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U.S. Offers Glimpse at Manhattan Project Facility
jonerik writes "According to this article from the Associated Press, the US government is this week permitting the public a rare glimpse of its high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant as part of Oak Ridge, Tennessee's annual Secret City Festival, which is being held this coming weekend. Although the plant is still associated with ongoing nuclear weapons work, members of the public will be permitted to see parts of the facility associated with its work on the Manhattan Project's 'Little Boy' bomb, which was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The facility produced the uranium-235 which was used in the device using 1,152 massive calutrons across nine separate buildings in 1944 and 1945. 'Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world was going on out here,' Department of Energy guide Ray Smith said on Monday. 'All this material was coming in, truckload after truckload, and nothing ever left.'"
"Nothing to see here, move along."
Scary in relevance to this.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Key point: Don't read article titles too fast
Sounds like it will be a bomb!
-Sj53
-20 lame, i know... someone had to say it though
Will the festival include a barbeque?
Is this really a good idea? I'm just imagining local Al Qaeda operatives on the tour...
"so again, to separate out the U235, the electromagnetic coils need approximately a 45KVA power supply - correct?"
"Could you tell me roughly how many camels on treadmills that works out to?"
If some half-wit accidentally walks into a restricted area and gets hungry, they might accidently push the button marked "lunch."
Man, I have quite a few paid leave days to spend and this would have been a great geek opportunity to spend part of them...being a science/history geek, this would have been a nice thing to visit.
It's not like we find any reason to visit Tennessee these days...
I thought they'd been doing tours round this plant for many years.
A few years ago I went on a 'bizzare places' tour round the states and this was one of the places on the agenda.
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to go on the tour round Y-12, but they were doing daily trips from the science & technology museum in nearby oakridge.
Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world was going on out here,' Department of Energy guide Ray Smith said on Monday. Is it just me, or is that a little confusing in print?
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
"Although the plant is still associated with ongoing nuclear weapons work, members of the public will be permitted to see parts of the facility..."
Is it really necessary to build even more nukes?
after all, there is only 1 nation that has ever used them on people. that should be scary enough not to build them. whats even more scarier, it really wasnt even necessary to nuke japan since the war was practically over. the only reason was to test the weapon while still in war (to make it more acceptable).
and btw, why is it that north korea and iran are not allowed to build any while some are allowed to build as many as they like?
the world spends more money on weapons than ever before, even during the cold war. what a lousy place this has become, money dictating peoples lives.
Is it not a bit awry that we are allowing tours through the building where a bomb that killed thousands of people was built? I mean, it isn't exactly a tour of an art museum, or a place like the White House. It's just kind of odd.
Did someone say Secret City?
Draw draw draw!
haha. 22 posts in the time it took me to type "bomb builds you". ::high-five:: for trying. ;)
What really happened down at Oakridge
This site is only missing a picture of this guy (http://radiation.szm.com/Killian/Images/falloutbo y.gif).
I actually know someone who works at that facility (well, he started there a number of months ago). Wonder what he thinks of this...he's asleep right now :-(
seriously though, it's not like the trucks drove there and stayed. They left, and unless they were uncovered, people couldn't tell what was coming and going.
or else!
- we all know the U235 came from the German sub U-234, originally destined for Japan. If it had made it there, the japs would have had the bomb first.
- atomic-program
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Japanese
"And you are dying so slowly, you believe to be living" - Bertrand Besigye
Same here.
Looks like they're still trying to draw attention aways from the real issues like Roswell and The Kennedy Assassination. However I must be brief even as I type people are homing in on me, the only thing stopping them from finding me is my Aluminum headware.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
'Little Boy' bomb, which was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 ...and killed approximately 70,000 people.
The article is so full of technical description that it tends to forget the main purpose of a bomb, that's frightening. Whatever the bomb indirectly acquieved (peace), I'm not sad that I won't be able to attempt the visit.
History Channel's Modern Marvels: The Manhattan Project
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
big lifetime achievment of developing more and more weapons and mankind developing more and more evil feelings and actions towards each other...
