Dr Carl F. Miller, who worked for the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at later nuclear tests to measure fallout on ships with washdown safeguards that were sailing under the expanding mushroom clouds, hit out in the February 1966 magazine Scientist and Citizen:

‘Reliance on the Effects of Nuclear Weapons has its shortcomings… I was twenty miles from a detonation … near ten megatons. The thermal flash did not produce the second-degree burn on the back of my neck, nor indeed any discomfort at all.’

http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/samuel-glasstone-and-philip-j-dolan.html

Miller’s declassified fallout report: http://worf.eh.doe.gov/data/ihp1d/78192e.pdf

http://www.vce.com/trinity.html

There is also a brilliant pbs documentary “Race for the Superbomb”:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb

Anyone interested in issues related to nuclear weapons–whether you are for or against–should see these films on a big widescreen tv. As a physicist I am afraid I do have to admit to having a morbid fascination for nuclear weapons. In particular, both films feature digitally restored and very powerful footage of the terrifying 10Mt Ivy Mike and 15Mt Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb shots in the Pacific, set to rather effective and haunting music. Witnesses talk about it being like sticking your head in a blast furnace, even though they were 50-60 miles away. The fireball expanded to 4 miles in a few seconds and vaporised about 120 million tons of coral and seawater. Where the test island was you later see a blue crater in the ocean miles across and deep enough to submerge a skyscraper. It is fascinating albeit scary stuff.

The biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated, by the Soviet Union in the artic circle, the Tsar hydrogen superbomb at 60Mt, is described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Scrolling down to the bottom there is a link to the “video of the event”. (It takes a few minutes to load.) What is really scary is that this was a scaled-down version of a 100Mt+ design. Anyway, here’s hoping that the only place where anyone ever sees these things again is on these films.

The 40-year total leukemias from radiation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki was 89 persons out of 36,500 irradiated survivors. http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq2

‘Nuclear weapons may be more effective in achieving a certain goal, less painful, and they have the power to discourage anyone – both sides – from continuing the war. But they are powerful and if they’re used properly, they can also lead to relatively positive consequences, not just negative consequences. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples.’

As has already been pointed out, the justifiability of bombing Hiroshima was debatable, but bombing Nagasaki was inexcusable.

Furthermore it is not the case that neuclear weapons are “less painful”. 60 years on, people are still dying of cancer in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting from the bombs.

’2) under certain circumstances, environmentalist perfectionism and luxury becomes secondary.’

It’s hardly perfectionism and luxury!

To everyone using Wikipedia references: accuracy is not guaranteed. Usual caveats apply to info you find online that could have been written by any old dude who thinks they know something.

–IP.

No one has answered my question yet. If you were making the decisions in Iran, would you build the bomb?

Or, leaving Iran, the mullahs, Islamic fundamentalism, Israel, the Palestinians, and the rest of it out of the question, if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfield were threatening your country with a nuclear attack, and if you had the capability of producing a nuclear weapon, would you build one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_casualties_by_country says 62 million died in World War II.

The bomb stopped it. Because of the “overkill” close to the detonation, collateral damage is reduced. By conservation of energy, the blast can’t do work in demolishing buildings and not lose energy in the process.

“Overkill” reduces the number of fatalities by concentrating most of the energy close to the explosion.

Hiroshima set off a firestorm because the man in charge on Tinian, Colonel Tibbets, had learned while bombing Europe earlier in the war that the only way to make an impact is to focus on dry wooden houses – for example the medieval area of Hamburg was old 4-6 storey wooden houses and was ignited. I don’t see cities built like that these days, do you?

The anti-nuclear hysteria is bad for three reasons: (1) it drives fraudulent anti-physics or at least generally anti-nuclear (pro-ignorance) public feeling about the knowledge of the facts of nuclear energy, (2) it ridicules civil defence which would be particularly effective in a terrorist attack or a limited war, at least to minimise casualties from burns, glass and debris and fallout, and (3) it puts a nasty stigma on the big bang cosmology, reducing public interest in the big bang (which is totally absurd, if you see supernovae and compare the energy release to Hiroshima, you see how crazy anti-nuclear fanatism is).

