There's a lot of people in this thread who see "North Korea" and "nuclear test" and get fired up but would otherwise shrug if it were instead, say, "Oklahoma" and "fracking".
The supplemental information is available and says:
> Our earthquake catalog consists primarily of small events with magnitudes of < 2.0
and there were 1399 of them.
The cited Ren&al says:
> The magnitudes of these seismic events primarily range from 1.5 to 2.5
and that there were 647 of them.
USGS (https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comp...) says that a magnitude 2.0 earthquake is the equivalent energy of 56kg of explosives, which is more than I'd want to be around but I think for people who actually use the stuff it's not a lot.
The energy being released in these many tiny earthquakes was always going to exist in this location. Much better to release it slowly via thousands of tiny earthquakes than all at once. Better to have 10k magnitude 3 quakes than one magnitude 7.
Geologic systems are more complex than this. Analyzing something like this as though it were a single system is wrought with the dangers of miscalculation.
You could locally release stresses on an incremental, short term basis this way in a local system, while at the same time increasing stresses on nearby systems which could fail even more spectacularly, especially if the increasing stresses are being moved from a less dangerous system to a more dangerous system.
I'm not suggesting the above is true in this case, but that you need to cast a pretty wide net with increasingly unknown (and perhaps unknowable) variables as you start to inject real changes into a local system and try to predict what those changes will actually do.
It's logarithmic so you'd need more like 30,000 magnitude 3 earthquakes to equal the energy of a magnitude 7. I don't think it's clear this is better. You can also make the argument that this may trigger the large earthquake that might not have happened for a long time.
Energy is logarithmic with magnitude, but if the underlying model is analogous to springs being loaded and suddenly released, that model is quadratic in energy with distance.
The article cites 1399 detectable follow-on earthquakes. If each of them represented a movement of earth an equal distance as compared to a single event, each of those movements would be 1/1399th in scale and therefore ~5x10^-7 in energy per event. (One two-millionth.)
There isA study about fire fighting. If you shit down every fire quickly then eventually you’ll have a major black swan. If you let fires burn a bit more then you’ll avoid black swan effect that burns down everything
I’m not sure if “let fires burn a bit more” is exactly what we’re after but hazard reduction burns are absolutely a thing and are an essential part of fire risk management. I don’t think your post deserved to get slammed like that.
The region can build up resistance to big fires by having small fires.
If you have an anvil hanging over your head, the potential energy that would kill you already exists. Slowly lowering the anvil makes sense. Damaging the rope holding the anvil doesn't.
If you have an ~~anvil hanging over your head~~ ton of compressed rock under you, the potential energy that would kill you already exists. Slowly lowering the ~~anvil~~ potential energy of the rock makes sense. Damaging the ~~rope holding the anvil~~ rock containing the energy doesn't.
Yeah, I mean, I understand the words you wrote. I don't think it's a good analogy.
It is entirely feasible that the same amount of potential energy, delivered either in small, successive amounts, but spaced out, proves to be tolerable, while a single large amount would be fatal.
But setting off small earthquakes doesn't just damage the rope, it also lowers the anvil. Also the anvil in our analogy is constantly getting heavier, so the chances of our rope holding forever are very low
At least naturally, faults release almost all their energy in the few largest events. You never see enough small earthquakes that you would "release slowly" that amount of energy. It would really need to be several orders of magnitude of more energy being released slowly.
We are not even remotely close to being able to predict this in a way to apply it reliably. Plate tectonics and volcanology are incredibly difficult to forecast anything short-term in.
Reminds me of a display at Chabot in the bay area. A bubbling volcano covered by a stable mass stays bubbling underneath, but shaking up the mass gives little bubbles a bath up and they break way for the big bubbles leading to a volcanic eruption. If you fragment a he soil at some point in the mantle of earth and there is pressure anywhere below, you could get yourself a new volcano.
This article does a very poor job of differentiating earthquakes people feel and care about versus magnitude 2 quakes that are like your neighbor dropping a book upstairs.
The issue on real faults is they span massive areas. The San Andreas fault system spans basically the entire coast of California.
Even if we could identify the right points there's a big liability shift both legal and political between doing nothing and intentionally setting off an earthquake that would be hard to predict the size of. It's part of why ~~proscribed~~ prescribed burns fell out of favor, it's way easier to do nothing and blame nature than defending damage caused by intentional acts. It gets into messy areas where it's hard to convince people that the damage was lesser than it otherwise would have been in the future.
The main reason is there are alternative paths where neither were required. Japan was already fishing around for diplomatic end to the war with the major sticking point being conditional vs unconditional surrender and their main condition iirc was protection for the Emperor which the US ended up not messing with significantly anyways (at least in terms of execution for various war crimes committed by Imperial Japanese forces). That's usually the main argument I see and honestly I see the points there, Japan really was putting out fairly significant feelers about a possible negotiated end to the war before the Soviet Union was able to pivot to the Far East theater.
