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Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified For First Time (gwu.edu)
HughPickens.com writes: Scott Shane writes in the NY Times that the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States' potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China. The Strategic Air Command study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and "friendly forces and people" to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the "systematic destruction" of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted "population" in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.
The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."
The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."
And the US military posts in West Berlin were OK with that?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788
We were fucking lucky we never blew ourselves up or kicked off our own automatic response plan built with no way to de-escalate.
A nuclear weapon is an effective deterrent. Without them, you can be invaded or can be subject to total war, which is almost unthinkable if you have them. With them, invading you is a much, much bigger risk. The stockpile is too big--the sheer size creates a security nightmare--but you want at least some. Whether you need enough to make nuclear war unwinnable is a closer question.
Also, the world should probably always have a few, even if they're locked in a drawer somewhere. Because aliens.
> The Strategic Air Command study includes chilling details
This faux pearl-clutching is a joke or just the side effect of ignorance. Every country's targets have included high-population areas that include infrastructure and manufacturing, as described. Why would this be chilling? It's pragmatic.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Indeed. East-Berlin alone was programmed to get 91 nuclear bombs on their heads.
The Germans are not amused.
you are ever only given what you can take.
not a concern since the cities will be targeted anyway (laughing at some rose-colored glasses wearers here to think that is still not doctrine for all out war)
You do know in warfare the silo doors are blasted open with explosives, not mechanically opened?
Mecca, with the Kaaba at 0,0,0. Probably added on 9/12/2001.
....Less than 100 years ago we were, and we did carpet bomb cities and nuke cities into the ground....Our new-found humanity prevents us from committing some horrible atrocities...
In the Second World War, we were fighting enemies who also carpet bombed cities and targeted civilian populations. Two examples: the Germans carpet bombed Rotterdam then later London. The Japanese carpet bombed Chongqing in China. The British didn't start targeting German cities until after the London Blitz.
If we fought against Al Qaeda and ISIS like we fought against Germany and Japan, those organizations would not exist and new similar organizations would not take there place.....
That is an assumption that you are making. As you stated, we are not fighting nation states, but we are fighting a political ideology that is promoted by several terrorist organizations and lots of self-radicalized individuals. I don't see how targeting civilian populations in the middle east would ensure peace. It would for one thing result in a mass exodus of refugees headed to Europe and it would wreck the already fragile economies in these countries. Paradoxically it would strengthen ISIS and other similar organizations; they would proclaim themselves to be the protector, and would have no opposition once the educated middle class (who knows better) packs up and leaves. What is needed to end these conflicts are legitimate political solutions, not incoherent tactics based upon false assumptions.
But it would likely take the slaughter of tens of millions of innocents, which we are no longer able to accept.
That is a good thing. Especially if the slaughter of innocents has no benefit whatsoever.
In the fascinating and disturbing BBC documentary "The Trap: F**k You Buddy", Adam Curtis outlines how the field of modern economics, specifically that which relies on game theory and systems analysis, is tightly related to the type of military analysis implied in the document referred to in the parent post. Both modern quantitative economics and military analysis use mathematical models based on game theory to cold bloodedly analyze human life and death. Most people don't realize that the same mode of thought that brought us fire bombing and potential nuclear apocalypse also brought us the Chicago School of Economics.
The BBC documentary series "The Trap" utilizes rare footage from the BBC archives that you will not see anywhere else. I highly recommend watching it. More of us need to stare the unpleasant reality of the modern world in the face if we are to get out of our current malaise. In the end, the truth shall set you free.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
look it up, minuteman missile silos for example had explosive charges to horizontally move the door away before launch
>> unfortunately the weapons are not yet history
As someone who's lives in a world that's been without a global war for 70 years, I'm actually quite happy that nuclear weapons are still around.
A great book explaining of the history of the cold war. And how lucky the world was.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
....Less than 100 years ago we were, and we did carpet bomb cities and nuke cities into the ground....Our new-found humanity prevents us from committing some horrible atrocities...
In the Second World War, we were fighting enemies who also carpet bombed cities and targeted civilian populations. Two examples: the Germans carpet bombed Rotterdam then later London. The Japanese carpet bombed Chongqing in China. The British didn't start targeting German cities until after the London Blitz.
