This BLOG is for LLNL present and past employees, friends of LLNL and anyone impacted by the privatization of the Lab to express their opinions and expose the waste, wrongdoing and any kind of injustice against employees and taxpayers by LLNS/DOE/NNSA.
The opinions stated are personal opinions. Therefore,
The BLOG author may or may not agree with them before making the decision to post them.
Comments not conforming to BLOG rules are deleted.
Blog author serves as a moderator.
For new topics or suggestions, email jlscoob5@gmail.com
Blog rules
Stay on topic.
No profanity, threatening language, pornography.
NO NAME CALLING.
No political debate.
Posts and comments are posted several times a day.
That’s what you’d expect from an Argentinian communist. January 9, 2018 at 1:55 PM
Yes. It's also extremely naive, since "the bomb" has kept us out of major continental and inter-continental world wars for almost 75 years. Death is death, and it doesn't really matter so much if it's death by conventional explosion and fire, or death by nuclear explosion and fire, or nuclear radiation. What matters is, fewer people die, and that is what we've seen for decades. Someone should send him this link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQBLpJFi6f0
For the millennials and trolls, the last major continental world war ended in 1945. It ended with the invention of nuclear fire, that itself killed fewer people than conventional firebombing.
For the millennials and trolls, the last major continental world war ended in 1945. It ended with the invention of nuclear fire, that itself killed fewer people than conventional firebombing.
January 11, 2018 at 5:20 PM
The only reason there has not been WWIII is because of all the brave people that have gone out to protest against the white-male straight war dirven evil. These are the same people that stopped the Vietnam war, if it was not for them we could have been in Vietnam longer than WWII but they stopped it. Nuclear weapons have not stopped anything.
Also the idiot who thinks the last major continental was in 1945, hello we just talked about how American invaded Vietnam and created South Vietnam. Last time I checked Vietnam is in a continent called Asia while the United States is in a...wait for it, a different continent called North America which makes it what...what a continental war, that utterly destroys the idea that nukes have ever stopped a continental war. How do you like the B-52s delivering a carpet of truth bombs on you!!! Reality can be brutal but so can war.
For the bored trolls who like to argue about grammar, "major continental" and "inter-continental world" are two different adjective pairs that each modify the object noun "war". [(major continental) and (inter-continental world)] vs. [major (continental and inter-continental) world]. It is admittedly ambiguous, but so is much of English, and it should be clear enough since "continental" and "world" as sequential adjectives applying to the same noun would not make sense, unless perhaps we are talking about a Pangean war.
There's no such thing as a continental World War. A continental war, yes. That implies a war that involves a single continent. A World War implies a war that involves ALL (populated) continents. Note the word "World" in "World War" actually means something. It wasn't just tossed in for no good reason. Sheesh.
The Iraq/Kuwait war involved over 30 countries including most countries in both Europe and the Middle East. The existence of Nukes didn't stop that. Same for Syria, Rwanda, the Falklands, and many others.
January 11, 2018 at 5:20 PM What about Vietnam. Maybe you could define what major continental war means. The Vietnam war had around 3 million death (https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War), which seems like a major war to me.
Hey 9;24. As you said yourself, the reader can't tell if you're modifying "war" or "world war". Good English should never be ambiguous so here's a better way to say what you intended. "... major continental wars and intercontinental world wars."
Now, this isn't just a gripe about your poor writing skills. It's also a gripe about the bunk you wrote. As others have pointed out, Nukes have most certainly NOT kept us and other combatants out of major continental wars.
More to the point, it certainly wasn't protesters that stopped the arming of Cuba with nuclear missiles. Nor have they prevented an exchange of nuclear weapons between world powers. The wars mentioned in these comments were brutal and unforgivable, but they pale in comparison to an exchange of even a few nuclear warheads. That is what our nuclear arsenal has prevented.
*OUR* nuclear arsenal has prevented the exchange of nuclear weapons? Well then, how did OUR arsenal prevent Pakistan and India from exchanging nukes? Was OUR arsenal a significant factor for either country?
