>Tactical nuclear weapons are basically a faster and more effective version of conventional strategic bombing. "Little Boy", the first weapon used in combat (in

>Tactical nuclear weapons are basically a faster and more effective version of conventional strategic bombing. "Little Boy", the first weapon used in combat (in Nagasaki), had a yield of 15kT. That resulted in an estimated 66k deaths and 70k injuries. Compare that to the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed ~100k civilians and burned the homes of over a million more. Two points: The first bomb was on Hiroshima, and killed many more people. The reason why the Nagasaki bomb killed "so few" people is because they missed. They were supposed to do a visual confirmation of the target, but the weather was cloudy so they (probably) used radar targeting, which wasn't particularly accurate in 1945. A lot of the energy hit the side of a mountain. Second, there's a huge difference between a conventional bomb and a nuke of the same size simply because of the fallout. It continues to kill well after it's dropped.