Feds Attempt To Censor Parts of a New Book About the Hydrogen Bomb 341
HughPickens.com writes: The atom bomb — leveler of Hiroshima and instant killer of some 80,000 people — is just a pale cousin compared to the hydrogen bomb, which easily packs the punch of a thousand Hiroshimas. That is why Washington has for decades done everything in its power to keep the details of its design out of the public domain. Now William J. Broad reports in the NY Times that Kenneth W. Ford has defied a federal order to cut material from his new book that the government says teems with thermonuclear secrets. Ford says he included the disputed material because it had already been disclosed elsewhere and helped him paint a fuller picture of an important chapter of American history. But after he volunteered the manuscript for a security review, federal officials told him to remove about 10 percent of the text, or roughly 5,000 words. "They wanted to eviscerate the book," says Ford. "My first thought was, 'This is so ridiculous I won't even respond.'" For instance, the federal agency wanted him to strike a reference to the size of the first hydrogen test device — its base was seven feet wide and 20 feet high. Dr. Ford responded that public photographs of the device, with men, jeeps and a forklift nearby, gave a scale of comparison that clearly revealed its overall dimensions.
Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford's book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book "contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb." "Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book."
Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford's book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book "contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb." "Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book."
Asking for trouble (Score:5, Funny)
That sort of censorship is just going to blow up in their face!
it always amazes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it always amazes me (Score:4, Interesting)
Without knowing the pedigree of the material he looked at, it is impossible to know whether it was classified or not. Simply releasing classified material to the public does not declassify it, especially if the release was unauthorized.
Who do they think they are? They are the people who are paid to protect classified information doing the job they are paid to do, when asked to do that job by the author of the book. He asked, they had to tell him to cut things. They don't get the right to change the classification on material, that has to go through the classifying authority.
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That's true, a lot of the information could be previously released by other while still being classified. There is a difference between someone independently collecting together the clues and facts from prior biographies and interviews, and someone who was actually inside the project with a classification level doing the same thing.
Some of the first public information about H-bomb, now considered "previously released" material, was from a book that the government also tried to have censored. Their failure
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Without knowing the pedigree of the material he looked at, it is impossible to know whether it was classified or not. Simply releasing classified material to the public does not declassify it, especially if the release was unauthorized.
Who do they think they are? They are the people who are paid to protect classified information doing the job they are paid to do, when asked to do that job by the author of the book. He asked, they had to tell him to cut things. They don't get the right to change the classification on material, that has to go through the classifying authority.
Surely there's no classified material in there, otherwise they'd be able to do more than ask him to take it out and I doubt he'd be allowed to tell them to fuck off.
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(sorry, Dr. Ford, not Broad)
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There's a big difference between uranium and a working hydrogen bomb. The US won't use nukes unless someone else detonates one first.
the US 'probably' wont use a nuke first.... (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a big difference between uranium and a working hydrogen bomb. The US won't use nukes unless someone else detonates one first.
That isn't how it worked out for Hiroshima.....For all our talk about how we are morally 'better' because we are a 'democracy', remember we are the only country that has use a nuclear weapon on an enemy.
Also, this author probably doesn't have a security clearance, so pretty much all the sources of info he is going to have access to is going to be by definition declassified
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By definition, classified information released into the world and publicly available is still classified. It still has legal protections, including being a felony for distributing it.
In practice in 2015 this policy is ineffective, but it is still the law. Back when a leak meant photocopying secrets and giving them to the Soviets it made
Re:the US 'probably' wont use a nuke first.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we used the Bomb, twice, against an enemy that fought tenaciously, and far beyond any reasonable chance of victory. The death toll, while still horrific, was a tiny fraction of the alternative.
Have you ever heard of Operation Downfall? It was the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland. The basic gist was to, ultimately, march into Tokyo and dictate surrender terms to Emperor Hirohito, personally. The planned amphibious landings were double the size of D-Day, and would have extended the war well into 1946, with casualty estimates into the millions. Additionally, the Japanese defensive plan (Operation Ketsugo) called for the all-out mobilization of the civilian population.
Re:the US 'probably' wont use a nuke first.... (Score:5, Interesting)
THAT'S how many people were expected to be wounded, let alone killed, and that was just the American side of the conflict.