On the other hand, a total worldwide ban, if such a thing could be enforced (NPT on steroids), would clearly prevent the exchange of nuclear weapons, wouldn't it?
Anyone who thinks nukes have not kept the world largely free of war for 75 years is just not paying attention to history. Which is not to say there have not been wars, but numbers don't lie. Check these, https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Wars-Long-Run-military-civilian-fatalities-from-Brecke.png and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll In particular, nukes have kept the major powers from fighting one another directly, in incredibly deadly conflicts that kill many tens of millions of people. Nukes have not played a role in stopping much smaller conflicts, like Vietnam or Korea or Rwanda or Afghanistan or Iraq or Somalia.
8:13 PM is wrong. South Vietnam was created in 1954 as a result of the Geneva Conference. Prior to that, the area was part of French Indochina. The creation of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) was negotiated between France, the Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communists), the Peoples Republic of China, the USSR, Cambodia, Laos, the US, Great Britain, and others.
The US had been supporting France through this period (and even before) but US ground troops didn't come to South Vietnam until 1965, 11 years AFTER South Vietnam was created. The US was invited to send troops by South Vietnam, the US did NOT invade. That's how the US got their army bases in South Vietnam; the US didn't fight for the bases, the South Vietnamese invited the US to use those areas.
"*OUR* nuclear arsenal has prevented the exchange of nuclear weapons? Well then, how did OUR arsenal prevent Pakistan and India from exchanging nukes? "
Outstanding point, we should never forget the India-Pakistan nuclear war that killed millions. Many people seem to think that only two bombs have been used in wartime but they forgot that India-Pakistan exchanged weapons in the great 2002 war. Thanks poster for bringing this up.
"The US had been supporting France through this period (and even before) but US ground troops didn't come to South Vietnam until 1965, 11 years AFTER South Vietnam was created. The US was invited to send troops by South Vietnam, the US did NOT invade. That's how the US got their army bases in South Vietnam; the US didn't fight for the bases, the South Vietnamese invited the US to use those areas.
January 13, 2018 at 6:22 AM"
Total bollocks, the US never supported France because everyone knows the US hates France. Vietnam was colloiinsed by European invaders but they tried to get their independence back to their natural government that existed thousands of years before the invaders. The US knew the French could not hold on to the land since they are weak so the invaded, you can quibble exactly about how it started but make no mistake it was an invasion. There was no South Vietnamese only puppets under the Western powers. The US lost the war because (1) The superior NVA forces that knew they where fighting for independence (2) the protestors in the US that made it impossible for US to ramp up even more, hence the war was ended sooner rather than latter. Nuclear weapons had nothing to do with stoping the war or any other wars and in the end could only lead to more war thus we should get rid of them.
So Scooby, it's ok for someone to laud protests against the "white-male straight war dirven(sic) evil" but it isn't ok to call that person a racist? Really?
That sounds like a horribly biased application of the rules to me.
I may overlook violations due to my own interpretation of them. I don't have an automated way of flagging them. The word "racist" is easier spotted than others.
1) Our "hate" of France only exists in some people's highly muddled minds. The fact is that the US did support France in French Indochina. The US provided military advisors and sold France nearly all the arms that the French used in Indochina wars.
2) You wrote "natural government that existed thousands of years before the invaders" but that makes no sense. Northern Vietnam was part of Imperial China from 111 BC to 905 AD. The Vietnamese then fought a war gaining independence from China in 939 AD. Vietnam's independent period was marked by many successive dynasties and then many successive feudal warlords. China reestablished dominance over Vietnam in the early 1400s but only for a short period, the French ruled them for about 60 years from the late 1800s, and Japan occupied them in the 1940s. So what was this "natural government" you were bloviating about? Chinese rule? Vietnamese dynasties? Feudal Warlords? Japanese Rule?
3) South Vietnam was an independent country created by negotiations between the world's major powers and all the local political entities. Do you know which countries DID NOT sign the Geneva Accords? The US and South Vietnam. The US held out for Vietnamese free elections to decide if the South would reunify with the North. However, the South backed out of the vote and reunification didn't happen. So who DID invade South Vietnam? The communist-backed Việt Cộng.