The Allies didn't start targeting German cities until after the Blitz because they could only do so once the Luftwaffe had gutted itself on the Blitz and Operation Barbarossa/ subsequent Western Front campaigns. The Luftwaffe lost over 2200 aircraft during the Blitz and had an additional 2700 aircraft tasked for Barbarossa (there were only 2-3 months between the 2 events). With all of those aircraft at the Luftwaffe's disposal they would have made the Allies' bombing campaigns much more difficult. During the Blitz and the early years of the war England was focused solely on defense. It was never about morals or ethics, it was about realities and capabilities.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
See, this kind of shit is why nukes were invented to begin with.
The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big.
No, it didnt. The US had a firm understanding that every missile the soviet union posessed, every single ICBM since the mid seventies, contained between 10 and 32 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. Each missile could impact more than a dozen cities with a near perfect mortality rate. The folly of the cold war wasnt in numbers, it was that those numbers in the context of the power of a nuclear bomb were meaningless. MAD didnt ensure peace, it only assured we found more creative, clever means of inching closer to destruction. It was brinksmanship of the cuban missile crisis that ultimately caused the US to back away from the bomb and in turn pull their missiles from Turkey.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Any chance that the gloriously titled "World Targets in Megadeaths" folder from Dr. Strangelove has a real-world counterpart?
of course cities would be targeted in all out nuclear war
This document isn't about an all out nuclear war. This is describing what a nuclear country would do to a country that could not effectively retaliate with nuclear weapons. In 1956 the US still had a massive nuclear advantage and far more access to air strips that could hit the heart of the USSR. There were no intercontinental missiles or nuclear equipped submarines on either side yet.
Eventually it made sense for the US to target civilian centers as part of mutually assured destruction. But in 1956 the United States using nuclear weapons on Russian non-military targets would have been little different than them using nuclear weapons on Iraq in the 90's.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I have trouble believing it was all luck. There were a lot of safeguards.
Some things went wrong but there was never escalation into a nuclear attack. Seems like it all worked out. Is that luck?
I don't know the answer for sure, no one does, but I think we may, in the interests of making a political statement, skew the analysis somewhat.
Holy nuclear winter, Batman!
Yet another reminder about why we need space programs to get colonies of people off Earth.
Not only will having more places available serve as backup for humanity, but it will also ease the strain of conflict over locations as many people would want to leave for proverbially greener pastures.
Or maybe if taking the pessimistic view, let's hurry up and destroy ourselves before we spread elsewhere.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and "friendly forces and people" to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout.
Along with an enormous amount of heat, thereby ending the 'cold' part of the war.
Unless ... they had cold fusion bombs all along, the plans for which I bet they buried in the declassified information! Finally, a room-temperature mechanism for producing city-scale energy -- truly, this is a great day for the world.
no Soviets (or Russians now) would be using nukes on our civilian targets because we'd be doing the same to them, evil on both sides
not news that ground bursts make fallout, look at projections made in 80s and 90s of the high and heavy rad areas from silo busting. plenty of big cities killed, to say nothing of most our farmland rendered useless for a while
But we were expecting the soviets to target cities in late 50s with bombers and missiles, hence the Nike Hercules program
Atrocities and genocides have been happening in war torn areas of the world right up to the present day; it's just that nobody reads the news anymore.
I am not aware of military atrocities even close to the scale of nuking cities committed by western nations, let alone the United States, in the past 50 years. And I do read the news.
If the West gets into a total war situation again, you'll see the same atrocities that happened in WWII and WWI re-enacted on a grand scale.
I guess my point is that the US of 1945 would have nuked Vietnam, but the US of 1960 did not. The US was not in total war against a country threatening invasion in either situation, but the tactics used were very different.
When the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, they were arguably no longer in a total war situation with Japan. They simply needed to get a crippled country to completely capitulate. Going after primarily civilian targets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not the type of tactics the western world uses anymore to get enemies to surrender. We don't even carpet bomb cities with standard munitions like we did in both Japan and Germany after the outcomes of both wars were decided.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
That is an assumption that you are making. As you stated, we are not fighting nation states, but we are fighting a political ideology that is promoted by several terrorist organizations and lots of self-radicalized individuals.
People forget we were fighting a very religiously radicalized country in WWII as well. ISIS atrocities are hardly even comparable to those committed by Japan during WWII. Japan killed millions of Asians, perhaps even over 10 million (estimates vary). Their fanaticism rose to the level not only mass murder of civilians but also suicide bombing.
I agree I can only make assumptions, but history shows even fanatics can be beaten into submission by a determined enough enemy.
