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Nukes: The Time for a Live Demo Is Long Overdue

Duck and cover! A bomb called Licorne. Fired at 18.30 on July 3, 1970, and yielded 914 kilotons (Think “57 Hiroshimas”). Imagine it being fired next door. Hope that if it is ever fired, it is fired next door.

Almost seventy-seven years ago: “On Monday, August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000. Approximately 69% of the city’s buildings were completely destroyed, and 6.6% severely damaged.”Hiroshima

“Little Boy,” the aptly named 16 kiloton bomb that took out Hiroshima, was — in comparison to the nuclear devices in the world’s arsenals today —  sort of a light field artillery shell. There was, at the time, a second bomb called “Fat Man.” Weighing in at 21 kilotons it would put paid to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. With the erasure of Nagasaki, the world was fresh out of nuclear weapons. It was only a temporary lapse. Today the Planet Earth has about 25,000 of these little items of discipline scattered about.

The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated in the atmosphere was The Soviet Tsar Bomba , or “Big Ivan” which at 50 Megatons was very harmful to every living think on Novaya Zemlya Island (located above the arctic circle in the Arctic Sea) in October of 1971. Whatever else you might think about them, you can’t deny those Soviets dreamed BIG dreams.

No matter what our political feelings, I believe we can all agree that the world is getting just a wee bit too hot for comfort these days, and I don’t mean “Global Warming.” I mean that people here and there about the globe are getting just a wee bit too hot under the collar. They seem to have forgotten just exactly what comes into play like the force of gravity when whole nations or peoples get really ticked off. Time to refresh our collective memories.

“It has been 77 years since the incineration of a city in a second, and we’ve lost any sense of exactly what happens.”

I think we need to have the people of the world focus like a laser on the table stakes of going beyond these little patty-cake wars we are currently diddling around with and look, really look, at what can actually happen with one little slip.

What we need to do this is: “The Live Demo.” By this I mean we need to find a small island or deserted space somewhere on the planet and sacrifice it for the greater good by setting off one, just one, low-yield thermonuclear device in the atmosphere for all the world to see.

Think of “The Live Demo” as a remedial educational moment for the entire world; a kind of slap upside the head coupled with a large shout out of: “PAY ATTENTION!”

I believe this “Live Demo” needs to be announced — in date, time, and place — to the entire world with something approaching the intensity of the promotion dumped on the Beijing Olympics.

I believe that we should allow any media organization that wishes to to cover this event and provide the infrastructure necessary to film and broadcast it (from a safe distance) to the entire world in all media — live. I believe we should re-task a satellite to give us a view of the event from space.

No matter what many may think, this event would be the essence of “appointment television” for the people of the world.

I think we should also construct some of those quaint fake suburbs, villages, and towns that were set up in the ancient Nevada tests to demonstrate just what happens to a family sitting down for an evening snack when the sun is brought — for one brief shining moment — to the surface of the Earth. (Those of you who saw the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull probably got some laughs out of this stuff, but it is not really a laughing matter, is it?)

I know that there will be an army of Environmentalists around the world that will bitch and moan about the “harm to the environment” from setting off a single nuclear device in the atmosphere. Those same people need to contemplate instead the “harm to the environment” that comes from setting off several hundred or several thousand of these devices in one very bad afternoon. These “Greens” need to, for one brief and shining moment, sit down and shut up!

Then there will be those who will carp about “The Test Ban Treaty.” They need to take a chill pill, lie down and think of England… or Cleveland… or Tel Aviv… or Tehran.

I can assure you that having the entire world tune in for “The Live Demo” — and the whole world will tune in — shall give the entire planet pause. It’s not enough for humans to be told about nukes. Every so often, we need to see to believe.

Let’s touch off a nuke for world peace next year on August 6. It will be a fitting memorial to Hiroshima. Nothing else we can do will have quite the same… impact.


Lest we forget: Here’s 10 minutes about the first “live demo” on a city.


I would imagine that if you repeated those grisly facts to most of the people of the world today they’d express either some polite sadness, a bit of political high dudgeon, or the classic contemporary rejoinder, “Whatever.” It’s not that they don’t know or care, but that — for the vast majority of the population of the world — they simply cannot imagine a Hiroshima.