Did the US invade South Vietnam? NO! ABSOLUTLY NOT. Claim that and you're lying. Perhaps the bigger issue is whether John F. Kennedy should have gotten the US involved in that quagmire. In my opinion the answer is no. Should Lyndon Johnson have expanded our role to include ground and air combat? Again, I would say no.
Why you wrote that non-funny fabrication about the two countries nuking each other (which obviously never happened) is beyond comprehension. The point was that Pakistan and India DIDN'T exchange nukes and OUR nuclear arsenal had nothing to do with it. We never extended a nuclear umbrella over Pakistan and India wasn't even our ally.
Obviously, the reason the two countries did not exchange nukes is because using nukes could quickly escalate to near-total annihilation. However, having nukes doesn't stop India and Pakistan from engaging in their never ending series of border skirmishes using conventional weapons.
Here's a PARTIAL list of wars in the last 75 years that Nukes didn't prevent. The last number is geometric mean estimated deaths.
Ahmen brother, I would contend that nukes have increased the number of smaller wars since people think since if nukes are used its not a real war. Nukes have only created more war, people that work at the labs have blood on their hands for creating more war, just ask any historian or political scientist and and they will agree that there is more war than ever before, EVER BEFORE and this can only be due to nukes. Now some of you so called people will point to Pinklers book on the Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, including the number wars, but never mind this, just ignore it. I doubt you can find a single socialist or political scientists who would ever EVER say that nukes have reduced war. Your list of wars proves beyond any shadow of doubt that there have been wars since the nukes where first dropped, which means nukes of not stopped wars. Now my friends how is that for a LOGIC BOMB!.
As a percentage of global population for any of those conflicts, it would be difficult to distinguish these body counts from the natural, background global mortality rate. The counts are merely associated with time periods of conflict for those areas. The fact the numbers are not 2-3 orders of magnitude larger, since 1945, is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the influence of nuclear weapons on the magnitude of human conflict.
One can argue about the details and you are probably right about some of your obscure historical points, but the main point is that the US screwed up Vietnam but the so called hippies stopped that awful war in 60s. The other point is that nukes did not prevent the war and those saying how nukes have been good for the earth by preventing wars are all wrong.
Remember that the filtering process is manual, ie I read all comments. I may make mistakes. If you have an idea on how to resolve the problem or simply want to help let me know. Otherwise, don't let the door hit you in the b....
I know it's a stretch, but try to be realistic for a moment. Nuclear weapons are not going away. They are going to proliferate beyond your imagination. And, they will be used in anger. Laws of chance biased by human nature will make it so. What will stop them from being used against us, once we unilaterally disarm?
It is interesting to test Scooby to see what he’ll remove and what he’ll keep. I suppose if he were Jefferson, the first amendment would read something like, “I’m doing you a favor...and don’t let the door hit you on the ass”. Thank you. Thank you. Thought police.
10:35. What you did was to compare the PARTIAL list of war deaths in last 75 years with one of the worst wars in the history of mankind. That's picking and choosing which led to your false conclusion. There are many 75 year periods before WWI that had fewer war deaths than in the last 75 years.
10:05 is simply wrong. These numbers are the war deaths, the LOCAL deaths above the expected natural LOCAL mortality rate.
4:27, I did not even mention the biggie, WWII, between the bomb and WWI. Have a look, https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Wars-Long-Run-military-civilian-fatalities-from-Brecke.png The death toll tells the story. Prior to the bomb we see a long history going back 500 years of episodes of massive death tolls, associated mostly with European wars. After the bomb we see a long period of declining death tolls, and no large spikes associated with deadly European wars. There isn't really a debate here, not a meaningful one.
My way or the highway! Yeah, egalitarian to the core, right? Would you entertain a vote of no confidence for you to just quit and leave us alone, for God's sake? No one has missed the huge drop-off in posts in the past several months. WHat's the point? Your moral purity?
