Nuts and Bolts of Nuclear War (split from Ukraine Reaction thread)

[Jarhyn]

I recommend you watch Grave of the Fireflies, actually read the reports of what the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wrote of what the aftermath was.

Grave of the Fireflies is a great film depicting Japan during the firebombings. But for the effects of the nukes, Barefoot Gen deals a lot more directly with that.

Fair enough!

 

[Politesse]

Death was most certainly not instant even for many of those relatively close to the epicenter. This was no mercy. I highly recommend this interview with survivor Setsuko Thurlow, not just for her testimony concerning the events themselves, but for her very appropriate thoughts on what our social response should be to the facts of the atomic attacks. It is admirable that she has managed to somehow bring herself to a point of such persepctive, but as she rightly notes a great many never had the chance to reach any such point of closure. Hers is only one of hundreds available on youtube in these connected times.

 

[steve_bank]

After debate Tokyo was taken off the nuclear bomb target list in the interest of preserving Japanese culture post war. The same reason the emperor was not executed for war crimes.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are inconsequential to the total war in the Pacific. Post war we heard of Nazi genocide. but little about the Japanese treatment of Chinese civilians. The WWII Japanese military was a genocidal as the Nazis.

If Japan had been invaded two things would have happened. Conventional and nuclear weapons would have reduced the country to rubble. Second, on orders from the emperer the people woud have fought to the death with pitchforks. It woud have been the end of Japapense culture.

Believe it or not, American leadership actually gave thought tothe continuation of post war Japanese cultue. That perhaos is what distinguishes western systems from Russia and China today.

China and Russia are acting like pre war Nazis and Japanese.

 

[bilby]

Death was most certainly not instant even for many of those relatively close to the epicenter. This was no mercy. I highly recommend this interview with survivor Setsuko Thurlow, not just for her testimony concerning the events themselves, but for her very appropriate thoughts on what our social response should be to the facts of the atomic attacks. It is admirable that she has managed to somehow bring herself to a point of such persepctive, but as she rightly notes a great many never had the chance to reach any such point of closure. Hers is only one of hundreds available on youtube in these connected times.

The atom bombs dropped on Japan were not much like modern thermonuclear weapons. Their effects would be very different.

The 1945 bombs were much smaller, and much dirtier.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In WWII firebombing by the Brits and Americans was a choice.

When Hitler switched to terror bombing to try and break the Brits including fire bombing 'Bomber' Harris head of the RAF wnated torespnd in kind. Initially Churchill opposed it but eventually acquiesced.

We fire bombed Japon and from the post war reports of Japanese survivors it was far more horrific than the nuclear bombs. Japm dosytibuted war production in population venters made of flimsy wodden structires.

We didn't really have much else we could do. The Japanese war production was too dispersed to be targeted directly. Thus all we could do is destroy the cities.

Sure. But was it something we should have done? Did it help the war effort?

It's main effect seems to have been to boost morale - "See, we are getting revenge for the bad things they did!"

Strategic bombing doesn't appear to have been a particularly useful strategy. As you just said, Japanese war production was too dispersed to be targeted directly. So the effect of destroying cities on that war production was minimal. Killing the workers' families didn't make them less productive, it just made them more determined and motivated.

It did help the war effort--it's just destroying the war production basically meant destroying everything. Ugly, but you don't walk away from the war because of it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's just foolish.

Or perhaps you just completely missed my point.

Again.

Yes, destroying cities should be beyond consideration. But some (such as Putin) clearly do consider it.

The point I am trying (and evidently failing) to get across is that destroying a city with a nuclear bomb isn't particularly different from doing so with a thousand bomber raid, from the perspective of the people living there at the time.

The idea that nuclear weapons are uniquely awful is simply false. There are ways of achieving the same awfulness without nuclear weapons, and those ways were in fact implemented on a massive scale in living memory.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were war crimes; But they weren't worse than Tokyo. Indeed, as they were smaller than Tokyo, destroying Tokyo was the bigger crime.

So an enemy that disperses it's facilities through a city is invulnerable? Because that's the effect of what you're saying.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh God no, they don't die very quickly. It can take days or even weeks or months to die from it. The dark smudges you see in pictures of past attacks are not "all that was left". They just cleaned the bodies up afterwards.

I recommend you watch Grave of the Fireflies, actually read the reports of what the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wrote of what the aftermath was.

And deaths from conventional attacks are cleaner??