It has been 71 years since the incineration of a city in a second, and we’ve lost any sense of exactly what happens. The images only survive in black and white films of a long-ago era, films of before (a city) and after (rubble and ash). In black and white images blood is the color of shadows and that’s what we have, as a race, of memories about what these weapons can do — shadows of victims seared into stone at the moment of the blast; the moment the Sun was allow to bloom on the surface of the Earth.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • OhioGuy August 9, 2017, 7:47 AM

    yuppers Mr V

    place world leaders on a crusie ship about 40 – 60 miles away from a deep ocean remote detonation

    let them come up on board in their swim suits and see / feel the blast wave and heat pulse

    let them go back to their respective homes and soberly catch a clue

  • ahem August 9, 2017, 8:18 AM

    As long as it takes out Congress, it’s all good.

    What—no Gap Band?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Or148PIrwA

    • Freddo March 2, 2022, 2:12 AM

      Why waste a perfectly good innocent island when you can take out Brussels instead? Maybe we can do a two for one deal to include Congress?

      • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 3:04 PM

        Brussels would be a “twofer”: that city plus the EU. Bombs away.

  • Casey Klahn August 9, 2017, 9:46 AM

    The hands down best way to survive a nuclear blast is to not be around one going off.

    The part I highly endorse in your illuminating article is the one where we drop everything and focus on this. I’ll bet there’s a prog think tank somewhere already laying out the blame for a Nork War on Trump alone. If they want to succeed, they’ll have to paper over the history of Bill Clinton giving energy help to North Korea and a bye during their crank-up towards this apocalypse. Clinton, as a Socialist, is an internationalist and a fellow traveler with the Korean commies. In my own special search for deep schadenfreude, I’d put Clinton on the negotiating team to calm down this crisis. He’d just be a figurehead, but no shame is too juicy for his likes.

    OK. That was fun. The facts are that if war begins with the Norks, it’s the Nork’s fault and here comes another defining moment in modern history. God bless our troops. Washington, pull your heads out and pay attention.

  • Snakepit Kansas August 11, 2017, 5:39 PM

    Casey,
    I always appreciate your opinion. I do not think much will come of the media or elites blaming Trump if the nukes drop. Half of this country still voted for Trump, and that half is still supportive and the well armed half. I do not see the military going against Trump. Riot, cry, blog, whatever.

    North Korea is not able to provide much more than verbal threats to the mainland US. If at some point in time the crazy chubby boy is able to drop a nuke on the US, the soccer moms will be at the front of the mob screaming for retaliation, if it has not happened at that point already. Who would have more likely NOT responded to NK from a nuke attack on the US, Obama or Trump? The Obama response would be in question. The Trump response would not.

  • Casey Klahn August 6, 2020, 1:03 PM

    New Trivia, or Significa if you’re a military history buff:

    https://youtu.be/5XX9ptCNpik

    I’m surprised I never mentioned before that my dad was slated to go into Japan in an amphibious assault and battle that would overshadow Normandy and D Day there. Would dad have survived? It beats me, but when his unit was coming back from Europe after fighting there, and scheduled for amphib training and the invasion of Japan, the men received the news that the atom bomb had been dropped, and shortly after this the surrender of Japan occurred. That fukn bomb is my salvation, most likely.

    Just for old times’ sake, we really ought to at least parade the nukes. Do it Soviet-style, and of course that is ironic, given that half the policies in America now are Soviet-style.

  • John Venlet August 6, 2020, 1:08 PM

    As a junior man on the USS Los Angeles (SSN688) when I first reported to the boat, on one of our first extended deployments out of Pearl Harbor, I was relegated to bunking in the torpedo room, along with six other new arrivals to the boat. It’s not an operational area conducive to sound sleep. The racks were laid out in the center of the torpedo room, just behind the tubes, and occupied places normally reserved for MK48 torpedoes. My rack was on the outside edge, alongside the gangway that separated the center torpedo storage area from the outside torpedo storage area, but it was not a torpedo or two being stored there. I was sleeping next to a UUM-44 SUBROC , a mere 250 kiloton thermonuclear device. I’m pleased it never went off. The experiment Gerard suggests, would be an excellent learning experience.

