Nuclear Weapons

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This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. -Albert Einstein

Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction. -George W. Bush

If nuclear weapons are allowed to persist they will be used again, and Washington is at the top of the target list. And politicians can ladle all the money they like into defensive weapon systems, in fact they substantially do, but it will never be possible to reliably guarantee that a single trunk sized object cannot be delivered within a particular mile wide circle. Weapon companies don't make a lot of money proclaiming this, but there it is.

A single bomb that will destroy an entire city is an abomination certainly intolerable to a civilized world. In every nation on earth, including our own, a clear majority would like to see nuclear weapons abolished. Yet still they persist. Why? If America can devastate a small faraway country to rid it of nuclear weapons it didn't have, why can't we all collectively rid the world of the weapons that actually do exist? If an international inspections program is practical and acceptable for one country, why not all? Why not?

Beyond this, the idea that some nations will always possess nuclear weapons while others will never have any is not only morally flawed but plainly ridiculous. Children in a schoolyard could tell you as much. Yet this is essentially the basis of our nation's long term nuclear policy, insofar as we can be said to have one.

The problem is that it's about power. And regardless of what the people of the world want, expecting politicians to give up the kind of power embodied by nuclear weapons is, to say the least, problematic.

nuclear weapon fact file:
Detonated in 1962, the largest nuclear weapon tested to date was roughly four thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The yield would have been significantly higher, but the weapon was effectively detuned to minimize fallout and give the drop aircraft time to escape.

It is generally believed that no nation has ever failed in its first test of a nuclear weapon. (note: looks like N. Korea messed this one up)

In the first US air drop of a thermonuclear weapon (Operation Cherokee), a navigation error caused a miss of 4 miles.

"The Shrimp" was accidentally the most powerfull US nuclear bomb detonated to date. Due to a miscalculation, the yield was two and a half times larger than expected, which combined with adverse weather resulted in heavy radiation exposure to a number of people and at least one prompt fatality.

The bulk of the Israeli nuclear arsenal is in fact kept some 50 miles from Armageddon. Just over the horizon.

Contrary to popular belief that such a device is science fiction, it is in fact quite possible to build a "doomsday bomb", or Weapon of Total Destruction (WTD). The basic principle entails wrapping a gigaton range nuclear weapon in a material tailored to enhance the radiation released, creating sufficient airborne fallout to kill all human life on the surface of the Earth. Though such a weapon would be too bulky for delivery, this is not a drawback, as its function is independent of location and thus a delivery system is not required. Hence this category of weapon has been referred to as "back yard", meaning it can simply be built and left in place. Here's a page on this subject.

historical myth debunking section:
Top American military leadership in fact strongly disapproved of using nuclear weapons against Japan in World War II-

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."-Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." -Dwight Eisenhower, Newsweek, 11/11/63

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." -Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." -Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, I Was There, pg. 441

addendum1:
(10/22/07) Here's a website with graphic pictures of what nuclear war looks like.


addendum2:
(10/29/07) Here's a news story about countries with long range missiles chastising other countries for their short and medium range missiles. It's best read with a sort of shrill Victorian tone.


addendum3:
(1/24/08) Sez our best and brightest-

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Oh Orwell where art though.