Re:the US 'probably' wont use a nuke first.... (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the atomic bombs saved the lives of millions of Japanese by removing six cities from the "bomb these places into the stone age list". Apparently, the people making the bomb wanted to get a good idea of the effects without having to take into account the effects of prior bombings. This included Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were spared the years of bombings (and their attendant casualties) that other cities had to endure.
Note further that the death tolls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined were lower than that of the firebombing of Tokyo.
Note, finally, that when generals talk about saving lives, they're generally (if you'll excuse the pun) talking about the lives of their men, not their enemy's men. Saving the lives of the enemy is someone else's job....
Addendum: just curious - where in Japan would you be finding "plenty of uninhabited or low population areas"?
Re:the US 'probably' wont use a nuke first.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things:
1. One night of fire bombing in Tokyo killed more people and did more damage than the atomic attack on Hiroshima did. The difference was it took an armada of bombers to do it, rather than just one plane with one package to drop off.
2. Truman wasn't just looking to end this war, but prevent the next conflict that was already brewing up - one with the Soviets. By showing Stalin that he was not only incredibly vulnerable to an attack that he couldn't bog down by throwing millions of people at like he did with the Nazis, and that the person on the other side was capable of using that kind of weapon, that war never came.
Was dropping those two bombs the right decision? Maybe, maybe not. However, it is world history, and seeing the devastation of two cities from these comparatively small weapons compared to what the 1950s and 1960s brought, it might have brought pause to anyone looking to use them later in the coldest days of the cold war.
Re:the US 'probably' wont use a nuke first.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, the alternative was to wait.
It should be noted that:
- The Japanese, like the Germans, had their own nuclear weapons program in progress. (That was how they were able to recognize the nuclear bombs for what they were: Bombs were SOME of the possibilities they were pursuing.)
- While they thought nuclear-reaction bombs were hard but doable, they were actively working on the immanent bombardment of the West Coast of the Untied States with radiological weapons - "dirty bombs" spreading fata
Re:it always amazes me (Score:5, Informative)
US doctrine has never been "no first use," unlike that of some other countries (USSR during the Cold War, China). Heck, we haven't even promised not to use them against nonnuclear states, attempting to retain their use as an option in the event of CBW attacks.
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Just like it did with, North Korea, Pakistan and India. They all occurred after the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Remember this, they engineered nukes without computers, uncertain of whether or not it would work. So computers and knowledge that it is possible puts it in many countries reach. The reality is denial of nukes to Iran is all about leaving them open for invasion.
Re:it always amazes me (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you have been reading the Hamas propaganda that pops up on Occupy facebook groups too much.
Lets get off the anti-Israel axe-grinding for a moment here. The US is not going to attack Iran, even if they decides to plop water poppers in the Strait again:
1: Iran is a sovereign power, with a distinct race (Persians are not Arabs). When the mullahs took over, Iran's top generals were killed. This enticed Saddam into invading... and Iranians pushed back by strapping bombs onto their kids and having them run under Iraqi tanks. This shows a will that makes the Alamo rally pale in comparison.
2: An attack on Iran would rally every Mecca-facing worshiper to attack the US and Israel. This is why the US did their best to keep Israel out of the first Gulf War when Saddam was sending SCUDs their way (SCUDs with chemical weapons.)
3: Iran is pretty damn powerful. They sell plenty of oil to China and Turkey. Even with sanctions, they are the top producing car maker in the region.
4: Iran is no "shit-o-stan". Attacking Iran would be like attacking Germany or France, with retaliation that a First World government would return with. Tehran's jubes are now fully working buried sewers.
5: If shit hit the fan, Iran would get China to help, stationing PLA nukes and garrisons. This was considered with Russia in the past, and could be done again. China is a thirsty country, and they would be more than happy to come in.
So, lets be real. Israel isn't going to sneak and grab territory, unlike the Hezbollah propaganda or the usual anti-Semite crap says.
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Turkey is Sunni and vies for influence in the region, Erdogan won't lose any sleep over the U.S. attacking Iran. He'll wax indignant because that's what he does best, but he'll be looking for geopolitical gain out the situation. He's a whore.
China isn't going to go to the mat for Iran either. And they certainly don't want the U.S. providing lethal arms to Taiwan. And there'll be no PLA in Iran either, with or without nukes. China will see what advantage it can make out of an attack, but putting their own pe
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2: An attack on Iran would rally every Mecca-facing worshiper to attack the US and Israel.