  • PA Cat August 6, 2020, 3:05 PM

    Casey says: “That fukn bomb is my salvation, most likely.” Mine too, I expect. My dad was in Germany with the 82nd Airborne on V-E Day, but he and his fellow paratroopers were worried about the possibility of being sent to Japan. If Operation Downfall (the amphibious assault on Japan scheduled for November 1945) had actually come about, airborne operations would have fallen to the 11th Airborne, and not the 82nd, but my dad and his buddies could not have known that. Nonetheless he saw dropping The Bomb as the one thing he liked about Harry Truman.

    For the military history buffs who hang out on Gerard’s site, here is a link to the Army Center of Military History’s chapter on Operation Downfall:
    https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch13.htm

    For all of Gerard’s readers, here is a link to a PDF copy of Paul Fussell’s hated-by-the-usual-suspects 1981 essay titled “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” Fussell served in an infantry division in the European Theater in WWII and was wounded during the fighting in France. He later became a history professor and taught at Rutgers and Penn. “Thank God for the Atom Bomb” is a long read (14 pages in the PDF), but it’s a keeper. You may want to download the PDF before it’s scrubbed from the Internet.
    https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf

    • ghostsniper March 2, 2022, 4:36 AM

      My dad was in Germany with the 82nd Airborne…
      =================
      Cool. I was too, but exactly 30 years later.

  • Casey Klahn August 6, 2020, 5:48 PM

    Fuhhhk, John V. Good thing they don’t explode by bumping them, but still.

    PA Cat, I read another of Paul Fussel’s books and he’s good at writing. I will check this out. Some part of the invasion plans was named Olympia, and maybe it was the islands proximal to Honshu. It’s all together, big and rugged. They use mirrors to see around hairpin corners on the mountain roads, and anything that’s flat has a rice paddy on it. Paratroopers? Fuhhhhk. Send mountain troopers; the DZs would’ve been few and fully overwatched by fire. Your brave dad could’ve been sent as that’s how the army overfills the ranks. For a reason, ahem. The All Americans, huh. Wow. If you haven’t done so, read Those Devils in Baggy Pants. The 82nd saw more combat than the vaunted 101st.

    • The Usual Suspect March 2, 2022, 6:49 AM

      My Dad was in the 101st airborne, 1944 Battle of the Bulge. Two Bronze Stars, 20 years old. I have a photo of him leaning against a Bastogne City sign, smiling.
      As far as the nuclear “demo” a silly idea. The type of thought that comes up at the local bar drinking with friends. As if anyone that matters needed to be reminded of the hellish power of even a “small” nuclear weapon. Like a train wreck on a grand scale, there are no “small” train wrecks. A nuclear blast is not for entertainment. Perhaps like the Super Bowl you could buy tickets for a live viewing point and maybe a postgame show, with commentators reviewing the performance of the bomb and aftermath? Do you suppose people attend a public hanging to see justice done or to witness a macabre horrific event?

  • TN Tuxedo August 6, 2020, 6:51 PM

    Fun fact:
    The Tsar Bomba was (and still is) the most powerful device ever created by man. It’s detonation produced 210 petajoules (that’s 210,000,000,000,000,000 joules) of energy.

    It’s roughly the amount of energy that would be consumed by keeping nearly 111 million 60W bulbs burning 24/7 for an entire year.

    It’s also the average amount of energy the earth’s surface receives from the sun in just under 1.7 seconds.

  • PA Cat August 6, 2020, 7:32 PM

    Casey– I first encountered Paul Fussell through his book The Great War and Modern Memory; later I picked up the paperback edition of Class, his book on the American status system.
    I’ll have to wait to buy a copy of Those Devils in Baggy Pants, though, as the least expensive used copy is presently a mere $64. But I do know all about the 82nd’s combat record as compared to the 101’s. My dad’s stories about the Battle of the Bulge in particular were the stuff of nightmares, particularly his account of his unit’s reaction to the news of the Malmedy massacre.

    If you haven’t seen it, here’s a video of the 82nd’s 1946 victory parade in NYC (note then-Governor Dewey at the end!):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjEkTdgpVwU&ab_channel=WWIIPublicDomain
    In light of recent events, though, I can’t help wondering how long Saint-Gaudens’ wonderful statue of Sherman (seen at 2:15) will remain standing.

