# 70 years ago today -- a moment of reflection



## Terry D (Aug 6, 2015)

70 years ago today, the first nuclear weapon was used against human beings. 140,000 people died in Hiroshima, more than half were incinerated in an instant. In a current world where the unthinkable is commonplace in entertainment and in reality, I think we should all take some time to reflect on those 140,000 and the further 80,000 who died after the second bomb fell three days later on Nagasaki. It could happen again.

Just months after the war's end, John Hershey wrote the book _Hiroshima_ based on survivor accounts of the attack. The book is still in print and is well worth a read.


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## Schrody (Aug 6, 2015)

May it never happen again.


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## InstituteMan (Aug 6, 2015)

Whether the decision to drop those bombs was right or wrong or anywhere in between, the results were horrific. That was a dark day in a dark time.

My wife and I have been watching a lot of WWII documentaries recently. I hadn't really thought too much about the War since I was a student. Now that I am older and have seen more of the world and life, I am both shocked by the atrocities of the War and encouraged by how we have somehow managed to move beyond the worst of those days. 

I have often heard the Americans of WWII generation described as our "Greatest Generation" because of the sacrifices they made in the War. When I watch the documentaries and read the books, I can scarcely comprehend what those men and women had to do, and I am grateful. I am not sure that I could do the same if I was called upon in that way. Still, I wonder if maybe the greatest service they did wasn't winning the War but winning the Peace. 

There's been too much bloodshed since the end of WWII, but we've managed to avoid conflict of anything like that scale since then. It's easy to say that our side was in the right, and given what we were fighting against that's not a hard call, but we have more than a little blood on our own hands. After the atrocities committed on both sides, I can't imagine what it took to find forgiveness. That seems almost harder to me than finding the ability to sacrifice in the fight. Yet, somehow the remnants of the Axis Powers were integrated by the Allies after the War. That's not just to the credit of the Allies, but also to the credit of those who lead the former Axis Powers after the War. 

Forgiveness is a hard thing, but a necessary thing. I had a visitor this week who had just returned from Italy. I do business with a colleague in Germany. I have travelled through Japan several times. Yet Italy, Germany, and Japan were mortal enemies of my nation just a couple of generations ago. I hope my experience is more a sign of the future than the documentaries I have been watching, but I know history has a nasty tendency to repeat. I am encouraged by the peace we have built from the most bitter of ashes, but I can see how fragile that peace is. 

Thank you for posting this, Terry. Human memory is a fleeting thing, and this should not be forgotten.


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## Pluralized (Aug 6, 2015)

Amen.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Aug 6, 2015)

Anyone who has lived through the cold war will agree it should never happen again. It was not a fun time to worry who might push the button when I was growing up


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## Schrody (Aug 6, 2015)

I bet, M. Thank God for that sane Russian guy... 

I began to watch "Threads", a Cold War movie which depicts the worst case scenario - dropping a nuke (I think it's set in UK), and I just couldn't watch it to the end... makes you wonder how humans are stupid in general... I can't even imagine how frightening was it to know it could happen any minute, and you're supposed to live your life like everything's okay...


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## Deleted member 56686 (Aug 6, 2015)

The movie that was big here was 'the Day After' which was a very realistic account of what could have happened if a nuclear bomb exploded in Kansas City if I remember it right. The results from the fallout was much more nightmarish than the actual bombing itself. I hope we never have to fear of something like that again.


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## JustRob (Aug 6, 2015)

To weigh up what happened properly we need to know what to put in the other pan of the scales, what would have happened otherwise. I don't know. Perhaps someone has written on the subject. The scale of the event is overwhelming but such things always are. If we compare it to something more "conventional" like the Bomber Command attacks in WWII then over 55,000 aircrew died there even before we try to estimate how many people were killed by the bombs themselves. The nature of warfare shifted significantly in the twentieth century and the biggest casualty was probably the concept of a civilian itself. Regardless of the technology the greatest threat to mankind has always been the human mind. The present terrorism threats make that all too evident.

