Ever wondered what would happen if a nuke hit your city? Wonder no more!

[DaveC]

NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein

This is some frightening shit.

At least if a nuke goes off in downtown Toronto, I'm probably safe at home so long as it's under 5 kilotons or so. At work, I shall become a fine powder of ash. Hooray for avoiding radiation poisoning at least?

 

[nbelcik]

I've been on this site before, the Tsar Bomba is the scariest one.


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[LemonMelon]

It would take a 3 Mt explosive in downtown LA to reach where I live, so that's comforting. 50 Mt in downtown Chicago might reach my in-laws.

 

[Galeongirl]

Pretty mad stuff!

 

[cobl04]

Crazy. And now you've sent me down a wikipedia rabbit hole.

 

[DaveC]

Crazy. And now you've sent me down a wikipedia rabbit hole.

Yep, same thing happened to me.

This is a pretty cool video that shows all nuclear explosions, ever, plotted on a map (although it's kind of infuriatingly long). I had no idea that the UK once nuked Australia, although you guys probably deserved it.

 

[Oregoropa]

I played around with 100t terrorist bomb. Scary.

For high score hit Tokyo with tsar bomba.


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[dazzledbylight]

Crazy. And now you've sent me down a wikipedia rabbit hole.

oh no, cobl!

Well, being in mah early 60's and a Born & Bred Lifelong NYC'r we he-ah in nyc have had a Big Ole "Ground Zero" Sign on our backsides since The Cold War; waaaay before 9-11! So i've seen our circles of destruction charts if a nuke was dropped on The Empire State Building since the 60's
And "thanks a lot" fuckin' Putin for reviving those bad memories a bit

 

[corianderstem]

In Hilarious (But Sad) Old Fox News Watching White Man News, my 70 year old dad says he worries about me living in Seattle, because he's pretty sure there'll be nuclear war soon.

But, he then mused, I wouldn't be much safer in my podunk Wisconsin home town because there's a really big power plant there or something. So, you know, totally a target.

I am almost 42 years old, and I struggled really hard not to roll my eyes at my dad like I was 30 years younger.

Re that link Dave posted, though? Thank you, but no.

 

[Mack_Again]

Nuclear bombs hit my country twice already so yeah, wut up, people?

 

[nbelcik]

Nuclear bombs hit my country twice already so yeah, wut up, people?

Yeah, sorry about the war crimes we committed against your country. We should have never used them.


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[Oregoropa]

The invasion of Japan would have cost the USA a million soldiers and 4 million Japanese. The firebombing of Japanese cities killed far more than the two nukes. The Japanese regime was committed to total warfare using civilians as suicide weapons to slow down GIs

Hiroshima and Nagasaki although killing civilians, saved the lives of many more by shocking the fanatical high command into surrender.


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[nbelcik]

Any action where the majority of those killed are civilians are war crimes. And both sides during WWII committed them, even though one side was significantly more evil.

Japan surrendered because the Soviets entered the war. The leadership just simply did not care about civilian casualties, but they did care about obtaining favorable terms of surrender and hoped that the Soviets would help them reach an agreement with the US. But once the Soviets invaded Manchuria, that hope died.


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[Oregoropa]

Soviets ha.they could roll into manchukoku Kuril Islands and Korea, but lacked the naval logistics to invade the home islands. It was little boy and fat man. That shocked the Japanese system.


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[bobsaget77]

The Japanese only committed a couple hundred war crimes during WW2. But just small stuff like raping thousands of women and children, using some of the most brutal torture tactics known to man, eating human flesh, supporting the jewish holocaust, committing an Asian holocaust, siding with Hitler, bombing our homeland, burying people alive, massacring 300,000 civilians in China, abducting women for sex slavery, scientific human experiments including amputations and dissection without amnesia, and killing over 400,000 more Asians with biological warfare. Sometimes you have to do what is necessary to end evil. Millions more would have died if not for the atom bomb.


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[DaveC]

bombing our homeland

Yeah this is where you lost me. Pearl Harbor was a direct attack on a military facility. The Americans dropped incendiary bombs across multiple cities indiscriminately. There's no effing way any sane person could consider Pearl Harbor a war crime and the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden not to be.

raping thousands of women and children, using some of the most brutal torture tactics known to man, burying people alive, massacring ... civilians, abducting women for sex slavery, and killing ... with biological warfare.

All atrocities the United States military is also just as guilty of, if not more so, over the course of history.

 

[nbelcik]

And their argument is that since the other side killed civilians and committed atrocities, then our side should be allowed to kill civilians and commit atrocities...


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[BVS]

It's amazing how one of the first wars thoroughly documented in motion picture and recorded by "modern" media methods can still be SO revisionist.

Makes you wonder how much of history we have absolutely wrong.


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[nbelcik]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/


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[Oregoropa]

Yeah this is where you lost me. Pearl Harbor was a direct attack on a military facility. The Americans dropped incendiary bombs across multiple cities indiscriminately. There's no effing way any sane person could consider Pearl Harbor a war crime and the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden not to be.



All atrocities the United States military is also just as guilty of, if not more so, over the course of history.

World War II was nasty. But on the whole, the Allied powers were more restrained (USSR excluded-Considering captured German soldiers were sent to gulags where their death rate was 90%)

As for the firebombings, The Japanese were committed to total warfare. The Rape of Nanking, Unit 731, horrible treatment and execution of prisoners of war. They were designed to break the Japanese will to fight and have their leadership to collapse. Same thing with Dresden. To your point yes, the USA does have blood on their hands with civilian deaths. But compared to what Germany and Japan did to civilians it pales in comparison.