January 14, 2018 at 8:01 PM Are you referring to the moderators? If so I suggest you follow your own "to just quit and leave us alone, for God's sake" I personally like it, that the blog is moderated; it greatly reduces the number of vile and offensive contributions and lends its hands to real discussions. On a blog the same civility should be used as in a face to face discussion with other people, and I doubt that you would use "to just quit and leave us alone, for God's sake". So, please follow the usual social norms of conversation, and people will listen to you. If this is too hard, go to any of number of sites, which let you let steam off.
You've jumped to the existence of nukes as the reason behind why we have not experienced another war of the scale of WWII but you gave no consideration at all to other factors that are far more impactful.
First, the reason deaths in the World Wars were so high is because of the rapid development of warfighting technology which resulted in a temporary lack of warfighting technological parity between combatants. WWI saw the first widespread use of chemical weapons, machine guns, effective grenades, long-range artillery, tanks, and (rather primitive) warplanes.
By WWII, the killing power of these weapons advanced to the point where a fighter plane or submarine could sink a ship carrying thousands of people with a single bomb or torpedo. Simple low-technology firebombing and conventional bombing could now slaughter 100s of thousands because of the newly developed capabilities of heavy-weight, long-range bombers. However, at this time, only a few countries possessed the most modern warfighting technology.
The vast majority of deaths in WWII resulted from the use of German warfighting technology against the lesser-equipped Soviet military. 27,000,000 Soviet soldiers and civilians died - that dwarfs the number killed by the US use of nuclear weapons against Japan, about 200,000 total deaths. More Jews died in German gas chambers (about 6 million) than all the Japanese who died in total from all war-related causes including nuclear weapons (about 3 million).
So what has changed since WWII?
1) A world ban on chemical weapons. This has dramatically reduced deaths from chemical weapons from millions (counting German concentration camps) to thousands. Note the total ban HAS WORKED.
2) Greater conventional warfighting parity across the world. As an example, the 27,000,000 Soviet deaths could never happen today as the Russians now have conventional warfighting parity with (or even superiority over) the Germans. Because of this parity, the Germans would now suffer substantially equal deaths so, with parity, they would have never prosecuted an action on the Soviet front.
3) Intelligence capabilities. Spy satellites and other intelligence technologies now instantly expose military build-ups and deployments making it less likely that an adversary can gain an advantage by preparing for large scale war without being countered early.
4) Non-warfighting factors. These are perhaps the most important factors. International trade has increased nearly exponentially since WWII entangling the economies of countries across continents. This makes it impossible to fight WWII-scale wars without suffering a worldwide economic depression. Leaders know this, making them less likely to want to escalate wars. Instant worldwide communications has made it impossible to operate gas chambers or use chemical weapons in secret. Greater control of the citizenry over their governments including more democracies. Democracies rarely engage in war against other democracies.
Agreed, nukes are bad so get rid of them and the labs. This is what people really want. Actually more specially it is getting rid of LANL for what they did certain ex-LANL employees.
Agreed, nukes are bad so get rid of them and the labs. This is what people really want.
January 16, 2018 at 4:29 PM
What "people" are you talking about? Putin? Kim Jong Un? The Chinese? The Pakistanis? Yeah, they'd love the US to give up its nukes. I bet you won't love the result once those "people" are done with us. Try to stay focused on reality. It's where you live.
43 comments:
That’s what you’d expect from an Argentinian communist.
Apparently the Pope never heard of the NPT.
That’s what you’d expect from an Argentinian communist.
January 9, 2018 at 1:55 PM
Yes. It's also extremely naive, since "the bomb" has kept us out of major continental and inter-continental world wars for almost 75 years. Death is death, and it doesn't really matter so much if it's death by conventional explosion and fire, or death by nuclear explosion and fire, or nuclear radiation. What matters is, fewer people die, and that is what we've seen for decades. Someone should send him this link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQBLpJFi6f0
What would a "major continental World War" be? Please give an example.
Please read again, it will expand your future options for speaking English.
Sorry, but your last post clarified nothing. It is also poorly written and without meaning.