We'll never /really/ know what the outcome of a negotiated peace would have looked like since it was obviated so soon after it started by the bombing and Japan's unconditional surrender afterwards. We don't really know how much that path would differ from the outcome of the unconditional surrender turned out to be. The main point is it's not an either or situation between bomb and the bloody full on land invasion scenarios as presented by the bomb apologist [0] camp.
[0] I mean this in the neutral dictionary sense of simply "one that defends a controversial position", just to clarify.
>The main reason is there are alternative paths where neither were required. Japan was already fishing around for diplomatic end to the war with the major sticking point being conditional vs unconditional surrender and their main condition iirc was protection for the Emperor ...
This is not true. While there were peace feelers put out by the civilian members of the Big 6, the military hardliners blocked each of them. (Most accounts also state that part of their conditions would be to be given the islands in the South Pacific that the allies had just conquered.)
Even AFTER an atomic bomb had been dropped, the military had unacceptable demands:
>...Three members held out for three additional terms: Army Minister General Korechika Anami and the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, General Yoshijiro Umezu, and Navy, Admiral Soemu Toyoda. These additional terms included: 1) Japan would disarm her own forces; 2) Japan would conduct any “so-called” war crimes trials of her own nationals; and 3) there would be no occupation of Japan. This last term would assure the continuance of the Imperial system and Hirohito’s seat on the throne. These positions would be referred to as the “one condition” and the “four condition” Japanese peace terms. Under the Japanese governing system, however, the Big Six could only act when unanimous. With a three to three split, they were deadlocked.
It was at this point that Hirohito intervened:
>...At the end of the theatrical demonstration of the deadlock, the emperor spoke. He stated he had given serious consideration to the situation at home and aboard. He then announced his support of the “one condition” offer. He and Japan must “bear the unbearable.” The Big Six and later the full cabinet made Hirohito’s decision official government policy.
The American and Allied reply accepted the Japanese surrender offer, except that it stated clearly that the emperor would be subordinate to the occupation commander. This produced another dispute as to whether Japan could accept these terms. The emperor intervened again to announce he was satisfied with the American cable.
Even after all this, hardline military officers attempted a violent military coup to destroy the Emperor's recorded surrender broadcast and keep the war going.
I talk in more (somewhat ramble-y) detail here [0], but I think I can put a more succinct version of the anti argument here, the main argument is that to morally justify the extreme act dropping atomic bombs on those cities requires an extreme set of justifications to the level of "it was the only option short of a bloody millions dead between both sides home island invasion" that history doesn't necessarily support.
The core thrust that undermines the this or that between bombs and traditional invasion justification for dropping the bombs is that a) the Emperor was already exploring possible peace deals and b) ultimately the Emperor was able to override the extreme militarists in the war council and accept the peace after the bombs. A lot of the pro-moral-bomb argument presupposes that the shock and awe of the atomic bombs were a prerequisite for the change in stance and that anything short of a full invasion of the home islands would not achieve shift large enough to get to a peace deal. (and that to achieve that impact required them to be used on a city)
Ultimately I think (and I know this is extremely hard to prove ahistorically) a naval blockade and shelling/arial campaign that devastated what little military might Japan had left would have lead to the same shift as the bombs and that the casualties from that would be lower or at least less morally weighted as the intentional atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When that shift would happen and how to weigh the deaths morally are going to vary a lot from person to person though and I accept that.
> Even after all this, hardline military officers attempted a violent military coup to destroy the Emperor's recorded surrender broadcast and keep the war going.
A coup that ultimately fails though. I don't think anyone really argues that there weren't fanatical elements remaining even after the bombs were dropped. Their existence doesn't mean peace required the bombs however, the big question is what were the conditions that would reduce their power to the point the peace could be accepted. We have one example in the bombing but that doesn't mean that was the only option.
I think very few people on the anti-bomb side would seriously argue there wasn't a split in the Imperial government and a lot of preparation going into defending against a potential US invasion attempt. At the same time however there were the beginning of diplomatic efforts to explore a negotiated peace from minority factions in the Japanese government partially backed by the Emperor, these (to me) undermine the "it was the only option" argument supporting the bombings morally. I found this article that talks a bit about the feelers (even though it gets side tracked about a supposed early-1945 prototypical peace "offer" that closely matched the eventual status post war, though that's an interesting read and an important bit of info about how to treat and examine reports of things like that). [0]
The main thrust of the anti-moral-bombing argument is essentially that the MAGIC intercepts we know happened for sure of their early diplomatic feelers indicate that the Emperor and some minority factions were beginning to develop the terms for a possible surrender and that combined with the main reasons for the US bombing not being directly oriented towards defeating Japan but were already looking to their next adversary, the USSR, weakens the argument that the bombing was ultimately more moral way of ending the war. We know for sure from Truman et al's own writings at the time show that their only concern wasn't the least bloody end of the war with Japan and they wanted to demonstrate the bomb to the USSR, I think that's pretty undisputed history even by the pro-moral-bombing side of the argument.
