Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

[Kristopher]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

The main reason to use the A-bomb was actually political..i.e... defeat Japan so that the Russians can't get a piece of the Japanese Empire when they surrender like they did in Germany.

 

That idea is modern political mythology, really.

[wick]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

Certainly good points Ian Mackinder. Except that Japan was being starved by resources and effectivley blockaded. So would they have been able to mass produce experimental weapons like the new subs?

 

A Japanese A-bomb could have been a big threat. I am not sure what intel the Allies had about their program or how reliable their spies. If they were 90% sure from an excellent source that the Japs were way behind then it may not have been a big concern.

 

I saw a program on TV where they did utilize bombs to try to spread diseases such as the Plague.

 

The element of the Japanese military and government was certainly ready to have each citizen and military unit fight to the death. Whether their will to fight was broken may be argumentative. But it is a fact that the U.S. did fear that they would have to kill a large number of armed civilians if a landing invasion was necessary.

 

The Japs did not know we had 2 bombs. Having more than one demonstrated that we did have more than one and gave a veiled threat that we may have more. If 2 why not 3 or 4 etc...

 

As for the atmosphere burn...even if there is a small possibility....the effects if you are wrong are irreversible and final for everyone. I bet they checked their math about 100 times on that bet.

 

Kristopher: Why would the Russians taking huge chunks of the Japanese Empire not be a big concern to the U.S. ? The U.S.S.R had definitely proved that they were keeping what the won rather than liberating in Eastern Europe. A conventional attack on the Japanese island would have taken a long time much less on the Asia mainland and the remaining islands would have been a lengthy bloody process and how much larger would the U.S.S.R be by the time the Japanese surrendered.

 

Also the A-bomb helped keep Russia in check after the war ended. At least up until they developed their own and the cold war actually began.

[Chuckg]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

Certainly good points Ian Mackinder. Except that Japan was being starved by resources and effectivley blockaded. So would they have been able to mass produce experimental weapons like the new subs?

 

When you're using them to deliver nukes or germ bombs, how many do you need?

 

And given the situation at the time, a total blockade of Japan would have resulted in one thing: mass starvation. It is *not* more humane to starve 20 million people in order to avoid nuking 150,000... especially since its overwhelmingly likely that the Imperial Japanese government would have deliberately hoarded what limited food was available to keep the military fed, even if that meant deliberately writing off entire cities worth of civilians. Mass deaths by starvation is horrific.

 

"If we are prepared to sacrifice 20 million lives in kamikaze effort, victory will be ours!" -- Admiral Takijiro Onishi

 

"If we continue to fight back bravely, even if hundreds of thousands of noncombatants are killed… there would be room to produce a more favorable international situation for Japan." -- Foreign Minister Shidehara

 

This is what they were actually saying at the time.

[Cancer]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

Since this is HERO system, reason from effect:

 

3d6 Cosmetic Transform, Nuclear Weapons --> Firecrackers.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

Certainly good points Ian Mackinder. Except that Japan was being starved by resources and effectivley blockaded. So would they have been able to mass produce experimental weapons like the new subs?

 

Chuckg has made an excellent response to your points. I cannot improve on them.

 

Now, food for thought.

 

At war's end, Japanese submarines I-400 and I-401 were already at sea on their first big mission. Supposedly, the plan was for them to to take a LONG sea voyage down to the Indian Ocean, across to Africa, then into the Atlantic Ocean and thence to the Caribbean. They would then launch their aircraft (3 per sub) for a kamikaze attack on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal (where it was believed the defenses would be lighter and easier to surprise). When word of the official surrender came through, the first thing both subs did was dump all their aircraft overboard and attempt to return to Japan. Both were intercepted at sea by US forces, and eventually convinced to surrender.

 

That is the offical story, and it may even be 100% true. But I have done some serious thinking on this of late , and have picked up a few ... almost-doubts, so to speak. Certainly, the Japanese frequently committed valuable forces to high-risk gambles, and often critically over-estimated the gains to be had. Hence the Panama operation which, IF successful, would have caused problems for Allied logistics and naval movements.