... the only thing mankind brought to perfection
big news, mankind is more savage than ever before...
you can really be proud. humanity doesnt deserve any better.
kill kill kill
(I grew up in Oak Ridge and can vouch that this is actually a very on-topic post). For those not in the know, Big Ed's Pizza is probably the biggest attraction in Oak Ridge outside of the Oak Ridge National Labs and Y-12/K-25 complexes. Many of my friends have been walking around various cities around the world while wearing a Big Ed's t-shirt and had people come up to them asking if they were from Oak Ridge and then relating their own stories of eating at Big Ed's. I was driving through Alabama a few years ago and met someone who was in the Marines with Big Ed. (Big Ed was, quite appropriately, a World War II veteran. He was also quite large of heart, supporting the local Boys' and Girls' Club, various clubs at Oak Ridge High School, and providing employment for many teenagers in Oak Ridge.) Big Ed's Pizza is indeed still there. Big Ed himself, unfortunately, is not (he passed away in 1998). But there are still massive crowds there most of the time, especially after football games at Blankenship Field. I usually have dinner or lunch there with some of my high school friends when I'm in town.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a great view of early Soviet nuclear work at Mayak starting in the late 1940's9 9larin
9 9larin
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so
"expensive apparatuses were more valuable than the people who operated them"
"it was common to clean up spills of radioactive solutions by hand. It seems strange now, but the possibility of spills was not anticipated, and there was no way to collect spilled solution safely. We had only wash cloths, buckets, and sometimes, rubber gloves. We collected the spilled solution and poured it into big glass bottles--it was a very expensive compound and we were expected to recover every drop."
"leaks happened there they sometimes lost as much as three tons of highly radioactive product. To collect those spills with wash cloths was impossible."
"several hundred kilograms of freshly irradiated nuclear fuel got stuck--men from everywhere in the plant were called out, and one after another they used long steel rods to push the elements into the apparatus. The only protection they had was cotton overalls and gloves"
Enjoy
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so
You should be more afraid of the local Homer Simpson visiting the facility....
I can vouch for the awesomeness that is Big Ed's Pizza. I'm living in Oak Ridge right now, but I grew up in Clinton.. Big Ed's house was about a quarter mile from where I lived. It was a sad day when he passed.
I live about half a mile from the Y-12 facility. Some guys from work and I got together to tour their place a few weeks ago to view their network infrastructure. They've got a HUGE room full of Crays. It was pretty loud in there, as to be expected. One of the less polite of the guys I was with had the nerve to ask one of their network admins what he made.. 37 grand and no benefits, because very few of them actually work for Y-12. That was a surprise. From what I saw, most everything there is AMD and Nvidia. Their preferred Linux is SuSE for some reason.. to each their own I suppose. For anyone who may want to make the trip, drop me a line and I'll let you know of some other interesting things to do around here. For anyone bringing their family, there's a park (Commerce Park, I think it's called) right next to Y-12 with a nice little picnic/fishing area. I'm rambling.
the parent writes: 'Keep in mind this is the japanese we are talking about not the french, they will die before they surrender. They are still finding japanese soldiers who refused to surrender.'
to extrapolate from individual characteristics (even culturally shared ones) to political/military outcomes, or even aggregate behaviour, is a fallacy.
this is like the old story of people saying that we have wars because it's 'human nature', when in fact while 'human nature' may give us the capacity to be soldiers (as well as to not be), it is ultimately *politicians* who start wars, not average people--average people just participate in them (and can escalate them through their participation).
equally, while you may say that because of some shared cultural characteristic japanese soldiers were less likely to give up the fight once they were involved in it, this does not imply that the japanese political/military elite would have had incentives to continue fighting no matter what. you cannot treat all japanese as if they had the same incentive structure.
the average japanese soldier was motivated by a belief in the emperor, the japanese nation, following orders and carrying out his duty. but what was the emperor motivated by? what were the generals motivated by? and when you put them all together, what is the systematic behaviour? it's not the same thing.
japan did in fact realise that it was losing, and while it is true that the average soldier probably would have fought to the death (just as many people would fight to the death defending their country, or what they see as their country's right), this does not imply that people making decisions would have taken them on the basis of 'death before defeat'. clearly this was shown not to be the case by the japanese surrender. there is absolutely nothing in the history that indicates that they would not have surrendered had it not been for the atomic bomb being dropped. what makes the atomic bomb somehow override japanese people's supposed character of wanting to fight to the death, where other means do not?
'Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world was going on out here'
The USA way of saying "Wir haben es nicht gewusst"?
My karma ran over your dogma
How can anyone still believe in propaganda like this? That the entire population of a country is evil, that they are freedom-hating fanatics who will fight to the last man, woman and child?
Not being a 'civilian' doesn't equal being Evil. You're the one bringing archetypes into the deal. I'm military. I don't necessarily consider my opponents evil, though I'd kill them just the same, because they're the enemy.
