Nukes and religion (hell, America, atheist, quote)

[coosjoaquin]

People how do you view nukes with regards to your religion(or lack of)?

-Do you find that they were ever needed?
-Do you think there are cases that justify having them?

What do you think of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Necessary to end the war or criminal overkill on very populated cities?

The reason I ask is because I just saw a show(The atomic bomb movie, trinity and beyond) on the history of nukes voiced by William Shatner and with music by the Moscow philharmonic orchestra(very nice btw). The documentary showed many of the nuclear tests carried out between 1945 to 1963 including the 15 megaton bomb at castle bravo(LiveLeak.com - Trinity And Beyond, Part 6 Of 10.), the unholy 57 megaton one dropped by the russians(
YouTube - The Monster Bomb (Царь-бомба)) and the 331 nuclear explosions carried out in the atmosphere by the americans.


It's quite sobering and at the same time quite scary to see the death that these things are capable of. If you ingest radiation from the air, the water or even the food then you are a goner and radioactive material lasts for many thousands of years. Would you believe that the way they disposed of the debri in the islands where these tests were carried out was by exploding yet another nuclear bomb, putting at the radioactive material on the crater it made and then sealing it all with a few feet of lead?

It reminds me of Edwin Brok's poem titled "5 ways to kill a man":

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
To the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this
Properly you require a crowd of people
Wearing sandals, a **** that crows, a cloak
To dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
Man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
Shaped and chased in a traditional way,
And attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,

At least two flags, a prince and a
Castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
Allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
A mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
Not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
More mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
And some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
Miles above your victim and dispose of him by
Pressing one small switch. All you then
Require is an ocean to separate you, two

Systems of government, a nation's scientists,
Several factories, a psychopath and
Land that no one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
To kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
Is to see that he lives somewhere in the middle
Of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

[freedom]

Originally Posted by coosjoaquin

People how do you view nukes with regards to your religion(or lack of)?

-Do you find that they were ever needed?
-Do you think there are cases that justify having them?

What do you think of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Necessary to end the war or criminal overkill on very populated cities?

The reason I ask is because I just saw a show(The atomic bomb movie, trinity and beyond) on the history of nukes voiced by William Shatner and with music by the Moscow philharmonic orchestra(very nice btw). The documentary showed many of the nuclear tests carried out between 1945 to 1963 including the 15 megaton bomb at castle bravo(LiveLeak.com - Trinity And Beyond, Part 6 Of 10.), the unholy 57 megaton one dropped by the russians(
YouTube - The Monster Bomb (Царь-бомба)) and the 331 nuclear explosions carried out in the atmosphere by the americans.


It's quite sobering and at the same time quite scary to see the death that these things are capable of. If you ingest radiation from the air, the water or even the food then you are a goner and radioactive material lasts for many thousands of years. Would you believe that the way they disposed of the debri in the islands where these tests were carried out was by exploding yet another nuclear bomb, putting at the radioactive material on the crater it made and then sealing it all with a few feet of lead?

It reminds me of Edwin Brok's poem titled "5 ways to kill a man":

Invention has powerful consequences, man thinks a thought and then plants it into a desire...

The Atomic age is man taking fate into his own hands, and we are the recipients of the outcome.

So to answer your question; Nuclear bombs will be the weapons that brings us to the brink of anihilation, so i think they are bad, because they take life and destroy our planet...and those that make and use them i believe will be held accountable for their decisions.

With great power comes great responsibility.- spidermans uncle.

godspeed,

freedom

[cleatis]

Well, I read that before we came up with the nuke that an alternative plan was to invade Japan; the plan was to send one million soldiers onto that island, and casualties would have been probably as high when the dust settled. So in the short run (or the here and now at that time) the nuke was a good idea.

I don't seen an answer to it, everyone that has them knows that if they use one they and the enemy will destroy the entire world. It's a high stakes bluff, or a pi$$ing contest with a dangerous outcome. I find it ironic that something created to provide security has created insecurity that only further divides and isolates humanity.

