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Atomic Veterans Speak Out
GoneGaryT writes "Last night I stumbled across the site for Atomic Veterans, the guys in the forces who were present at the Pacific atmospheric nuclear tests and those who 'cleaned-up' Eniwetok 20 years later. There are scores of testimonies, many from men who have a range of cancers or who have since died from them. The absolute and callous disregard for their health and safety at the time is shocking; I suppose the same kind of thing happened to British, French, Russian and Chinese troops in similar circumstances. The Chernobyl pages discussed here a few months ago were eerie; this site is simply heartbreaking. On the one hand, I hate the idea of this site being Slashdotted, on the other hand, people, you've just got to read some of these testimonies. What happened back then is no joke and I'm not sure if we have half the fallout story even now. For the continental US, see this compilation."
For those who are interested in what the natives went through as well as the navy guys, check out Radio Bikini. There's some good clips of the blasts, too.
just a little fyi, we used the nuke in the Second world war... using it in the first would be highly improbable, as we didn't even have planes that could deploy it at the time.
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
It's called the Rio Grande Valley. Very high levels of lithium (natural) and radioactive lithium (definitely unnatural).
er, their targets.
Japan didn't surrender after the first bomb, thus a second was justified. Their effectiveness had already been shown in the Southwestern US, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not tests. How many times does it have to be said that a prolonged war with Japan would have cost more lives than ending the war with nukes?
I can recall cases that involved British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers. Last year, there was a documentary about the nuclear test happened in Australia. While Australia herself is nuclear weapon free, it was being used as a testing ground for the British test program... Some veterans were exposed to high radiation doses because of wind shift, miscalculated yield and reasons like that. In theory, the commanders could just place the film badges and dosimeters. But, the military planner at that time really wanted to stretch that a bit further. From memory, PLA did the same thing after the first Chinese atomic test in 1964. Some troops were ordered to drive/ march across the ground zero after some precalculated "safety hours"....
The Cold War was a crazy time in human history Well, we might be committing something equally ridiculous right now without realising that... I am quite sure the situation is the same in France and USSR. Any example?
another link
I'd feel a bit more guilty if the Spanish and Portuguese hadn't wiped out 80% of the Natives in North and South America before the US of A was ever a twinkle in Tom Jefferson's eye. Or maybe if the Brits and French hadn't killed off another 10-15% themselves.
You should be a bit more careful with that 'we' word. One other thing, history goes back further than the Louisiana Purchase...even in North America.
The DOE has some great photos of the various test shots available, at very low cost.
--jc
Those were smoke rockets fired to provide a background to measure the progression of the shock wave, once it was past the initial fireball. During the first fractions of a second, the shock wave and the fireball had the same perimeter. After, the shock wave continued outward and was harder to track.
As the shock wave continued out, it would cause a density change in the air, leading to a distortion in the images of the smoke trails.
Those smoke trails were only present in test firings, not at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
--RIAmAses! Let my MP3ople go!
I would just like to point out that, up until as late as the late 50's, it was believed that radiation was actually good for you. People actually bought Radon Water, because it was "natural" and "good for you." If your interested, the August edition on Popular Science is running a short article on the subject that is really pretty informative (and scary). (sorry, but they don't have it online yet)
The theory goes something like this:
Cancer occurs as a consequence of genetic damage that hits certain critical genes within in a cell, usually those that control cell growth/death. Many genes control cell growth... if one of these genes gets overexpressed, or a suppressor gene or modulator region for one of the aforementioned genes gets damaged or otherwise turned off, you can get cancer... but not always.
If your own body's immune system recognizes the cancer cell as abnormal and kills it, you dodge the bullet. There's absolutely no way to quantify how often it happens, but it's probably more often than we know.