On the other hand, there are videos and documentation showing arms-caches and propaganda aimed towards using the populace(including women and older children) to repel invasion.
Oh, and according to the conventions, even civilians are legal targets if they're contributing to the war effort. To that end, if you're producing bullets, bombs, arms, vehicles, etc, you're a legal. You're still legal even if you're producing food, clothing, etc for military use.
Thus, the point that the cities were being used for military purpose made them targets.
Whether, in hindsight, it was needed or not, well, I'd have to say that in this case, not even hindsight is 20/20. There's been just too much spin-doctoring on both sides.
I don't read AC A human right
It's unfortunate that Big Ed's Pizza sucks now that he's passed away as does the rest of Oak Ridge. People there are still living in the past and think the government will come back and give everyone jobs again.
Only if you're prepared to go fishing daily. And catch more with the net than the line.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This is the coolest place to go visit - would have been a seat of government for the uk during a nuclear war scenario. Lots of cool stuff to see.
...
Hack Green
Home page
Not quite on the scale of this one but I thought someone here might find this of use.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Some of the people on here are so liberal that they're offended by the realities of everyday life. There's nothing wrong with having pride in your country and admiring its war machines.
I'm surprised that these people aren't ashamed of being human or living in the country they do, because after all, humans fought their way to the top of the food chain and their ancestors surely took the country they live in by force from someone else. Fighting, natural selection- it's all part of nature. No matter how evolved people think they are, they still cannot break free of the most simple rules of mother nature.
- This may bell be just a PR campaign to make the place look better. Lots of things you won't hear on the tour:
- The calutrons were basically a FAILURE-- they only put out about 10% of the expected U235-- the rest they smeared all over the place, and not in the collection bucket. Once the gas diffusion plant got running the calutrons were relegated to secondary status. Being extremely expensive and inefficient to boot, they were shut down ASAP after the war.
- They were built mostly due to Lawrence's reputation in building the cyclotron, not on any technical merit.
- Ask about when the building had most of the world's mercury flowing through its pipes. And how much got lost. A DOE report says: "A 1983 study by USDOE estimates that 733,000 pounds of elemental mercury were released to the environment in the 1950s and 1960s around the Y-12 Plant. Most of the contamination around Y-12 is confined to the upper 10 feet of soils and fill. Additional studies revealed that some 170,000 pounds of mercury are contained in the sediments and floodplain of about a 15-mile length of East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC), which has its headwaters at Y-12, and that some 500 pounds of mercury annually leave this watershed." ( i.e.: don't smoke the grass)
- Ask about the nearby sites where they dumped tons of radioactive waste right into the creeks and hollers.
Just MHO but his would be one of the LAST places on Earth I'd care to visit....is Israel's nuke facility! :D
Rape of Nanking
"Troubling" he says...
Watch out for suspicious looking teenagers joining your tour party and smuggling themselves onto the bus.
Party Time: Excellent
I also grew up in a community surrounding Oak Ridge. The government facilities there provided many jobs for my grandfather and his generation after they returned from WW2. These jobs had an extreme impact upon the surrounding communities in that they provided the very poor families in East TN jobs and the ability to escape poverty and move up to middle class status. This opportunity has lasted even until now. My grandfather and others like him died from exposure to the materials produced in Oak Ridge. The government is now providing families of those men and women restitution for their services. My wife's family alone recieved well over $200k from the government. Not only did the work that went on in Oak Ridge put an end to the greatest war ever waged, it also gave many families a chance for survival. Now ORNL is working on many things, even Glassy Steel! http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v38_1_05/artic le17.shtml
Your quote strikes a chord "Japan had a bunch of religious nutcases in control and the bombs shocked everyone back to reality."
But who is shocking whom?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Even more relevant:
"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization." -- John O'Hara
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I think a contributing factor was that the whole of the French defensive system (most famously the Maginot line) was designed, after the first world war, without expecting air attacks. The whole of the German 'blitzkrieg' strategy was based on starting with concerted air bombardment, and therefore flew right over the French defenses.
French tanks may have been superior, but the German strategy was based on a combined air/ground war, while France was not anticipating the air aspect.
Long after the Republic of Ireland gained its independence, despite the fact that the vast, vast majority of northern ireland citizens wanted to remain part of the UK, the IRA, 'fighting' for a united ireland by murdering civilians, was *still* viewed as 'freedom fighters' by many Americans, and much of its funding came (and still comes) from America.