As far as religion goes, some of the folks I have seen McPalin turn out scare the hell out of me when it comes to them having any say in the use of a nuke.

[coosjoaquin]

Originally Posted by cleatis

Well, I read that before we came up with the nuke that an alternative plan was to invade Japan; the plan was to send one million soldiers onto that island, and casualties would have been probably as high when the dust settled. So in the short run (or the here and now at that time) the nuke was a good idea.

Hmm, I don't think I can agree with you here. Obviously having the least amount of casualties in you side is the best thing in war but couldn't they have just detonated that bomb somewhere else? I mean understand that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had some strategic importance but that's 220,000 civilians down the(highly radioactive) drain.

Originally Posted by cleatis

I don't seen an answer to it, everyone that has them knows that if they use one they and the enemy will destroy the entire world. It's a high stakes bluff, or a pi$$ing contest with a dangerous outcome. I find it ironic that something created to provide security has created insecurity that only further divides and isolates humanity.

As far as religion goes, some of the folks I have seen McPalin turn out scare the hell out of me when it comes to them having any say in the use of a nuke.

True, hmmm how many minutes till midnight now?

[MontanaGuy]

What makes this even scarier is the fact that the military is always trying to come up with more efficient ways of killing or incapacitating people. I was reading the other day that the US is building a weapon that will be carried on a truck that's basically a giant microwave generator that they intend to shoot at a crowd of people if they get out of hand. It's not supposed to be lethal because they shoot it in bursts but it's supposed to be very painful and they admit that if you happen to be in the area where the effects are the strongest that it really is very dangerous. They're even coming up with a concept for handheld devices that could single out a particular individual to target instead of blasting the whole crowd. Personally I don't think I'd like to get zapped like a tv dinner.
As far as nukes are concerned the radioactivity didn't last that long but the new generation of hydrogen bombs they tested in the 50's left certain islands in the Pacific so radioactivite that even though they covered some of them with concrete they'll be uninhabitable for probably thousands of years.
As far as the question of bombing Japan is concerned there is a legitimate debate that invading the nation with a massive armed force could have caused far more deaths than those two bombs did but I have to agree with Coos that bombing innocent women and children, some of whom were literally vaporized, seems very barbaric. That would have been a very difficult decision to make but it did stop the war whereas a prolonged invasion may have been much worse. I have mixed feelings about it.

[forkpower]

I am a fan of Nuclear Technology, in terms of using it for energy. In that regard all we need to figure out is what to do with the waste.

Nuclear Warfare though, is a very scary thought. I think a weapon that is guarnteed to kill hundreds of thounds of innocents, should not even be considerd an option.

Montana Guy, if you ever have an itch to find out some more info of the future of American weapons, check out Rail Gun Technology. Its not perfected yet but the Rail Guns being devolped generates enough force to put a 2Kg (4.4 pound) object through a tank, all the way through and out the other side.

Rail Gun

And a note about the Japan bombings, I havent heard about the million man invasion, so ill have to look into that. But i do know that it wanst the original plan to only drop 2 nukes. As soon as the nuclear bomb was devolped the plan was make one, then drop it. Japan surenderd after the first two. Had that not been the case and America kept droping nukes on Japan, i think that the lives lost would have been much, much greater.

[cleatis]

Originally Posted by coosjoaquin

Hmm, I don't think I can agree with you here. Obviously having the least amount of casualties in you side is the best thing in war but couldn't they have just detonated that bomb somewhere else? I mean understand that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had some strategic importance but that's 220,000 civilians down the(highly radioactive) drain.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. At the time it was either the bomb or an invasion, and at the time the bomb was the best alternative because it lessened casualties on our side. But in the long run (the repercussions we feel today - 60+ years later) the nuke was probably one of the worst creations to come from the whole of humanity. No one should be in a position where they can kill millions or literally end the world with their finger.