For the millennials and trolls, the last major continental world war ended in 1945. It ended with the invention of nuclear fire, that itself killed fewer people than conventional firebombing.
For the millennials and trolls, the last major continental world war ended in 1945. It ended with the invention of nuclear fire, that itself killed fewer people than conventional firebombing.
January 11, 2018 at 5:20 PM
The only reason there has not been WWIII is because of all the brave people that have gone out to protest against the white-male straight war dirven evil. These are the same people that stopped the Vietnam war, if it was not for them we could have been in Vietnam longer than WWII but they stopped it. Nuclear weapons have not stopped anything.
Also the idiot who thinks the last major continental was in 1945, hello we just talked about how American invaded Vietnam
and created South Vietnam. Last time I checked Vietnam is in a continent called Asia while the United States is in a...wait for it, a different continent called North America which makes it what...what a continental war, that utterly destroys the idea that nukes have ever stopped a continental war. How do you like the B-52s delivering a carpet of truth bombs on you!!! Reality can be brutal but so can war.
Mike drop.
For the bored trolls who like to argue about grammar, "major continental" and "inter-continental world" are two different adjective pairs that each modify the object noun "war". [(major continental) and (inter-continental world)] vs. [major (continental and inter-continental) world]. It is admittedly ambiguous, but so is much of English, and it should be clear enough since "continental" and "world" as sequential adjectives applying to the same noun would not make sense, unless perhaps we are talking about a Pangean war.
There's no such thing as a continental World War. A continental war, yes. That implies a war that involves a single continent. A World War implies a war that involves ALL (populated) continents. Note the word "World" in "World War" actually means something. It wasn't just tossed in for no good reason. Sheesh.
The Iraq/Kuwait war involved over 30 countries including most countries in both Europe and the Middle East. The existence of Nukes didn't stop that. Same for Syria, Rwanda, the Falklands, and many others.
January 11, 2018 at 5:20 PM
What about Vietnam. Maybe you could define what major continental war means. The Vietnam war had around 3 million death (https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War), which seems like a major war to me.
Or Look at Korea.
Hey 9;24. As you said yourself, the reader can't tell if you're modifying "war" or "world war". Good English should never be ambiguous so here's a better way to say what you intended. "... major continental wars and intercontinental world wars."
Now, this isn't just a gripe about your poor writing skills. It's also a gripe about the bunk you wrote. As others have pointed out, Nukes have most certainly NOT kept us and other combatants out of major continental wars.
More to the point, it certainly wasn't protesters that stopped the arming of Cuba with nuclear missiles. Nor have they prevented an exchange of nuclear weapons between world powers. The wars mentioned in these comments were brutal and unforgivable, but they pale in comparison to an exchange of even a few nuclear warheads. That is what our nuclear arsenal has prevented.
Hey Scooby, what happened to my comment about the racist's false statement about how South Vietnam was created? Didn't like the truth?
*OUR* nuclear arsenal has prevented the exchange of nuclear weapons? Well then, how did OUR arsenal prevent Pakistan and India from exchanging nukes? Was OUR arsenal a significant factor for either country?
On the other hand, a total worldwide ban, if such a thing could be enforced (NPT on steroids), would clearly prevent the exchange of nuclear weapons, wouldn't it?
Anyone who thinks nukes have not kept the world largely free of war for 75 years is just not paying attention to history. Which is not to say there have not been wars, but numbers don't lie. Check these, https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Wars-Long-Run-military-civilian-fatalities-from-Brecke.png and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll In particular, nukes have kept the major powers from fighting one another directly, in incredibly deadly conflicts that kill many tens of millions of people. Nukes have not played a role in stopping much smaller conflicts, like Vietnam or Korea or Rwanda or Afghanistan or Iraq or Somalia.
8:13 PM is wrong. South Vietnam was created in 1954 as a result of the Geneva Conference. Prior to that, the area was part of French Indochina. The creation of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) was negotiated between France, the Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communists), the Peoples Republic of China, the USSR, Cambodia, Laos, the US, Great Britain, and others.
