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>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

>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.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Chemical weapons are world-killers, absolutely. You could gas out every human city and end civilization as we know it. Biological weapons can probably do this 10x faster and via weaponized viruses meaning no ICBM's needed, just a good enough virus to be carried by human and animal hosts that infect the world. Or infect common crops and watch the world burn as everyone starves. A total war between the US/NATO and USSR sans nuclear weapons would also probably have ended western civilization and probably drawn in everyone else too. World-killer? Maybe, maybe not, but the world left over would have been one no one wold want to live in. The same way a post-nuclear world would be. If anything nukes kept US/NATO and the USSR from going hot. That conflict could very much been a world-ender and was itching to happen for decades.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Chemical weapons are shit, sorry. They're expensive to produce, dangerous to store, and their mortal enemy is... weather. Biological weapons could, if they were properly designed and released, didn't mutate, etc... etc... Nukes just... work. You twist a couple of keys, flip a switch and 45 minutes later human civilization ends.
    - mr_luc 10y ago
      This reminds me of a moment from the book "Against All Enemies," where Colin Powell, when asked behind closed doors about the dangers from chemical agents if the Iraqis had them, rolled his eyes a bit, and said that they were "goofy." He elaborated along the lines of: chemical weapons are completely at the mercy of the wind and dispersal patterns, and while they might be nasty in isolation, they simply weren't an operational concern.
rangibaby 10y ago
> Yet somehow all the other horrible weapons in history get a free pass? Certainly not. > Assad Years of brutal civil war vs literally two moments. We have been seconds away from nuclear war several times due to computer bugs. And those are the times we know about! How many more have been kept secret?
BFatts 10y ago
You forgot swords and maces and lances, going back to spears and arrows of crude stone and stick... We can go back, way back before the artificial horizon you place on it, and see that people have been killing - and in the most gruesome ways - since the beginning of humanity. If you really want to engage in a philosophical discussion, do include all the history. It has always been about protecting resources that are deemed important. At some point, someone wants what someone else has. I suppose we could maybe stop the horizon at explosives. Once it went from melee to ranged combat, things really changed. So, "who could make the bigger boom?" became the defacto leader. The problem is that nuclear weapons are as big as it gets, at the moment, with more and more organizations wishing they had them too. Being a strong arm in the weapons race is very important. But using them is atrocious. The destruction is beyond the pale. And it affects those that used to be meaningless: us, the commoners. Killing uninvolved people is a hard pill to swallow, so it is hard to be the one to pull that trigger. I hope to hell it never happens. And I worry, a tiny bit, about people with the stupidity to think that their beliefs "command them" to use them to prove a point.
jsudhams 10y ago
But it does not have to be like i think is that , humans can decide to end poverty, end money madness and make a peaceful world . I am sure it will happen one day may be after bigger disaster but we all intelligence to make that happen. We just dont try.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Maybe we did... The modern world is like a utopia compared to the horrors of our past. Every year the world is getting better statistically. Poverty is decreasing, wars are decreasing, life spans are increasing... You wouldn't know it if you just watched the news. Which only focuses on the bad events and the negative aspects of the world.
JoeDaDude 10y ago
"...being stabbed in the belly..." If I am not mistaken that is a quote attributed to Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris [1] who led the bombing campaign of Germany as Commander-in-Chief of the British Bomber Command during World War II. In an interview he was asked if dropping bombs on cities full of civilians was moral. His response went something like this: "Name me one thing in war that is moral. Is sticking a bayonet in a man's belly moral?". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet#Second_World_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet...
- JoeDaDude 10y ago
  I found the film of Sir Arthur Harris saying that quote. It was played in the documentary series War by Gwynne Dyer. See the excerpt here: https://youtu.be/tPnppCelvk0?t=48m56s https://youtu.be/tPnppCelvk0?t=48m56s

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.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Chemical weapons are world-killers, absolutely. You could gas out every human city and end civilization as we know it. Biological weapons can probably do this 10x faster and via weaponized viruses meaning no ICBM's needed, just a good enough virus to be carried by human and animal hosts that infect the world. Or infect common crops and watch the world burn as everyone starves. A total war between the US/NATO and USSR sans nuclear weapons would also probably have ended western civilization and probably drawn in everyone else too. World-killer? Maybe, maybe not, but the world left over would have been one no one wold want to live in. The same way a post-nuclear world would be. If anything nukes kept US/NATO and the USSR from going hot. That conflict could very much been a world-ender and was itching to happen for decades.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Chemical weapons are shit, sorry. They're expensive to produce, dangerous to store, and their mortal enemy is... weather. Biological weapons could, if they were properly designed and released, didn't mutate, etc... etc... Nukes just... work. You twist a couple of keys, flip a switch and 45 minutes later human civilization ends.
  - mr_luc 10y ago
    This reminds me of a moment from the book "Against All Enemies," where Colin Powell, when asked behind closed doors about the dangers from chemical agents if the Iraqis had them, rolled his eyes a bit, and said that they were "goofy." He elaborated along the lines of: chemical weapons are completely at the mercy of the wind and dispersal patterns, and while they might be nasty in isolation, they simply weren't an operational concern.

rangibaby 10y ago

> Yet somehow all the other horrible weapons in history get a free pass? Certainly not. > Assad Years of brutal civil war vs literally two moments. We have been seconds away from nuclear war several times due to computer bugs. And those are the times we know about! How many more have been kept secret?

BFatts 10y ago

You forgot swords and maces and lances, going back to spears and arrows of crude stone and stick... We can go back, way back before the artificial horizon you place on it, and see that people have been killing - and in the most gruesome ways - since the beginning of humanity. If you really want to engage in a philosophical discussion, do include all the history. It has always been about protecting resources that are deemed important. At some point, someone wants what someone else has. I suppose we could maybe stop the horizon at explosives. Once it went from melee to ranged combat, things really changed. So, "who could make the bigger boom?" became the defacto leader. The problem is that nuclear weapons are as big as it gets, at the moment, with more and more organizations wishing they had them too. Being a strong arm in the weapons race is very important. But using them is atrocious. The destruction is beyond the pale. And it affects those that used to be meaningless: us, the commoners. Killing uninvolved people is a hard pill to swallow, so it is hard to be the one to pull that trigger. I hope to hell it never happens. And I worry, a tiny bit, about people with the stupidity to think that their beliefs "command them" to use them to prove a point.

jsudhams 10y ago

But it does not have to be like i think is that , humans can decide to end poverty, end money madness and make a peaceful world . I am sure it will happen one day may be after bigger disaster but we all intelligence to make that happen. We just dont try.

Houshalter 10y ago
Maybe we did... The modern world is like a utopia compared to the horrors of our past. Every year the world is getting better statistically. Poverty is decreasing, wars are decreasing, life spans are increasing... You wouldn't know it if you just watched the news. Which only focuses on the bad events and the negative aspects of the world.

JoeDaDude 10y ago

"...being stabbed in the belly..." If I am not mistaken that is a quote attributed to Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris [1] who led the bombing campaign of Germany as Commander-in-Chief of the British Bomber Command during World War II. In an interview he was asked if dropping bombs on cities full of civilians was moral. His response went something like this: "Name me one thing in war that is moral. Is sticking a bayonet in a man's belly moral?". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet#Second_World_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet...

JoeDaDude 10y ago
I found the film of Sir Arthur Harris saying that quote. It was played in the documentary series War by Gwynne Dyer. See the excerpt here: https://youtu.be/tPnppCelvk0?t=48m56s https://youtu.be/tPnppCelvk0?t=48m56s