More on apocalypse

Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
User avatar
jimbob
Light of Blast
Posts: 5276
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:04 pm
Location: High Peak/Manchester

Re: More on apocalypse

Post by jimbob » Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:57 pm

secret squirrel wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:39 am
warumich wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:25 am
jimbob wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:17 am


I really don't see how it could have been overblown, given how close it came with Exercise Able Archer '83 for example. Or the occasion where the Soviet warning system misidentified something as a US attack, and was luckily sat upon by the civilian observer, against protocol.
From what I remember (books' in my work office so I can't really check), the argument was more that the destructive power of nuclear war was exaggerated (compared to conventional war) - so he didn't argue that many people wouldn't die, but more that it won't be a paradigmatically different type of war (the fire bombing of Dresden or Tokyo came close to killing a similar amount of people - not saying that either that or Hiroshima was acceptable, but the argument was that if we accept Dresden, then we should also accept Hiroshima). So, if a nuclear war had broken out, then it would have been bad, but it wouldn't have been apocalyptic, or no more apocalyptic than the (conventional) second world war already was. It suited both sides of the cold war to claim nuclear weapons were more destructive and apocalyptic than they really were, so there was no incentive to tone down the rhetoric.
One of the reasons nuclear weapons had not been used in the Korean war was not because the US had suddenly become squeamish about civilian loss of life, but because they feared that using them would demonstrate their relative uselessness in strategic warfare. Much better to not use them and let people run wild with imagination of what they could do.

NB, this is me trying to summarise the argument, not my opinion.
I wouldn't take that argument very seriously then. The US air force estimated in the 60s that the causalities from executing its nuclear war plan would be around 600 million people in the first 6 months after launch* in the USSR, China, and parts of Europe unfortunate enough to be close to either. And they didn't model the effects of fire in their calculations, or the long term effects of radiation on harvests etc., or the effects of any counterattacks.

Maybe fission weapons could be approximated by conventional warfare, but fusion weapons are orders of magnitude worse. Also, the dangerous thing about nuclear weapons is not just that they could destroy the world, rather that they can destroy the world by accident over the course of a few days. It would take a huge amount of deliberate effort from hundreds of thousands of people over months and years to destroy the world with conventional warfare, but once they've been made nuclear weapons can do it at the flick of a few switches.


*Figures again from Ellsberg's book.
Yup.

The Tokyo firebombing killed more than either atom bomb, but that's different to mass attacks on all the major cities in three continents, and the associated breakdown of infrastructure. Also, there's nothing to say that it would have been a single exchange then everyone started singing Kumbaya. Any remaining military units would probably still be prosecuting the war for revenge, and include any chemical and biological weapons they had
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

User avatar
individualmember
Catbabel
Posts: 654
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:26 pm

Re: More on apocalypse

Post by individualmember » Thu Apr 16, 2020 8:05 am

warumich wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 10:22 am
individualmember wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:48 am
Every time I read the title of this thread my brain goes Moron Apocalypse.

Like Zombie Apocalypse but driven by morons.

Sorry.

As you were
Pun intended, glad someone spotted it!
I’m sure everyone spotted it, but have been too polite and/or occupied with the content to mention it.

I, on the other hand, haven’t got anything useful to add to the conversation.

(I could mention that some things in the book Command and Control by Eric Schlosser regarding nukes/cold war but (a) I can’t remember the details well and (b) it seems pretty small beer compared to other posts in the thread).

User avatar
lpm
Junior Mod
Posts: 5944
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:05 pm

Re: More on apocalypse

Post by lpm » Thu Apr 16, 2020 8:31 am

jimbob wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:57 pm
The Tokyo firebombing killed more than either atom bomb, but that's different to mass attacks on all the major cities in three continents, and the associated breakdown of infrastructure. Also, there's nothing to say that it would have been a single exchange then everyone started singing Kumbaya. Any remaining military units would probably still be prosecuting the war for revenge, and include any chemical and biological weapons they had
There's also the counter factual of no Manhattan Project. The planned no-nuke strategy for Japan was to bomb the sh.t out of trains and other transport and prevent rice from being distributed. Planners did estimates of how many people in cities would starve to death and speculated on when urban areas would depopulate from inhabitants leaving to seek food. The death toll was many multiples of Hiroshima, even before the actual invasion in 1946 happened.