Most nuke deaths are in an area of overkill and thus come quickly. I'd take death by nuke over death by fire.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Death was most certainly not instant even for many of those relatively close to the epicenter. This was no mercy. I highly recommend this interview with survivor Setsuko Thurlow, not just for her testimony concerning the events themselves, but for her very appropriate thoughts on what our social response should be to the facts of the atomic attacks. It is admirable that she has managed to somehow bring herself to a point of such persepctive, but as she rightly notes a great many never had the chance to reach any such point of closure. Hers is only one of hundreds available on youtube in these connected times.

The atom bombs dropped on Japan were not much like modern thermonuclear weapons. Their effects would be very different.

The 1945 bombs were much smaller, and much dirtier.

Yup--the bigger the boom the more people are in areas of considerable overkill and die very quickly and the bigger the boom the smaller percentage of radiation casualties.

Also, now we know the dangers of the fallout, there won't be nearly as many deaths that way.

 

[bilby]

So an enemy that disperses it's facilities through a city is invulnerable? Because that's the effect of what you're saying.

No, it's really not.

Apart from WWII, most wars in history ended without the destruction of the losing side's means of production.

Nobody obliterated Berlin, Vienna, Budapest or Istanbul during the Great War, but the Germans, Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians lost nonetheless.

 

[Copernicus]

Death was most certainly not instant even for many of those relatively close to the epicenter. This was no mercy. I highly recommend this interview with survivor Setsuko Thurlow, not just for her testimony concerning the events themselves, but for her very appropriate thoughts on what our social response should be to the facts of the atomic attacks. It is admirable that she has managed to somehow bring herself to a point of such persepctive, but as she rightly notes a great many never had the chance to reach any such point of closure. Hers is only one of hundreds available on youtube in these connected times.

The atom bombs dropped on Japan were not much like modern thermonuclear weapons. Their effects would be very different.

The 1945 bombs were much smaller, and much dirtier.

Yup--the bigger the boom the more people are in areas of considerable overkill and die very quickly and the bigger the boom the smaller percentage of radiation casualties.

Also, now we know the dangers of the fallout, there won't be nearly as many deaths that way.

Nobody seems to be trying to provide sources to these claims about modern nuclear weapons, which can be thousands of times more powerful than the WWII bombs. From what I've read, the fallout is determined by how a country chooses to detonate the bomb, with an airburst sending radioactive material far higher. The Nagaaki bomb was an airburst--2,000 feet above the Nagasaki Catholic cathedral. (Nagasaki was Japan's largest center of Catholics.)

Source: Russia's attack on Ukraine raises a harrowing question: How widespread would fallout from a nuclear bomb be?

All of this academic debate by internet-based nonexperts over how lethal a modern nuclear bomb would be, besides being ghoulish, is largely beside the point. An all-out nuclear attack would involve a great many warheads and possibly trigger strikes by countries not directly involved in the initial strike. The whole idea of a survivable nuclear war is utterly mad, but it does look like a lot of people are so hopped up over Ukraine that they are anxious to give it a go.

 

[Jayjay]

Oh God no, they don't die very quickly. It can take days or even weeks or months to die from it. The dark smudges you see in pictures of past attacks are not "all that was left". They just cleaned the bodies up afterwards.

I recommend you watch Grave of the Fireflies, actually read the reports of what the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wrote of what the aftermath was.

And deaths from conventional attacks are cleaner??

Most nuke deaths are in an area of overkill and thus come quickly. I'd take death by nuke over death by fire.

Luckily you don't have to choose. The heat wave from nuke will set everything on fire. And while it might not technically kill you, you'll spend your last seconds alive in excruciating pain being burned alive while waiting for the shockwave to hit and let you out of your misery.

The only surefire way to avoid a painful death in nuclear explosion is to be very close to ground zero, practically hug the explosive device when it goes off. That guy riding the bomb in Doctor Strangelove had the right idea.

 

[Swammerdami]

For example, have you looked at the impact of just the two little atomic bombs that wiped out Japanese cities?

Yes, I have.

They were similar to the impact of the firebombing of other Japanese cities.

The most significant tactical difference is that a single aircraft could do the work that previously required about a thousand....

They're different in many ways, but it's all quantitative, or psychological. They're qualitatively not different from any other weapons.

The fire-bombings succeeded because Japanese anti-aircraft capability had been severely degraded. Do you think a bombing raid of that scale could be mounted in Europe today?

And even the worst raid directed against one of the largest cities in the world killed "only" about 150,000 people. A single Trident II SLBM, presumably unstoppable, directed against Tokyo today would kill millions, even without considering radiation illness. The missiles from a single submarine could kill more people than Stalin and Hitler combined ever did. Even if weapons are mostly aimed at "military targets" the human toll might be catastrophic.

