Comment by forestrywat
1 day ago
Why single out the only two instances of nuclear weapons being used in anger in the entire history of their existence? Why single out the single largest escalation in force in the world's history? Why single out the two largest single bombs ever deployed against an enemy?
Surely you aren't nearly so naive that you think these aren't significantly different from other bombings...
I don't understand the naivety involved in thinking that this matters to the people dying from the bombs.
I haven't personally died from a bomb, but I find it super hard to imagine a scenario where I would be happier if I died from a regular bomb vs a nuclear bomb.
More people died from the single bombing raid on tokyo than died from the nuclear weapon being dropped on hiroshima. Yes, people also died from radiation poisoning during the days and months following, but people also died from all sorts of injuries sustained from the "regular bombs", burns, smoke inhalation, etc.
Comparing which type of agonizing death is worse is rarely a useful way to spend time.
> Surely you aren't nearly so naive that you think these aren't significantly different from other bombings...
This is the point I want to make. It really wasn't that different. Yes, a city was destroyed in a single night. Over seventy other cities were destroyed in a single night in Japan alone during the year of 1945.
It's not about two bombings. Yes, the Tokyo bombing was a ghoulish war crime. Obviously.
But nukes as a weapon are fundamentally different. A single airplane can level a city. A single submarine can destroy a country. I'm sorry, but they are a Pandora's box that was opened and changed the course of the world afterwards.
The difference being that it cost a lot more to destroy those two Japanese cities alone than it did in total to destroy 72 other Japanese cities to the same degree.
Later on, that type of weapon became cheaper and several thousands were created and became the basis for a long window of relative peace.
Strictly speaking, the first city cost a whole lot of money, the second was basically free, through the magic of not amortizing the cost of R&D to win an online argument.
It's my understanding that the two bombs used were not the same technology so you can't just amortize the whole research costs from one to the other.
win?
Moreover, what's the argument here as you see it?
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