In a controlled sample of 36,500 Hiroshima-Nagasaki irradiated survivors, 89 people got leukemia over a 40 year period, above the number in the unexposed control group. Published in Radiation Research volume 146:1-27, 1996, see http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq2

Over 40 years, in 36,500 survivors monitored, there were 176 leukemia deaths which is 89 more than the control (unexposed) group got naturally. There were 4,687 other cancer deaths, but that was merely 339 above the number in the control (unexposed) group, so this is statistically a much smaller rise than the leukemia result.

Natural leukemia rates, which are very low in any case, were increased by 51 % in the irradiated survivors, but other cancers were merely increased by just 7 %.

Adding all the cancers together, the total was 4,863 cancers (mainly natural), which is just 428 more than the unexposed control group. Hence, the total increase over the natural cancer rate was 9 %, spread over 40 years.

For example, it takes only 354 to 800 Russian warheads to destroy every city and town in the United States that has a population density in excess of 1,000 people per square mile (urban and metropolitan USA, 36.3% of the U.S. population, 94 million people)

http://www.nukefix.org/nukepix.html#350to800

That is roughly 400 megatons of Russian nukes – most of them being half a megaton. Half as many bombs could kill more than half of the 94 million people, hitting the more densely populated areas first.

Even if a 2 megaton bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, the 2 megatons of conventional damage of WWII is equivalent to 271 of such 2-megaton bombs, assuming no overlap in damage areas.

271 bombs, each of four times the punch of the Russian arsenal, could killed more than 47 million people if targetted as above. That many people did not die in WWII bombings.

In all, 18,000 tons of high explosives had been dropped on England during eight months of the Blitz. A total of 18,629 men, 16,201 women, and 5,028 children were killed along with 695 unidentified charred bodies.

Hiroshima had a population of some 255,000. An estimated 66,000 people died. (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp10.htm. Estimates vary.
This page http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Japan/save/blane/blane.htm says 140,000 died. Let’s go with the low figure). The bomb on Hiroshima had a yield of 13,000 tons of TNT.

So, let’s see:

England – 18,000 tons – mostly on London – 40,553 fatalities
Hiroshima – 13,000 tons – 66,000 fatalities – no one knows for sure, the destruction was so massive.

We now look at this statement and scratch our heads:

Even if a 2 megaton bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, the 2 megatons of conventional damage of WWII is equivalent to 271 of such 2-megaton bombs, assuming no overlap in damage areas.

This is because the same amount of explosive, divided into a large number of small bombs, is more efficient at causing destruction. Most of the energy is wasted as close-in overkill in big bombs. So conventional weapons are far more effective than nuclear ones.

Of course, one explanation is that to Science, the killing of people is not damage.

Do you not think that if Hitler had managed to put one 10,000 ton bomb into the middle of London that Great Britain would not have surrendered? Or at least, that organized British resistance would have come to an end?

I repeat – if Science is representative of the decision-makers in a country, then every responsible national government should seek nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

the validity of your conclusion depends on the definition of the null and the void. Whatever their boundaries are, the conclusion can be used in both ways. Iran is working on some nuclear program and has certain strategies, too. Don’t they lie in the infinite realm of the null and the void, too? And what about the strategy not to react to the events in Iran in any way? Does not this strategy lie in the same infinite realm, just because of the rules of logic?

There are many uncertain things in every situation. But it does not mean that we can’t try to think. We should always try to think and reduce the uncertainty.

Best
Lubos

3) of course that such a bombing would have impact beyond military targets. If the whole Iranian nation were innocent in this story, I would also find such a suffering of innocent people unacceptable. I don’t think that the guilt and potential guilt is localized to Iranian military. Of course that the people who elect XY are partially responsible for his extermination of Israel, if it is hypothetically planned.

I cannot believe you wrote that. Islamic terrorists would say that the bombing of American civilians would be acceptable for the same reasons. Americans elected a president who has botched the liberation of a country and used cluster bombs and torture to do it. Then they re-elected him. The difference is that the US president was elected in a free election. The Iranian president was not.