Which shows how famine is the true killer of humanity - a year without a harvest and/or inability to distribute into cities is the underlying breakdown that matters.
⭐ Awarded gold star 4 November 2021

Imrael
Snowbonk
Posts: 505
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2019 5:59 am

Re: More on apocalypse

Post by Imrael » Thu Apr 16, 2020 10:17 am

Destructive as the big conventional city raids of WWII were - it generally took a lot of aircraft to deliver them - 700 over several days for Hamburg. Hiroshima was delivered by a single plane (or 3 if you count the weather plane and observer). As someone growing up in the 60's/70's that always seemed enough of a difference in degree to be a difference in kind.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: More on apocalypse

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Apr 16, 2020 10:22 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:39 am
warumich wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:25 am
jimbob wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:17 am


I really don't see how it could have been overblown, given how close it came with Exercise Able Archer '83 for example. Or the occasion where the Soviet warning system misidentified something as a US attack, and was luckily sat upon by the civilian observer, against protocol.
From what I remember (books' in my work office so I can't really check), the argument was more that the destructive power of nuclear war was exaggerated (compared to conventional war) - so he didn't argue that many people wouldn't die, but more that it won't be a paradigmatically different type of war (the fire bombing of Dresden or Tokyo came close to killing a similar amount of people - not saying that either that or Hiroshima was acceptable, but the argument was that if we accept Dresden, then we should also accept Hiroshima). So, if a nuclear war had broken out, then it would have been bad, but it wouldn't have been apocalyptic, or no more apocalyptic than the (conventional) second world war already was. It suited both sides of the cold war to claim nuclear weapons were more destructive and apocalyptic than they really were, so there was no incentive to tone down the rhetoric.
One of the reasons nuclear weapons had not been used in the Korean war was not because the US had suddenly become squeamish about civilian loss of life, but because they feared that using them would demonstrate their relative uselessness in strategic warfare. Much better to not use them and let people run wild with imagination of what they could do.

NB, this is me trying to summarise the argument, not my opinion.
I wouldn't take that argument very seriously then. The US air force estimated in the 60s that the causalities from executing its nuclear war plan would be around 600 million people in the first 6 months after launch* in the USSR, China, and parts of Europe unfortunate enough to be close to either. And they didn't model the effects of fire in their calculations, or the long term effects of radiation on harvests etc., or the effects of any counterattacks.

Maybe fission weapons could be approximated by conventional warfare, but fusion weapons are orders of magnitude worse. Also, the dangerous thing about nuclear weapons is not just that they could destroy the world, rather that they can destroy the world by accident over the course of a few days. It would take a huge amount of deliberate effort from hundreds of thousands of people over months and years to destroy the world with conventional warfare, but once they've been made nuclear weapons can do it at the flick of a few switches.


*Figures again from Ellsberg's book.
I'll also add that the only way that the firebombing of Dresden can be seen as having comparable casualties to a nuclear strike is if people accept the forged casualty figures which were fabricated by the Nazi apologist David Irving.*


*No libel problems here, it was all proved in court.

User avatar
jimbob
Light of Blast
Posts: 5276
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:04 pm
Location: High Peak/Manchester

Re: More on apocalypse

Post by jimbob » Thu Apr 16, 2020 10:39 am

lpm wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 8:31 am
jimbob wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:57 pm
The Tokyo firebombing killed more than either atom bomb, but that's different to mass attacks on all the major cities in three continents, and the associated breakdown of infrastructure. Also, there's nothing to say that it would have been a single exchange then everyone started singing Kumbaya. Any remaining military units would probably still be prosecuting the war for revenge, and include any chemical and biological weapons they had
There's also the counter factual of no Manhattan Project. The planned no-nuke strategy for Japan was to bomb the sh.t out of trains and other transport and prevent rice from being distributed. Planners did estimates of how many people in cities would starve to death and speculated on when urban areas would depopulate from inhabitants leaving to seek food. The death toll was many multiples of Hiroshima, even before the actual invasion in 1946 happened.

Which shows how famine is the true killer of humanity - a year without a harvest and/or inability to distribute into cities is the underlying breakdown that matters.
Yup, and at the time, even in the week before the surrender Japan still launched over 400 attacks in China and over half took territory. Every day the war dragged om *without* an invasion of Japan, thousands of mainly Chinese were killed.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

Post Reply