I will even acknowledge that the 'Japs' were so dissimilar to the US culturally at the time that the firebombings didn't phase many military men. Up to that point the US had only known brutality from the Japanese. So yes there is a racial component. The US was more akin to Europe culturally so we didn't mass firebomb the Germans, many who had relatives in the US. And pilots were given instructions to avoid spots of cultural significance such as Koln Cathedral.

 

[nbelcik]

It's amazing how one of the first wars thoroughly documented in motion picture and recorded by "modern" media methods can still be SO revisionist.

Makes you wonder how much of history we have absolutely wrong.


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Yeah, it's amazing how many people in the West believe false narratives about the war. Like most people believe that it was the UK and U.S. invading France that led to the end of Nazi Germany, when by that point the war was already won. Once the Nazis were turned back in the Eastern Front and began to retreat, the war was over for them. It's amazing the absolute scale of the Eastern Front and how much bigger it was than the Western Front. I'll find a link to a very good video about WWII casualties and post it.

And not to mention the fact that there's people out there that deny the Holocaust occurred, even though the Holocaust is one of the most thoroughly documented atrocities of history. It's amazing what cognitive dissonance can do to people.


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[nbelcik]

http://youtu.be/_vjj13l6Pb4


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[Oregoropa]

 

[Hollow Island]

Yeah, it's amazing how many people in the West believe false narratives about the war.

I don't know about the US or UK, but I bet most people in Canada don't even know that there was an eastern front, or that Russia was even in the war.

DaveC, you're right on when pointing out that an attack on a military facility is not a war crime. But in a world where attacks on military facilitates and soldiers are called acts of terror, I'm not sure how many people would agree with you. Right now it seems as though the military are treated as victims, while the real victims (the civilians who always make up the majority of deaths) are forgotten or denied their status. The military exists to fight and kill. This will sound callous, but dying is in their job description, same as killing is. And any death is sad, but it's not like there's a draft any more. Though many people are forced into the army by socio-economic factors and false promises....anyway. Gonna listen to SOI and watch the Jays tear the Yankees apart.

Oh yeah: rape is a major part of any war. That's what soldiers do. Pretending that the Japanese were the only ones to do it is to deny human nature, or whatever it is that makes soldiers rape. It's sick. But why are people more bothered about soldiers raping civilians than they are about them killing civilians?

I don't care for war, though I love War. As the man said, gold is the reason for the wars we wage. Nobody gave a shit about the Jews. Alright! Off to watch ball. I'm a bit drunk. Sorry.

 

[Oregoropa]

I was doing research into family members of my grandfathers generation. My paternal grandfather had it pretty easy

Paternal Grandfather - Based at an Army Air Corps airfield in Trinidad. Was a part of the air ferry system that flew supplies from the US to Brazil across the Atlantic to points beyond including Iran, India, North Africa.

His Brother - Bomber crew that flew B-26 Marauders into France to support D-Day

Grandmother's Brother - US Army. Captured by Germans during Battle of the Bulge. Spoke very little about except that were fed boiled horse gums for food during captivity.

Step Grandfather - Flew P-51 recon missions over China.

I have a distant relative that was in the Polish Army and was severly injured by gas exposure during 1939 invasion.

 

[BVS]

I was doing research into family members of my grandfathers generation. My paternal grandfather had it pretty easy

Paternal Grandfather - Based at an Army Air Corps airfield in Trinidad. Was a part of the air ferry system that flew supplies from the US to Brazil across the Atlantic to points beyond including Iran, India, North Africa.

His Brother - Bomber crew that flew B-26 Marauders into France to support D-Day

Grandmother's Brother - US Army. Captured by Germans during Battle of the Bulge. Spoke very little about except that were fed boiled horse gums for food during captivity.

Step Grandfather - Flew P-51 recon missions over China.

I have a distant relative that was in the Polish Army and was severly injured by gas exposure during 1939 invasion.

And your point? Is that it's personal for you?


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[bobsaget77]

And your point? Is that it's personal for you?


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Why are you so antagonistic all the time? You must be a blast at parties.


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[Oregoropa]

And your point? Is that it's personal for you?


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Jeez BVS. Not making any point. Just trying to get a World War 2 discussion going that's not about arguments, but what personal stories people may have.

Why do you have to nitpick everything apart? Isn't it obvious I wasn't arguing in that section but just talking about World War II. We might actually have some interesting stories to tell without the infighting.

Just chill. Not everything Bob and I say is meant to be combative.

 

[BVS]

Why are you so antagonistic all the time? You must be a blast at parties.


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It was an odd post given the original nature of the thread, despite the recent turn. I asked a question. I didn't attack, call names, or resort to your tactics; would you have preferred that?


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[BVS]

Jeez BVS. Not making any point. Just trying to get a World War 2 discussion going that's not about arguments, but what personal stories people may have.



Why do you have to nitpick everything apart? Isn't it obvious I wasn't arguing in that section but just talking about World War II. We might actually have some interesting stories to tell without the infighting.



Just chill. Not everything Bob and I say is meant to be combative.

This has nothing to do with you or Bob.

I was trying to understand the context. It was an odd transition.


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