No, Iran are Shias. Most of the Muslim nations would love to see them gone.
3: Iran is pretty damn powerful. They sell plenty of oil to China and Turkey. Even with sanctions, they are the top producing car maker in the region.
4: Iran is no "shit-o-stan". Attacking Iran would be like attacking Germany or France, with retaliation that a First World government would return with.
No. Iran is powerful and has a serious military, but so did Iraq. The two were in the same league. Somehow Iraq's one million men under arms was still not comparable to less than 100,000 western troops.
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the US runs around the world effectively promoting nuclear weapons because it is the only way to be safe from invasion by them
deserves +5
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Uhm, the US is a BIG country. The Iranians are probably capable of building maybe a 150-200kt device, if that. An EMP pulse would take out the power in mid-sized city for a few weeks at most. It would also cause major damage on the ground.
90% of the US population would not die from starvation. Maybe 0.1% would die from the blast itself.
Even if they had a 50's style high-yield multi-megaton thermonuclear device they could not make 90% of the US population starve.
Even the USSR at its high point would not have
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If the Iranians get one, I would be freaked because then the Saudis will buy a few from Pakistan.
When it comes to fanaticism the Persians are not even close to the Saudis. I would be freaked if they get a bomb.
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I can not think of any one worse than North Korea having one and wait, yes they have them and nothing what so ever is happening. Now, why is this so? Easy, asshat chick hawks the world over are happy to send people to kill and die to feed those chicken hawks own pocket books and egos but when it comes to those chicken hawks risking their own precious skins, well, a great big fat fucking no, no, no, on that. The reality is, no one on this planet is safe from nuclear weapons, even the chick hawks lives would
Goddess save us from ass covering bureaucrats (Score:2, Insightful)
foreign policy (Score:2)
I'm more concerned about the effect this has on peoples' perception of our foreign policy. If people understood exactly how easy it is to build a Uranium atomic bomb (I understand we're talking about hydrogen here), they might feel very differently about being ok with Iran saying no to UN or IAEA regulator snooping.
Hydrogen bomb knowledge is still not exactly common (like the uranium bomb knowledge is) so I can understand and even support their interest here. This isn't even about domestic consumption, anyb
Dept of Energy? meh (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm... (Score:2, Troll)
So, the take away from this is... what? Any author gets to decide what information does or does not constitute a breach of national security based on what the effect of its deletion on their book sales would be? I for one would sleep more soundly knowing that that information wasn't in his book than I would knowing he was going to get a big fat royalty check.
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That same logic can be used to justify data mining of social networks.
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No, it's not.
In addition, our Constitution lets the author make that decision, not the government. We have a whole theory concerning "prior restraint" that cannot simply be tossed away because "why make it any easier for a would-be terrorist bomb maker to find it and make use of it." You only get to challenge the author for allegedly disclosing critical secrets after they're published. That helpfully pre
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite a few years back, Tom Clancy wrote a book called "Sum of All Fears" about a bunch of terrorists building an H-bomb using Pu they recovered from an Israeli bomb lost during the '73 war.
Clancy's Afterward included this:
BLOCKQUOTE>It is generally known that nuclear secrets are not as secret as we would like - in fact, the situation is even worse than well-informed people appreciate. what required billions of dollars in the 1940s is much less expensive today. A modern personal computer has far more power and reliability than the first Eniac, and the "hydrocodes" which enable a computer to test and validate a weapon's design are easily duplicated. The exquisite machine tools used to fabricate parts can be had for the asking. When I asked explicitly for the specifications for the very machines used at Oak Ridge and elsewhere, they arrived Federal Express the next day. Some highly specialized items designed specifically for bomb manufacture may now be found in stereo speakers. The fact of the matter is that a sufficiently wealthy individual could, over a period of from five to ten years, produce a multistage nuclear device.
Based on what I learned about the subject as a young man, I see no particular reason to doubt him...
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They could have the entire thing built...except that pesky Plutonium-239
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And they would have had that if Doc Emmet Brown hadn't hoodwinked them.