  • Rob Muir August 6, 2020, 11:03 PM

    My uncle had just rotated out of the European theater and met my dad in San Francisco en route to a ship bound for the Phillipines – US Army both of them. That was on the 5th or 6th of August. VJ Day happened during the transit. They both ended up on occupation duty. My uncle was an O5 and ended up in Tokyo. My dad was an E3 and ended up collecting weapons on Kyushu and Shikoku. They were super grateful there was no invasion for them as they both had no illusions about the difficulty of that landing party. I had another uncle (US Marines) that had seen action during the landings on Guadalcanal and Okinawa. He was in China on VJ Day sending letters home to a family grateful that he would not be needed for another invasion.

    I spent 2 years on Kyushu in the 70s not far from Nagasaki. I only met one old timer who was bitter about the use of the atomic bombs (they call them pikadon – flash boom). Many folks viewed them as a regrettable part of war and sadly necessary to persuade the Japanese military that their plans were hopeless. I heard one old timer say that they deserved it because they attacked Pearl Harbor. I’m sure most folks just kept their feelings to themselves, whatever they felt. The topic rarely came up in discussions with people under age 40.

  • Fletcher Christian August 7, 2020, 3:06 AM

    Yup. The use of the two bombs was a blessing. (It ought to be noted that they comprised the entire arsenal at the time.) The problem is that while 2 of them might have been a blessing, 25,000 of them leaves us with the potential for horrors beyond the wildest imagination of even the wildest of writers.
    Sure, the Chicxulub event was bigger than even a maximum-effort spasm war would be – but that leaves out the fallout.

  • Mary Ann August 7, 2020, 6:37 AM

    I too would probably not be here if not for 8/6/45. My dad was already in the Pacific, piloting a Higgins boat. The 593rd EB & SR was part of the amphibious assault on Balikpapan, Dutch Borneo with the Australian Army 7th Division. He never spoke of his war experiences. In contact with his best buddy, I finally heard the stories of events that affected him for the rest of his life.

  • John Venlet August 7, 2020, 6:59 AM

    To be fair, Casey, the SUBROC did have a little bit of lead shielding for the warhead. Wasn’t much, an L shaped lead shield covering just the side (facing the center of the torpedo room, which I could reach out and touch from my rack) and the top of the warhead. The L shaped lead shielding was about 3 inches thick, 18 inches tall, and about 3 feet long. Other than that, the SUBROC was open to viewing, and touch.

  • Chris August 7, 2020, 8:22 AM

    My Dad was a P-47N pilot assigned to the first wave of ground support for the invasion of Kyushu in November, 1945. They were told to expect 90 percent casualties on the first pass. Then fly to Iwo Jima if they survived.

    He said, repeatedly, that dropping the bomb was the only thing Harry Truman did right. That I’m here to write this, 75 years later, I tend to agree.

  • Fuel Filter August 7, 2020, 9:38 AM

    Writing just from memory, the estimated Allied casualties (deaths, not wounded) from the initial sea and airborne invasions were over 250,000. This is not counting Jap army, Air Force and Navy deaths.

    Inland, civilian deaths were estimated at well over 1,000,000. One Million. (For you Brits and Aussies that’s One Thousand, Thousand.) And that’s just the initial pacification numbers. God only knows how many would have died in the many, many months after as guerrilla units led by Jap solders behind the lines plaid hit-and-run on American forces, ammo, gas, food and other logistics dumps for as long as they stayed alive (remember those Jap soldiers who didn’t get the surrender orders on those islands that finally did in the early 50s?).

    That’s why those bombs had to have been dropped.

    Oh, and BTW, fuck any notion of a demo drop. That’s some fever dream of someone who thinks the Leftists among us are open to logic and persuasion.

    They are not, nor shall they ever be. If a demo drop should take place let them all gather in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco and drop three. And televise that.

    That program should shut up the rest of them in our midst. At least for a while.

    • OneGuy March 2, 2022, 8:08 AM

      The two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were a blessing for Japan and our military. Estimates of Japanese deaths in an invasion are as high as 20 million. Also a fact lost to history is that Russia was moving to try to attack Japan from the West. Their intent was to do what they did in Eastern Europe rape, pillage and occupy for decades.