A short while ago my angel and I visited the place of my birth in London just over 70 years ago. The scars have finally healed now but one can still see the mismatched houses built since the war in the gaps where the bombs fell and the new apartment block on the site where the V2 exploded a few hundred feet from my family home when I was only months old. I'm grateful that I didn't die before I could even talk, let alone read or write, and I'm sad for those who were less fortunate, but no single incidents can adequately represent the total horror of those times.


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## Bard_Daniel (Aug 6, 2015)

Schrody said:


> I bet, M. Thank God for that sane Russian guy...
> 
> I began to watch "Threads", a Cold War movie which depicts the worst case scenario - dropping a nuke (I think it's set in UK), and I just couldn't watch it to the end... makes you wonder how humans are stupid in general... I can't even imagine how frightening was it to know it could happen any minute, and you're supposed to live your life like everything's okay...



I watched it till the end. Amazing movie. Horrifying, bleak and dark.

Nuclear warfare, and the inevitable fallout that would result, are horrifying. Hopefully we can remember the past to change the future.


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## Mesafalcon (Aug 6, 2015)

The effects of world war two are still ruining lives here in Japan today and have allowed propoganda to grow out of control and make the japanese believe something less harmful than tobacco and alcohol is 'the demon seed'

War has effects you dont even begin to imagine. 

Anyone who doesnt understand this connection, doesnt know the history of Japanese law. 

Wish WW2 never happened for many reasons.


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## AtleanWordsmith (Aug 6, 2015)

mrmustard615 said:


> The movie that was big here was 'the Day After' which was a very realistic account of what could have happened if a nuclear bomb exploded in Kansas City if I remember it right. The results from the fallout was much more nightmarish than the actual bombing itself. I hope we never have to fear of something like that again.


The event coordinators for East Wind 8 had us watch The Day After and several other documentaries from the era in order to immerse us in the world we'd be inhabiting for a week.  I spent the two weeks leading up to the event trying to live as if I were stuck in a fallout shelter, surviving off rations, canned food, and bottled water.  It was an interesting experience, and one that I hope never to have to go through for real.

Even as someone who didn't have to live through the 80s, the thought of destruction on that scale and the horror of the aftermath--not just of the explosion, but of the fallout, the radiation, and the chaos of it all--scares me... and I don't think people realize exactly how _unprepared_ a lot of us are for such an event.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

Nobody's prepared for an utter destruction, which is ironic considering how humans destroy everything they touch.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 7, 2015)

Good one, Terry. It is too easy to forget the human cost to civilians in any war situation, but radiation is something we should all be more aware of, and scared of. Since the initial tests started in the nineteen forties artificial radiation has polluted every water source in the world to some degree, people are still dying from it in the Ukraine after their power station went, and lamb from  the Welsh hills ll that way off is still not clean enough for  the market. In Japan the sunami hit reactor has leaked radiation into the sea, and God knows where else they are not revealing. You would think it would make us cautious. No, nine countries at least have now developed nuclear weapons, others are still trying, power stations are still being built, on coasts, in earthquake zones,  not that anywhere can be guaranteed safe, and we go on producing radioactive material with the sort of half life that would out last the Roman or Japanese empires as though we can guarantee looking after it. 

When people say they are glad they didn't experience the fear of the sixties I think they are blinkered, possession of the means is more diffuse and involves countries without a stable political  base, meanwhile the 'peaceful' uses of radioactive materials, from power  stations to x-ray machines, are growing with inadequate, or no, provision for their containment. I am glad I was born when I was, the future looks pretty grim when I put on my realist's hat, don't start rejoicing yet, or give up protesting. As Malcolm Rifkind pointed out last night on the anniversary, America may have reduced its arsenal to about a tenth of what it was, but it is still ten times what it needs to ensure its security, if security can be ensured with nukes.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

I'm all for energy from the renewed sources, but that won't happen soon, that is, we'll be oil and nuke dependent for at least another 30 years, probably even longer.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 7, 2015)

Schrody said:


> I'm all for energy from the renewed sources, but that won't happen soon, that is, we'll be oil and nuke dependent for at least another 30 years, probably even longer.


