Targetarear
Posts: 6
Joined: 3/25/2010
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August 1945.
Targets: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Casualties: over 300,000 deaths, many more horrific injuries, followed by generations of people born with genetic mutations, and greater susceptibility to cancers.
Result: the end of war in the Pacific, which could have cost over a million lives, had the USA tried to invade Japan; and, most importantly, a "demonstration" of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, when they were in their infancy, as the result of which they have never been used again. (The smallest modern "strategic" nuclear warhead, the kind aimed at cities, is eight times as powerful as the bomb exploded over Hiroshima, five times as powerful as the one exploded over Nagasaki).
The theory, throughout the "cold war" was that if either side resorted to battlefiled nuclear weapons that would be followed by a swift escalation, with each side lobbing hundreds of missiles at the other, resulting in worldwide destruction. Whether that would have happened, nobody can say, but the "Cuban Missile Crisis" suggests that sane leaders would not have contemplated such an exchange. I suspect the use of battlefield weapons backed by the threat of attacks on civilian targets would have brought any conflict in Europe swiftly to an end, with each side withdrawing to its original positions.
Of course, it's well known that if a large nuclear warhead is exploded high in the atmosphere, it produces what is known as an "electro-magnetic pulse" that will burn out electricity supplies, communications, even automobile batteries, so you could cripple a country with just one big bomb that, at worst, would only shatter windows at ground level, and cause no more serious injuries than acute sunburn. I suspect that if things had escalated, that would have been more the likely course of a "strategic nuclear exchange" between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. But perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part.
quote:
ORIGINAL: countrychick
Damn political forums dragging me back in...
Just curious everyone, when was the last time a nuclear weapon was actually used? What was the result of such action? And shouldn't we as a world be working together instead of working against each other?
I'd imagine, and this is just a theory so if you disagree fine, I understand, but wouldn't the use of one nuclear weapon result in the usage of a second nuclear weapon and continuing on until both countries are destroyed alongside most of the rest of the world? Otherwise, why wouldn't they just nuke Afghanistan and Iraq and start over? Just saying that might be a heck of a lot easier resulting in much fewer American casualties and hey then the democracy could be instituted using those who were air lifted out by the US before the bomb who promise allegiance?
(Yes this is entirely out in left field or right field? perhaps centre field.. but kinda hilarious to think about..)
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RE: New restrictions for the use of nuclear weapons - 
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