primitives discuss the nuclear age

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141148438

Oh my.

bananas (25,500 posts)    Thu Jul 16, 2015, 05:36 PM

16 July 1945: The Atomic Age begins
 
Dangling from a steel tower in the desert at 5.29am on 16 July 1945 was a device so devastatingly powerful, even its creators weren’t sure what they’d made. The physicists who had spent years working on their terrible weapon made bets on how terrible it would be from the safety of their laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

<snip>

When the plutonium bomb, nicknamed the Gadget, dropped a minute later on that wet morning in 1945, it unleased a wave of destruction with a force of 18.6 kilotons of power. The steel tower that cradled it turned to dust, and the heat from the blast was so great, it turned the asphalt into shards of green glass, known as trinitite, named after the test site, Trinity.

J Robert Oppenheimer, who led the research into the atomic bomb (the Manhattan Project), chose the name Trinity after a religious-themed poem by John Donne, such was his awe of the new weapon. As he watched the mushroom cloud rise to the sky, his thoughts turned to the Hindu holy text, the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds”.

<snip>

“I made one great mistake in my life”, Einstein is reported to have said shortly before he died, “…when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made.” The Atomic Age had begun, and nobody could say for sure how it would end.

Also on this day

16 July 1935: the world’s first parking meter is installed

Read more: http://moneyweek.com/16-july-1945-the-atomic-age-begins/ 

TygrBright (13,906 posts)    Thu Jul 16, 2015, 08:07 PM

2. I remember watching a television interview with Oppenheimer...
 
It was during the 1960s and he was talking about the publication of a book based on some of his lectures about the state of physics and the moral and ethical dilemmas scientists needed to grapple with.

He explicitly refused to answer questions about the Manhattan Project, etc., due to security clearance issues. But he did say that he was profoundly uncertain whether, knowing what he knew by then (the mid-1960s,) he "would have made all the same decisions during the course of that project," or something like that.

He died shortly after that, of cancer.

I remember thinking that I had never seen such a deeply tormented individual, and feeling a kind of horrible, helpless compassion for him. 

<<<wonders if the primitive's aware that one of Oppenheimer's biggest supporters during his "loyalty" hearings of the 1950s was.....Richard Nixon.

<<<wonders if the primitive's aware that one of the eulogizers at Oppenheimer's funeral (in 1966, if I recall correctly) was.....Richard Nixon.

Probably not.

And next up, one of the self-admittedly insane primitives:

hunter (22,285 posts)   Fri Jul 17, 2015, 01:54 PM

8. Hans Bethe was a wonderful gentleman.
 
He was convinced the bomb project was necessary because he reasonably expected Germany was capable of building the bomb too.

After the war he directed his efforts towards peace and arms control. He opposed Edward Teller's Strangelovian enthusiasm for "better" bombs (Teller being one of the actual inspirations for Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.)

When I was a university student and newspaper reporter, Hans Bethe came to town for a United Nations charity event. By some random chance I took his callback to the university newspaper.

I was entirely in awe. This was the guy who figured out how the sun and stars work!!!

In our conversation he invited me to be a guest at one of the dinners he was having with wealthy people who were writing checks to his charities for thousands of dollars.

Later, he was on campus. followed by an entourage of physics grad students, and he noticed me sitting on a bench eating a snack and waved at me to come along.

I was ready, right then and there to start anew and change my major to physics... Nah, hah, hah, I'm too easily distracted to slog through all that math. I did the standard year of physics for scientists, and that was enough, no matter how much I enjoyed playing with stuff in the labs. 

Telcontar (574 posts)    Fri Jul 17, 2015, 03:58 AM

7. Needed to happen
 
Better the atomic bomb than Olympus.

Better we got it first.

Thank God for the atom bomb.

Telcontar (574 posts)    Sat Jul 18, 2015, 04:06 AM
response to a stupid comment by the crazy hunter primitive, not copied here

14. "one of the great war crimes"? **** that revisionist nonsense
 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both legitimate military targets, regardless of what else they might have been.

hunter (22,285 posts)    Sat Jul 18, 2015, 12:39 PM

15. Dropping "Fat Man" on Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb test, just like "Gadget."
 
The plutonium reactors and refining trenches at Hanford had been built huge, built to mass-produce plutonium bombs to fight a possible nuclear war against Germany and in anticipation of later conflict with "godless" Communism and intimidation of other U.S. "enemies." This was the bomb of the future, a tool coveted by the most amoral and genocidal aspect of U.S. culture, people grasping for a last minute opportunity to test one of these plutonium on a living city.

Hiroshima was the press poster child of a city destroyed by an atomic bomb, but it was destroyed by a very expensive enriched uranium bomb, a bomb that was already obsolete. Meanwhile the bulk of U.S.A. military researchers were swarming over Nagasaki assessing the damage a plutonium bomb did to industrial infrastructure and living human beings.

If Japan, for some unfathomable reason, hadn't surrendered then there were plans to drop more bombs on them until they did, bombs that were already being assembled.

