and fatman. It has settings for thermal, pressure, and fallout foot prints.
edited 4th Sep '11 4:05:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?

^ Notoriously unpracticed in the world today.