Oolite Bulletins

Seventy years ago today! Has the concept of MAD kept the world safe? So far, it seems to have worked.

It's traditional to play this every August 6th in my household... and I always follow it with this!

<wanders thoughtfully away>

Well, sir, that's a bit of a hazy question.

We have only this one world to see the outcome upon; what /may/ have happened without that seventy-year stalemate is up for any scenario you care to imagine.

Could have been worse. Could have been better.

Without a genuine warranted What-if Machine (and a finger-longer to operate it with) we can't ever be sure. Still, an anniversary worth thinking over.

Layne wrote:

Still, an anniversary worth thinking over.

Aye, that's the point. As for 'what ifs' - what if the Persians had defeated the ancient Greeks? <chortles>

Darn those butterflies! Destroying countless innumerable alternate timelines just for the sake of a single wingflap! The nerve of those Lepidoptera to make us their whimsical playthings as they change possible futures!

Down with butterflies!

Indeed an anniversary of note.
Hundreds of thousands killed, and perversely probably more than that saved on the assumption that the War would have continued for much longer and much more fiercely without their use.
And the concept of MAD would not have been so successful without this actual demonstration of the destructive power of atomic weapons, implying that the relative peace we have all enjoyed throughout our lives was also dependent on these horrific events.
On a side note, Nukes along with chemical and biological weapons are truly Weapons of Mass Destruction - weapons capable of killing tens of thousands. Yet in the USA recently, several people planning to use or actually using things like pressure-cooker bombs have been charged with using WMDs. While these crimes are horrendous, I do think that the weapons involved are clearly not WMDs and personally I find this somewhat distasteful as I feel it cheapens the phrase and detracts from the true horror of 'real' WMDs. Without in any way being disrepectful to the victims, an event like the Boston marathon bombing is really not in the same league as say Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Halabja. I just worry that these charges may lead to a situation where the scale and horror of true WMDs may be overlooked or forgotten.

Smivs wrote:

Yet in the USA recently, several people planning to use or actually using things like pressure-cooker bombs have been charged with using WMDs. While these crimes are horrendous, I do think that the weapons involved are clearly not WMDs and personally I find this somewhat distasteful as I feel it cheapens the phrase and detracts from the true horror of 'real' WMDs. Without in any way being disrepectful to the victims, an event like the Boston marathon bombing is really not in the same league as say Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Halabja. I just worry that these charges may lead to a situation where the scale and horror of true WMDs may be overlooked or forgotten.

I'd agree with that. A bomb that kills a few dozen is no less a tragedy and a horror-- at what point can we set a scale on such barbarity?-- but is not, really speaking, a weapon of 'mass destruction'. It's a weapon of fear and cowardice and cruelty, certainly.

Do we also count those horrors created by carelessness, or in some cases, deliberate recklessness? The Bhopal Gas Tragedy? The Benxihu Colliery explosion? These, too, kill thousands. What about the slow deaths of Chernobyl? None of these were deliberate WMDs, yet we recoil from them nonetheless.

Cody wrote:

Seventy years ago today! Has the concept of MAD kept the world safe? So far, it seems to have worked.

More by luck than judgement, perhaps – and the biggest risks, and the closest shaves, seem to have come from near-miss accidents, like when the US Air Force dropped a 4-megaton hydrogen bomb on North Carolina ... just one of many nuclear weapons incidents listed in Eric Schlosser's book Command and Control. An excellent book, and well worth reading: it's fascinating and horrifying in equal parts (and it only deals with US incidents: who knows what other countries got up to?).

Smivs wrote:

On a side note, Nukes along with chemical and biological weapons are truly Weapons of Mass Destruction

Nukes, certainly.

Biological, theoretically - but you'd have to engineer a disease considerably more dangerous than any natural one to beat dropping a single 1000lb conventional bomb on a major city for deaths and injuries, and any disease that dangerous is likely to spread indiscriminately and come back to you too.

