Joe wrote:In WWII, after all options were exhausted. For terrorist sects I can't see us using nukes, since military operations designed to bring those reponsible to justice likely wouldn't require hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to die, unlike Japan.
That's true. But if a US city goes up in a mushroom cloud it's going to be worse than September 11th and Pearl Harbor combined and the public will be out for blood, pure vengeance. I certainly wouldn't rule out of it.
Joe wrote:Now if North Korea were to somehow nuke us (which they can't, but if they could), that would be a different story.
Yeah, it would mean instant retaliation. But that's not to say that it wouldn't happen.
What would the other countries think about us lobbing nukes? I'm sure Russia and China would be glad that our nukes were landing pretty close to them....
If we were still in the Cold War, I doubt that any ICBM's would be used. It would be too big of a risk that the russkies would decide to use it as an excuse to attack us. Nowadays....ehh....I doubt that we'd even use nukes on them (perhaps tactical warheads...but nothing big). The fallout (political) would be terrible. Then again, not kicking the shit out of some bad guys would be terrible political fallout as well.
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Stormbringer wrote:Yeah, it would mean instant retaliation. But that's not to say that it wouldn't happen.
Understatement.
Our birds would be aloft before the warhead hit us.
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Laishkar-e-Taiba had been claiming that they have two Pakistani nuclear weapons that are capable of using against enemeis of Islam according one pakistani newspaper article.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Stark wrote:My god... listening to you americans is terrifying. Get me on the first time machine away from you lunatic motherfuckers.
And YOUR country, if attacked by a nuclear weapon, would be so enlightened as to accept possibly MILLIONS of casualties and turn the other cheek without retaliation? Please, tell me where such a utopian society exists, as it is sure and proof that Super-hippies exist and are walking among us. They are to be revered as Gods.
What would the other countries think about us lobbing nukes? I'm sure Russia and China would be glad that our nukes were landing pretty close to them....
If we were still in the Cold War, I doubt that any ICBM's would be used. It would be too big of a risk that the russkies would decide to use it as an excuse to attack us. Nowadays....ehh....I doubt that we'd even use nukes on them (perhaps tactical warheads...but nothing big). The fallout (political) would be terrible. Then again, not kicking the shit out of some bad guys would be terrible political fallout as well.
Were the US nuked with millions dead, virtually every government in the world would look the other way as we glassed NK.
Joe wrote:
In WWII, after all options were exhausted. For terrorist sects I can't see us using nukes, since military operations designed to bring those reponsible to justice likely wouldn't require hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to die, unlike Japan.
Now if North Korea were to somehow nuke us (which they can't, but if they could), that would be a different story.
Are you forgetting that long before the Bomb was dropped, we unleashed a concentrated firebomb campaign that killed over a million people in Japan and decimated over 60 cities? A nuclear retaliation may seem like a fantasy, but so did 9/11 and we are a nation with a track record of destroying civilian targets with extreme prejudice when attacked.
RedImperator wrote:I doubt we'd have blown away Kabul if 9-11 had been nuclear, for example, but we'd probably have used small devices against training camps, supply depots, maybe Taliban military targets. And we might have broken out the nerve gas (assuming we have any left) against those caves.
The US has plenty of nerve gas left, however its all basically useabul, its all become unstable and broken down chemically. It's so bad that many of the stockpiles can't be moved any distance and have to be burned on site.
However tunnels in Vietnam showed that its not all that hard to get tear gas to lethal levels in a confined space.
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Are you forgetting that long before the Bomb was dropped, we unleashed a concentrated firebomb campaign that killed over a million people in Japan and decimated over 60 cities?
A million? I have no doubt that the figure was at least in the hundreds of thousands, but I've never heard it estimated as high as a million. Now if you're talking about a million casualties, that figure would probably be correct.
The real shame about it is that in the long run, it was probably unnecessary, unlike the nuclear bomb.
A nuclear retaliation may seem like a fantasy, but so did 9/11 and we are a nation with a track record of destroying civilian targets with extreme prejudice when attacked.