  • Daniel K Day August 7, 2020, 11:24 AM

    My father enlisted in the merchant marine on his 17th birthday in January, 1944, and then in the Navy on his 18th birthday. After boot camp and training as a machinist, he sailed to Pearl Harbor. The day after his ship left Pearl Harbor the Japanese surrendered. He never saw the war directly.
    His older brother spent most of the war on a radar/photo surveillance ship which never suffered a direct attack.
    In Hokkaido in 1981, I met the father of a woman I was teaching English. At the end of the war, he had been in training as a pilot of the Tokkotai, who we call the “kamikaze squadrons”. My courage, and my Japanese level, were not up to the task of asking him what he thought of the A-bomb.

  • Jack August 7, 2020, 11:59 AM
  • Alan Potkin August 7, 2020, 9:42 PM

    Boo friggin’ hoo!… BTW, it’s National Purple Heart Day today (huuuhhh?), 7th Aug. Just saw an amazing article about how —prior to US President Harry Truman’s decision (immediately following the utterly snarling and contemptuous Japanese response to Truman’s threat after the Potsdam Summit to play unprecedently rough with the Nihon heartland if they didn’t instantly and unconditionally surrender) to whack Japan with the only two —hopefully operational— nukes in our stockpile— the then-War Department ordered 500,000 (!) Purple Heart medals which they thought would at least initially cover the expected American casualties, both KIAs and WIAs, of the amphibious invasion + land war alternative. Apparently it took Korea, VN, and the Iraq+Afpak wars to fully deplete that original stock. Apparently, those are two on the first page (linked below) are from that batch. I was just a few days past my first birthday, my father was on a troop ship in the North Atlantic about to be redeployed to the Pacific….

    https://cultivateunderstanding.com/pdfjs-2.3.200-dist/web/viewer.html file=../..//Digital_Media/VN_firsthand_online/eye_corps_stories_hero_junk.pdf

  • Alan Potkin August 7, 2020, 9:47 PM

    Sorry everybody…
    Let’s try that again…

    If it still brings up a 404 0r a blank screen, either retype and enter the URL manually, making sure no artifact spaces have appeared, or otherwise go into the main website and scroll down to the war stories…

  • Dave E August 8, 2020, 6:06 AM

    Those 2 in the arsenal likely worked in my favor as well. My dad was in flight school, B-29 navigator, getting ready to deploy when the show stopped. He went on to do 55 missions over N Korea, was nuclear weapons qualified navigator / bombardier, over 4000 hours in the B-47. Spent the Cuban missile crisis 100 mi from Soviet airspace

  • Bruceph August 8, 2020, 1:09 PM

    Every day of human history, Vanderleun, indeed every human beings waking moment, is and has been a precedent to this ill conceived idea. And still, there are things worse than death.
    Please, do try not to rush to the keyboard the next time this thought sneaks into your brain cage…

  • Fletcher Christian August 8, 2020, 2:33 PM

    And one more thing:

    Apocalyptic as nuclear weapons are, there are things many times worse waiting in the wings. Engineered plagues and autonomous, self-reproducing AI weapons are two of them. The latter could be smaller than a bacterium. And there may be worse things, that we don’t have a clue about yet. Ridiculous? Well…

    In 1898, a certain M. Becquerel noticed that photographic plates, placed underneath crystals of salts of a certain heavy metal, were fogged despite being in light-tight envelopes.

    47 years later? Trinity.

    What other unexplained anomalous results could lead to catastrophe? No way of knowing. That’s science.

    We need to grow up.

  • Vanderleun August 8, 2020, 2:33 PM

    No idea at all what you are talking about Bruceph. Would mind elucidating on those vague thoughts? Thanking you in advance.

  • Casey Klahn August 8, 2020, 5:52 PM

    I was telling my offspring that when It’s all said and done, Covid will be an historic note in my lifetime, along with The Cold War, the moon landing, Reagan and Trump, Kennedy and Nixon, Vietnam and the turning of the clock. The Information Age, the Millennium, The Sixties. But, although it preceded my lifetime by 13 years, World War II had the biggest gravitational pull in my life.

