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I'm not surprised these were kept classified for so long. No one could watch these and not be moved. That beautiful beach with a mushroom cloud on the horizon.

• infinitone 10y ago
  I never heard/read that quote by Einstein; interesting. Here is the full quote for the curious: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17014-the-release-of-atomic-power-has-changed-everything-except-our http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17014-the-release-of-atomic-...
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    I live my life by that single insight: technology and progress do not change human nature. Behavior, sure, but not our nature. Human nature and nuclear weaponry are not compatible.
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > Human nature and nuclear weaponry are not compatible. Here's the problem though: most interesting and useful technologies of the future are not compatible with human nature. E.g. any interesting interplanetary drive that would give us reasonable transit times is at the same time a powerful WMD, simply because of the energies we'll be working with. Or bio/nanotech, dream of so many industries, is also potentially much worse than nukes. Makes me worry if we grow up in time, or end up killing ourselves with our toys.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        You've hit on why I don't see humanity's long-term survival as very likely, and why I find the Great Filter hypothesis so compelling.
        • noir_lord 10y ago
          It's also why if we where rational as a species we'd be focusing on becoming a genuine space borne/multi-planetary civilisation. Our best shot at surviving the great filter is been spread out enough that when someone goes "Ooops" and levels wherever they are there are other self-sufficient humans far enough away to survive. Not sure if we'll ever achieve that (though I think in totality it's only just beyond our current technology) though since it would require a colossal investment that would make the Apollo program look tiny to bootstrap it. barring some significant breakthrough in fusion.
          • alphapapa 10y ago
            > Our best shot at surviving the great filter is been spread out enough that when someone goes "Ooops" and levels wherever they are there are other self-sufficient humans far enough away to survive. This idea of compartmentalization is a strong argument against globalism. "Oops"es in government, society, and culture can be just as deadly.
          • c-smile 10y ago
            Wondering if it is even possible to convince humanity to focus on creating multi-stellar civilization at this point until it is not too late. Instead of fighting in sandboxes, et cetera.
            • M_Grey 10y ago
              http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/10/darwin-day/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/10/darwin-day/ I'm afraid not.
    • emmelaich 10y ago
      > Human nature and nuclear weaponry are not compatible. They've been around for quite a while, so the evidence is against that conclusion.
• deleted 10y ago
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• drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >Nuclear weapons are humanity's shame. Yet somehow all the other horrible weapons in history get a free pass? Fireboming of populated cities and watching tens of thousands of people burn? Being stabbed in the belly with bayonet and dying painfully over the next 12 hours? Bombs that take away the sight and hearing of children? Napalm, phosphorus, etc that stick to skin and burn down to the bone? .50 caliber shells that tear people apart? Mustard gas the burns through your lungs? Biological agents that can spread in a population quickly and kill off a city? My take is that if it builds detente that stops conflicts then it must have a net good. Humanity built these things and uses them either explicitly (Japan) or as a threat (MAD). They are artifacts of human culture. They reflect our warring nature and we cant just shame them away. In a non-nuclear world we would have the same, if not, more conflicts and many more dead. Assad has killed around 500,000 civilians with his small military and just conventional arms. No nukes needed. That's more than twice the number killed by nuclear weapons use in WWII. There's also a moral hazard here of excusing guys like Assad because "hey at least he isn't using nukes." The more we vilify nukes and excuse conventional warfare, which is just as if not more brutal, the farther we'll be from proper peace. Nothing really changes if we get rid of nukes. You're making the mistake of confusing the symptom with the problem. Nukes should go away, but only at a time where the threat of another world war doesn't exist. What that means politically is unknown, but arguably nukes, as horrible as they are, have stopped a proper WWIII. The more I study WWII and think about how much better our conventional weapons and manufacturing ability were during the cold war compared to the 40s, I can't imagine a conventional WWIII not ending the world. Not as dramatic as nukes, but certainly the end result would be similar. I sometimes wonder if nukes are a required stage for a species like ours. Its something that stops the possibility of a catastrophic world war while we aim to developer better social and political mechanisms to end war on this level. At that point we would naturally get rid of our nukes, the same way people in very safe neighborhoods don't sleep with guns under their pillows. I think "umm kay nukes are bad" narrative is short-sighted and ignores the real possibility of a conventional WWIII ending the world.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    None of the other weapons were world-killers. There is a difference in quality and quantity. Mustard gas is nasty, but it's ultimately not very effective. Napalm, phosphorus are cruel, but not generally more useful than a large explosive. A nuke is everything. Nukes are too effective, allowing you to make a whole planet uninhabitable if you really felt like achieving that goal. Maybe we should be especially repelled by the fact that we've stockpiled the means to utterly erase our existence.
• TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > No one could watch these and not be moved. I am very much moved by pictures of nuclear tests. Though for me, the description would go like this: "that typical boring beach like every other beach out there, with that beautiful nuclear fireball and mushroom cloud on the horizon". Call me weird, but I'm absolutely mesmerized by videos of nuclear detonations. I appreciate that dropping nukes on people is evil and wrong, but it doesn't change that so much raw power extracted out of what's basically cleverly mixed soil, unleashed on human command, feels like a big achievement. That we learned to control it and put into productive use in nuclear reactors is even better, but nowhere near as beautiful to watch.
  • btown 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation is equally beautiful/awe-inspiring to my eyes. It's like we made those glowing starship engine cores out of science fiction, except they exist in real life. Nuclear detonations feel a bit more like power we can't control - and arguably, that's true.
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Indeed. Nuclear detonations are more about just how much power we can deliver to a place on demand, but we don't really control much of it. Nuclear reactors are about us controlling smaller, though still huge amounts of that power. Related, while I'm at all into cars, I love the ingenuity behind internal combustion engines - we took a substance that just burns very well and figured that if we can explode very small amounts of it in a container very quickly, we can produce lots of reliable, portable power. We built a whole civilization on top of it. Cherenkov radiation is just beautiful.
  • maxxxxx 10y ago
    I am generally against nuclear weapons but to be honest if I got an offer to watch a nuclear explosion live I would go without question.
    • colmvp 10y ago
• senthil_rajasek 10y ago
  "Nuclear weapons are humanity's shame. That we used our best minds and science to build these things." You can't blame the whole of humanity for the shamefulness of a few Western powers. Surely, there are cultures all across the world that chose not to use violence.
  • noir_lord 10y ago
    Today I learned that China,India, North Korea and South Africa (though they destroyed theirs) are "western" powers.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • senthil_rajasek 10y ago
      At least, I know that India had no choice but build a nuclear deterrent against the constant superpower bullying.
      • mturmon 10y ago
        I believe the United States used a similar rationale.
        • senthil_rajasek 10y ago
          The United States had the Monroe doctrine, so arming with weapons was an offensive state policy.
  • alphapapa 10y ago
    What about the shamefulness of the Eastern power that necessitated the development and use of nuclear weapons?
• Cshelton 10y ago
  I mean, if the U.S. had not created the nuclear bomb, odds are high that Germany would have. At the same time, the U.S. was prepared to do a full invasion of Japan with 250,000 troops, expected casualties at 100,000 U.S. troops. My grandfather was on a boat off the coast of Japan when the bombs dropped. I may not be here now if we did not drop the bombs. I know it's all relative, as somebody would be here today that is not in Japan. But still. I tend to blame human nature for the destruction of our own selves, not the weapons we do it with. One way another, humans will kill each other, nuclear or not.
  • saagarjha 10y ago
    Not a history expert by any means, but didn't Germany basically drive away all the scientists that could have worked on the bomb?
    • rangibaby 10y ago
      Yes, and the war in Europe ended before the Germans built a bomb (they were trying, but had not made much progress), and like you said many of their best minds were in the US. I think in a situation where the Americans didn't build an A bomb then no one would have for some time. Would it have made a difference to our world now? It's hard to tell, but the Soviets certainly would have taken more Japanese territory than they did in our timeline. My opinion was Stalin was too pragmatic to start WWIII, Before and after WWII he only provided limited support to Soviet-aligned groups (see: post-war France and the Spanish or Greek civil wars) in other part of the world to avoid antagonizing the west too much. The real answer is, who knows?
  • omarchowdhury 10y ago
    I read yesterday that the estimated cost of invading Japan would be 1M US casualties.
    • chillingeffect 10y ago
      That's an often-repeated and far from conclusive statement used to justify dropping the bomb to gain a temporary (it's crumbling now) international advantage. Check out Oliver Stone's Untold History [1], or many other history sources for various opinions. There is considerable debate about it.[2] In reality, the Japanese were on the verge of surrender. The U.S. had badly firebombed Japan, burning hundreds of thousands of people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untold_History_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untold_History_of_the_Unit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan
• dhimes 10y ago
  Everybody's watch would have a different time, rendering them useless.