With a very brief interlude after the war to patch up the most worrisome safety risks of the Hanford plant, risks that had been deemed acceptable in time of war, and to build an actual bomb assembly line, rather than a bunch of scattered shops, we continued production of these plutonium bombs until April 1949 at which point we had 120 of them and had started to build new and improved atomic bombs.

The U.S.A. was crazy about The Bomb, Stalin and everyone else knew that, and played a grim game of keeping up during the entire Cold War.

Of course Stalin wanted the bomb too, so did France and Britain, all using information they'd gleaned from their spies within the Manhattan Project to jump start their own atomic weapons projects. It really was an "arms race." The whole thing was insanity.

Yes, there was no World War III nuclear Armageddon, but in a lot of ways it was the luck of fools and children, playing with things they did not fully understand. We were toddlers who had just found a loaded gun.

Just the facts Ma'am history is bullshit and "revisionist" too. Jack Webb, playing a Los Angeles City Cop on "Dragnet," a radio and later television show glorifying the LAPD, only wanted the "facts." This was during a time the LAPD had declared war against both the black community and the antiwar leftist community, wars that led to an inevitable escalation of violence between the extremist on either side.

"Just the facts" is just another way of covering up the deeper, and much uglier realities of the human story. We humans live by stories that reflect reality and it's a distorted reflection. One must be able to shift one's point of view about, like looking into a funhouse mirror, to better comprehend the distortions, and maybe achieve a better understanding of the reality they reflect. 

tabasco (19,895 posts)    Sat Jul 18, 2015, 01:09 PM
response to the crazy hunter primitive, above

16. Yawn
 
So tired of this revisionist nonsense. 

hunter (22,285 posts)    Sat Jul 18, 2015, 02:25 PM

17. Then don't read it.
 
It's indisputable: The very moment The Gadget exploded all plans for a mainland invasion of Japan were moot, if they were not already moot.

We were going to drop atomic bombs and huge conventional bombs and firebombs on Japan until they surrendered, or there was nothing left of them but starving refugees.

There is no glory in the atomic bomb, and no one was "saved." That's a bald-faced lie, and you will either not respond to this assertion or do a squid ink "fact" dump, just like a corporate lawyer dropping of truckloads of bullshit documents during the discovery phase of a trial.

Japan had already lost the war, the only question was how they would surrender. Japan was in ruins while the U.S.A. still had all it's industrial might running 24/7 entirely intact and fueled by oil and coal reserves that still haven't been depleted to this day. And oh yes, we had The Bomb.

The history of World War II as taught to our children in the U.S.A. is a stinking pile of puke and shit, just as foul and misleading as the history of the war as it is taught to children in Japan.

We are uncomfortable about the way racism factored into our response to the Japanese, and the Japanese are uncomfortable with the racist atrocities their Empire committed in China, Korea, and other territories they controlled. 

[GOBUCKS]

When reading posts from DUmmy hunter, one must always keep in mind that he is, by his own repeated admissions, a severely mentally-ill person who for long stretches of time lives in his car.

At the DUmp that qualifies him as a philosopher and historian.

[98ZJUSMC]

Yes, there was no World War III nuclear Armageddon, but in a lot of ways it was the luck of fools and children, playing with things they did not fully understand. We were toddlers who had just found a loaded gun.

The, simplistic to the point of retarded,  "Academic-only" inspired narrative regurgitated by emotional infants.   

who for long stretches of time lives in his car.

Which underlines my above.

[SVPete]

Telcontar (574 posts)    Fri Jul 17, 2015, 03:58 AM

7. Needed to happen
 
Better the atomic bomb than Olympus.

Better we got it first.

Thank God for the atom bomb.

Quote
Telcontar (574 posts)    Sat Jul 18, 2015, 04:06 AM
...
**** that revisionist nonsense
 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both legitimate military targets, regardless of what else they might have been.

I believe the correct name for the operation to invade Japan (or one of the islands, maybe Kyushu) was Operation Olympic.

As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki being "legitimate military targets", the IJN battleship Musashi was built at Nagasaki, the IJN battleship Yamato was built at Hiroshima (Kure naval base), and the aircraft carrier Shinano (which started construction to be the third Yamato-class battleship) was sunk while transferring from Yokosuka to Hiroshima for fitting out. In addition, there was at least one airbase near Hiroshima, probably more; it seems likely the same could be said of Nagasaki. Many base personnel - civilian and military - lived in those cities.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs killed close to 200K people, and probably many survivors' lives were shortened due to radiation exposure. War's balance sheet is bloody on both sides: those bombs also probably saved a million or more Japanese military personnel, civilians, and allied POWs in Japan and scattered in isolated and cut-off parts of the Japanese Empire.

From the B-29 crews up to President Truman, the decision to drop the A-bombs was horrible and correct. For all hunter's armchair pontifications and toddler-who-discovered-a-gun "analogy", that toddler made an amazingly tough correct decision, and in the seven decades since somehow managed not to unleash the nuclear holocaust Libs and Progs have been prophesying, also for these past seven decades.