I think its interesting that it wasn't until after someone bombed the US that Americans started getting really anti-terrorist, but before that, they were, in many ways due to their support of the IRA, pro-terrorist. I remember the bombing of canary warf... not so different from the bomb attack on the WTC, eih?
Big Ed's pizza isn't anything special besides the fact that they replace the tomato sauce with molten lava. This leaves you with a typical Big Ed's 3rd degree burn in your mouth and you can't eat anything for several days. They're also really paranoid about security...they have 15-20 security cameras for the 15 tables in the restraunt.
I think a better restaurant in Oak Ridge WAS Buffalo Grille....their Y-12 hot wing sauce was arguably the hottest food you can probably get at a restaurant anywhere....definitely a legal liability on their part. That stuff burned going in you and would burn for days coming out.
I don't know why you are trying to insult me for. You can't hurt my feelings. You're just wasting your time and proving that you're fat-loving /. retard.
This argument is too abstract. The battles on and around Midway and Iwo Jima involved extreme difficulties and high casualty rates because the Japanese forces really did fight often to the last which is unusual and notable. Fire bombing raids on other cities such as Tokyo had actually caused even bigger atrocities already by igniting firestorms. The expected alternative was an invasion beginning at Okinawa that was projected to have a vast cost in money, material, and human life.
As for the Japanese mind set at the time, some people knew of problems, but that Japan was loosing was not broadly known. Also, there were various preparations for extreme reactions to invasion including civilian resistance and suicide when alternaves ran out. Ending the war with devastating force very likely saved Japanese lives.
And let's be honest about the impact of nukes. Yes, some people got incinerated or poisoned by radioactivity, but with the introduction of nuclear weapons the impact of war, which had only ever grown worse over time, was for the first time not only reduced, but effectively minimized. Nuclear weapons are awful things, but they have tamed our thirst for conflict like nothing else before or since.
I highly doubt that they're going to give out plans on building your own nuke
Of course thy won't be giving them away, the gift shop is planning boming revenues from these plans along with several other key products:
Wasn't it "Fat Boy", and then "Little Man"?
The article called the bomb "Little Boy". America does need more history classes it seems.
"Clark's Park" (actually Clark Center Park) has a swimming area and you can fish and swim all you wish. The restricted water is on the East Fork of Popular Creek, which originates in the plant and flows through town. The major concern is actually mercury, not radiation.
America....FUCK YEAH!!!!
Perhaps one day idiots like you will understand that an attacked nation is under no obligation to risk any more of its citizens lives then is necessary to end a conflict. The atomic bomb both ended the war and saved American lives and thus its use was just.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
As a Canadian, and a retired Canadian soldier at that, thanks for noticing our contribution at Normandy - and I say that without irony; the fact that Canada had a Normandy beach all to itself, and was in fact the only country to reach its D-Day objectives, is sadly often overlooked.
:) But please don't assume we're an American puppet state, militarily - we are not.
But your comment "I don't think Canada would have had that level of involvement without US cooperation" is well off the mark.
Historically, Canadians don't give a fig about what the US does when it comes to going to war. We are our own independant country, and we make our own decisions.
We joined WW1 and WW2 within a couple of days of both wars starting, and in both cases Canadians were busy fighting and dying well in advance of any American involvement.
Even in the case of war material Canadians have gone it their own if they had to. In WW1 we brought the Canadian made Ross rifle (sadly, a steaming hunk of shit and a political boondoggle) and we started WW2 with our own tank, the Ram (design elements of which eventually made it into the vastly superior Sherman) When US material, usually much cheaper to obtain rather than building it ourselves, became availble we'd use it, but having access to US equipment was never a precondition to Canada going to war.
In fact, it's interesting to see which wars Canada has chose to get involved in, and which ones it chose to avoid. I think we have a pretty good batting average when it comes to finding the just ones:
WW1, WW2, Korea, Gulf War 1, and Afganistan we all get into immediately. Vietnam and Gulf War 2 we purposely pass on.
And then there's all those UN peacekeeping missions: Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti....
Anyway, thanks for noticing our proud military heritage. We think we've done OK over the years.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
So what did they do with the 99% of the load they couldn't use? Is there a big mountain of it inside the facility?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
One of the things I've always thought the Americans got right, and could be justifiably proud of, was how they rebuilt both Germany and Japan after WW2.
While not _completely_ innocent of a Machiavelllian scheming (what is, in politics?) the effort to NOT seek revenge by punishing the enemy, and instead to do everything possible to rebuild their economies and get them back on their own, *independant* feet, I think was one of the wisest political decisions made in human history. The contribution to the stability and well-being of the world since is incaluable.