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Building a simple working atomic bomb is trivial given some expertise. The gun type design basically requires some uranium, a strong pipe and explosives. However:
. manufacturing the right fissile material is hard, expensive and very slow using a nuclear reactor that is hard to hide
. extracting the same material from the spent reactor fuel requires a huge amount of expertise (some of which isn't published), materials resources and time
. learning how to handle the material will take time
I don't think we'll ha
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So, the take away from this is... what? Any author gets to decide what information does or does not constitute a breach of national security based on what the effect of its deletion on their book sales would be? I for one would sleep more soundly knowing that that information wasn't in his book than I would knowing he was going to get a big fat royalty check.
The take away is that the first amendment exists.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. Supreme Court [cornell.edu] disagrees with you. The author would have to be inciting imminent lawless action. Reporting on the history of the hydrogen bomb is neither inciting nor likely to produce imminent 'safety' effects.
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Yes it does and it always has, retard.
Show me where in the constitution public safety is given higher precedence than the first amendment.
Show me where the constitution conflates speech and the right to it with culpability for the consequences of said speech.
Erh... what would it accomplish? (Score:2)
Ok. Let's say they censor it. So, what is gained?
Terrorists can't get a hold on these "secrets"? Please. Care to take a look at the thermonuke club? Half of them doesn't have a government suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and the other half doesn't give a fuck who gets that information as long as the price is right.
There might be some overlapping, though.
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Why? There is no shame in knowing how to build a weapon. Not even in building it.
There can only be shame in using it.
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The thermonuclear club is a lot smaller than the nuclear club. Most aren't worried about terrorists with thermonuclear weapons because terrorists with nuclear weapons are far more likely to occur and far more within their reach. Thermonuclear weapons are used as bargaining chips between a few major nations, these are nearly too expensive to produce by rogue states, certainly out of reach of even well funded terrorist groups. Hydrogen bombs serve much better as deterrents than as actual weapons, a normal
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Let's clarify something technical here.
Thermonuclear refers to the use of fusion to gain more energy. It can be used for two things:
a) To make a really humongous bomb. High-yield more than 5MT.
b) To boost a pure fission bomb to get the same amount of energy in a smaller package.
Almost all modern nuclear weapons are of the b) sort. They are all thermonuclear but they are small. A pure fission device (Little boy, for instance) is physically large for the boom you get.
That said, most of the weapons do not use
Constitional Rights (Score:5, Funny)
How dare the government abridge our 2nd amendment rights. Who will join me in a Hydrogen Bomb Open Cary campaign?
The only way to ensure our freedom and safety is that every man woman and child has the comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction.
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An atom bomb constitutes a Destructive Device and doesn't cover the scope of the Bill of Rights.
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Just get or make a personal or vehicle-mounted binary flamethrower, they are totally unrestricted for owning or carrying in all states and territories.
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If you can pick one up with a clean and jerk, you're welcome to carry it. Except for you, Doctor Banner.
BRILLIANT (Score:3)
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As I always said, information doesn't want to be free....
but wants to be exploited.
No such thing (Score:3)
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as a real secret any more, if there ever was. If the "secret" is based on scientific research, it's been published and is reproducible and all the relevant people already know about it.
Nope, not true. I have a friend with a Physics Ph.D. who does nuclear weapons related research at LANL. Her work is read only by fellow DoD scientists and certainly is not published in public journals.
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The problem with secrets is that you can only hope to keep a minute amount of them. Trying to make things secret that everyone already knows about is not only futile but a waste of resources that could be used to keep real secrets. They continuosly waste resources on things that are either obvious, already known, or not important but just embarrasing to some official jackass. I think most official secrets fall into the last category. Wasting time and effort to keep millions of facts secret instead of ma
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No such thing as a real secret any more, if there ever was. If the "secret" is based on scientific research, it's been published
This may come as a shock to you, but most large companies have a big R&D division that follow the scientific method while rarely or never publishing their work. Intel knows a lot about making CPUs. Boeing knows a lot about making planes. Ford knows a lot about making cars. They're going to use that to make money, not to blab away the details to their competitors. Sure, Intel's processors are based on physics... but good look making a 14nm processor from their PR slides.
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The U.K. France and China have also openly tested hydrogen bombs. Israel is also thought to have them.