How long such things take partly depends on people's willingness to accept it is going to take time, "revolution next year" is putting it off forever.


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## Thaumiel (Aug 7, 2015)

Sadly, I have to say that nuclear warheads are absolutely necessary possessions for all major powers right now. It'd be all well and good for us to dismantle ours but the fact is, not only do major countries not trust each other, but ones with up and coming nuclear programs have nothing but UN sanctions telling them what to do. I mean, if I was them, a group of other countries telling me "You're not allowed to do that or we'll stop playing with you!" really wouldn't stop me. 

I personally think we'll be wiped out by nature before someone grows enough balls to start a launch. Has anyone here read The Los Alamos Primer, by any chance? It's a book of the first lectures given to the physicists that worked on the Manhattan project.

As for power stations I think there's far too much stigma around them. The public need to be more engaged with what the issues in them are instead of trying to dismiss them as bad. (As an aspiring nuclear physicist I would say that though.) Did you know that in hospitals they took the word 'nuclear' out of the title of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR -> MRI) because they thought it would put people off.

That said, I do think that power stations need to be more sensibly placed and better designed. As for nuclear waste there are people working on that problem.

One idea proposed to dispose of C-14 from moderators in old Magnox reactors is to burn it (conversion to CO[SUB]2[/SUB]), turn it into a synthesis gas (conversion to CH[SUB]4[/SUB]) and form radioactive diamonds. Then to coat them with a nanofilm of Lithium ions and Oxygen ions. The idea being this causes electrons in the diamond to be in a potential so they want to leave it. Basically, diamond batteries.

As for storage of waste we have no use for, that's what I want to work on. With any luck my final year project will be an investigation into corrosion of nuclear waste storage glass. However, in making better storage for radioactive material we come full circle to nuclear war heads. If I were to produce a better storage material it would be used in waste storage and the inner workings of warheads.

I think I'm going to stop rambling now.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

That's the thing; powerful people don't want to switch to something that's not destroying the nature and polluting the air - they're making big bucks on our oil dependence, and they'll do it as long as they would have interest in it. Small people are not the problem; sure, some will always resist to changes, but overall, I think a lot of us would be for gaining the energy without having to fear will there be a nuclear meltdown or something else, worse.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

James, you're not rambling. This is an interesting thread, and while we can do little influence on the radioactive waste disposal, we should still discuss about it. Fate of our planet should depend on all of us, not on the mighty few.


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## Thaumiel (Aug 7, 2015)

[Edit 1: Ignore the attachments at the bottom. Edit 2: Figured out how to delete them, never mind.]

Sad thing is we can't realistically make a quick switch to renewable energy. 

Looking at the UK alone, we're well set over here, being an island. At the time of my last lecture on this particular subject I believe the total power output of the UK was ~80GW with ~36GW being nuclear. Now obviously we aren't running at full capacity, I think the UK demand is ~42GW, but if we were to make a total switch starting right now we'd need a lot of out at sea wind turbines (most places that can have hydroelectric already do, and solar is a bit crap in this climate) but there are a few drawbacks. I don't now how to hide content in an expandable box so yet more ramble.

A wind turbine has three main point in it's wind speed-power output graph. 






Now, the cut in speed is when the turbine start turning, the rated output speed is when you receive maximum power. Anything above that does nothing to the power output, so they're very limited in what they can produce. A 1GW power station would need to be replaced by ~780 wind turbines.

To meet the 42GW demand you need ~33000 turbines

Noting that wind speed drops significantly on land, and that these remove kinetic energy from the air as it moves past meaning you need to allow enough space for the air to recirculate means on land turbines are utterly infeasible. 

A typical turbine blade may be about 55 m[SUP]2 [/SUP]if you want the air to recirculate you need to leave about (100 x 55 x 55)m surface area.