The sad thing is that it appears that the lesson learned there has been forgotten. Can you imagine what the world would be like today, if the US had, instead of invading Iraq, chosen to bring the Marshall Plan to Afganistan?
Not only would the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people been improved (an absolute good in of itself) an America that chose to treat Afganistan benevolently, that rebuilt industry and infrastructure and got the country cleaned up and back on its feet, would have torn the heart out of the support base for the people who attacked the US in the first place. It's hard to get people to hate the guy whose making your life better....
Ah well.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
...and the Ostrich Burger was to die for...
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
...had the dirtiest hands at the time. Japan picked the fight with the USA, and indeed suffered grave consequences for it, but look where the healing of time and the resulting postwar relationship with the USA has now positioned Japan in the world. Most Japanese that I know today however are thankful for the way things have turned out for them in the long run.
Germany's hands are probably the dirtiest of all IMHO because of what they did to the Jews. FYI, I am half German, my dad was an American soldier in the war and my mother was German. They met at the end of the war during the occupation, so I am a direct product of WW2, without it I wouldn't even exist. My German side of the family were not nazis, or supporters of the party, but they certainly weren't active opponents either. In reality, they couldn't have done much to oppose the party either had they wanted to, they were simply there cuaght up in the midst of the turmoil. What burns me up most about the Germans however, is that today they are mostly thankless for the US keeping the Soviets from assimilating them during the years of the cold war. They even have their country back as a whole unit much more quickly that it would have eventually happened naturally, primarily because of Ronnie Raygun. Even my relatives who are living in Germany acknowledge this yet feel no gratitude toward the US, only disdain. Someday when the muslim problem (and it's definitely coming, have no doubt about that) begins to grow into serious grief for Germany (and France and the rest of western Europe) beyond what they can handle themselves, there will be much debate in America whether or not to help bail them out... but ultimately we will.
tm
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Oh, what a romantic vision, those hard working people designing a bomb to kill Japanese civilians -- needlessly, when one considers that the Japanese gov't was frantically trying to make peace at the time of the bombing.
:-(
But our nationalistic historical revisions never remember General Leslie Groves' words, the military commander of the WWII Manhattan Project: "There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis."
Or even WWII journalist and author Studs Terkel's comments: "Why did we drop [the atomic bombs]? So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we've got the cards. That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we've got something and they'd better behave themselves in Europe. That's why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they'll spit in your eye."
Instead, we use such nostalgic "tourist attractions" to build up the PR for another new generation of nuclear weapons that the US is more eager than ever to use.
The Oak Ridge Reservation comprises X-10, Y-12 and K-25 plants.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was a predominantly civilian research facility based at X-10, and a little bit of Y-12.
The Y-12 Plant, as an institution, on the other hand, was predominantly concerned for decades with the manufacture of the fusion secondaries for thermonuclear weapons. It's the secondary (H-bomb) part which has the really secret and high tech bits.
I worked at ORNL a number of years ago, and my office was in the unclassified Y-12 side.
Inside the (electric security) fence was the nuclear bits. These days, it is the "Fort Knox" of highly enriched uranium.
It does not at all look very "high tech", compared to any modern industrial engineering plant it seems pathetically ugly, dull and dreary, a cross between a chemical plant and a Soviet-style apartment block, and neither of which was updated since 1947 or so. One of the most unpleasant physical environments to work in.
Try toxic waste, fumes, etc. Then try cancer and death, then try thousands of people on the other side of the globe.
Try toxic waste, fumes, etc. Then try cancer and death, then try thousands of dead people on the other side of the globe.
Am I the only one who got the Far Out Space Nuts reference? I thought so. And you people say you love Adam Quark.
During WWII, my grandfather was teaching physics to Navy cadets at Murray State College in western Kentucky, as part of the War Department's "90-Day Wonder" program. They'd take cadets out of basic training who'd had some college experience, and give them technical training before putting them in charge of engineering battallions, or other technical posts.
Grandfather (a civilian) actually wanted to enlist in the regular military, but was always told by the temporary military commander of this civilian school, "Uncle Sam needs you right here, teaching these cadets." Finally he gave up, decided they were right, and resigned himself to what he was best at, being a small-town physics teacher.
Immediately he starts getting draft notices in the mail. In frustration he showed the notices to the commander, who telephoned his own superiors and according to my grandfather, "Just started cussing." After five minutes, he hangs up.
The next thing my grandfather knows, he receives another notice, no return address, telling him to take a train from Murray to a town he'd never heard of near Knoxville, and not to tell anybody where he was going.