 

But would it have been a war-winner for Japan? I really do not think so, and believe even the most delusional of Japan's leaders would have had major doubts at best. This operation would have taken MONTHS to complete, the Japanese forces were already seriously outmatched and, even if totally successful, the operation would not have done more than inconvenience the Allies, not stop them or even slow them down by much.

 

Now. this is pure conjecture on my part. I have absolutely no evidence to support it, not even rumours. But what if this mission was NOT to attack the Panama Canal, but something else? What if the plan was for the aircraft to make a surprise one-way visit to Washington DC and/or New York? With, maybe, a few germ bombs? The plan being to foment major panic, divert Allied forces from the frontline and maybe even convince the Allies to negotiate for peace? The Japanese Empire had the mindset to try something like this, and certainly had the basic components for it, there is just no proof that they ever put it all together.

 

The surrender stymied the whole operation, and the Japanese hurriedly covered up the whole deal. Odds are the US figured it out at some point, but chose to keep the whole thing quiet. After all, how long was the Balloon Bomb thing kept quiet?

 

As I said, pure conjecture ...

 

A Japanese A-bomb could have been a big threat. I am not sure what intel the Allies had about their program or how reliable their spies. If they were 90% sure from an excellent source that the Japs were way behind then it may not have been a big concern.

 

Probably rather good intel, for the most part. Japanese coding verged on the downright incompetent (hey, one thing the Germans did to help later on was to send them some Enigma machines). They never seemed to realize that there were NON-Japanese who could understand Japanese as effectively as many Japanese could understand English. As for the bomb program, there was still the radiological approach - scattering quantities of radioactive material over enemy cities and forces. Not as showy as a real live A-Bomb, but still pretty dern scary.

 

The element of the Japanese military and government was certainly ready to have each citizen and military unit fight to the death. Whether their will to fight was broken may be argumentative. But it is a fact that the U.S. did fear that they would have to kill a large number of armed civilians if a landing invasion was necessary.

 

Exactly.

 

The Japs did not know we had 2 bombs. Having more than one demonstrated that we did have more than one and gave a veiled threat that we may have more. If 2 why not 3 or 4 etc...

 

Which, as I said, is that many fewer available for if the nukes had to be used for real. The Allies used two - the Japanese government STILL tried to play games, and there were still high-ranking military who wanted to keep on fighting. I think these are the simplest and most decisive counters to the whole "demonstration strike" argument.

 

Also the A-bomb helped keep Russia in check after the war ended. At least up until they developed their own and the cold war actually began.

 

The Cold War arguably had much of its beginnings DURING ww2, and, in certain respects, even prior. Early on (1930s), Hitler had a fair bit of popular support from the West because he was seen as being tough on Communism.

[Yansuf]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

I remember Superman (1978)

Lux was going to drop California into the sea by a series on hydrogen bombs along the San Andreas fault.

Not likely, the west coast is slowly riding

and contiental masses out weigh the force of an H-bomb by a factor of a few exponential steps.

 

While it is true the west coast of the US will not "drop into the sea" no matter how big the earthquake is, the area west of the San Andreas fault is moving north. Eventually it will be an island. Bombs in the fault might shorten the time of "eventually" from millions of years, but in reality I expect that it would still be (many?) tens of thousands.

But in a comic book (or comic book movie) why worry about that?

[Nuclear Fridge]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

We're heading into Roland Emmerich 'way kewl' territory here, I think.

We don't live long enough to see long-term environmental impact, no matter what Hollywood may show.

[Clonus]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

The fact is there was a volcanic explosion which did change the weather that year (not to mention noticeably changing what the sunsets looked like). So what would happen if there were a whole bunch of volcanoes going off all at once?

[Matt Holck]

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

 

an ashen sky

twilight days

 

While it is true the west coast of the US will not "drop into the sea" no matter how big the earthquake is, the area west of the San Andreas fault is moving north. Eventually it will be an island. Bombs in the fault might shorten the time of "eventually" from millions of years, but in reality I expect that it would still be (many?) tens of thousands.

But in a comic book (or comic book movie) why worry about that?

 

Because the comic story prompted me to consider them

 

 

We dropped the atomic bombs because we were at war and weapons were at our disposal.

I'm pretty sure if their was a volcano bomb, we would have used that.

The effect was so dramatically devastating that no one has used a nuclear bomb since.