The US had been supporting France through this period (and even before) but US ground troops didn't come to South Vietnam until 1965, 11 years AFTER South Vietnam was created. The US was invited to send troops by South Vietnam, the US did NOT invade. That's how the US got their army bases in South Vietnam; the US didn't fight for the bases, the South Vietnamese invited the US to use those areas.
It was deleted because bit violated rules.
"*OUR* nuclear arsenal has prevented the exchange of nuclear weapons? Well then, how did OUR arsenal prevent Pakistan and India from exchanging nukes? "
Outstanding point, we should never forget the India-Pakistan nuclear war that killed millions. Many people seem to think that only two bombs have been used in wartime but they forgot that India-Pakistan exchanged weapons in the great 2002 war. Thanks poster for bringing this up.
"The US had been supporting France through this period (and even before) but US ground troops didn't come to South Vietnam until 1965, 11 years AFTER South Vietnam was created. The US was invited to send troops by South Vietnam, the US did NOT invade. That's how the US got their army bases in South Vietnam; the US didn't fight for the bases, the South Vietnamese invited the US to use those areas.
January 13, 2018 at 6:22 AM"
Total bollocks, the US never supported France because everyone knows the US hates France. Vietnam was colloiinsed by European invaders but they tried to get their independence back to their natural government that existed thousands of years before the invaders. The US knew the French could not hold on to the land since they are weak so the invaded, you can quibble exactly about how it started but make no mistake it was an invasion. There was no South Vietnamese only puppets under the Western powers. The US lost the war because (1) The superior NVA forces that knew they where fighting for independence (2) the protestors in the US that made it impossible for US to ramp up even more, hence the war was ended sooner rather than latter. Nuclear weapons had nothing to do with stoping the war or any other wars and in the end could only lead to more war thus we should get rid of them.
So Scooby, it's ok for someone to laud protests against the "white-male straight war dirven(sic) evil" but it isn't ok to call that person a racist? Really?
That sounds like a horribly biased application of the rules to me.
I may overlook violations due to my own interpretation of them. I don't have an automated way of flagging them. The word "racist" is easier spotted than others.
Scooby is an arbitrary arboter.
10:02 AM
1) Our "hate" of France only exists in some people's highly muddled minds. The fact is that the US did support France in French Indochina. The US provided military advisors and sold France nearly all the arms that the French used in Indochina wars.
2) You wrote "natural government that existed thousands of years before the invaders" but that makes no sense. Northern Vietnam was part of Imperial China from 111 BC to 905 AD. The Vietnamese then fought a war gaining independence from China in 939 AD. Vietnam's independent period was marked by many successive dynasties and then many successive feudal warlords. China reestablished dominance over Vietnam in the early 1400s but only for a short period, the French ruled them for about 60 years from the late 1800s, and Japan occupied them in the 1940s. So what was this "natural government" you were bloviating about? Chinese rule? Vietnamese dynasties? Feudal Warlords? Japanese Rule?
3) South Vietnam was an independent country created by negotiations between the world's major powers and all the local political entities. Do you know which countries DID NOT sign the Geneva Accords? The US and South Vietnam. The US held out for Vietnamese free elections to decide if the South would reunify with the North. However, the South backed out of the vote and reunification didn't happen. So who DID invade South Vietnam? The communist-backed Việt Cộng.
Did the US invade South Vietnam? NO! ABSOLUTLY NOT. Claim that and you're lying. Perhaps the bigger issue is whether John F. Kennedy should have gotten the US involved in that quagmire. In my opinion the answer is no. Should Lyndon Johnson have expanded our role to include ground and air combat? Again, I would say no.
Here's a PARTIAL list of wars in the last 75 years that Nukes didn't prevent. The last number is geometric mean estimated deaths.