    Dad’s service. The reorganization of the planet. The follow-on of the Cold War, in which I some gave small personal service. The preservation until now of some semblance of liberty in the West. No fukn Nazis, Fascists, or Imperial Pacific sphere. Korea and Vietnam. All afterthoughts and aftermath of perhaps the greatest event, or the grandest in scale, in history.

    School kids in the big cities could give two shits about WW II. They know that there was racial discrimination in the US ( try the fukn Brits on that subject, dikwad), and a horrendous bombing in Japan (2 actually, and before that some Götterdämmerung shit called fire bombing). They know Nazis were bad conservatives that are the direct opposite of socialism (which is so wrong I cannot even begin to tell you). The Jews bitched a lot. Something about white privilege and woman bashing. That’s their WW II education.

    Gerard, this is why your posts are critical. Please keep em coming.

    John V, my compliments.

  • Bruceph August 9, 2020, 4:26 AM

    I think showing people what happens when you have a nuclear event won’t effect change any more than showing people what happens when a bullet goes through a watermelon will curb gun violence. It’s not an experience per se, and if it were, the outcome isn’t so predictable that the message is assured. It’s more like shoving your kids face in his plate to make him like/eat his vegetables. He may even eat his vegetables, but he’ll hate you for it, and he’ll be humiliated And that hatred and humiliation will go on to do what it will do until that kid joins his ancestors. The Americans walked the residents of a certain German town through the camp be after seizing it. Has anyone measured the results of the walk thru? Not to my knowledge.
    Your underlying assumptions may be correct if they include 1) people don’t know. But the question is ‘why?’. That’s the part the essay forgets, and it’s much harder to address that problem not to mention how, when, who, where, etc.
    We’ve got to keep an eye on our end (see Baltimore Cathecism No. 1. Lesson First question 6 & 9).
    And then defund the D. O. E.

  • Vanderleun August 9, 2020, 8:45 AM

    Oh I see what your point is now.

  • Doubletrouble August 9, 2020, 5:11 PM

    Nuke the Moon! (Look it up)

  • Jim March 1, 2022, 11:23 PM

    You know all those abandoned, empty, bankrupt “cities” the Chinese built not even 20 years ago?

    One of those is your “demonstration” target. Be nicer if they were to fully evacuate it first though, yes?

    Jim
    Sunk New Dawn
    Galveston, TX

  • Mike-SMO March 2, 2022, 1:39 AM

    The Russians have already delivered their threat. A 50-100 M-Ton warhead on a drone torpedo detonated in the deep water off the continental shelf. Everything between to current coastline and the Appalachians would be “surf city” . Now, that would significantly reduce the “Blue” population but there might be some adverse effects on the inland survivors.

    Using “brains” to find a way out of the conflict might be better than using those brains as fish food.

  • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 2:22 AM

    We have all read that “the world changed overnight after nuclear bombs were invented.” That is the conventional wisdom, and that is what the History books say. But I wonder: Did the world really change? If so, how? Did wars suddenly cease? Did human nature shift from greed and envy and cruelty to benevolence and generosity and kindness? Did depravity and perversion disappear from this world?

    None of that happened. Men and nations continued on their merry way. If nukes really “changed everything”, then what of the Korean War? Vietnam? Kosovo? The “Cultural Revolution” in China? The wars between India and Pakistan? The wars between Israel and her neighbors? The innumerable civil wars here, there and everywhere? The untold millions in Africa who supported the wrong warlord? The Soviet post-war conquest of Eastern Europe?

    I could go on and on, but why? All of these happened after 1945, in spite of the existence of nuclear weapons.

    Nuclear weapons did not change warfare at all. What they did was speed it up. There was nothing that happened to Hiroshima that did not also happen to Carthage (146 BC). Except that the death toll at Carthage was 450,000 in six days compared to the 140,000 at Hiroshima in six seconds. Given enough time, a Roman legion could do to Hiroshima the same thing it did to Carthage. And to Corinth. And to Numantia. The Assyrians fell in two weeks (612 BC), and nothing remained of their gleaming cities of Nineveh, Assur and Dur-Sharrukin. In those 14 days perhaps 1,000,000 died, and those cities, unlike Hiroshima, were never rebuilt but remained hidden for 2500 years.