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Read Richard Rhodes (Score:3)
I got two of his books ("The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb") and have read them both a few times. Lots of really good information in there, but both were written pre-9/11. He's written two books since which I literally ordered a few minutes ago while reading about this.
only one thing to do (Score:2)
Put a torrent up of the book, and tell fed.gov to go fuck themselves. Silly fascists seem to think that H bombs are still super secret tech.
Hate to say it Feds, but 60+ year old tech is hardly a secret.
The design is relatively simple (Score:3)
The design of the bombs is not the problem. Getting fissile material to build the trigger is the problem. Even a large corporation could probably not enrich uranium without attracting attention. Unless the book contains some method that Joe Sixpack can use to leach highly-enriched uranium from tailings or something, it's not a threat.
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With the hydrogen bomb, the actual design is a rather difficult engineering problem as well. Not sure his book has much that isn't available on Wikipedia, though.
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I'll just order one directly (Score:2)
Not sure why all the fuss about this book, when instead of building a thermonuclear device you can just order one ready made... I hear Iran will be shipping them to countries around the globe any day now. Pretty sure I'm in the test market area!
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Knowing how it works != knowing how to build it (Score:5, Informative)
I know how suspension bridges work. I probably could build a small one, but any lengthy span would be well beyond me.
I know how internal combustion engines work. It would take a year of training on the tools before I'd be able to make one that even sorta worked, and then it would be at 1900s-level functionality.
I know how nuclear weapons work. Several types, in fact. But I cannot make them.
1) I could build a gun-type weapon, given the material (200lbs of 90% pure U-235, a 76mm artillery barrel, and some regular explosives), but I could not create the equipment to refine uranium.
2) I could probably build a reactor to generate plutonium, with massive effort and a significant risk of poisoning myself, but I could not build a working implosion bomb with it. It would take a year's training in explosives just to be able to build an existing design, and those designs are tightly secured.
3) With the materials, I might be able to upgrade an unboosted fission weapon into a boosted one. Maybe.
4) A fusion weapon is completely beyond me. You could stick me in Lawrence Livermore with all the parts in front of me, and without some Ikea-like instructions you aren't going to get anything.
We are protected from homemade gun-type weapons by the scarcity of uranium and the immense difficulty in refining it. Remember, this is something that was beyond the capabilities of most nations a scant 70 years ago. A dedicated nation-state or perhaps certain multinational corporations could pull it off, but not without detection.
We are protected against homemade implosion-type weapons by the complex engineering necessary, the esoteric nature of the specific engineering knowledge needed (nuclear physics and shaped explosives are not a common dual-major), and by the absolute need for testing before use. The former prevents fringe groups from succeeding; the latter prevents the non-suicidal from trying.
We are not protected by lack of general knowledge on nukes, because no such lack of knowledge exists. I learned half of this stuff from school textbooks, and the other half from Wikipedia. Anyone driven to find more can easily do so.
Cheese it, it's the Feds! (Score:3)
Cheese it, it's the Feds!
Everyone hide your Beryllium-Pollonium detonators and your K-alpha reflector cavities, and act natural, for God's sake!
Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:4, Informative)
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War also never changes.
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What kind of small, hateful person says "women, children, and other civilians" instead of "people" or "civilians"?
How fucked do you have to be to value the life of one person more than another because of their sex or adulthood?
Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:4, Interesting)
Not very fucked at all actually.
Women and children are valued more because they are worth more.
Women can have kids in the future and may even be pregnant now, and children can grow up into adults.
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women, children, and other civilian
That comment is kinda sexist
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Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually one seriously has to question how much Truman knew about what he was authorizing, and what was Groves and his ilk overstepping their bounds. Truman's diary has repeated mentions that he doesn't think it should be used against civilians, and people who he talked to at the time reported similar.
(Truman's first public statement after the bomb was dropped, said while the second bomb was being dropped on Nagasaki).
The next day, Truman receives the first reports and photographs related to the bombings, and the scale of what was done becomes clear.
.
One really has to question what sort of information Truman was given and what exactly he thought he was authorizing. Hiroshima was anything *but* a military base. It was one of the least militarized cities in Japan, which is why it had been so little touched by conventional bombings. Its war industries were on the periphery and were little damaged by the explosion. Groves' targeting committee prioritized it precisely for the reason that it would visibly kill so many people and because it was largely untouched thusfar; the committee ruled out purely military targets (what Truman actually wanted) as they didn't consider them to be showy enough as demonstrations of the weapon's power.