As Copernicus implies, an all-out nuclear exchange might have a profound effect on human civilization itself. It seems unreasonable to treat the impact of nukes as "similar" to that of other weapons.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So an enemy that disperses it's facilities through a city is invulnerable? Because that's the effect of what you're saying.

No, it's really not.

Apart from WWII, most wars in history ended without the destruction of the losing side's means of production.

Nobody obliterated Berlin, Vienna, Budapest or Istanbul during the Great War, but the Germans, Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians lost nonetheless.

Because they were willing to surrender. Japan was relying on a strategy of making it too bloody to actually take the country. The only way to defeat that would be to basically annihilate the country. The bomb was a giant bluff that made them think we could annihilate the country without them being able to kill an awful lot of our troops in the process.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody seems to be trying to provide sources to these claims about modern nuclear weapons, which can be thousands of times more powerful than the WWII bombs. From what I've read, the fallout is determined by how a country chooses to detonate the bomb, with an airburst sending radioactive material far higher. The Nagaaki bomb was an airburst--2,000 feet above the Nagasaki Catholic cathedral. (Nagasaki was Japan's largest center of Catholics.)

You have it backwards!

Sending the fallout higher is a good thing! It's not going to hurt anyone in the sky, the longer it takes before it comes down the less harm it causes. Furthermore, airbursts (of the proper height for the bomb in question) don't go sucking a bunch of material up and thus provide less material to fall back, thus delaying the fallout. Remember, there is an inverse relationship between radioactivity and half-life. The fiercely hot stuff doesn't last long. The stuff that falls back in an hour is roughly 100x as hot as the stuff that falls back in 2 days.

A surface detonation (emplaced, vehicle-born, carried by a terrain-skimming missile or set for low-altitude detonation for bunker-busting) sucks up a lot of material from the environment making the stuff in the sky clump more and thus fall back faster as well as actually creating more radioactivity because of neutron activation. (Neutrons absorbed in the atmosphere tend to produce non-radioactive isotopes, although you get some C-14 production.)

The design of the bomb is more relevant. Fission produces far more fallout than fusion. Standard h-bombs actually contain two small fission bombs but they are a small part of the total bang. However, wrapping your bomb in U-238 (a standard h-bomb requires a shell of something heavy, making that shell out of U-238 doesn't make your bomb any heavier) provides an inexpensive way of increasing the yield--but at the cost of making the bomb much dirtier. We got a nasty surprise when we tried a U-238 jacket--they saw the good material properties and didn't realize that while it can't sustain a chain reaction it will fission well when bombarded with neutrons from the h-bomb detonating inside.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Luckily you don't have to choose. The heat wave from nuke will set everything on fire. And while it might not technically kill you, you'll spend your last seconds alive in excruciating pain being burned alive while waiting for the shockwave to hit and let you out of your misery.

The only surefire way to avoid a painful death in nuclear explosion is to be very close to ground zero, practically hug the explosive device when it goes off. That guy riding the bomb in Doctor Strangelove had the right idea.

If you're shielded from the thermal pulse (and it doesn't take much) the blast wave will kill you before the fires have much effect.

And the guy in Dr. Strangelove didn't have an idea in the first place, he didn't intend to ride the bomb.

 

[steve_bank]

There are distinct differences. The first atomic bombs just went boom. Modern nukes go KA BOOOOOM.

Fllout gets into the jet stream circles the globe, and eventual falls on the ground. I was living in Portalnd when St Helens erupted.

In the 59s and 60s radioactive contamination from Chinese tests showed up in wets coast milk. The grass cows ate became contminated.

Here in Seattle we get visible smoke from Siberian and California fires.

A volcanic eruption is credited with a 19th century fezze that disrupted agriculture, today we call that a nuclea winter.

 

[Copernicus]

You have it backwards!

Sending the fallout higher is a good thing! It's not going to hurt anyone in the sky, the longer it takes before it comes down the less harm it causes. Furthermore, airbursts (of the proper height for the bomb in question) don't go sucking a bunch of material up and thus provide less material to fall back, thus delaying the fallout. Remember, there is an inverse relationship between radioactivity and half-life. The fiercely hot stuff doesn't last long. The stuff that falls back in an hour is roughly 100x as hot as the stuff that falls back in 2 days.

You don't think that the smoke rising from burning cities would carry radioactive debris into the atmosphere after the initial blast? The real short term danger would probably be the possibility of a global  Nuclear winter. And, as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs. That's why countries now conduct such tests underground. Also, you need to add into your calculations the number of nuclear warheads exploded around the globe. Cleaner bombs may actually produce a lot more radiation and damage to the environment when used in high quantity than a few dirty bombs.

