# Nagasaki and Hiroshima **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 1, 2016, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841 "2016-02-01T13:07:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/41 "2016-02-04T14:29:30Z")
How can I believe you, Noslap, when you constantly indulge in sloppiness? You say, “billions of people rejoiced the end of W.W. 2 in the Asia/Pacific region”? Billions of people means more than two billion. There were only 2.35 billion people in the entire world in 1945. There were somewhat more than a billion people in all of Asia at that time. Billions of people were not rejoicing. You’re going to complain that I’m nitpicking you. The problem is that you’re constantly making exaggerated statements and statements that you clearly have no source for. You claim that Cecil is a pacifist and that Chronos is a left-winger. Give us some evidence for this. Cecil has lots of columns available on this website. Chronos has lots of posts on the SDMB. Show us that the positions in those columns and posts fit your description of Cecil and Chronos. No, saying, “Here’s one sentence that I disagree with, so anybody who disagrees with me on anything must be a pacifist and a left-winger” isn’t a valid argument. Similarly, you vastly underestimate the number of “doomsday” predictions made in the past 2,000 years, and you are wrong when you say that none of them were correct. I presume that you mean that a doomsday prediction is one where something very bad happened, not just a prediction where the world ended. Clearly the people who thought the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings were a bad idea weren’t claiming that the world would end. There have been a huge number of predictions at all times. Most of them were at least somewhat wrong. Many were wildly wrong. Predictions are very difficult. Again, I urge you to read _Future Babble_ by Dan Gardner. He looks at lots of bad predictions. Some were made by liberals and some by conservatives. Some were too pessimistic and some were too optimistic. If you want to argue with people on the SDMB, you have to be precise in your statements and show your sources. Statements which are just saying, “You’re obviously part of a political group that I disagree with, and they are never right. Therefore I don’t have to back up any of my statements, since all I have to do is call you names.” That doesn’t work on the SDMB. State your arguments much more carefully and show us your sources. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2016, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/42 "2016-02-04T15:13:57Z")
Also helpful would be quoting people who are actually disagreeing with you. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/43 "2016-02-04T16:40:20Z")
> [@Noslap](#): > > They made false doomsday predictions of both cities being unable to be inhabitated between 150 and thousands of years… Who did? When did they? Quote them from original sources so we can evaluate the worth of such claims and their makers. Otherwise there is nothing to say about them. I know of one contemporary claim, from Harold Johnson of Columbia University, who said that Hiroshima might be uninhabitable for 70 years. Johnson was a low-level worker on the Manhattan Project. Is he a good source? Oppenheimer ridiculed him. The War Department pressured him to retract his comments. Johnson admitted that the doomsday prediction was based on his personal opinion, not on official sources. Groves, head of the Project, sent a team out to show that no radioactivity lingered four months after the blasts. [Source: _Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age_, by Catherine Caufield] One person, with a claim that was denied and quickly proven false. Radioactivity from the initial blasts left horrifying effects in humans, of course, but from the very beginning there were no doomsayers of the left (or right or any other point on the compass) saying that Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be wastelands. I accuse you of simply making up this claim out of ideological bias. If I am wrong, then prove me wrong with contemporary citations. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2016, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/44 "2016-02-04T21:20:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Noslap** : > > Chronos, > more than 80 million people lost their lives during W.W.2 and death due to fire-bombings and other types of bombs, including chemical weapons, killed many more lives than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and death is death, no matter how it had been achieved. > The Japanese were mass-murderers and even used tens of thousands of captured women as “comfort women”, which mean “sex-slaves”. > As I mentioned before, billions of people rejoiced the end of W.W. 2 in the Asia/Pacific region after we had suffered terribly under the Japanese occupation. Yup, and firebombs are bad for cities, too. As for the various atrocities committed by the Japanese, I already said that you could make a case that the atomic bombs were a net positive for the world, and those Japanese atrocities would certainly be a significant part of that argument. Which still doesn’t change the point that the atomic bombs were very bad for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I’m not sure how anyone could conceivably dispute that. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/45 "2016-02-05T04:52:32Z")
On the subject of doomsday predictions, there was some initial concern that an A-bomb might detonate the entire atmosphere, but a team led by Bethe and Teller studied the question and concluded that such a conflagration was very unlikely. [QUOTE=Emilio Segrè, Mahattan Project participant who later won the Nobel Prize] We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore…I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible. [/QUOTE] On the subect of whether billionS implies more than 2 billion or more than 1 billion, I initially agreed with **Mr. Wagner** but was reproved early in my SDMB tenure and informed that even 1.01 billions is enough to take the plural. I think the SDMB Moderators need to agree on a convention so we can put this matter to rest. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Noslap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a8b319/32.png) [@Noslap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noslap)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/46 "2016-02-05T13:53:03Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Why do you think that Cecil is a pacifist, Noslap? Where does he say anything that implies pacifism? Is your argument that Cecil is not quite as enthusiastic about the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as you and therefore must be a pacifist because only pacifists might even slightly have problems with the bombings? What do you know about hippies, Noslap? My memory is that no more of them hated the U.S. than did any other random group of Americans. > > Far more than a hundred “doomsday” predictions were made. The Wikipedia article just lists some of the most well known of them. Furthermore, over the past 2,000 years, an enormous number of predictions of all sorts have been made. Nearly all of them were inaccurate. Some of them were too pessimistic. Some of them were too optimistic. Some were inaccurate in ways that can’t be characterized either as optimistic or pessimistic. Predictions are extremely difficult. I just finished _Future Babble_ by Dan Gardner, a book about the many inaccurate predictions that have been made. Gardner concentrates on things like economic, political, or environmental predictions rather than religious ones, which is what that Wikipedia article is about. You might want to read this book to learn about the difficulties of forecasting anything. Wendel, you and your ilk, just can not see my point: Why are you so obsessed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while some 80 million people have died in W.W. 2? If I made a mistake in quoting billions instead of over one billion in the Asia/ Pacific region, I will stand corrected, but that lower number still is huge compared to the losses in those cities. Why did pacifists only march to commemorate the 2 cities, but ignored f.e. the loss of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, or for the aprox. 100 million lives lost under communism? They were blinded by their hatred of the U.S. and could not care less, what other people/ideologies had done. You should read the auto-biography of Peter Collier and David Horowitz, titled: “Destructive generation: second thoughts about the '60s” and not believe, that the hatred by the Left Wing acolytes was focussed on America’s decmoracy? These 2 ex-communists together with many tens of thousands of other gullible students, were brainwashed by their communist-leaning law-professors and helped to establish the New Left to topple the government . That movement even aligned themselves with the Black Panthers and overseas terrorist movements, because they hated capitalism so much. They ideolised the so-called “heroic freedom-fighters” of South Vietnam and the communist North Vietnamese, who killed over one million and made many more South Vietnamese Buddhists and non-communists flee to safety and also the murderous Pathet Lao in Laos and extremists in Cambodia, where half the populaton was murdered. Their hatred against their own government blinded them to these atrocities. Then there is the subject of spreading false doomsday predictions: If you take the time to read: “Scared to Death”, written by Christopher Booker and Richard North, then you should be aware how dangerous the environmentalists (Left Wing) are. Lies were concocted by their warped brains and spread to not only scare the public, but to make many millions of dollars for the corrupt law-firms, that jumped on the band-wagon. One of the horrific lies, that cause a near genocide, is how the Green movement has managed to influence the U.S. government to stop the production and sale of D.D.T., with the result, that approximately 1.3 million infants and babies in the 3rd world countries die from typhoid and malaria since the ban in 1972. Rachecl Carson, an environmental botanist, falsely claimed in her book “Silent Spring”, written in 1962, that D.D.T. not only killed the Bald Eagle, but also causes cancer in humans. I myself and many millions of people have been treated with D.D.T. to combat lice on our heads and bodies and our homes and crops were sprayed regularly to kill mosquitoes during the mid 1940’s until the late 1950’s. My parents and my 7 siblings and I had never cancer from the treatment and when I questioned the then Chairperson (Ms. Lisa Jackson) last year, why the U.S. E.P.A. persists in the genocide and send me written proof of humans having contracted cancer from the use, one of her managers replied to me, that the W.H.O. still “deems” D.D.T. a “probable” cause of cancer, but could not send me any proof. I replied to them asking, how they could have one night of sleep without feeling guilty. Then there is also the subject of why you people have this obsession with Nagasaki and Hiroshima, while in 2012 alone, some 58 million died world-wide and the figure for preventable deaths, like drug-overdoses, smoking etc. etc. in the U.S. alone show 900,000 or some 3 times that of those 2 cities??? None of that matters to you at all. The phobia for nuclear power is unwarranted, as the atomic bomb has become a deterrent against another world-war, as proven by the fact, that peace between W.W.! and 2 lasted just 22 years (from 1918 to 1940), but we now have a much longer stretch of no world-war of nearly 71 years! 31 Countries around the world use nuclear energy, with France leading the group, since it built its first nuclear power-plant in 1963, produces 80 percent of its total output from that source and sells large surpluses to f.e. Germany and other countrues that have buckled under the anti-nuclear energy movement (the Greens). There are also more than 100 ships (both naval and commercial), that are powered by nuclear energy and they are safe and do not emit any gases. Pacifists, who truly believe that all races are peaceful and that all countries should dis-arm, live in a dream-world. During W.W.2, European countries like Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg Yugoslavia were neutral, but the Germans did not care for that or follow the Geneva Convention and just overpowered them. The same happened when the Japanese attacked the unwary countries in the Asia/Pacific region. Now, after the lesson was learned and common sense prevailed, all countries are armed to the teeth as they see the stark reality, that we are not all the same. Here are some of the many articles that prove, that zealotry and scare-mongering is only in the mind of people, who live in a dream-world. > **[The Black Book of Communism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism)** > > The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a 1997\[note 1\] book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics\[note 2\] documenting a history of political repression by communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and deaths in labor camps and allegedly artificially created famines. The book was originally published in France as Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répressi... > **[The Atomic Bomb…..Was it Necessary in 1945](https://standupforamerica.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/the-atomic-bomb-was-it-necessary-in-1945/)** > > There is no secret that the Atomic Bomb was used on two Japanese cities in WWII. Some say it was the end of the war and some say it was not necessary. Some say that without the United States “forci… www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index2.html [www.carbon-sense.com](http://www.carbon-sense.com) Noslap ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/47 "2016-02-05T14:07:47Z")