That said, I think it would be unthinkable for the United States to do whatever it takes to defeat Islamic terrorism for good. Perhaps hundreds of millions would ultimately need to be killed this time. The United States would become the great Satan their enemies already think they are. My only point was that tactics used by the United States in the 1940's, and apparently had plans to do in the 1950's, are from a different time when the targeting of civilians was treated differently than today. Faulting the use of nuclear bombs 60 years ago is similar to faulting men like Jefferson for owning slaves.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The only reason nukes aren't used now, is that cruise missiles and other guided munitions reduce the size of warhead required to destroy a particular target. Taking out power stations, power lines, bridges, refineries, airfields and telephone exchanges is all they need to do in order to send a country back to the stone age.
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But we were expecting the soviets to target cities in late 50s with bombers and missiles, hence the Nike Hercules program
From my understanding, the Nike Hercules program started as a defense against jet bombers in general, not long range nuclear bombers specifically. By the late 1950's there was a real threat of Russian nuclear weapons being used against the US homeland, but not in 1956 when the document in question was written (other than easy targets like Alaska and the Northwestern US). I could be wrong though.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Similar in that both actions are morally reprehensible and inexcusable? Your demonetization of japan is simply a rationalization for america unnecessarily murdering millions with atomic bombs. The only country ever to do so.
Perhaps you have heard the phrase, two wrongs don't make a right? Except if you get to write the history books and indoctrinate your citizens for the next 70 years that is.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
I recall back in the day we fully expected to have civilian population centers targeted.
The general rule was (on top of every other specific military target):
1) Capitols.
2) Technology Centers
3) Population Centers.
That's for each of the 50 states. 150 (or more if multiple warheads were specified for each) detonations that are almost entirely taking out civilians.
The fact this article (and the summary) seem to make a big deal of us targeting population centers the other direction seems extremely naive.
The truth of the matter is both sides had(have) enough nukes to flatten both countries completely the specific target sites on the way to that result are just the minutia of "when in doubt where should I go first". If it makes your conscience feel any better population centers are not at the top of the list... that's after you've already taken out the majority of your high-value targets unless you find yourself in a "I'm going down so take out the nearest target before I do" situation.
Similar in that both actions are morally reprehensible and inexcusable? Your demonetization of japan is simply a rationalization for america unnecessarily murdering millions with atomic bombs. The only country ever to do so.
I never made this claim. My claim was that acceptable treatment of civilians in warfare has changed since 1945, just like acceptable treatment of minority races has changed since 1800. People who lived hundreds of years ago were not inhuman monsters for having slaves; they were a product of their times. I also do not think individual Japanese or Nazi soldiers were evil men simply because their indoctrination caused them to do horrible things.
I think the usage of nuclear weapons by the United States was unfortunate, but not out of character for any of the nations involved in WWII (or for major nations in the 1000's of years prior). Trying to characterize the United States as the good guys and the Axis as the bad guys is a lazy way of looking at history, even if this war was a rare case where that simplistic narrative was mostly true. Carpet bombing civilian areas to break the will to fight was not a new or original tactic. It simply became more effective with improved technology. Not until the Geneva Convention did nations start to agree this was not an acceptable way to wage war.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Truman weighed heavily the decision to use the bomb on Japan. He ended up going for it.
Truman also weighed heavily the decision to use the bomb on North Korea and China during the Korean War, as some generals wanted to. He opted out. The world is better for it.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The German 'carpet bombing' of Rotterdam killed less than 1000 people, and involved 90 bombers...
The Blitz in London (which never even got close to 'carpet bombing' killed less than 500 people.
Our lovely Americans killed around 100,000 Japanese in Tokyo with incendiary raids (basically burnt them to death), Hiroshima and Nagasaki averaged about 100,000 each also, but of course those were single bombs.. Other 25,000 in Dresden, pretty much the same method, 40,000 in Hamburg. While the British assisted on such raids, they were very much American designed and lead. There failure is also well documented (it was supposed to 'break' the Germans, instead of course it just strengthened their resolve), but the lessons have pretty much been ignored.
For the Germans you would have been better to perhaps actually learn some history, Warsaw and Stalingrad were their big cases of bombing,although neither was at all typical carpet bombing (more a long sustained attack over weeks), and a large number of the casualties there are considered secondary (disease, starvation, exposure, etc) (around 25,000 and 40,000, similar to Dresden and Hamburg, however fatalities from actual bombing are estimated to be closer to 1/3 of those numbers).