Ionizing radiation affects DNA by damaging it. However, your body can often use the matching DNA strand from the other side of the double-helix to repair the damaged region... you have enzymes in your cell nuclei that are specifically for this. You should thank your lucky stars for those enzymes too... there are a few syndromes where those enzymes are deficient or dysfunctional: those poor patients grow cancers like it's their job.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The Soviets have said that they tested four weapons in space and the USA tested four weapons in space (Starfish Prime, Argus-1, Argus-2, Argus-3). Starfish Prime was the large thermonuclear weapon launched from Johnston Island into space on a missile.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I call BS.
I saw the bill my insurance company paid for my hospital stay $37,000 + for 5 days. That didn't include the surgery or doctors. You will die of the cancer I had sucessfully removed before you get your operation if the government is involved.
I have friends in Canada. They tell me 18 months is the wait for a common hip replacement. In the US if you are on Medicare you'll get it the same day you broke your hip.
I have a friend in the UK who has been waiting 3 years for an operation as her health continues to fail. She will die because of government health care.
Goverment rationing of health care sucks. The last thing we need is some government accountant deciding if we are going to live or die based on some table and formula. By the way all these Vets are entitled to free government health care through the VA. Guess what they aint getting it like they were promised. Governmet mandated health care provided by the government will never work in the US because the government will screw us just like they are screwing these Vets.
Rape of Nanking is a forgotten Holocaust. The Japanese Government is reluctant to give a formal apology to the Rape of Nanking or the invasion to China herself. South Korean government received their long overdue apology just before the 2002 World Cup Soccer, co-organised by Japan/ Korea.
Some historians claimed that the lost of China to communism (and many other related problems) was the direct consequence of the Japanese Invasion. A whole generation of more educated/modernised officiers with the Chiang Kai-shek government got slaughtered between 7/7/1937 (the attack of Peking) to 13/12/137 (the fall of Nanking). The level of corruption in China got rampant after WW2 and thus triggered the shift towards communism....
The Japanese Emperor and the wartime cabinet should feel lucky as the atomic bomb was not directed towards them. At the end of the day, many Hiroshima and Nagasaki civilians are innocents.
is that the creation of the first fision bomb was probably the greatest scientific achievment in human history. The neutron was only discovered in 1930, fission in 1939. From there the first reactor only went on line in December 1942 and the first fission bomb, Trinity was tested less than three years later. In the interviening time some very smart men had to discover isotope separation (extreemly hard as Uranium 235 and 238 are chemically identical), and figure out how to make large remote controlled factories to produce a new element, Plutonium which durring the designing only existed in microgram quantities. Also let's not forget the problems of explosive lenses, and just dealing with a newly discovered mettle which burns violently in air.
Also for all you out there willing to blame the atomic bombing of Japan on America's megalomania don't forget that this was a joint venture between England, Canada and America. The fact that the bombs were made here was only by virtue of the fact that we were the only country with the economy to do it. Also the whole thing was only possible thanks to some very smart Europeans, notably two Hungarians (Leó Szilárd and John von Neumann) a Dane (Neils Bohr) and an Italian (Enrico Fermi).
It really is a very sad irony that the most explosive growth in the theory and aplication of physics should happen for the aim of killing large numbers of people. However before anyone starts damning anyone though, remember what they were trying to do: stop the most destructive war in human history.
Don't mess with the bunny, outsideworld.org
Huh. last I heard, the cigarette was far more lethal a cause of cancer than the Sun.
*Interesting side note: During WW I women were hired to paint the controlls on the inside of fighter planes. The paint was composed of radium, so that pilots could see the controlls in the dark. The women would like their brushes between painting jobs to keep the tip fine enough for the small writing. When the women died, they had to be buried in lead lined coffins. *
This last part sounds like an urban myth. The radium painters indeed suffered (and the worst cases experienced extremely high rates of bone cancer (20 cases of bone cancer out of the 44 worst exposure cases). This doesn't describe the full story. There apparently were other nasty illnesses they could fall prey to. But they were ingesting paints with high concentrations of radium. Someone handling the unshielded coffin of such a victim wouldn't receive significant dosage (IMHO of course), and I don't see any other obvious benefit to a lead-lined coffin. After all, six feet or so of earth is a very effective shield.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that several of these poor women were buried in lead-lined coffins (perhaps out of ignorance or for propaganda purposes), but you don't need to bury them that way.
