Fun with Uranium235

*LesMTS* · 16th July 2005, 11:31am

Exactly 60 years ago today was the detonation of the first atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity, in New Mexico. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the research which culminated in this moment, wrote in his diary after witnessing the test the simple statement "MUTHAH-FUCKAH!".
Nah, actually he wrote "I am become death, destroyer of worlds", which is a little more poignant.
Good invention? Bad invention? Necessary evil? Has the nuclear bomb kept the world relatively peaceful since world war 2? Or has it just made the world a much nastier place? Go on, admit it, you'd like to press the button that detonated one, just once.
Any thoughts on this anniversary?

Krocktopus · 18th July 2005, 12:07pm

wow, the instrument responsible for the 2 single most discraceful acts of mass murder of innocent people in the history of the world.

of course, no-one was ever held accountable for this as it meant the perpetrators had won.

DoNotResus · 18th July 2005, 12:19pm

I think that without the atomic bomb we would have much cleaner power stations by now.. The atomic bomb cemented fear of the Nuclear Age in the publics mind, quote from my girlfriend "I don't know alot about Nuclear reaction theory, I've only been taught its bad points".

If you look in to advanced Nuclear theory you can see it in a whole different light, Breeder reactions for example, whereby the waste products of one power plant can be fed in to another as fuel giving a waste product thats fuel for the previous, only losing a small fraction of effiency as it goes (hence its not a complete perpetual energy device)..

**djtoast** · 18th July 2005, 12:46pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy Temple

wow, the instrument responsible for the 2 single most discraceful acts of mass murder of innocent people in the history of the world.

of course, no-one was ever held accountable for this as it meant the perpetrators had won.

i honestly don't think that's true. compared with the bombing of dresden (estimates are that between 35,000 and 100,000 were killed in three days) or hamburg (40,000 killed in three days; most on the first night though) or london for that matter ( >40,000 deaths but spread over eight months) what's "worse" about hiroshima and nagasaki?

to say that it's worse because it only took one bomb to destroy a city misses the point of what the damage was i'd say, and the INTENT was the same in each case.

Krocktopus · 18th July 2005, 3:38pm

70,000 people died at Hiroshima and about 40,000 at Nagasaki, so as far as single one off acts go, theses are the worst, but yeah you'd kill more peolle bombimg the shit out of a town for a few weeks.

Was it VJ day or some shit like that recently, I saw some coffin dodgers in uniform waving flags and reminiscing about killing foreigners, on TV the other day. (apparently they don't like it up 'em)

When are they going to stop celebrating wars no-one can remember

DoNotResus · 18th July 2005, 3:43pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy Temple

When are they going to stop celebrating wars no-one can remember

If you spent your days smelling of pee, scaringkids, eating horrible liqorice sweets, and not getting phone calls from relatives, you would want a day to put on a suit and wave a flag....

Not to say that this applies to all war veterans, some are dead, others are doing just fine...

**djtoast** · 18th July 2005, 5:03pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy Temple

70,000 people died at Hiroshima and about 40,000 at Nagasaki, so as far as single one off acts go, theses are the worst, but yeah you'd kill more peolle bombimg the shit out of a town for a few weeks.

german estimates for hamburg range from 100,000 - 135,000 and although bombs were dropped for three days, the first night's 150mph 1200 degrees C firestorm did most of the killing.

meh, i din't suppose there is a "worst" - each time ONE civilian is killed in iraq (today for example, multiple times relicated across the land) it's the worst for that person's family.

we HAVE learned that indisscriminate bombing of civilian targets is unacceptable. the SUCCESS of our attempts to avoid it is questionable, but we're moving in the right direction i guess.

i couldn't drop bombs for a living though, however much i believed in the cause at hand, not because i'm naïve enough to say "there should never be war" but just because of the same selfish reasons that i want someone ELSE to slaughter the meat i eat. it's convenient to have someone else do the hard things in life.

grim but true

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