From a humane viewpoint it could only be described as genocide. No one really wins if war is the result of ideology.

[technobarbie]

By the original post, I'm not really sure how nukes and religion are related. I always thought nukes were unnecessarily. I thought this when I was a Christian and as an atheist.

[MontanaGuy]

technobarbie wrote:

By the original post, I'm not really sure how nukes and religion are related.

I think what he's getting at is the moral issue of killing potentially millions of people and how that might fit into a religious belief system. Of course I can't speak for Coos and he's pretty good at expressing himself anyway but that's my take on it. There is definitely an ethical dilema when a weapon will kill anyone within a certain range of where it explodes and it's obvious that in a populated area that's going to include women, children, babies and many people who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing or aggressive acts against whoever is detonating the weapon. I think that any religion has certain beliefs regarding killing someone and of course in the Christian religion one of the Ten Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Murder so this is a good question to put to believers and nonbelievers alike.

[GCSTroop]

This is one of those questions I have struggled with myself and it seems like I never do quite come up with a definitive answer of how I feel about nuclear weapons especially in regards to the ones we dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I think the only book my Mom ever forced me to read when I was a kid (it wasn't like forcing me to read was that hard - I read a lot anyway) was a culmination of five eyewitness accounts of Japanese men, women, and children who were in either Nagasaki or Hiroshima at the time. It was truly a horrifying book to read and think about and it really set me on the path to thinking that nuclear weapons had no place in this world at all.

And yet, several years later I found myself standing at "Ground Zero" of the Hiroshima blast. All around me, there was no sign anywhere of the fervent destruction and damage that the bomb caused. Hiroshima is a hustling, bustling city with all of the commodities you can think of and more. The people in Hiroshima did not treat me like I was some sort of horrendous monster because of what my grandfather's did. In fact, most of the people in Japan don't even know what day the bombs fell - which I find strange.

Talking with my wife, who is Japanese, she is well aware of the reasons why we bombed those two cities and her feelings are that the war itself was unnecessary and that there would have been an even greater loss of life had we not done it. In fact, I think the Japanese are somewhat happy to look back on it and reflect that we stopped it before it got any worse. Because if there's one thing I do know about both the Japanese culture and the Japanese people - they wouldn't have stopped until every single person on the Japanese islands was dead.

So, in that perspective, I think that the bombs were not necessarily justifiable as I don't think you can ever justify the mass annihilation of so many hundreds of thousands of people. But, I also have to wonder whether those people would have died anyway - or at least the same amount numerically speaking. And I have to admit that I think the answer would be "yes". And I also think a lot of historians would agree.

So in that sense, was the mass annihilation of that many people warranted as opposed to possibly even more numbers of dead over a longer period of time? I think so... But, I can only say I think so as we don't have any alternate endings to history...

Nonetheless, it is one of those things that you think about and wonder what would have happened had we not dropped the bombs on those two cities. I'd like to think that America made the right decision and so I lean in that direction.

But to speak of nuclear weapons in this day and age I think we have gone slightly overboard. I still don't understand why we have so many thousands of them... Did we stock up just in case we founds some Communists on Mars too?

I think that ultimately what it boils down to is that for each scenario and each conflict each option has to be delicately weighed and that nuclear weapons are just one of those things that we're going to have to deal with on some level or another - regardless of how we feel about them.

I'd also like to point out the irony of the Laws of Armed Conflict and the U.N.'s stance on nuclear weapons. It's the most ironic set of rules you'll ever read. Here is one of my favorites taken from Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) :

Distinction. - Distinction means discriminating between lawful combatant targets and noncombatant targets such as civilians, civilian property, POWs, and wounded personnel who are out of combat. The central idea of distinction is to only engage valid military targets. An indiscriminate attack is one that strikes military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. Distinction requires defenders to separate military objects from civilian objects to the maximum extent feasible. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to locate a hospital or POW camp next to an ammunition factory.