Great War of Africa , 1998 - 2003 , 3,675,000
Pakistan/Bangladesh , 1971 , 3,000,000
Vietnam War , 1955 - 1975 , 1,750,000
Nigerian Civil War , 1967 - 1970 , 1,730,000
Afghanistan , 1978 - present, 1,620,000
Second Sudanese War , 1983 - 2005 , 1,410,000
Iran/Iraq , 1982 - 1988 , 1,375,000
Korean War , 1950 - 1953 , 1,200,000
Soviet Afghan War , 1979 - 1983 , 1,100,000
Rwanda , 1994 , 800,000
Angola , 1975 - 2002 , 504,000
First Sudanese War , 1955 - 1972 , 500,000
Syrian War , 2011 - present, 470,000
First Congo War , 1996 - 1997 , 447,000
Iraq War , 2003 - 2011 , 445,000
First Indochina War , 1946 - 1954 , 400,000
9:50 AM,
Why you wrote that non-funny fabrication about the two countries nuking each other (which obviously never happened) is beyond comprehension. The point was that Pakistan and India DIDN'T exchange nukes and OUR nuclear arsenal had nothing to do with it. We never extended a nuclear umbrella over Pakistan and India wasn't even our ally.
Obviously, the reason the two countries did not exchange nukes is because using nukes could quickly escalate to near-total annihilation. However, having nukes doesn't stop India and Pakistan from engaging in their never ending series of border skirmishes using conventional weapons.
Here's a PARTIAL list of wars in the last 75 years that Nukes didn't prevent. The last number is geometric mean estimated deaths.
Ahmen brother, I would contend that nukes have increased the number of smaller wars since people think since if nukes are used its not a real war. Nukes have only created more war, people that work at the labs have blood on their hands for creating more war, just ask any historian or political scientist and and they will agree that there is more war than ever before, EVER BEFORE and this can only be due to nukes. Now some of you so called people will point to Pinklers book on the Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, including the number wars, but never mind this, just ignore it. I doubt you can find a single socialist or political scientists who would ever EVER say that nukes have reduced war. Your list of wars proves beyond any shadow of doubt that there have been wars since the nukes where first dropped, which means nukes of not stopped wars. Now my friends how is that for a LOGIC BOMB!.
As a percentage of global population for any of those conflicts, it would be difficult to distinguish these body counts from the natural, background global mortality rate. The counts are merely associated with time periods of conflict for those areas. The fact the numbers are not 2-3 orders of magnitude larger, since 1945, is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the influence of nuclear weapons on the magnitude of human conflict.
January 13, 2018 at 9:08 PM
One can argue about the details and you are probably right about some of your obscure historical points, but the main point is that the US screwed up Vietnam but the so called hippies stopped that awful war in 60s. The other point is that nukes did not prevent the war and those saying how nukes have been good for the earth by preventing wars are all wrong.
9:10, that entire list doesn't add up to half the number killed just in WWI.
Remember that the filtering process is manual, ie I read all comments. I may make mistakes. If you have an idea on how to resolve the problem or simply want to help let me know. Otherwise, don't let the door hit you in the b....
You mean arbiter. No, I am doing you service trying to keep the blog clean. Being arbitrary goes against that. Stop complaining.
I know it's a stretch, but try to be realistic for a moment. Nuclear weapons are not going away. They are going to proliferate beyond your imagination. And, they will be used in anger. Laws of chance biased by human nature will make it so. What will stop them from being used against us, once we unilaterally disarm?
It is interesting to test Scooby to see what he’ll remove and what he’ll keep. I suppose if he were Jefferson, the first amendment would read something like, “I’m doing you a favor...and don’t let the door hit you on the ass”. Thank you. Thank you. Thought police.
10:35. What you did was to compare the PARTIAL list of war deaths in last 75 years with one of the worst wars in the history of mankind. That's picking and choosing which led to your false conclusion. There are many 75 year periods before WWI that had fewer war deaths than in the last 75 years.
10:05 is simply wrong. These numbers are the war deaths, the LOCAL deaths above the expected natural LOCAL mortality rate.
Listen! You know you have a choice here: don't visit this blog.