Well, I’m convinced. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/48 "2016-02-05T14:34:03Z")
Noslap, when you learn to spell my name correctly and how to divide your posts into paragraphs correctly, I’ll read your last post, but till then I don’t have the time to figure them out. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/49 "2016-02-05T14:55:51Z")
> [@Noslap](#): > > [snip] … Why are you so obsessed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki … [snip] Perhaps it has been impolite of us to not welcome you here to the SDMB as much as we should have. There are a few unwritten rules one of which is to focus on the subject at hand, and in this case the article written by **The Master** about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two cities are the only examples where we can find the StraightDope on how long it takes for a city nuked during wartime to become inhabitable again … sooooo … really we’ve only these two cities to work with AFAIK. The Nazi slaughter of Ukrainians, quickly followed by the Soviet slaughter of Ukrainians didn’t really involve Cesium-135 … understandably, **The Master** didn’t bring this fact up in an article about the lingering effects on a city that was nuked during wartime. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/50 "2016-02-05T15:06:46Z")
> [@Noslap](#): > > My parents and my 7 siblings and I had never cancer from the treatment and when I questioned the then Chairperson (Ms. Lisa Jackson) last year, why the U.S. E.P.A. persists in the genocide and send me written proof of humans having contracted cancer from the use, one of her managers replied to me, that the W.H.O. still “deems” D.D.T. a “probable” cause of cancer, but could not send me any proof. How do you justify your demanding proof from others, but when I ask you for proof of your claims you completely ignore me? ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/51 "2016-02-05T16:00:18Z")
[Was Rachel Carson a fraud and is DDT actually safe for humans?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2428/was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actually-safe-for-humans) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2016, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/52 "2016-02-07T02:27:15Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > [Was Rachel Carson a fraud and is DDT actually safe for humans?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2428/was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actually-safe-for-humans) Well, the article does say that DDT is not as safe as some in favor continue to harp about, but Rachel Carson was more correct than wrong but it was not really her why DDT was banned to be used in agriculture (it was not banned for use in cities and homes where malaria is a problem). It was actually the fact that many forgot about or did not believe in evolution. > **[Skepticblog » Denial of evolution can be hazardous to your health…](https://www.skepticblog.org/2011/08/10/denial-of-evolution-can-kill-you/)** > > Many people regard creationism as just a harmless belief held by religious zealots, but there are instances where creationist beliefs and actions not only hinder the proper teaching and understanding of science in this country, but some of their... > [@](#): > > But a bigger problem is the fact that in some cases, denial of evolution is dangerous or even deadly. Evolution keeps happening all the time, whether creationists want to believe it or not. Yet if we deny the fact that evolution is happening in viruses and bacteria and in other pathogens and pests, it only makes the problem worse when they evolve resistance to whatever we throw at them. If creationists ran the labs that produce these protective chemicals, do you think we would have a chance when the next deadly pest hits us? > > Many insects and weeds have evolved resistance to pesticides and herbicides, all within a few decades, causing enormous economic damage to people all over the world. Every modern housefly now carries the genes that make it resistant not only to DDT, but also pyrethroids, dieldrin, organophosphates and carbamates, so there are few poisons left that can suppress them. The mosquitoes that evolved resistance to DDT and other organophosphate insecticides apparently evolved in Africa during the 1960s, spread on to Asia, then reached California by 1984, Italy in 1985, and France in 1986. As entomologist Martin Taylor describes it (in Weiner, 1994, p. 255): > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > It always seems amazing to me that evolutionists pay so little attention to this kind of thing, and that cotton growers are having to deal with these pests in the very states whose legislatures are so hostile to the theory of evolution. Because it is the evolution itself they are struggling against in their fields every season. These people are trying to ban the teaching of evolution while their own cotton crops are failing because of evolution. How can you be a creationist farmer any more? > > > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2016, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/53 "2016-02-07T02:58:31Z")
Wait … what? … swatter-resistance flies … that is bad … ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841/54 "2016-02-12T01:34:48Z")
**Noslap** , you seem to be confused. **Cecil** did not sidestep or avoid anything - he answered the question he was asked, not some other question that you wish he had answered. The question asked was: > [@](#): > > If nuclear fallout takes thousands of years to dissipate, how did the Japanese return to Hiroshima and Nagasaki three months after the nuclear bombs exploded? Doesn’t the area stay radioactive and uninhabitable for thousands of years? That is not a question about the validity of dropping atomic bombs. It is not a comparison of lives lost versus lives that might have been lost otherwise. It is not a defense of anti-nuclear protests, nor is it a claim that Stalin was a good guy. **Cecil** was writing a newspaper column with a word limit. He necessarily had to limit the discussion. He addressed the question he was asked. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nagasaki-and-hiroshima/744841.md?page=2)