Truman's underlings were mixed on the subject of the bomb as well. Bard (undersecretary of the navy), for example, was adimant that the US should not use the bomb on cities. He thought it not only morally abhorrent, but totally unnecessary, as he and many others felt Japan was already on the verge of surrender (the post war Strategic Bombing Survey would later back him up on this point).
But, it ended as it ended.
Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:4, Informative)
It was one of the least militarized cities in Japan, which is why it had been so little touched by conventional bombings.
Not exactly. There actually was an important military base in the city (headquarters of the Japanese 5th Division and the 2nd Army Headquarters.), as well as many industrial targets, and it was an important port city. Keep in mind that Japan had converted most private enterprises and even many homes into places of war materiel production. There was no such thing as a non-militarized city in Japan at that time. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and several other cities had not been bombed only because they had been taken off the bombing list some time before. The idea was to keep some prime targets "pristine", so accurate bomb damage assessment could be done afterwards. Everyone was well aware there would be massive civilian casualties.
Truman knew exactly what he was doing, incidentally. It was true he had moral qualms, but it was reported his Secretary of State told him "What will you say, Mr. President, at your impeachment proceeding, when the American people learn that you had a weapon which could have ended the war and did not use it?" The US leadership also feared the planned invasion of Japan by the Soviet Union, with the real threat of Japan being split into a communist and democratic zones similar to Germany. The bombing was seen as the quickest and surest way to end the Pacific war
Many in the US leadership and military brass had also been wildly optimistic about the "imminent collapse of Nazi Germany", after which the fighting had gone on for half a year still. History is fairly clear that the Japanese were unlikely to surrender before the bombing. Even after the two atomic bombs were dropped and the Soviet Union joined the war, the Japanese military leadership was still evenly split about whether to continue the war. It took the emperor to make the final decision. Even after the emperor publicly surrendered (without ever using the word 'surrender' or 'defeat' in his speech), a small group of Japanese officers actually mutinied and invaded the palace, fortunately not succeeding.
Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:4, Insightful)
"one of the least" != "no military component". You're absolutely correct that "There was no such thing as a non-militarized city in Japan at the time". Hiroshima had been a city that refugees had been fleeing to. It is simply true that for its size it was one of the least militarized cities in Japan at that time.
In something that's rather sickening, and one *hopes* was accidental but suspects that it wasn't, the US had been leafletting Japan in the weeks leading up to the atomic bombings, warning them to evacuate "Otaru, Akita, Hachinohe, Fukushima, Urawa, Takayama, Iwakuni, Tottori, Imabari, Yawata, Miyakonojo, and Saga" There was no mention of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Anyone who listened to the US leaflets walked into the bomb zone.
Byrnes (claimed source of your quote) was an atomic bomb radical within the government. He wanted to threaten to bomb the Russians to get better success in the postwar negotiations too. But if you search for your quote online you'll find only half a dozen hits. It appears to be an urban legend. Claims that "The US leadership also feared the planned invasion of Japan by the Soviet Union" are somewhat true. The US had been trying for a long time to get the Soviet Union involved, but started having misgivings. Various people were concerned to varying degrees about the potential of Soviet involvement.
You're free to disagree with the US military's own postwar analysis of the Japan situation (the Strategic Bombing Survey). But that would be what most people would call "revisionist history".
The fact that there was a coup attempt after the emperor tried to surrender just drives home how little effect the atomic bombings had. The War Cabinet had steadily been shifting more to the side of the doves but was split down the middle, three-three on whether to accept an unconditional surrender. The emperor had been working in secret to negotiate an unconditional surrender, including making preparations to send his son to offer it, but had been delayed by Potsdam. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, there was literally no change in the view of any of the members of the War Cabinet, it remained a three-three split. The hawks considered it just another entry in the list of horrors that Japan was experiencing. The Potsdam declaration had been made just two weeks earlier. There hadn't been an imperial conference since the Potsdam Declaration to discuss it. The Imperial Conference on the 9th-10th. It was at this conference that the emperor made clear that he had wanted to accept the Potsdam terms. But it is clearly documented that he already had by that time supported accepting the Potsdam terms, even before the bombing.
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Hiroshima was anything *but* a military base. It was one of the least militarized cities in Japan, which is why it had been so little touched by conventional bombings.