Right, that's an amazing sequence, especially when you realize the horse mask is anything but airtight - as if it would really make that much of a difference.
Read the history of this shot:CASTLE-BRAVO
Apparently the bomb designers miscalculated something. The yield was supposed to be about 5 megatons. Turned out to be closer to 15. (Miscalculated!) The fallout irradiated other islanders and a fishing boat that were supposed to be safe. I'd say this event qualifies as one of the biggest engineering f-ups in history.
Here's an interesting animation about fallout from the Nevada tests. Guess it's for people who don't like to read.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
It is ok to flog this horse one more time. I have been reading about it for 30 years.
But there have been new atomic veterans and civilians for the last twenty years due to the usage of military stream (contaminanted with Americium, Technicium, Neptunium and various isotopes of Plutonium) depleted Uranium (238) anti-tank ordinance. Tonnes and tonnes onto western states. Vieques Island and parts of Okinawa severely contaminated with Ur238 that has a half life of 4 plus billion years.
Yes, veterans, like the 15 homeless Korean war vets I lived with for 3 1/2 years and the two to five mentally ill Vietnam war vets I also lived with during that time.
The chemists always chuckled at the physcicists at Los Alamos whenever they stuck a metal shovel into uranium. An intense fire starts. When depleted Uranium ordinance strikes metal, it ignites so hot that 90+% can oxidize to one micron particles. These exhibit brownian motion - they do a devils dance in the atmosphere for years, decades in arid environments, and can return as aerosol with a whisper of the wind.
One micron particles of DU 238 ingested give off alpha. That size is almost tailor made for efficacy. This resulted in a spike of specific leukemias and kidney cancers in Basra (Southern Iraq) from 1996 on. I have 6 (5 us and one Mennonite Canadian) friends who saw that cancer ward from 1996 to 2002, and two in June 2003. All came back changed from viewing that pediatric oncology ward.
Of course, contrary to Pentagon statements in the early 1990's, military instead of commercial Ur238 was used. Plutonium and Neptunium are almost as toxic as botulism toxin. The tie ins between the chemical toxicities and the radioactive mutagenic activity probably has some very strong synergistic effects. Unknown however, it hasn't been studied much.
It hasn't been studied much in veterans is the case again. There were some mass spec studies done in Canada and Italy on the first Gulf war veterans. That is how the military waste stream was identified, they were not only pissing DU, but also transuranics two years after leaving the theatre.
For Vietnam war vets - Agent orange and all dibenzofuranes and their ilk have an affinity for DNA (especially after hitting the cytochrome P-450 enzyme chain - arene oxides) and are transmitted via sperm into the next generation. If these new vets are pissing DU it is also going into their sperm.
No, DU is not the entire answer to Gulf War syndrome. Adrenaline and stress, the touch of nerve gases that went up from bombed chemical arsenals, the anthrax vaccine, some of the insects that bit soldiers and the parasite they vector, etc., etc., all played a factor in Gulf War Syndrome. But DU explains many many symptoms that in retrospect were not exhibited by say, non atomic WWII vets.
Birth defects and still borns are way way up in all people exposed to DU, including males vets.
Just as Agent Orange was dismissed for years, and not studied in the US (and the de facto isolation of the nmost promising studies by the isolation of Vietnam) until the later 1990's - depleted Uranium is not being studied seriously here.
No one else is using DU yet, just the US and UK (and Israel), and now it is probably being added to the new bunker buster bombs (five letters from the Senate Finance chair to me state that the Pentagon hasn't gotten back to him yet whether DU is in the bunker buster bombs). Russia is all set to start bringing on line DU antitank ordinance for sale to any and all however, not quite yet - give them six months to start competing with Alliant Technology.
No, we have a new generation of atomic vets starting up. How many more?
You google it, Nukewatch is a good place to start.