4:27, I did not even mention the biggie, WWII, between the bomb and WWI. Have a look, https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Wars-Long-Run-military-civilian-fatalities-from-Brecke.png The death toll tells the story. Prior to the bomb we see a long history going back 500 years of episodes of massive death tolls, associated mostly with European wars. After the bomb we see a long period of declining death tolls, and no large spikes associated with deadly European wars. There isn't really a debate here, not a meaningful one.
My way or the highway! Yeah, egalitarian to the core, right? Would you entertain a vote of no confidence for you to just quit and leave us alone, for God's sake? No one has missed the huge drop-off in posts in the past several months. WHat's the point? Your moral purity?
January 14, 2018 at 8:01 PM
Are you referring to the moderators?
If so I suggest you follow your own "to just quit and leave us alone, for God's sake"
I personally like it, that the blog is moderated; it greatly reduces the number of vile and offensive contributions and lends its hands to real discussions.
On a blog the same civility should be used as in a face to face discussion with other people, and I doubt that you would use "to just quit and leave us alone, for God's sake".
So, please follow the usual social norms of conversation, and people will listen to you. If this is too hard, go to any of number of sites, which let you let steam off.
6:08
You've jumped to the existence of nukes as the reason behind why we have not experienced another war of the scale of WWII but you gave no consideration at all to other factors that are far more impactful.
First, the reason deaths in the World Wars were so high is because of the rapid development of warfighting technology which resulted in a temporary lack of warfighting technological parity between combatants. WWI saw the first widespread use of chemical weapons, machine guns, effective grenades, long-range artillery, tanks, and (rather primitive) warplanes.
By WWII, the killing power of these weapons advanced to the point where a fighter plane or submarine could sink a ship carrying thousands of people with a single bomb or torpedo. Simple low-technology firebombing and conventional bombing could now slaughter 100s of thousands because of the newly developed capabilities of heavy-weight, long-range bombers. However, at this time, only a few countries possessed the most modern warfighting technology.
The vast majority of deaths in WWII resulted from the use of German warfighting technology against the lesser-equipped Soviet military. 27,000,000 Soviet soldiers and civilians died - that dwarfs the number killed by the US use of nuclear weapons against Japan, about 200,000 total deaths. More Jews died in German gas chambers (about 6 million) than all the Japanese who died in total from all war-related causes including nuclear weapons (about 3 million).
So what has changed since WWII?
1) A world ban on chemical weapons. This has dramatically reduced deaths from chemical weapons from millions (counting German concentration camps) to thousands. Note the total ban HAS WORKED.
2) Greater conventional warfighting parity across the world. As an example, the 27,000,000 Soviet deaths could never happen today as the Russians now have conventional warfighting parity with (or even superiority over) the Germans. Because of this parity, the Germans would now suffer substantially equal deaths so, with parity, they would have never prosecuted an action on the Soviet front.
3) Intelligence capabilities. Spy satellites and other intelligence technologies now instantly expose military build-ups and deployments making it less likely that an adversary can gain an advantage by preparing for large scale war without being countered early.
4) Non-warfighting factors. These are perhaps the most important factors. International trade has increased nearly exponentially since WWII entangling the economies of countries across continents. This makes it impossible to fight WWII-scale wars without suffering a worldwide economic depression. Leaders know this, making them less likely to want to escalate wars. Instant worldwide communications has made it impossible to operate gas chambers or use chemical weapons in secret. Greater control of the citizenry over their governments including more democracies. Democracies rarely engage in war against other democracies.
January 16, 2018 at 10:14 AM
Agreed, nukes are bad so get rid of them and the labs. This is what people really want. Actually more specially it is getting rid of LANL for what they did certain ex-LANL employees.
January 16, 2018 at 4:29 PM
You can't even pretend to be serious with that kind of argument. It is certainly not a "specially" argumenet. Come back when you have some facts.
Agreed, nukes are bad so get rid of them and the labs. This is what people really want.
January 16, 2018 at 4:29 PM
What "people" are you talking about? Putin? Kim Jong Un? The Chinese? The Pakistanis? Yeah, they'd love the US to give up its nukes. I bet you won't love the result once those "people" are done with us. Try to stay focused on reality. It's where you live.
Post a Comment