Grandfather arrived at Oak Ridge, which in his telling was hardly a town, with knee-deep mud in the streets. He asked where the town hall was (this is where he was supposed to meet his contact) but no one would say a word to him. Finally he joined in a boy's game of marbles, and found out from the children where the place was.
From the town hall, he was whisked into the nascent Oak Ridge plant, and interviewed for some hours about his background, and his knowledge of physics (which I remember was heavy on practical knowledge, but medium on sophisticated theory.)
After the meeting was over, they wouldn't let him leave the plant for several more hours, as his paperwork had gone missing during the interview.
Grandfather decided that Oak Ridge was no place to raise my three year-old father, took the train back to Murray, and went straight back to teaching those Navy cadets (and then the GI Bill veterans, after the war, and then their children.)
He died in 1996, without ever knowing the job description for which he'd been so meticulously interviewed.
Now the story about the class of graduating cadets "replacing" his entire set of "civilian" demonstration apparatus by standing at attention and presenting him with a chalkboard eraser tied to a piece of string will have to wait for another Offtopic post....
RIP, Granddaddy.
LC Manley asked if there had been problems with frogs, especially at ORNL. Gordon Blaylock answered that frogs would get into pond 3513, a waste disposal pond, and reproduce. The sediment and water in the pond contained relatively high levels of radionuclides from the waste disposal system. As the frogs matured from tadpoles to adult frogs, they were exposed to relatively high levels of radionuclides. The adult frogs, which contained high body burdens of radionuclides would leave the pond and were run over in the street or stepped-on on the sidewalk.
Quoted from http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/oakridge/meet/pha/m1_ 20_04.html
Oh yeah the poor Japanese, they just wanted peace.
I suppose they hand out a questioneer before letting you enter:
1) Are you an agent of a foreign power? (y/n)
2) Are you a terrorist? (y/n)
3) Are you an IAEA inspector (y/n)
4) Did you vote for Jimmy Carter (y/n)
5) Have you ever read any works by Linus Pauling (y/n)
If you resopnded 'Y' to any of the above, please step out of the tour line, and onto the bus for Gitmo. Thank you, and continue to write your congresssman for more WMDs.
Brought to you by the government that used Smallpox to wipe out tens of millions of natives.
So why is it that "could's" are always used to support the incineration of children in Japan?
I think it was modded down not because it was inflammatory but because our Gung-Ho "patriot" moderators were made uncomfortable by the argument.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Well, they did after their cities were firebombed and burned to the ground, their Navy sunk and the gains they made in the war largely reversed...
The point is, they knew they were beaten and wanted to end the war. The US ended the war -- on the same conditions the Japanese were proposing through third parties -- but only after nuking two cities to show the Soviet Union how ruthless and "mighty" the US was.
Would you have wanted to fight the Russians?
Wrong. Hirohito and the military knew about that city's destruction later that day, but were paralyzed by indecision. Hirohito did not meet with his supreme war council until about 11 a.m. Aug. 9, within minutes of when the second bomb fell on Nagasaki. Another choice quote: "The Japanese military did not want people to know about the atomic bomb," said Tsuia Etchu, founder of Nagasaki's Atomic Bomb museum. Etchu was an army officer in the city of Fukuoka when the bomb fell.
It stands to reason that the military didn't want people to know that America had these superweapons, so that people would still have some delusion about fighting to the death and taking as many American's with them as possible.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Oh my god. I finally got a freak. My UID is 115173 and I FINALLY GOT A FREA
Er. Sorry. Anyway:
This is the problem with history: We only exist in one world-line. We are forever plagued by what might have been, what could have been, what should have been. However, when I look around, while I find that I do not live in the Best of All Possible Worlds, I find the one I'm in isn't too bad. There is work that could be done and it looks like it will get done, in time.
Power and Wisdom must go hand in hand. To see an example of what happens when they do not go hand in hand, just look at our current President.
However, wisdom is cold and calculating. Ideally, we use our hearts to see what should be done, and then we wisely choose a course, and use our power to make it so. We had to have Japan surrender, and unconditionally. No other option would truely get the point across. Cultural differences.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
There is an article here describing the various services' ideas as to how to end the war with Japan. It says the U.S. Army wanted to invade, and the U.S. Navy wanted to blockade and use U.S. Army Air Force strategic bombers to end the war. Note that the planners didn't know about the Manhattan Project, and made plans that didn't involve atomic weaponry.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton