Nukes After WW2

>>1965982

Pre-hydrogen bomb nukes are "only" about as effective as a very large (1,000ish) or so heavy bombers sortieing at once. They're powerful, but not an instant win button for any conceivable conflict. Hell, they got the railroads running again in Hiroshima the next day.

Quite honestly, if you posited a war breaking out between the USA and the USSR in the aftermath of WW2 as we know it, it would almost certainly be more decided by conventional weapons than atomics.

>>1965982
>world domination

For what purpose?

>>1966036
For the same purpose the bomb was created.

>ability to achieve world domination

What did he mean by this?

I see no reason not to go nuclear in an Operation Unthinkable scenario. The Soviets would almost certainly acquiesce at the threat of Moscow or Leningrad being vaporized. Even if they didn't surrender, the Red Army would probably buttfuck the Allies even with rearmed Germany's support, but their offensive would grind to a halt when all the supply lanes, oil fields, industrial centers etc. are turned to glass.

>>1966040
.... to force a surrender from the Axis powers through a bluff-like display of overwhelming force?

>>1965982
The possession of a weapon and the will to use a weapon are two very different things.

As far back as the Crimean War, cyanide gas artillery shells existed, but were not employed because they were seen as too loathsome.

>>1966057
Well with the addition of the nuke, surrender or death could equally be assumed. Had they produced more at the time and dropped them on other axis powers do you think the result would be the same as Japan?

>>1966092
I'm sure you could argue this, but the weapons where STILL created, and can and have been used. You can't make death "beautiful" by killing them cleanly and humanly where they "DIDNT FEEL ANYTHING"... a gruesome death or a clean death... its still death.

>>1966098

Not him, but I very much doubt that "surrender or death could be equally assumed". The nuclear strikes on Japan were hardly the most deadly aerial attacks they endured; the conventional firebombings of Tokyo killed a lot more people, and the #1 factor in how many people died per strike was a simple basis of how dense the population was.

They provoked a surrender primarily because Japan was on its last legs anyway. They were blockaded by a nigh invincible U.S. fleet, their transportation infrastructure was bombed to shit and they were facing starvation in 1946 absent someone bringing in food, they were cut off from communication with their empire, their fleet was gone, and they were desperate enough to arm random people with bamboo spears to try to repel the expected invasion.

Japan almost certainly would have surrendered sooner if not for their own bizarre system of government that prevented a lot of action from being taken, with almost every cabinet having veto power.

Might they have provoked a surrender when the Axis were on their last legs? Sure. But I doubt a nuke would have done more than the sort of devastation that you got during say, Operation Gomorrah, and that didn't even make Hitler blink in the direction of surrender.

Fat Man had a mere 20 kiloton payload. That makes its 20 psi air pressure from an aerial detonation less than a square km in radius. It wouldn't even completely destroy a single city, even with optimal placement.

But they did achieve it.

What kind of world you live in? Who's the one and only superpower? Why do you think the combination of democracy-capitalism is so prevalent?

Unless by domination you mean physically forcing ppl to do what you want in which its just a matter of that policy being less efficient.

>>1966113
Feels > Reals.

This has always been the first law of all political decisions.

From a rationally standpoint, dead is dead, and a person smothered by gas or vaporized in an atomic blast is no worse off than someone shot with a gun, but our leaders aren't perfectly rational and instead hold a special disdain for weapons of mass destruction.