Chemical is even less deserving of the name than biological, I think - they're considerably easier to protect against than the same mass of conventional explosives, and harder to attack with effectively. (Tear gas is widely used by police and military forces against civilians in various countries in situations where grenades or bullets would perhaps cause stronger international condemnation and certainly cause considerably more harm)

Smivs wrote:

weapons capable of killing tens of thousands.

If that's the definition, then several attacks with purely conventional explosives and incendiaries by various sides in WW2 count - and they've got a lot more potentially deadly since.

The improvised bombs used by terrorists are fairly unremarkable - except for their target - as weapons go, and generally considerably more deadly than the chemical weapons occasionally used by terrorist groups ... so why not count them as WMD. Given the various treaties against WMD, I wouldn't actually object to a precedent that classed conventional explosives as them.

cim wrote:

The improvised bombs used by terrorists are fairly unremarkable - except for their target - as weapons go, and generally considerably more deadly than the chemical weapons occasionally used by terrorist groups ... so why not count them as WMD. Given the various treaties against WMD, I wouldn't actually object to a precedent that classed conventional explosives as them.

But by that definition, a modern assault rifle would also qualify surely, as it is quite capable of killing numerous people. Debating definitions is always tricky, but I do think to be labelled as a WMD, a weapon should not only be able to kill multiple targets but should have the potential to kill in huge numbers over very large areas at least.

cim wrote:

Given the various treaties against WMD, I wouldn't actually object to a precedent that classed conventional explosives as them.

That got me thinking of Dresden, so I went reading Vonnegut (who was a POW there throughout the bombing and its aftermath):

Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in.

Typical Vonnegut, and if you haven't read it, the novel is Slaughterhouse Five - a curious tale of becoming unstuck in time!

Smivs wrote:

Debating definitions is always tricky, but I do think to be labelled as a WMD, a weapon should not only be able to kill multiple targets but should have the potential to kill in huge numbers over very large areas at least.

Surely the biggest weapon of mass destruction would be a country's military - not only does it have the capacity to destroy 10's of thousands of lives over a wide area (and to add to the definition - a relatively short period of time), but it has the ability to add to the statistics by destroying a portion of its own units (almost inevitable). And since the military has a significant 'Human' element, can fly under the radar or be conveniently backseated to the mechanical 'horror' that is toted to kill indescriminently.

This week (6th-10thAug) is the 100th anniversary of the "Battle for Lone Pine", and today, the single worse day for ANZACs in the Gallipoli campaign.

The ground captured during the battle amounted to a total of about 150 metres... In most sources, Ottoman losses are estimated at between 5,000–6,000, although Kenan Celik from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, has placed their losses as high as 7,164, broken down as 1,520 killed, 4,700 wounded, 760 listed as missing and 134 captured by the Australians. These included the commanding officers of both the 47th and 15th Regiments. Of the Australian force that had launched the attack, almost half became casualties. Australian losses during the battle amounted to 2,277 men killed or wounded, out of the total 4,600 men committed to the fighting over the course of the battle.

edit to add: Scary that these 'weapons' are held in the hand of the 'select' few that could use it, but who think twice about employing a 'nuke for fear of international condemnation.

Lest we forget.

70 years on..
I'm 51.

The greatest threat I have ever seen is propaganda.

Not the weapons held by either but what they believe is right.

Propaganda;
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

The biggest threat.

Every nation uses it without thought.

We are right! You are wrong!

There is the real threat.

Cure;
Education, Education, Education.
Maybe of each others lives and asperations.

100% agreed .

Alex wrote:

70 years on..
I'm 51.

The greatest threat I have ever seen is propaganda.

Not the weapons held by either but what they believe is right.

Propaganda;
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

The biggest threat.

Every nation uses it without thought.

We are right! You are wrong!

There is the real threat.

Cure;
Education, Education, Education.
Maybe of each others lives and asperations.