Shalom,
Mark
You may be thinking of Marie Curie, who was buried in this way because of fears about radium contamination.
Blah.. Looks like Canada got a lot of the crap. :(
for list of all nuclear explosions in history 1945-1998:
/
....
http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/level2/nuk e.cat.index. html
put THAT in your database and smoke it
for photography of effects on children and newborns in Iraq from
depleted uranium from first Gulf War and updates:
http://www.savewarchildren.org/
http:// www.savewarchildren.org/exhibitPictures.htm l
Japanese photograher Takashi Morizumi::1
http://www.chimerafilms.co.uk/childre n6.html
"American troops guarding the Ministry of Oil
Received:16:23JST, 21/06/03
"Looters ransacked most of the government buildings after the war, but
this building was always under the U.S. protection. I burst out laughing
when I saw the American soldiers on guard here. Isn't it a little
too obious? This scene sympolises one of the objectives of the war."
"Gulf War Syndrome"-- often claimed to be from DU, then
usually denied by the US. Will there more US veteran
cases from the lastest? Still a mystery...
RADIATION EXPOSURE COMPENSATION Program
http://www.angelfire.com/tx/atomicveteran
Atomic Veterans Radiation News
http://www.tpromo.com/usvi/atomic/
http://www.vethealth.cio.med.va.gov/atomicvets.h tm "Approximately
195,000 U. S. service members have been identified as participants in the
post-World War II occupation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan following
the atomic bombing of Japan. In addition, approximately 210,000 mostly
military members are confirmed as participants in U.S. atmospheric
nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1962 in the United States and the
Pacific and Atlantic oceans prior to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty.
Largely as a result of epidemiological studies of Japanese atomi..."
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/
Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with
Atomic Radiation. 1982 Wasserman and Soloman
http://archives.cjr.org/year/94/2/radiation.asp
Columbia Journalism Review
March/April 1994 THE RADIATION STORY NO ONE WOULD TOUCH
by Geoffrey Sea
" In California, Dorothy Legarreta, who had worked on the Manhattan
Project as a laboratory technician, organizes the National Association
of Radiation Survivors (NARS) and starts to write a book about human
experimentation. In 1982, while examining the papers of Joseph Hamilton
-- the scientist in charge of radiation experiments at the University of
California -- at the library of the University of California at Berkeley,
she comes across a 1950 memo written to Shields Warren, then director
of the Atomic Energy Commission's Division of biology and medicine. The
memo advised that large primates -- chimpanzees, for example -- be
substituted for humans in the planned studies on radiation's cognitive
effects (the very same program of experimentation that Dr. Saenger was
to execute). The use of humans, Hamilton wrote, might leave the AEC
open "to considerable criticism," since the experiments as proposed had
"a little of the Buchenwald touch."
"After Legarreta finds the so-called Buchenwald memo, Hamilton's
papers are removed from public access by University of California
administrators. Soon after this, Legarreta files a Freedom of Information
Act request with the Department of Energy, asking for all documents
concerning experiments in which humans were intentionally exposed to
radioactive materials through injection or ingestion. Later that year,
NARS receives a two-foot-high carton of documents in response -- documents
that, for the first time, expose the widespread human experimentation
program of the U.S. government.
"1988: Dorothy Legarreta is killed in a mysterious car crash,
reminiscent of the death of Karen Silkwood. Legarreta's briefcase --
listed on the accident report as being found -- is missing. The tow-truc
I would just like to point out that, up until as late as the late 50's, it was believed that radiation was actually good for you.
There's a lot of evidence that low dosages of radiation are good for you. Google "hormesis" or check out this article.
There's also a psychological issue about radiation or toxic exposure. To make up some numbers, let's say 10,000 soldiers get exposed during a nuclear bomb test in the '50s. Let's say that based on normal demographic statistics, 1,000 of them would have gotten cancer 50 years later. However, the radiation exposure increases the number of cancers by 50%, so 1,500 get cancer. In other words, only 1/3 of the men who got cancer did so because of the exposure, but I guarantee you that nearly all of the 1,500 would be sure that their cancer must have been caused by the bomb test.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Oppenheimer: throat cancer. (He smoked.)