    Hiroshima after Tibbets (1945):

    Richmond after Grant (1865):

    Stalingrad after the Nazis (1943):

    Notice any difference? Those cities were all rebuilt, and today look as if nothing horrific had ever happened there.

    So nuclear weapons “changed everything”? Such as?

    • ghostsniper March 2, 2022, 2:26 PM

      What if every gun that existed was designed in such a way that if the trigger was pulled it destroyed what it was pointed at but also killed the person that pulled the trigger, would that cause a ne’er do well to not cave your head in with a club and take your stuff?

      IOW, before the invention of the bomb, the gun, the knife, the spear, the club, was man a peaceful animal devoid of envy, jealousy, desire, laziness, and ignorance?

      • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 2:37 PM

        The first crime in History was murder, fratricide to be precise. Done with a rock. Rocks don’t kill people, people kill people.

        Cain went on to found cities. So the first killer was the first urbanizer. Chicago is one of Cain’s children.

  • oldvet50 March 2, 2022, 5:41 AM

    How many times has this article been recycled? I see comments from 2020 above.
    The most worrisome aspect to this threat now is that the majority of the world leaders are truly Godless (and old). They have no fear of having to answer for their actions in the afterlife. They think they can take the attitude of: “If I can’t have what I want, nobody will have anything”. If Hitler had nukes, do you think he would have killed himself in an underground bunker?

    • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 6:26 AM

      The world elites—the ones who control all those nukes, and the ones who decide when to use them—are indeed Godless. They hate the Godly. And like Hitler, who wanted to destroy all of Germany in some Wagnerian Gotterdammerung, the world elites would revel in the destruction of billions. That has long been their plan, as they have said many times.

      If Hitler had had nukes, Germany would resemble what the architectural plans of Albert Speer imagined in his “Germania Project”.

      https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a5a61ed868374bd8e30463c33a40e6fb

      “Mein Kampf” spelled all this out in detail The slavs would be the new helots, the other European nations and the US would slowly be “Germanized”—as the Romans did to those they conquered—and Christianity would slowly be eliminated in favor of a perverted theology based upon the old Norse gods.

      • ghostsniper March 2, 2022, 2:28 PM

        Looks like DC.

        Mike sed:
        If Hitler had had nukes, Germany would resemble what the architectural plans of Albert Speer imagined in his “Germania Project”.

        • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 2:40 PM

          It certainly does. But it was planned on a vastly larger scale. It did not work out quite that way.

    • Vanderleun March 2, 2022, 7:15 AM

      THIS item was first written and published at the old site of American Digest in 2008.

  • KCK March 2, 2022, 6:40 AM

    Just an FYI, the Soves, and now your boys the Russians, had and have nukes in the 10 megaton size, while ours, iirc, are about 1 or 2. The reason: they don’t target so well. Pictured at the top of this post: 0.9 megaton blast. A 10 MT blast would ruin your whole day, and thensome.

    If I were POTUS there’d be spies and Deltas watching the nukes in Russia like hawks.

    • KCK March 2, 2022, 7:15 AM
    • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 7:28 AM

      And if I were Putin—ex-KGB himself—I would know who they are and would feed them false info as well as photographing them involved “honey pots” with women and with boys. American intelligence agencies are notoriously incompetent. Russian intelligence agencies are notoriously competent. Every major Western city was honeycombed with Soviet spies both before and after World War II. They even penetrated the White House of FDR, who was a tremendous dupe and fool. And recall the Rosenbergs. How many American spies did we have in the Kremlin?

      The only thing the US “intelligence” agencies are good for is spying on and entrapping American citizens, and creating “false flags” every chance they get. How many Russian spies have turned traitor? How many American spies have turned traitor? The difference in those numbers is extraordinary.

      I doubt that Putin loses any sleep over US government intelligence agencies. Most of them work for him anyway, whether they know it or not. And those in government not beholden to Putin or Ukraine, are in the pay of Xi Jinping. Pelosi, Biden, Feinstein, Schumer, Romney, Swalwell, Schiff, Vindman, Comey, Cheney and dozens others are manifestly involved in treason. And yet, what happens to them? They remain in office, advance to the White House, and sit on congressional “intelligence” committees.

      When you think of Washington DC, think of the Stables of Augeas. Senator McCarthy was right all along.