Civilians losses must always be minimised. To fail to do that is immoral. Just because a country can get away with it in the legal channels, doesn’t mean that it won’t whip up a lot of hatred towards it among… *gasp* civilians. Not to mention that passing judgement on a whole population of people is racism, plain and simple.

Furthermore, you neglected to notice where bittergradstudent mentioned that these effects would not be limited to Iran. The Chernobyl incident was not a nuclear explosion, but it resulted in increased death rates across Europe for decades. It may be fine for you on the other side of the Atlantic, but the people in this vague geographical area are liable to get seriously pissed off. Speaking of which…

5) I have doubts about the speculations that a nuclear attack would reinforce anti-US fighters. You don’t know what power the nukes show. When you see a certain power on the enemy’s side, you better surrender. This happened to the Japanese and the Muslims are, to some extent, similar. The anti-US fighters are only self-confident because they “know” that a democratic state can’t really use any of these gadgets against them.

How do you use nuclear weapons against terrorists and guerillas without exterminating a whole population? And if we encourage that population to believe that we are going to exterminate them, what logical reason do they have not to become anti-US fighters? Finally, we’re not just talking about the opinions of Iraqi insurgents. We are talking about the way the whole world views America, and, believe it or not, the US does actually need other countries.

7) the main reason why Tony Blair declared that he won’t join any attacks on Iran is that he feels that the U.K. can’t afford it.

I’m sure he says that, but seriously, we’d eat him alive.

Well, one country has already attacked another (non-nuclear) country using nuclear weapons, namely in Summer 1945. I think it was a good decision, it had saved many lives, ended the worst world war we have ever seen, and ideas that wars with nuclear weapons must always be worse than those without nuclear weapons is just an artifact of anti-scientific sentiments.

The US could have simply decided to stop fighting and impose a blockade. They didn’t do that because of an earlier agreement made with Stalin: The Soviets had agreed to fight the Japanese. The US was afraid that if Japan didn’t surrender to them, the Soviets might be able to occupy Japan.

It is therefore no surprise that the atomic bombs were dropped just a few days before the Soviets occupied Manchuria and the Kurile Islands.

#10 and #11 above, the facts are easy to establish:

Japan continued to fight (in desperation with Kamikaze attacks, very bad treatment of POWs, etc.) in the hope that Russia would mediate a settlement. If they hadn’t been shocked into immediate surrender by Hiroshima, why would they surrender when things became more desperate?

The exact provable mechanism for the end of the war was this:

(1) 8 August: Hiroshima (1st nuclear bomb), convinces Stalin that America will win the war soon. So Stalin declares war on Japan.

(2) 9 August: Nagasaki (2nd nuclear bomb) convinces Japan that Hiroshima was not a once-off.

Hiroshima did nothing compared to the firebombing of Tokyo. In WWII a total of 2 megatons of conventional bombs were dropped, equal to 167 Hiroshima’s in energy equivalent. So why go on about the horrific effects of a nuclear weapon, which unlike the far greater destruction from conventional bombs, actually did what it said on the tin and ended the war?

In fact, if you take account of the fact that the damage range scales as the cube-root of the energy release, then in terms of the amount of area damage, then the 2 megatons of conventional bombs (about 20 million conventional bombs of an average of 100 kg) caused 20,000,000 x (0.100/12,000)^(2/3) = 8,220 times the actual damage in Hiroshima.

Even if a 2 megaton bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, the 2 megatons of conventional damage of WWII is equivalent to 271 of such 2-megaton bombs, assuming no overlap in damage areas.

This is because the same amount of explosive, divided into a large number of small bombs, is more efficient at causing destruction. Most of the energy is wasted as close-in overkill in big bombs. So conventional weapons are far more effective than nuclear ones. (Forget about a small long-delayed rise cancers from delayed radioactivity, that is trivial compared to the effects of conventional weapons.)

I agree that the brutality of achieving an objective is not time invariant.

