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The Man Who Literally Saved the World
99luftballon writes "Today is an important anniversary for Russian hero Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet missile commander who saved the world from nuclear destruction in 1983. Sadly there are plenty of other examples of this kind of thing. How long will we keep getting lucky?"
If the same thing had happened now do you think people in other countries trust America enough that they would be confident that America hadn't launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike?
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
``How long will we keep getting lucky?''
I couldn't say it better than Sting:
What might save us, me, and you
Is that the Russians love their children too
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
``Frankly, the India/Pakistan development of a nuclear arsenol worries me more than what happened historically between the U.S. & Russia.''
What worries me is that, at some point, the Russian government wasn't able to pay all it's employees' wages. What does that say about a rich and determined party being able to acquire some of the stored weapons? Even if such a scenario is highly unlikely, I'm still more worried about that than about what a state with citizens and territory might do with nuclear weapons.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If there were no nuclear weapons, the world would be a safer place.
This is completely false.
If the number of deaths by war were plotted over the course of human history you would see a a line that increased every year and each year the increase grew steeper. Around 1945, by coincidence I'm sure, the number of deaths by war has dropped to about a million per year and it has stayed there ever since.
Nuclear weapons, as illogical as it may sound, save lives.
there is only one county in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons... twice... on civilians.
Case in point. Japan started the fight and they would not surrender. Very conservative estimates of an invasion of Japan's homeland put American deaths at a million and Japanese deaths as a multiple of that. As horrific the destruction caused by the 2 atomic bombs, those bombs saved American and Japanese lives.
Wow. The babysitter I hire for my kids was born in 1992.
Between you, she, and a host of the current MTV generation, you guys have no concept of:
The significance of the Berlin Wall - you used to be able to buy pieces of it when you were in grade school.
Life before the internet.
Life without cell phones.
A time when you couldn't buy telephones in the store - they had to be leased from the Bells and from their stores.
61 cents a minute to a town 90 miles away was the normal fee for intrastate long distance.
Life before VCRs; and yeah, the Wizard of OZ was on every Easter and that was your only chance to see it.
There was a smoking section in airplanes and the ashtrays in the arm rests used to open.
A time before the Space Shuttle.
A time when rocket trips to the moon were current events. My 6th birthday had the Apollo capsule on the cake.
A time before Star Wars.
A time when your local TV weatherman hosted a kids show on their station. It's kind of against regulations now.
And as far as I matter, Cuba has always been shut off to the US. I eagerly await the day when travel from the US will be allowed.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Case in point. Japan started the fight and they would not surrender. Very conservative estimates of an invasion of Japan's homeland put American deaths at a million and Japanese deaths as a multiple of that. As horrific the destruction caused by the 2 atomic bombs, those bombs saved American and Japanese lives.
Also consider Iraq. The Japanese were just about a militant as the Iraqies. Given even the limited industrial capacity of current iraq, they do a lot of damage to the US. Imagine a near technological peer beign just as militant, and you've invaded their home land. The bomb completely demoralized Japan. any hope of conditional surrender or resistance died. In Iraq, the militants are fairly certain the Us will not nuke them all so it has no effect and the US has the head aches they do now.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I also think Iraq has been invaded and North Korea hasn't been yet is due to North Korea having claimed to posses nuclear weapons and Iraq denying the same.
It's much more that the North Korea/South Korea border is the most heavily militarized location in the world. The US estimated that if we were to invade North Korea, there would be more than 50,000 casualties in the first three months of fighting.
Because both the United States and Russia blew up hundreds, if not thousands of atomic and hydrogen bombs during testing?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Adding to the reasons you have given, consider that the US had very valid concerns that Japan may be nearing completion of its own nuclear weapon . Immediately before Germany's fall, in May of 1945, U-234 (almost an ironic name) was captured by US forces. Its mission had been to transfer to Japan enough Uranium for two nuclear weapons, two fully disassembled ME-262's, full documentation of Nazi Germany's nuclear efforts to date, centrifuge technology, a V-2 rocket expert, etc.. While unknown at the time, the Japanese Navy may have even had a sneak attack capability against the mainland US in the form of the I-400 submarine aircraft carriers.
U-234 surrendered to US forces after the Germany's fall - but the US had to face the very real possibility that there had been other submarines that may not have surrendered. I guess my point is that you can't divorce the reality of the situation from the perception of the decision makers at the time. With some risk of attracting flames, some believe the same applies to the run-up to the Iraq war.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
problem is that would only work for twenty five minutes or so, then you've only released a few and after the first one hits the USSR you'd get thousands in return. Preemptive first strike has to be very massive and totally debilitating.
I think the misunderstanding lies in the disconnect between the civilian and military leadership in Japan. The ambassadors were negotiating terms of surrender, but that didn't necessarily mean that the military leaders in the country were ready to surrender.
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Did you read anything else from the article? The population was ready to revolt, and half of the military and civilian government were dead-set against continuing the war. They tried to establish diplomatic ties with Russia to save their country and avoid invasion; the US demanded unconditional surrender, the Japanese not surprisingly said "pass", but KEPT WORKING ON HOW TO END THE WAR. Christ, man! Read the article.
US history books make it out like they were rabid, crazed defenders of their almighty emperor that would have fought to the last man, and that our atomic bombs "shocked" them back to "reason" and "saved lives". It's all a blatant lie.
Please help metamoderate.