The total coverage of 33000 turbine is ~ 10000 km[SUP]2[/SUP]. The area of Wales is about twice that.

With current resources it would take about 90 years to put that many up, and that's assuming we do no maintenance on the ones already up. So there's also a huge funding and workforce problem.

Now obviously we wouldn't put all our eggs in one basket but switching to renewable is a very daunting task. Removing nuclear and fossil fuel power stations will have to be a long slow process. You'll also need to keep some as back up in case of power outages.

The best way would be to place solar panels in deserts, but then you'd have the trouble of convincing everyone to share. Oh, and one bomb could knock power out for most of the world in that scenario...


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## Deleted member 56686 (Aug 7, 2015)

The bottom line is we need to find a way to get along with the other countries of the world. If we can accept each other for our differences, it will lessen the chances of any war, and certainly something as devastating as nuclear war.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

Nobody said we can achieve 100% of the world's energy consumption in a decade, but we should start now, before it's too late.


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## Thaumiel (Aug 7, 2015)

Schrody said:


> Nobody said we can achieve 100% of the world's energy consumption in a decade, but we should start now, before it's too late.



Researchers need funding, workforce needs funding, raw materials need to be bought.

More importantly politicians need to be sorted out. The ones that are saying we should phase it in slowly are doing it at a completely unacceptable pace. The ones that want to speed things up expect a quick fix. Neither is realistic, but have you ever tried changing someone's mind on a subject like this?

To get anything done we need to shake up politics. Or just sit here and not fund sustainable electricity or space programs and stay on an increasingly inhospitable planet until our species can't survive.


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## Terry D (Aug 7, 2015)

Please don't turn this thread into a discussion of energy alternatives. Although an important topic of discussion, it's not why I started the thread. This isn't about nukes as much as it is about our species proclivity toward slaughter in the name of 'the greater good'. More than half of the 55 million killed in WWII were civilians.

My father fought in Europe and North Africa during WWII. He was at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke of the carnage he saw, and helped to cause, but it was clear that it effected him deeply. I remember the paranoia of the sixties; we had regular air-raid drills when I was in grade school, and even at nine years old, the Cuban Missile Crisis is a clear memory. I think -- I pray -- we, as a species, have matured beyond the point where a full-scale nuclear war is conceivable, but I also believe we see the small-scale use of such weapons within the next decade or so. As Olly said, the proliferation of nuclear capability in unstable political environments is frightening.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

That's what I'm talking about; if people came to their senses and redirected money to researches, we would have it in no time.


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## Schrody (Aug 7, 2015)

Sorry Terry, but I think it's important to see alternatives here. If you mind us talking about the other sources of energy, we'll stop


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## Thaumiel (Aug 7, 2015)

Terry D said:


> Please don't turn this thread into a discussion of energy alternatives. Although an important topic of discussion, it's not why I started the thread. This isn't about nukes as much as it is about our species proclivity toward slaughter in the name of 'the greater good'. More than half of the 55 million killed in WWII were civilians.
> 
> My father fought in Europe and North Africa during WWII. He was at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke of the carnage he saw, and helped to cause, but it was clear that it effected him deeply. I remember the paranoia of the sixties; we had regular air-raid drills when I was in grade school, and even at nine years old, the Cuban Missile Crisis is a clear memory. I think -- I pray -- we, as a species, have matured beyond the point where a full-scale nuclear war is conceivable, but I also believe we see the small-scale use of such weapons within the next decade or so. As Olly said, the proliferation of nuclear capability in unstable political environments is frightening.



Sorry dude. 


Well, I suppose leaning back towards the thread topic a bit more, did you know that the Nazis couldn't build a nuclear bomb? The closest they could get was to designing one was the idea of actually building a nuclear reactor and letting the chain reaction go uncontrolled until it exploded. They realised they couldn't use it as an endgame for the war and so the project groups working on it were split up to other tasks.

If I remember correctly, the Manhattan project wasn't completed until after the war in Europe had ceased.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Aug 7, 2015)

Just to echo Terry, the thread is about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you want to talk about renewable energy you can always start another thread, cool?

Note to Terry: Sorry I wasn't able to get the attention back to the subject on my last post.


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## Thaumiel (Aug 7, 2015)

The most striking thing to me is the progression of the Manhattan project actually. Trinity, the first ever nuclear weapon to be tested, was the only one they successfully tested before building Little Boy and dropping it on Hiroshima. Fat Man, the nuke dropped on Nagasaki, was only the third nuclear weapon to be detonated.

It's like the American military had a new toy and were just waiting to play with it.


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## Terry D (Aug 7, 2015)

James 剣 斧 血 said:


> The most striking thing to me is the progression of the Manhattan project actually. Trinity, the first ever nuclear weapon to be tested, was the only one they successfully tested before building Little Boy and dropping it on Hiroshima. Fat Man, the nuke dropped on Nagasaki, was only the third nuclear weapon to be detonated.
> 
> It's like the American military had a new toy and were just waiting to play with it.



There were many factors involved with the decision to drop the bombs, and doing a 'live test' was one of them I'm sure. The stated reason of avoiding a prolonged land-based invasion was accurate also. Even at the time of the bombing, Japan still had a one-million man army ready to fight house by house to defend the home islands. An invasion would have been horrific and could easily have cost just as many civilian causalities -- we'll never know for sure, but the bombing undoubtedly saved thousands of American soldiers. To be honest, part of the reason for the bombing was probably as punishment for Pearl Harbor also.

It may be terrible to say this, but I think the use of an 'A-Bomb' was inevitable at some point. The people who build and control weapons will always ache to see them in action. Fat-Mat and Little Boy far exceeded what their designers anticipated. If we hadn't seen that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I think we would have seen it at some point later. By the late fifties and early sixties the weapons were far more powerful -- the hydrogen bomb tested on the Bikini Atoll was 1,000 more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb -- so the potential loss of life in a first use could have been even greater. Maybe, just maybe, seeing the human cost twice kept the madness at bay.


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## Thaumiel (Aug 7, 2015)

Terry D said:


> There were many factors involved with the decision to drop the bombs, and doing a 'live test' was one of them I'm sure. The stated reason of avoiding a prolonged land-based invasion was accurate also. Even at the time of the bombing, Japan still had a one-million man army ready to fight house by house to defend the home islands. An invasion would have been horrific and could easily have cost just as many civilian causalities -- we'll never know for sure, but the bombing undoubtedly saved thousands of American soldiers. To be honest, part of the reason for the bombing was probably as punishment for Pearl Harbor also.
> 
> It may be terrible to say this, but I think the use of an 'A-Bomb' was inevitable at some point. The people who build and control weapons will always ache to see them in action. Fat-Mat and Little Boy far exceeded what their designers anticipated. If we hadn't seen that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I think we would have seen it at some point later. By the late fifties and early sixties the weapons were far more powerful -- the hydrogen bomb tested on the Bikini Atoll was 1,000 more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb -- so the potential loss of life in a first use could have been even greater. Maybe, just maybe, seeing the human cost twice kept the madness at bay.



The Tsar Bomba, most powerful nuke detonated, was just at a test. They actually reduced it from 100 megatons to about 50 megatons due to the amount of fallout that it would produce. 

When it comes to nukes I'm not sure it's the death toll that really bothers military powers. The fact that you can send radioactive fallout into the atmosphere that could spread to where you are, that scares them. That and radiation poisoning is horrible way to go, why you would inflict that on anyone is beyond me.


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## escorial (Aug 9, 2015)

it amazes me how humanity has got to this point without wiping itself out...it probably will eventually


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## Arcopitcairn (Aug 10, 2015)

But...If we never have a nuclear war, we never get to have a mutant-filled post apocalyptic wasteland full of irradiated adventure 

So it's kind of a toss up for me.


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