Sorry to let facts get in the way..
AFAICT "Category 275" isn't taken as a band name yet. Somebody: Rock that fucker!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you nuke Al Qaeda -- which would necessarily mean nuking a non-belligerent city full of civilians and a few dozen Al Qaeda operatives (let's say Karachi) -- it's certain that Al Queda would greatly expand its enrollment as a result and become much more dangerous. What survivor or neighbor wouldn't join them? There'd be nothing left to lose and every reason to die trying to revenge instead of die an uninvolved coward.
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The "Geneva Convention" (surprisingly the american tourture camp soldiers claimed they never had heard about it) is a series of 4 or 5 treaties, only the latest one was crafted/refined after WWII.
However you are right, the emphasizes on protecting civilians came after WWII.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I am not aware of military atrocities even close to the scale of nuking cities committed by western nations, let alone the United States, in the past 50 years. And I do read the news.
Then you missed Vietnam. ...
You missed Angola.
You missed Algeria.
You missed Tunisia.
You missed Zimbabwe
To late here to count all the countries you missed.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big.
Yes, we could have killed them all 100 times over, they could only have killed us all 10 times over.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
We had that filmstrip when I was in school. Yes, filmstrip.
I don't remember all the words but it was something like:
"There was a turtle his name was Bert,
and Bert the turtle was always alert.
something something something something
and he'd duck and cover. Duck and cover."
I imagine somewhere there's a video of it but I don't like you enough to go find it. Google is so very far away and I am lazy. Even the mouse is too far away.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Some of your figures are a bit off, and you omit some important data.
The Blitz in London (which never even got close to 'carpet bombing' killed less than 500 people.
The Blitz killed far more than that. Just the first attack killed almost that many.
... by the end of the Blitz, around 30,000 Londoners would be left dead, with another 50,000 injured.-- The Blitz
-------
The German 'carpet bombing' of Rotterdam killed less than 1000 people, and involved 90 bombers...
The German bombing of Rotterdam occurred while the Dutch were negotiating surrender. The only reason it killed so few people (~900) was that there had been evacuations. As it was the bombing destroyed about 2.5 square km of city, and left many thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) homeless.
Other 25,000 in Dresden, pretty much the same method, 40,000 in Hamburg. While the British assisted on such raids, they were very much American designed and lead.
You've pretty much got that wrong. The UK and US teamed up for "around the clock" bombing, but it was the British that concentrated on "area" bombing at night while the Americans strove for precision bombing during the day. RAF Air Chief Marshal "Bomber" Harris was a key driver in planning bombing campaigns. RAF bomber command attacks often dwarfed the associated American attacks in size. For bombing Hamburg during Operation Gomorrah the RAF typically sent 780-790 +/- to bomb at night, and the USAAF managed 100-150 to bomb during the day (although it attempted more). For Dresden it was RAF 722 and USAAF 527.
There failure is also well documented (it was supposed to 'break' the Germans, instead of course it just strengthened their resolve), but the lessons have pretty much been ignored.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke the Japanese will to continue the war. As to Hamburg,
"It was quite a surprise to us when the first Hamburg raid took place because you used some new device which was preventing the anti-aircraft guns to find your bombers, so you had a great success and you repeated these attacks on Hamburg several times and each time the new success was greater and the depression was larger, and I have said, in those days, in a meeting of the Air Ministry, that if you would repeat this success on four or five other German towns, then we would collapse." – Albert Speer – The Secret War
The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good
But however terrible Operation Gomorrah was, it did serve a purpose in the end. It changed the attitude of many Germans, who may hitherto have been unaffected by the war, discrediting a leadership which was unable to ‘protect’ the population. As tales of the bombing spread throughout Germany, it provoked something called the ‘November mood’ of growing antipathy to the regime. Operation Gomorrah and the devastation of German cities meant that there could be no ‘stab in the back’ myth, as there was after 1918 when it suited people to believe that Germany had not lost the war fairly, but had been betrayed by their own home front. In this sense, Germany’s modern democracy was built on the rubble of its cities.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
My sixth grade teacher told the class one day that if the air raid sirens ever went off "for real", he'd go outside and face the base, because he didn't want to survive a nuclear war. And since were basically at ground zero, we wouldn't have to worry about that. But at least we didn't get that "duck and cover" nonsense.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There was a turtle by the name of Bert
and Bert the turtle was very alert;
when danger threatened him he never got hurt
he knew just what to do...