      • Casey Klahn March 2, 2022, 11:20 AM

        OK, but my spies would be misogynist licensed to kill homophobes. It’s my fantasy, isn’t it?

        So, you’re mostly right the Soves had good spies, or at least the spied a lot. Right now, any product coming out of Russia is suspect to me.

        Our CIA needs to be replaced by military spies and oriented outwardly. Lock the door on the FBI, CIA and most if not all alphabet agencies in DC. Create new agencies that are headquartered in Omaha, Dallas, Jacksonville, and other armpit cities around the nation.

        Also, start with actual raids on democrat party locations whose crimes can be proven and who are legally liable.

        • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 11:58 AM

          Every inch of ground upon which stands every aspect of the CIA and NSA—and every damned 3-letter agency—should be dismantled and turned into pasture. Those who formerly were employed by them can move to China and work for Chinese Intelligence—which they do anyway.

          My only doubts about US Army Intelligence are because it once had me in its sights. It made no bones about letting me know I was on some Kafkaesque “list”. But all seems well now. Seems.

          As long as the Democrat Party exists no man on earth is safe, no nation is secure, no secret is held, no womb is sacred. What Cato the Elder said about Carthage at the end of every speech to the Senate needs to be said every moment of every day about the Democrat Party: “Ceterum autem censeo in popularem party esse delendam.” It must be treated like Trotsky treated the Kronstadt sailors.

          Asking for “legal liability” and “proof” would only show weakness. Let God sort them out. That’s His job.

  • David Foster March 2, 2022, 6:43 AM

    One effect of such a demo, though, would probably be to reverse the growing acceptance of nuclear power. Which wouldn’t make logical sense, but still would likely happen.

  • nunnya bidnez, jr March 2, 2022, 8:19 AM

    Build Back Better!

    Better than Hiroshima!
    The best part about nuclear bombing is the opportunity for widespread urban renewal. Compare and contrast pre-bomb aerial photos of Hiroshima, and current aerial photos; get on a bicycle and ride around the neighborhoods, visit the parks, the waterfront, the new airport, the shrines. It’s all nice and clean, no graffiti, no homeless, newish houses and buildings, well paved. Hiroshima is also about twice the size that it was pre-war. The people seem friendly. Why can’t Manhattan be like that?
    Burn baby, burn.
    Build Back Better.Build Back Better!

  • James ONeil March 2, 2022, 8:38 AM

    I’m not going to dig up the data to defend this but if my memory is correct, the carpet, fire, bombing of Tokyo did as much damage as Hiroshima but lacked the instant destruction shock that ended the war.

    As to the long overdue live demo; hopefully neither a backed in a corner Putin nor a “Preemptive strike will end this once and for all” New World Order lackey on the other side decides to provide such.

    • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 12:13 PM

      The strategic fire bombing of Japan lasted from 1944 – 1945. One million Japanese were incinerated. The Japanese militarists cared not at all. Hiroshima and Nagasaki got their attention.

      A “live demo” was suggested to Truman in 1945, to drop a bomb on some uninhabited place in order to spare lives yet frighten the world. Truman said it would more likely show weakness. He was right.

      No live demo would work today for the same reason. If America wishes to remind the world of what a nuclear war would be like, drop a nuke on Brussels. That would show them up close and personal and rid the world of those parasitical tyrants at the EU. A twofer. Or drop one on Geneva during the next meeting of the World Economic Forum. Another twofer.

      Oh what the Hell. Lob one into the San Andreas Fault.

      • John the River March 2, 2022, 3:58 PM

        If I get a vote. The San Andreas Fault. Second choice, Washington DC.

        • jwm March 2, 2022, 4:09 PM

          San Andreas?
          Kinda’ close to home, and I like my home despite the lunacy of So Cal.
          Oh. and my cats, too.
          Uh, couldn’t we do Seattle instead? Or maybe Portland?
          You guys are far enough inland, right?

          JWM

          • Mike Austin March 2, 2022, 5:16 PM

            Portland. Lived there for 30 years. It begs destruction. If God does not blow that city to Hell, then He owes Sodom an apology.

  • gwbnyc March 2, 2022, 11:29 AM

    the last were gassed, it was dropped, eight years later I was born.