 

[bilby]

as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs

High levels?

We have experienced measurable levels. And these levels have done no measurable harm to anyone or anything. Radioactivity is very very easy to detect, in even minuscule quantities. Being detectable is a total non-event. Being both detectable and traceable to a specific source is likewise a non-event; traceability is a particularly useful characteristic of radioactivity, which is widely exploited in medicine and engineering. It's got three eighths of fuck all to do with being hazardous, much less dangerous.

If we are going to characterise levels of radiation typical of cavendish bananas as "high levels of radioactivity", then we are abusing the phrase "high levels" beyond its breaking point.

 

[Copernicus]

as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs

High levels?

We have experienced measurable levels. And these levels have done no measurable harm to anyone or anything. Radioactivity is very very easy to detect, in even minuscule quantities. Being detectable is a total non-event. Being both detectable and traceable to a specific source is likewise a non-event; traceability is a particularly useful characteristic of radioactivity, which is widely exploited in medicine and engineering. It's got three eighths of fuck all to do with being hazardous, much less dangerous.

If we are going to characterise levels of radiation typical of cavendish bananas as "high levels of radioactivity", then we are abusing the phrase "high levels" beyond its breaking point.

High levels caused by roughly 400 above-ground bomb tests between 1945 and 1963, when Kennedy imposed a partial ban on above-ground testing. Before you go making claims of "no measurable harm", you should actually check to see if your statement has scientific backing. It is extremely difficult to prove that any particular case of cancer was caused by exposure to radiation, but we can look for statistical significance in populations:

CANCER RISK TO AMERICANS FROM ATOMIC TEST FALLOUT A CASE CONTROL STUDY OF STRONTIUM-90 IN BABY TEETH

1. The average Sr-90 level in teeth of persons who died of cancer was 122% greater – more than double – than in teeth of healthy controls, a significant difference
2. Average Sr-90 concentration in teeth of cancer survivors was not significantly elevated

And we aren't looking at anything like the levels of radiation that people would be exposed to from an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. This is just from a relatively small number nuclear tests conducted over a period of almost two decades.

 

[bilby]

as Steve Bank pointed out, we've already experienced high levels of fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs

High levels?

We have experienced measurable levels. And these levels have done no measurable harm to anyone or anything. Radioactivity is very very easy to detect, in even minuscule quantities. Being detectable is a total non-event. Being both detectable and traceable to a specific source is likewise a non-event; traceability is a particularly useful characteristic of radioactivity, which is widely exploited in medicine and engineering. It's got three eighths of fuck all to do with being hazardous, much less dangerous.

If we are going to characterise levels of radiation typical of cavendish bananas as "high levels of radioactivity", then we are abusing the phrase "high levels" beyond its breaking point.

High levels caused by roughly 400 above-ground bomb tests between 1945 and 1963, when Kennedy imposed a partial ban on above-ground testing. Before you go making claims of "no measurable harm", you should actually check to see if your statement has scientific backing. It is extremely difficult to prove that any particular case of cancer was caused by exposure to radiation, but we can look for statistical significance in populations:

CANCER RISK TO AMERICANS FROM ATOMIC TEST FALLOUT A CASE CONTROL STUDY OF STRONTIUM-90 IN BABY TEETH

1. The average Sr-90 level in teeth of persons who died of cancer was 122% greater – more than double – than in teeth of healthy controls, a significant difference
2. Average Sr-90 concentration in teeth of cancer survivors was not significantly elevated

And we aren't looking at anything like the levels of radiation that people would be exposed to from an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. This is just from a relatively small number nuclear tests conducted over a period of almost two decades.

I would strongly advise against taking the word of any website with a "DONATE" button prominently displayed.

That's even if you don't already know that radiation.org is an unashamed set of liars whose dedicated purpose is the ending of nuclear power generation.

Seriously, these cunts are beyond fucking awful. You would get more respect from me if you had linked to an argument by the Church of Scientology.

And the amount of Sr-90 in a typical person's teeth is utterly minuscule; 122% of fuck all is fuck all. They went p-hacking, and no surprise they found a 'significant' correlation between one of the radioisotopes they studied and cancer victims. They probably wouldn't admit that that's lying, but it's fucking lying.



Before you make counter claims that you believe have scientific backing, you should ensure that your sources aren't pseudoscientific charlatans with a massive bias who are systematically and deliberately lying to you (and anyone else they can hoodwink).