He'd duck! [gasp]
And cover!
Duck!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_Cover_(film)#Plot_summary
you're welcome
mod parent up. GP is way off on his facts. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I know it probably makes sense, but it kinda of makes me giggle to think of the engineers involved in the decisions...
So we designed the silos for our nuclear explosives... We haven't figured out how to actuate the doors yet... Have you tried exploding them open? Excellent.
Apparently you missed the "even close to the scale of nuking cities" part. Not sure how many times the US killed millions of civilians in a single encounter in any of those countries. There will always be cases of civilian deaths in wartime, whether by accident or by small groups of soldiers acting out. The worst thing the US military has done in those wars that I can think of is the My Lai Massacre, and at most 500 civilians dead in that encounter (more likely closer to 400). That is 3-4 orders of magnitude less atrocious than a nuclear bomb.
I'm not sure if there is any way to put large numbers of soldiers in such a stressful situation and never have them act out. Civilian deaths, and soldiers treating civilians as combatants, becomes far more likely during guerrilla wars like Vietnam. I doubt any advancements in society will stop these minor atrocities from happening in warfare until warfare is done away with all together.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Going after primarily civilian targets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not the type of tactics the western world uses anymore to get enemies to surrender.
Hiroshima served as the headquarters for the 2nd Army which was responsible for defense of southern Japan. It was also a communications hub, storage point, and assembly points for troops. The harbor there was used to ship out troops with frequency. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima neutered the command structure for the 2nd Army as well as basically caused the Japanese to write off three divisions. Nagasaki's military importance was due to it having one of the largest ports as well has industrially providing a large variety war material.
Strategic bombing in WW2, which nuclear bombs would fall under, had evolved towards targeted industrial production or military targets but not every bomber commander held that view. Bomber Harris, in particular, had no issue with bombing residential areas while James Doolittle frequently protested against hitting residential targets.
There is also a severe misunderstand as to the reason why residential areas were targeted in carpet bombing in Japan. Japanese war production was not styled like Germany. There were numerous small shops littered throughout cities that were used for small arms production rather than large assembly line style factories as were favored by Germany. So while plane, tank, and truck factories could be bombed, a large portion of the production for the common soldier was not easily bombed.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Heh... Well, at leasts the damned Christmas carol is no longer stuck in my head.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I even grew up on base (until I went off to school due to a long and winding story) and they didn't do us any favors like that. We knew it was stupid - they had shown us a filmstrip of the bombs detonating. I now have that song stuck in my head. Ah well... My kids should be here sometime soon so I'll be distracted.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The US Massacred civilians in Vietnam every day by napalm bombing their towns and villages. ... that was not clear from your post.
If it is important for you that this happened over a course of time and not on a single day
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What would an enemy do to US during a war? Try imagining the "lists" of some other countries out there...
Apparently you missed the "even close to the scale of nuking cities" part. Not sure how many times the US killed millions of civilians in a single encounter in any of those countries. .
No-one said anything about only the US doing the killing.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki totalled about 200k deaths compared to say the genocide in Rwanda of up to 1 million, or the Cambodian genocide of over 2 million.
Shit is still happening...
The US Massacred civilians in Vietnam every day by napalm bombing their towns and villages. ... that was not clear from your post.
If it is important for you that this happened over a course of time and not on a single day
Most of the civilians massacred in the Vietnam war were killed by the Communist forces, not weapons like Napalm. Total civilian deaths caused by US / South Vietnam total between 50,000 and 70,000, while total civilian deaths caused by North Vietnamese forces totaled 360,000 to 720,000. Literally ten times as many. This is the difference between the morality of modern nations and the 3rd world.
And again, 6000 civilian deaths per year in Vietnam is nothing compared to the bombing campaigns in WW2. And considering Vietnamese were fighting a guerrilla war, you would think civilian deaths would have been much higher in Vietnam. Using civilians as human shields tends to cause civilian deaths.
1st world nations continue to improve though, and I doubt that will change any time soon. Napalm for instance is another weapon no longer used the same way as it was in Vietnam.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
we were talking of the past; it is not the case now
Part of the whole "Mutually Assured Destruction" thing meant simultaneously posturing and acting in secret.
Vast plans to kill the majority of an "enemy" country, including its civilians, were just the sort of thing which needed to produced, in highest secrecy, so that the enemy spies knew the potential cost of poking the big guy
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All