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How Nukes Were Almost Launched From Okinawa During Cuban Missile Crisis (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick writes: Aaron Tovish is calling on the U.S. government to release documents pertaining to one of the scarier incidents of the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to an Air Force airman, the system designed to prevent an accidental launch of nuclear weapons failed as the codes ordering a launch were given in each of the three transmissions required for a launch: "By Bordne's account, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Air Force crews on Okinawa were ordered to launch 32 missiles, each carrying a large nuclear warhead. Only caution and the common sense and decisive action of the line personnel receiving those orders prevented the launches -- and averted the nuclear war that most likely would have ensued."
Obligatory shout out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Nor can the meanness, paranoia, stupidity, psychosis, or evilness be replaced either.
Obligatory shout out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Well, while we're at it : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Elok
The two nuclear attacks on Japan basically ended any chance of World War III, and guaranteed that the Great Powers would never again become directly embroiled in a major war against each other. Yes, it's meant lots of proxy wars, but those are far preferable than a nuclear age version of the great wars of the past.
Nuclear weapons are the most profoundly successful peacemaker in history.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So, we have: a single-sourced story from a news source that has in the past been an advocate of the removal of the U.S. base from Okinawa, an anonymous verification source (and thus unable to be contacted for independent verification), and a reprinting of the story by the BoAS, which has long changed its tune to keep itself as being seen as relevant.
I'm surprised that this story was even allowed to be printed, as single-sourced stories are usually laughed out of the editors' offices. Even in this case, if you allow 2 sources, usually you'd need hard evidence, not just hearsay.
How does the expression go? "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? I don't see anything extraordinary here.
The two nuclear [] guaranteed that the Great Powers would never again become directly embroiled in a major war against each other.
Guaranteed? I don't think so. The future is a long, long time my friend.
Perhaps, but you do understand that so far it's been working for nearly 4 generations?
The future may be a long time, but anything that has worked for 70 years and has successfully reduced the number of the weapons in question is not a bad start.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Get rid of nuclear weapons altogether. They benefit no-one and endanger all of us.
Nuclear weapons have done more for peace than any other invention in the history of the human race. No-one can risk fighting a major war any more.
The downside, of course, is that if we ever do get into a nuclear war, we're screwed.
Which is why Japan immediately surrendered after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Oh, wait. No, they didn't.
You're twisting history to try to condemn something you dislike (the atomic bombings). The Allied forces had drafted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan and outlining how the Allies would treat Japan in exchange. Yes Japan was willing to surrender, but only if key provisions of the Potsdam Declaration were changed in their favor. In other words, they wanted to keep fighting to try to gain better terms for surrender.
By best accounts, the first bombing was met with disbelief among those in power in Imperial Japan. That the reports of the city being gone were inaccurate, or this was some sort of trick - a regular bombing raid and not just a single plane. They wanted to continue to fight, or negotiate for better terms of surrender. It took the second bombing (and the Soviets breaking their non-aggression pact and declaring war on Japan) to convince the emperor to overrule the hawks and surrender unconditionally. In fact there was even a rebellion by some of those hawks to try to take over the government after the surrender was announced.
There's a tendency for people to compare decisions like these against a vacuum. i.e. To compare the atomic bombings to if the bombs hadn't been dropped but the rest of history proceeded the exact same way. You can't compare to a vacuum like that. For those of us who grew up in countries which were occupied by Japan at the time, we were living in a hell of subjugation, inhumane treatment, and executions. Japanese soldiers forced my grandmother to watch as they raped and killed her sister and niece, all to coerce my grandfather (a doctor) into treating their commanding officer. Any act which might shorten that hell was justifiable. For people in the occupied territories, the atomic bombings meant liberation. Roughly 15% of the people killed in the Hiroshima bombing were Koreans brought over to Japan for slave labor. Aside from the lack of recognition (they're classified as Japanese deaths because Korea didn't exist as a country at the time) Korea has never complained about those deaths. Because as a price of liberation, those deaths were worth it.
10-15 million civilians were killed during the Japanese occupation. That works out to an average of about 150,000 killed by the Japanese each month. If the atomic bombings shortened the war by just 2 months, it was worth it purely on those numbers alone (never mind the number who would've been killed in an invasion of the Japanese mainland). That's the context you have to compare the bombings against. Japan likes to play the "innocent" victim in the atomic bombings, but they weren't innocent. They were guilty as hell of a mass extermination on the order of the Holocaust in Europe. Hastening the end of that extermination was completely justified.