Feynman: leukemia, maybe related to radiation exposure.
Fermi: stomach cancer. Unlikely to be connected with radiation exposure.
Slotin: died from radiation exposure. (Not cancer.)
Serber: managed to live to 86.
Pilot Paul Tibbets: still alive, as far as I can tell.
Copilot Robert Lewis: died aged 66.
Still, one or two out of seven ain't bad.
My Grandfather was in the Tuskeegy (spelling?) experiements when he was in the navy. They had them all on boats in a circle and had no idea what they were there for. The government set off an atomic bomb under the water. He said it was like nothen he ever seen before. He lived to be 65 and the only kind of cancer he ever got was skin cancer. I guess he just got lucky. The people that had to be or went on deck died almost instantaniously. No mutations in the family yet BTW :P
V-E day was May 8, 1945; the successful test of atomic bomb was July 6, 1945. Unfortunately the time machine project hasn't been completed so we could drop the atomic bomb on Germany first.
If you look at the destruction of the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg, you would know the goverment wouldn't have had a problem dropping the atomic bomb there.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
DOE radiation experiments on unsuspecting civilians
Three things about this:
1. If the Clinton administration hadn't opened these records, people would brand anyone who claimed that this stuff actually happened as tinfoil hat wearing paranoids.
2. If the tip of this iceberg was spotted during this administration,all evidence of it would have been "accidentally" destroyed like all records of the Bush family's skeletons - from the grandfathers registered foreign agent status for the German banker, the fact that the Bush brothers were all close with Hinckley when they lived in Lobbock. Why did the Hinckley family offer up their blacksheep for the Bushes to be able to take early control of the White House (which Bush, Sr. had wanted since he had Kennedy killed for fucking him on the Bay of Pigs)? Because the DOE was going to fine the Hinckley's oil company for illegal profit taking during 1973-1981, and for fear of the ensuing cans of worms that would be exposed as those dominos fell. I wonder if they ever were fined? - I would assume yes since Hinckley failed to do the job. All the way up to the idiot son's national Guard service record details, so that they could not be used against him in the election.
3. John Titor was correct, he said the civil war would start on "a day everyone would remember", my guess is that now that the Bush/Cheney regime realize that they are going to lose, they will say that there is going to be an attack on election day and delay the election, that will become (in hindsight) the day that catalyzed the civil war.
I would be amazed if that were true. A few years ago, I was talking to a health physics guy at a US national lab. He had previously worked for a contractor that did radiation surveys at a number of US nuclear power plants. He said that, in that business, it was standard practice to push the techs up to the NRC limit of 5000 mrem/year, then send them home for the rest of the year.
I don't see why in the heck you're modded as funny, but ah well.
Anyway, the Japanese, and English languages are completely different. You can't interpret a language without also throwing in parts of its culture, and what conventions there are in speech. They might have said literally "We don't have a decision", or something similar, but, if a Japanese person is talking to another Japanese person, the true meaning conveyed behind it is "We decide no." The best way to look at it is that there is no direct translation of almost any sentence in any language, to another sentence in another language. It is the interpreters job to make a judgement on what the meaning would be in English, and if they decided to interpret it as "We decide no." Well, I'd bet they knew the weight resting on their shoulders, and I'd bet they're a lot more qualified to make that decision than you and I are.
BTW, interesting thing, in Japan at least, there's a difference between a translator, and an interpreter. A translator directly translates what is said, practically word-for-word, as close as they can get. An interpreter many times puts their own spin on things (which I'd doubt is what happened in this situation), and has to go based on their experience and knowledge of the culture to translate the *meaning*. A translator converts what is said. An interpreter converts the meaning of what is said.
Example: When someone asks the phrase "how are you?" in Japanese, it's rude to answer anything negative. A translator would probably say "How are you?", whereas an interpreter would probably say "Hello" or some other non-inquisitive greeting.
http://www.doug-long.com/guide1.htm
I always heard that Japan was considering surrender prior to the bombs. The only exception being that they keep their deified Emperor.
from site...
Intercepted cables showed Japan responding positively to a U.S. offer of a surrender based on the "Atlantic Charter" as put forward in an official July 21, 1945 American radio broadcast. The key clause of the Charter promised that every nation could choose its own form of government (which would have allowed Japan to keep its Emperor).
The broadcast was allowed to stand with Presidential sanction, but U.S. officials chose thereafter to ignore this indication of Japan's willingness to surrender.
and
Three days before Hiroshima was bombed President Truman and his top advisers agreed Japan was seeking peace, but the President feared Tokyo would negotiate a surrender through Russia:
The diary of Walter Brown--an assistant to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes-- records that aboard ship returning from Potsdam on August 3, 1945 the President, Byrnes and Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the President, "agrred [sic] Japas [sic] looking for peace. (Leahy had another report from Pacific) President afraid they will sue for peace through Russia instead of some country like Sweden." (See p. 415, Chapter 33)
Putting aside the "which war?" error, the main point is wrong, too. The US conducted the Strategic Bombing Survey after the war to determine the effects of conventional and atomic bombings. Before the end of the war, many of the top military brass, such as Undersecretary of the Navy, Bard, had been lobbying Truman not to use the bomb or to use it only as a test to demonstrate that we had it, because they were convinced that the Japanese were about to surrender. The Strategic Bombing Survey confirmed that the Japanese were, in fact, ready to surrender, and indicated that the Japanese had already been ready to offer a non-unconditional surrender, and would likely have offered an unconditional surrender within months. They did a person-by-person breakdown of the views in the Japanese government, their actions, and all sorts of other stuff to come to this conclusion; it was a pretty in-depth report. The only reason it took them more than the (sarcasm)huge benevolent three day waiting period(/sarcasm) that we gave them before dropping the second bomb was due to all of the confusion in the Japanese government.
The more you learn about what we did, the more annoyed you get with it. The target planning memos show a clear preference for killing *more* civilians, actually ruling out a number of militarly more useful targets with less civilian casualties. It's also likely that even Truman himself was lied to. In Truman's diaries, he writes how he never could support the targetting of Japanese women and children - how he didn't want America to resort to the sort of lows that the Japanese had, and how he was only interested in targetting the military. After the war, he gave an infamous speech in which he told the nation we had just dropped the first atomic bomb on "... Hiroshima - a military base".
I could go on in a lot more detail... but you get the picture. There's a lot of myths about Japan near the end of WWII, and one of the most profound is that the government was all looking to fight to the death.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
plutonium and neptunium are _not_ chemically toxic in any way. in biological systems they are chemically inert as no cells are capable of processing it, and it cannot substitute for any element used in biological systems (unlike radium, which can substitute for calcium).
they are however _radiologically_ toxic.
as for the "toxic as botulism toxin", i call bullshit again. eat 1 mg of plutonium and 1 mg of botulism toxin and see who dies first.
but don't just take my word for it. try here.
Operation Magic, in which we had cracked their communication encryption, we learned that the Japanese wanted to surrender but were worried about the fate of their emperor.
Admiral William Leahy along with the rest of the Joint Chiefs all felt that the Japanese were defeated militarily. An effective sea blockade was in place as well as the success of conventional bombing and the seizure of Okinawa.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Five Star Admiral Chester Nimitz all agreed that Japan was defeated militarily. Former Ambassador to Japan for 10 years Joseph Grew who understood the Japanese mentality at the time felt the Japanese would surrender unconditionally if allowed to keep their emperor.
When presented to Truman he thought it a "sound idea" and ran it by the Joint Chiefs who also approved the proposal. However at the Potsdam conference that followed the stipulation to allow the emperor to retain power was omitted.
Truman wanted to drop the bomb in order to make the Russians more manageable as they had violated the Yalta agreement and felt they couldn't be trusted, not allowing democratic elections to take place in the countries they had liberated in Eastern Europe.
Even Winston Churchill was quoted as saying:
"The historic fact remains and must be judged in the after-time, that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue."
** That said, you are an embarrassment to your country. I'm going to take that google.ca link to mean that you are Canadian). I seriously doubt that you are sorry you had to bash America. **
On a different note, enlisted Canadian servicemen were horrifically mistreated by the Japanese while being held as prisoners of war. They were slowly being starved to death and overworked, and were due to be executed if it looked possible that their allies might liberate them. This order was overturned as a direct result of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans, and it was the Americans who initially looked after these mistreated men when the Japanese surrendered.
That you suspect something doesn't make it so, especially when you "suspect" something you've got no clue about: http://www.cbwinfo.com/Biological/Toxins/Botox.ht
Funny.
There's actually quite a bit of data about the danger of ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise coming into contact with plutonium. I'd start with ATSDR's PDF on plutonium biological effects.
And to start, I'd note that pretty much the entirety is consumed by discussions of the radiological toxic effects of plutonium, because the chemical toxicity is pretty much negligible by comparison.
Before you talk out of your ass and say things like "No one knows the danger of inhaling or contacting plutonium", make an attempt to look for things like MSDS or CDC's ToxFAQs, okay? Otherwise you just look like a tinfoil wearing paranoid crank.
Unless you like looking like what you obviously are, of course.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I don't think your optimisim regarding an American invasion of the home islands is justifed. The Americans had just finished with Okinawa, where the cost of capturing that small island was 70,000+ American casulaties (12,000 killed) along with over 100,000 Japaense military dealths and over 100,000 Japanese civilian deaths. Almost the entire Japanese military garrison was killed rather than surrender.
In my opinion (which is shared with the majority of military historians) an American invasion of the home islands and a Russian invasion of Manchuria would have cost far far more casulaties than the nuclear bombings did, not to mention more property destruction. While we will never know for sure, none of the evidence we have supports any kind of quick march on Tokyo that you envision.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
It's kind of weird seeing this article on /. considering that I just watched "The fog of war" on the weekend. I highly reccommend everyone watch it.
Anyway, the movie is 11 lessons from Robert S. McNamara. He was the secretary of defence for Kennedy, and was there for the cuban missle crisis. He also participated in fire bombing japan during WWII. It's interesting wisdom right from the horse's mouth.
One of the interesting lessons he has is that "There must be proportionality to war". In one night they had killed 100,000 people by firebombing bombing Tokyo. He addmitted that if the U.S. had lost WWII, he would have been charged and convicted of war crimes. Well, they then went on to firbomb 66 other japanese cities. In the end of it, they had killed more japanese civilians then the atomic bombs.
So after watching the movie. I was trying to figure out more depth to this lesson. As you point out they could have saved lives by killing hundreds (millions?) of thousands of people. It could easily be millions, remember 1 attack on Tokyo killed 100,000 people. With 66 more attacks, they could have reached the million people mark. I think his point is that if you're willing to drop a massive bomb and kill a shit load of people, you better be ready to have it done to you. It's the basis of Mutually Assured Destruction. If you kill a shit load of people you actually raise the bar of acceptable behavior in war.
So if it was acceptable to drop the bomb and firebomb japan. Would it have been acceptable to that being done to the U.S.?
-asoap
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Any invasion of Honshu would have had to pass by Kyushu, subjecting their flanks to attack (by suicide aircraft and boats). There were more than 2000 aircraft held in reserve in Honshu and about 1 million troops as well. As absurd as an invasion of Kyushu might seem to you, it was necessary to prevent more casualties. Hiroshima was the military command center controlling the defence of Kyushu and Shikoku.
Nagasaki perished because Kokura was overcast (Kokura was the primary target, Nagasaki was the secondary). Why Nagasaki? 2 very important reasons: it was a large port that would have been needed for the conventional invasion of Kyushu and it was the place that the special torpedos used in Pearl Harbor were made. Normal torpedos dropped by aircraft plunge to about 20-30 meters after splashing into the water (and would slammed into the bottom of Pearl Harbor if they had been dropped there), the ones made by Mitsubishi in Nagasaki were made to plunge to only 10 meters before leveling off. Never underestimate the power of revenge.
Scientists from Tokyo were in Hiroshima within 12 hours of the bomb dropping, and they knew what sort of weapon it was immediately. Why? They were working on their own. Japan was within 1 year of making their own atomic bombs when the war ended. The facilities used to make the components for theirs were located in Northen Korea.
If you think that the arguments in favor of the use of nuclear weapons were unjustified, you don't understand them, the cultures involved, nor the people involved. I recommend you read the following 2 books by Richard Rhodes: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and Dark Sun.
So what do you propose as an alternative? Blockade? Great, millions starving is SO much better than some cities being bombed.
Diplomatic pressure to surrender? This one is the hardest to really dismiss, as *everybody* wishes it had been possible. But for evidence against it, look what was happening. As of August, the cabinet had still not been able to even articulate their terms, or determine even approximately what to have their few, inept peace feelers communicate. Then, even AFTER the first bomb, the cabinet is still split over surrender. After the SECOND bomb, the cabinet still dithers, is convinced only by the personal intervention of the emperor, and a part of the military then even starts a coup to try to overturn the emperor for THAT!
The Russians invade? Augh, I don't know who would consider this to be a benefit - look at the results in the parts of Manchuria that the Soviets captured in 1945. Something like 20% of the civilian population went "missing". Realistically, would they treat the Japanese any better? Plus now Japan is another Korea, divided and ready for Cold War incidents?
Invasion by US/allies? Oh sure, 100,000 allied casualties on top of hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Again, millions of Japanese starve, since transportation system is wrecked.
So yeah, it was an awful thing, but it seems to have been the least awful of the realistic alternatives.
"At a climactic last Imperial Conference, War Minister Anami was still talking about going on with the war, of meting out a terrible blow to the enemy and achieving a good opportunity to end the war. Japan must press forward courageously, seeking Life in Death: certain victory was not assured, but neither was utter defeat. The terrain was working in favor of the defenders, and so was the inflexible national unity. But just in case a massive blow against the enemy proved not possible, it seemed appropriate for the name of Nippon to be inscribed forever in history by the annihilation of her 100 million loyal subjects, etc., etc. And tears welled into the eyes of the earnest War Minister"
Remember, this conference was after the SECOND bomb...
probably contributed significantly to the restraint exercised by the USA and the USSR, two countries that could have killed many tens of millions ouright in a nuclear war and many more later through its aftermath.
Soviet tactical plans for major cities were to use thermonuclear devices, then, a few days later, an arial spray of anthrax on any survivors. With the radiation exposure, a weakened immune system, and limited access to antibiotics, survial within 50 miles of the epicenter was estimated to be less then 1/10 of 1 percent. Tens of millions dead? Gross understatement. Who knows what the Americans had cooking.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I worked many moons ago in a lab that measured uranium loads in miners. The detectors were very sensitive - I was told by an older technician that they could even see the spikes in the background radiation after the Chinese atmospheric A-bomb tests in the 60's. However, the amount of radiation in the miners lungs was so small that readings were taken in a lead lined 8 inch steel chamber to screen out environmental radiation. We also had to account for the of the normal background radiation given off by humans, so we calibrated to unexposed subjects of about the same weight and build (lots of K40 in muscles). It still took us about an hour to get a decent signal.
However, if I remember correctly, the reason we were doing this was to ensure that the uranium burdens didn't get too high as there was a correlation between high burdens and lung cancer. Probably not due to the radiation - it seems unlikely with that low an amount but possibly through chemical or physical toxicity (like with asbestos...). Just saying that there *might* be some basis for some of the DU complaints...