A record recently broken; we could have unleashed the gates of hell after 9/11, but we didn't.
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I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
Stark wrote:My god... listening to you americans is terrifying. Get me on the first time machine away from you lunatic motherfuckers.
You haven't heard about our plans to blow up the moon yet.
BoTM / JL / MM / HAB / VRWC / Horseman
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
Stark wrote:My god... listening to you americans is terrifying. Get me on the first time machine away from you lunatic motherfuckers.
And YOUR country, if attacked by a nuclear weapon, would be so enlightened as to accept possibly MILLIONS of casualties and turn the other cheek without retaliation? Please, tell me where such a utopian society exists, as it is sure and proof that Super-hippies exist and are walking among us. They are to be revered as Gods.
LOL MY country is enlightened enough to have no nuclear deterrent at all!
If we're talking a single nuclear detonation, what possible justification could there be for destroying an entire country? Those are simply childish revenge impulses. Sure, when they found the Evil Mountain Stronghold, off you go, but there's no justification to destroy possibly hundreds of millions of people in an indiscriminant, just because some americans died. Indeed, any nation that would contemplate such a thing is 'heinous'.
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
Stark wrote:LOL MY country is enlightened enough to have no nuclear deterrent at all!
Australia has the benefit of being an American ally and thus under the aegis of our nuclear deterrant. I doubt that Australia choose to forgo nuclear weapons merely out of "enlightenment."
ROFLOL, but no. The KSA is very vulnerable to attack -- a relative few select conventional strikes will cripple the country. Also, AFAIK all of their oil pipelines run through one point.
Sea Skimmer wrote:It's a load of bullshit, and anyway the shelf life of Soviet nuclear weapons was only six years,
Interesting; why the six-year shelf life? Are we talking about tritium decay? If so, wouldn't the fission stage still work, even if the fusion stage doesn't?
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My understanding is that all recent nukes are designed such that they require all of the fissionable material be undecayed. This is especially important on tactical nukes, as the less waste you have the smaller and lighter the device.
Are nuclear weapons generally stored assembled and ready to go, or do they require some kind of loading procedure? Are the same warheads kept on the missles, or are they traded out occassionally?
If they 'go off', I imagine there'd be a maintenance schedule or something
Joe wrote:
A million? I have no doubt that the figure was at least in the hundreds of thousands, but I've never heard it estimated as high as a million. Now if you're talking about a million casualties, that figure would probably be correct.
I just saw the movie The Fog of War (the documentary with Robert McNamara) and that's where I got the million dead number from.
Joe wrote:
A million? I have no doubt that the figure was at least in the hundreds of thousands, but I've never heard it estimated as high as a million. Now if you're talking about a million casualties, that figure would probably be correct.
I just saw the movie The Fog of War (the documentary with Robert McNamara) and that's where I got the million dead number from.
It's possible that over a million civilians died in the firebombings, but that's the upper limit. I've also heard it estimated as low as 300,000, but I don't think it was that low.
I don't want to defend the firebombings, because our history in that area is just so sorry that it isn't worth defending. But even if you took the highest estimates available on Japanese civilian death caused by the U.S. as truth, the number probably wouldn't even equal a double-digit percentage of the massive total civilian deathtoll in WWII.
BoTM / JL / MM / HAB / VRWC / Horseman
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
Joe wrote:
It's possible that over a million civilians died in the firebombings, but that's the upper limit. I've also heard it estimated as low as 300,000, but I don't think it was that low.
I don't want to defend the firebombings, because our history in that area is just so sorry that it isn't worth defending. But even if you took the highest estimates available on Japanese civilian death caused by the U.S. as truth, the number probably wouldn't even equal a double-digit percentage of the massive total civilian deathtoll in WWII.
Oh certainly, but as McNamara stressed in The Fog of War the firebombings were a conscious decision to engage in the mass slaughter of civilians. They new exactly what they were getting into and decided it was worth it to end the war. I'm not going to argue for or against that decision, but it shows the US is certainly capable of deciding to exterminate civilians on a massive scale in order to win a war.
Class of 2007 w00t