One quarter of the casualties from the direct bombing were soldiers. The city served as the headquarters for second general army, the 59th army, and two divisions. Aside from the aforementioned 20,000 military casualties, the bomb also beheaded each of those commands. The city population was approximately 345,000 and there were 40,000 soldiers stationed within the city for a total of 385,000. The bomb killed 20.7% of the people inside the city, 17% of the civilian population, and 50% of the military populat
Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:5, Insightful)
Many feel the Japanese would have surrendered anyhow.
I call BS. Before the atomic bombs, Japan's strategy was to basically arm every citizen and make the invasion of the mainland such a bloody, costly quagmire for the Allies that they would negotiate favorable peace terms. Even the Wikipedia article on Surrender of Japan [wikipedia.org] has a deeper understanding of the issue than whatever you're making up. Even after Hiroshima, the Supreme Council voted against surrender. They thought that maybe the U.S. only had one bomb, or that it lacked the will power to use it again. After Nagasaki (and the Soviet invasion), the Supreme Council still didn't want to surrender, so they tortured a captured U.S. P-51 pilot, and he told them that the U.S. had at least 100 atomic bombs (he was lying). But the cabinet still split on whether to surrender. It took the emperor basically begging the cabinet, for the sake of the millions who were about to be slaughtered, to persuade them to vote in favor of surrender.
Modern navel-gazing revisionist historians really don't appreciate how truly warlike and blood-soaked the entire Japanese culture was before 1945. They were obsessed with killing and torture. The Japanese surrender and subsequent disarmament fundamentally transformed the entire nation.
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Truman had to make one of the toughest calls ever made in human history. It's easy to second guess today. But put yourself in his shoes. I believe he weighed the information that he had and made the decision that he thought best, knowing full well that history would both praise and condemn him.
No one could possibly be happy about the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But no one is happy about all the lives that WWII claimed before that time and would have claimed had the war gone on. Paul Tibbets, the pilot
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That their culture was steeped in something does not mean that every individual is obsessed with it. American culture is obsessed with a bunch of people named Kardashian, but all I know about them is that there are several of them, and I think one of them is named Kim or something.
And racist or not, yes, Japanese culture was obsessed with killing and torture. It had been for a very, very long time.
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Nonsense. The US dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a military base [accuracy.org]. That was because they wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.
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Oh, bullshit. Hiroshima was no more a "military base" than were any number of American cities.
A total of some 40,000 military personnel were present in the city. The rest of the approximately 350,000 population were civilians.
The number killed was very approximately 100,000. It is plain that not even the
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((Whoosh!!!))
Operation Downfall (Score:2)
The number killed was very approximately 100,000. It is plain that not even the majority could possibly have been military personnel.
Clearly. However, the most important thing is to compare the Bombs to the estimated casualties of Operation Downfall--a hell of a lot more Japanese people would have been killed by the Allied invasion.
Re:How fucking tasteless (Score:4, Insightful)
"U.S murdered"
No. Killing the enemy is not murder.
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Though, bombing a tank factory and killing a non-combatant janitor is not murder, as you targeted a military target and the death is collateral damage, not a murder. Dresden and the Tokyo bombings killed lots of civilians. Hiroshima was a military target, killing 20,000 Japanese troops. That there were
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women, children, and other civilians.
Women, Children, and Adult Males. Interesting that not a single military person was killed. At least according to your re-statement.
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a) British & Canadian scientists contributed significantly to the fission bomb project. They did not contribute significantly to the successful fusion bomb projects in the USA and USSR.
b) German scientists did not contribute significantly to the US nuclear weapons projects unless you count former Germans expelled or driven out because of Nazi ideology.
Re:Censor it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, I remember reading about some dude who designed an A-bomb for his senior thesis.
His last stumbling block was the proper explosives for the implosion. So he called up the sales arm of some manufacturer, said he was a building contractor, and that he would need an explosive with $CHARACTERISTICS.... and that he was ready to buy in quantity.
The sales guy fell all over himself providing the exact info the dude needed.
He turned in his thesis, and then when no grade was published, he went to see his professor, who told him that DOE was considering classifying it.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
Brief overview of this: http://www.universitypressclub.com/archive/2013/02/the-a-bomb-kid-and-hows-your-senior-thesis-going/ [universitypressclub.com]
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