[BlueStateSaint]

And, Pete . . . The atomic weapons program started, and came to fruition, under which party, again?  That should drive the Progs absolutely batshit.

[RayRaytheSBS]

hunter (22,285 posts)    Sat Jul 18, 2015, 02:25 PM

17. Then don't read it.
 
It's indisputable: The very moment The Gadget exploded all plans for a mainland invasion of Japan were moot, if they were not already moot.

We were going to drop atomic bombs and huge conventional bombs and firebombs on Japan until they surrendered, or there was nothing left of them but starving refugees.

There is no glory in the atomic bomb, and no one was "saved." That's a bald-faced lie, and you will either not respond to this assertion or do a squid ink "fact" dump, just like a corporate lawyer dropping of truckloads of bullshit documents during the discovery phase of a trial.

Japan had already lost the war, the only question was how they would surrender. Japan was in ruins while the U.S.A. still had all it's industrial might running 24/7 entirely intact and fueled by oil and coal reserves that still haven't been depleted to this day. And oh yes, we had The Bomb.

The history of World War II as taught to our children in the U.S.A. is a stinking pile of puke and shit, just as foul and misleading as the history of the war as it is taught to children in Japan.

We are uncomfortable about the way racism factored into our response to the Japanese, and the Japanese are uncomfortable with the racist atrocities their Empire committed in China, Korea, and other territories they controlled.

Uhhh
No DUche, just NO. The war dept.  at the time had estimated the invasion  of Japan would have cost 10 MILLION  casualties.  The battle of Saipan had shown us how fanatic al the Japanese population there  was when the ENTIRE GARRISON to include women and children  jumped  off a 400 foot cliff to their deaths in the ocean.

A mainland invasion  would have been VERY costly in US lives. Which is why Roosevelt  made concessions  to Stalin at the Malta conference foe eastern Europe  if he'd assist in Japan. Stalin  was going to give us 50 DIVISIONS of soldiers to fight the homeland invasion.  That's how serk STALIN, one of your heroes , took the Japanese threat. 

There were several japanse soldiers who did not surrender officially ontil DECADES after the war was over. On in the '70's Aircraft. Couple  that level of fanaticism with the defense of their homeland,  it would have been brutal.

So Curtis LeMay and MacAurther convinced Truman to drop the bomb, and to fire bomb locations. And it did what it was supposed to, it saved AMERICAN LIVES.

Take YOUR revisonist history  and shove up your fourth point of contact. 

[obumazombie]

The dawn of the nuclear age was presaged by the pre existing population of libs and their unclear age.
Libs remain in their unclear age to the present.
Lib revisionist history notwithstanding.

[Carl]

What are they fussing about,Barry just gave birth to the second nuclear age.

[docstew]

Uhhh
No DUche, just NO. The war dept.  at the time had estimated the invasion  of Japan would have cost 10 MILLION  casualties.  The battle of Saipan had shown us how fanatic al the Japanese population there  was when the ENTIRE GARRISON to include women and children  jumped  off a 400 foot cliff to their deaths in the ocean.

A mainland invasion  would have been VERY costly in US lives. Which is why Roosevelt  made concessions  to Stalin at the Malta conference foe eastern Europe  if he'd assist in Japan. Stalin  was going to give us 50 DIVISIONS of soldiers to fight the homeland invasion.  That's how serk STALIN, one of your heroes , took the Japanese threat. 

There were several japanse soldiers who did not surrender officially ontil DECADES after the war was over. On in the '70's Aircraft. Couple  that level of fanaticism with the defense of their homeland,  it would have been brutal.

So Curtis LeMay and MacAurther convinced Truman to drop the bomb, and to fire bomb locations. And it did what it was supposed to, it saved AMERICAN LIVES.

Take YOUR revisonist history  and shove up your fourth point of contact. 

It saved Japanese lives as well. To quote ADM Bull Halsey, "After I'm done with them, the only place the Japanese language will be spoken is in Hell." Meaning that they KNEW the invasion would be a campaign of genocide, and they were JUST FINE with it.

Further proof of the "saved lives" argument is that, even after Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, OIF/OEF, and all the various other military operations, every issued Purple Heart medal was ordered for the projected casualties from Operation Olympic.

[RayRaytheSBS]

It saved Japanese lives as well. To quote ADM Bull Halsey, "After I'm done with them, the only place the Japanese language will be spoken is in Hell." Meaning that they KNEW the invasion would be a campaign of genocide, and they were JUST FINE with it.

Further proof of the "saved lives" argument is that, even after Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, OIF/OEF, and all the various other military operations, every issued Purple Heart medal was ordered for the projected casualties from Operation Olympic.

Hi5, I'd  forgotten  the part about the purple hearts.

[obumazombie]

Hi5, I'd  forgotten  the part about the purple hearts.

I did not know that either, but I will certainly use it on any lib who spouts off about any related subject.

[DumbAss Tanker]

I've always felt like there is a line between having a full sense the gravity and historical significance of one's endeavors, and just bogging down in emo mental problems and self-importance.  Tibbits, Grove, and Teller stayed on the right side of the line.