July 16th is the anniversary of the Trinity explosion in Los Alamos in 1945...

The one shown here is from the Pacific in 1946, when the Americans were testing the effects which those monstrosities might have on ships ..

Quote :

July 1, 1946, in the Marshall Islands: A mushroom cloud erupts in the North Pacific Ocean over the Bikini Lagoon during the first of the two detonations of Operation Crossroads. The series studied the effects of nuclear radiation on large ships, and the United States assembled a fleet of 90 obsolete naval vessels, including a few captured German and Japanese warships, for the test. Several ships can be seen here, silhouetted against the blast.

Wired

Check out this one to see the scale of this thing, with some American destroyers silhouetted against the blast.
http://zvis.com/nuclear/php/dimg.php?baker3,crbaker

I suppose to some those images are angelic ...

Some fellow, from the Taliban, on Newsnight claimed that suicide bombers were the Muslim equivilant of atom bombs, only more accurate.

I was reading up on the Non-Proliferation Treaty today, I didn't know it was the Irish who started that. Frank Aiken, back in the day.

What an astounding photograph.

I presume those ships didn't fare to well.

The older I get, the less time I have for technology.

There are some amazing videos on youtube showing nuclear detonations. I'm of two minds when watching them.
It's sometimes easy to forget that they are actually weapons. Some of the detonations look really beautiful.

i read a great book about "THE BOMB" called... The Bomb. Can't remember the author/

cookiemonster wrote:

i read a great book about "THE BOMB" called... The Bomb. Can't remember the author/

Theodore Taylor?

http://www.amazon.com/Bomb-Theodore-Taylor/dp/0380727234

A weapon of mass terror if ever I saw one.

Any ideas how to put the geni back in the bottle?

cactus flower wrote:

A weapon of mass terror if ever I saw one.

Any ideas how to put the geni back in the bottle?

You cannot uninvent something, so nuclear weapons are with us for the long term.

But the fact that they are weapons of mass terror is good. Hopefully that way they won't be used. It's the idea that a nuclear attack is survivable that is most dangerous. That's why the idea of Iran becoming a nuclear power is so worrying. Not that Iran might be tempted to use their nukes but that the US, in the knowledge that Iran cannot strike America, might be tempted to use theirs.

Someday nuclear weapons will be used again in a war. Hopefully it will be a small and contained war.

We invented spears, bows and arrows, cross bows, guns, cannons, gas, mines and the atom bomb. All have been used in war and will again. What weapon have we invented that hasn't been used (perhaps germ warfare)

This is unstoppable whilst men of ambition, driven to gain power, govern us. The evil is the men who promote pernicious propaganda, the people who seek to divide and set us against each other. That is what we need to stop but it is everywhere and humanity is basically an insecure species.

Squire wrote:

What weapon have we invented that hasn't been used (perhaps germ warfare)

In 1346 the Mongols, besieging the town of Kaffa in the Crimea catapulted the corpses of plague victims into the town and spread the disease to the defenders.

White settlers in 18th century America gave smallpox infected blankets to inconvenient natives.

The Japanese army dropped cases of plague infected fleas onto Chinese towns in the Sino-Japanese War.

Biological weapons aren't easy to deliver effectively though.

Nuclear bombs aren't much good in a resource/territorial war. Even depleted uranium is causing the US a lot of problems with their own troops.

cactus flower wrote:

Nuclear bombs aren't much good in a resource/territorial war. Even depleted uranium is causing the US a lot of problems with their own troops.

When do your own troops actually really matter? War is a numbers game, you commit people to death. A percentage of those who join an army will die. Nuclear may not be of use if you want to accrue useful territory, but if you wish to reduce your opponents ability to wage war or as a final goodbye present what better. There is no logic to war other than the logic of carnage and reducing your opponent into submission as efficiently as possible. A vile trade surrounded by sanitised jargon. Friendly fire, collateral damage, resource depletion, surgical strike.................

Lestat

Forget about the infected blankets and plague corpses, didn't realise the Japanese tried plague. Just proves we will do anything in war or to gain someone else's land.

The British tested anthrax on an island people still aren't allowed on I think.
I think the main reason they didn't use it was that it didn't work very well.

There is every appearance that Reagan intended to make a "first strike" in the early 1980s and was only dissuaded by seeing a TV drama, and the strange reluctance of his european NATO allies to be wiped out.

There is also the appearance at present that the US is dreaming again of
first strike, if the 'defensive' moves in the Balkans are anything to go by.
But is its the purest lunacy.

An accident is always a worry.