However, I was referring to the differences between alternative classes of weaponry. Military planners do this calculus all the time: time for development, logistics, and deployment; opportunity cost; ability to achieve the objective in the theater; civilian casualities and the attendant political costs; etc. etc.

AFAIK, the strategic objective in Dresden was to destroy industrial capacity in the city, as well as aiding the Russians by disrupting the movement of reinforcements eastward and the evacuation westward. This required total destruction of the city’s infrastructure, esp. the railyards.

take a gander at yon site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran

then tell me that ahmedinijad will have any control over the nukes when they show up. if khameini wishes to nuke someone, then i will wonder about it but methinks he is not stupid. you may proudly wear your ayatollah blanka-blanka shirts, but the religious councils are pretty smart about retaining their power, which they wouldn’t if they got nuked by the Great Satan.

iran had been very supportive of america in the aftermath of 9/11, offering intelligence and all sorts of things but buscheney had to start with that axis of evil claptrap and then invade the 2 countries bordering it, so what are they gonna do?

happy dance? i think not.

A more pointed question might be: What is a proportionate response if there is unambiguous evidence that Iran is about to: (a) mate a nuclear warhead with a missile (cruise or ballistic); (b) transfer nuclear weapons to a terrorist group; or (c) begins to make nuclear threats against its neighbors?

Morality aside, would a destructive conventional attack that preemptively destroys a part of Iran’s nuclear capability be justifiable? What will the likely reprisals be from Iran? If U.S. preemptive attack removes the likelihood of nuclear weapons use by Israel or Iran, is it justifiable?

Questions like these illustrate the “no-win” character of these decisions – even if on assumes rationality or wisdom on the part of leaders – which is not something that I would rely upon.

I, for one, hope that diplomacy removes some of the crisis-oriented decision dynamics that seem to be growing. Perhpas cooler heads will prevail if we have more time to contemplate potentially negative futures.

in some sense, it was indeed a “matter of time” when Japan surrenders. It could also have been a matter of five extra years. I also agree with you that it was also a message to the Soviets – look how strong we are. In 1952, the Soviets replied by Joe One, named after Stalin (the Russian official name RDS-1 is more boring). Why do you exactly think that I disagree? The bombs were life-expensive but compared to other options, they may have been a good choice.

Dear bittergradstudent,

1) the hypothetical inability to nuke the bunkers is a fantasy. If it fails for the first time, you can send one more.

2) under certain circumstances, environmentalist perfectionism and luxury becomes secondary.

3) of course that such a bombing would have impact beyond military targets. If the whole Iranian nation were innocent in this story, I would also find such a suffering of innocent people unacceptable. I don’t think that the guilt and potential guilt is localized to Iranian military. Of course that the people who elect XY are partially responsible for his extermination of Israel, if it is hypothetically planned.

4) dreaming that the foe was 5 years from the bomb also occured in 1952 about the Soviets – and suddenly Boom, they had it in 1952.

5) I have doubts about the speculations that a nuclear attack would reinforce anti-US fighters. You don’t know what power the nukes show. When you see a certain power on the enemy’s side, you better surrender. This happened to the Japanese and the Muslims are, to some extent, similar. The anti-US fighters are only self-confident because they “know” that a democratic state can’t really use any of these gadgets against them.

6) as hinted above, I don’t think that the politicians of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan should be the ones to decide about the fate of the region in the case of a hypothetical conflict, so I find your comment irrelevant.

7) the main reason why Tony Blair declared that he won’t join any attacks on Iran is that he feels that the U.K. can’t afford it. I don’t know whether I would have supported bombing of Soviet targets in the late 1940s. It could have been difficult to justify etc. But if I knew that it would have stopped communism in the rest of Eastern Europe, I would have probably said Yes. (Incidentally, I would not be born then because I was born because of the communist extra support of newborns in 1973-4.) No idea about the Korean war – I don’t know much about the situation.

I think that the Pentagon guys always considered Iran to be a bigger threat than Iraq, and it is conceivable that the war in Iraq (and perhaps even Afghanistan) was mainly a preparation to get a better access to Iran from both sides.