I tend to agree that it's unlikely Japan would have been able to stand up to a US blockade when we were already able to safely park battleships off their coast before the bombs were dropped and ultimately the Supreme War Council would have been overruled by the Emperor the same way they were after the atomic bombs were dropped. How quickly would the pro-negotiation side have gained power with a blockade of the home islands? That would have been a pretty safe operation for the US at the time.
The biggest question marks in the whole thing are largely impossible to answer how many more defeats would the militarist side have to suffer before accepting a surrender that looks like the eventual post war status. The insistence on unconditional surrender is also a thing that's difficult to weigh morally. If the US insists on a condition it knows is unacceptable how much does that shift the moral blame for Japan not accepting the ultimatum of an "unacceptable" condition or bomb?
Sorry if it's a bit jumbled, I'm bouncing between work and this and I'm not a great essayist to begin with.
Too long; You rambled too much there in the middle: the main argument of the antibomb remains that it's unlikely that a full or even partial invasion of the home islands would have been ultimately required and the atomic bombing of civilians is so morally bad that it requires an iron clad "there was no other option to end the war" (or the only alternatives were far bloodier; eg a full home island invasion) which the Japanese feelers about negotiating a peace undermines.
I think ultimately if we could part the curtains of time for both sides and show the post war outcome to both sides Japan would have accepted a surrender that lead to that future.
Nah, that whole thing is pure human. I originally had simple "tl;dr" but this felt more true and acknowledging of my poor self editing/thought organizing plus a little self deprecating. [0] Somethings that smell of llm speak are common in their output because the llms are mirroring human writing patterns after all.
The only LLM sourced thing in there is I found the nuclear secrecy blog post in a citation link but I then read it myself to try to avoid cherry picking a portion of an article that ultimately shut down my own argument.
[0] eta: Also I thought some people might take tl;dr offensively so softened it with the self deprication.
No this is apologizing for a fascist and suicidal regime. One day people will make this claim about Russia in their current Ukraine war even though it’s painfully obvious Russia is not seeking an actual diplomatic solution, and I will view them with the same distain as I view you now
> One day people will make this claim about Russia in their current Ukraine war
They might, it would be a sore excuse to nuke Russian territory or bomb Moscow a-la Dresden in 1945. The fact that Americans cannot imagine resolution to war without nuclear violence is exactly how Crimea was annexed and lost. If you ignore proportionality, then your adversary can test your patience and win every time.
This is why asymmetric warfare is so popular in Russia and China, and why it pisses off Americans so consistently. Nuclear weapons give nations a false sense of security, it doesn't protect you against subtle escalation like widespread corporate hacking, political blackmail, proxy conflicts, border harassment or industrial overmatch.
The complicating part to that is there's not the same Supreme War Council populated by militarists vs the Emperor split in modern Russia, there's just Putin. To match scenarios there would have to be an oligarch council in Russia pushing continuing the war while Putin put out feelers and that's not what's happening.
Also nothing about the anti-moral-bomb argument hinges on apologetics for Japanese actions just arguments that the bombs were unnecessary to achieve the end to the war. The only assumption is that there was some set of conditions and peace deal short of the two bombs that would lead to the emperor overriding the war council and surrendering.
Yes there was. They didn’t surrender, and the US intended to make it look like they had an enormous number of bombs even though the next was going to be weeks away
Nothing nuclear is easy. People will want to make sure you are not going to contaminate the atmosphere, or the aquifers. Not just on the day of the explosion, but long term. They will want to know your plans about how you will contain the nuclear contamination for thousands of years.
And then everyone and their uncle will sue you for any property damage they think they suffered as a result of your engineering. Which can be everyone who owns real estate for hundreds of miles?
But apart from those things there are really no major legal problems with it.
Who said anything about engineering... Do it the American way -- mine the entire fault with nukes, set them off simultaneously, broadcast the entire thing live and sell ad time!
Imagine if they trigger the California Big One and all of LA, San Diego and the SF Bay (and innumerable towns) are swallowed "because of man-made actions", I wouldn't want to be the Governor or President to approve that one lol
> Since the treaty's opening for signature in 1996, only sixteen nuclear tests have been conducted, all by non-signatory states: Pokhran-II by India and Chagai-I by Pakistan in May 1998, and six tests by North Korea from 2006 to 2017.
There have always been earthquakes in Korea. They are just typically quite weak. Though the south region that is closer to Japan has experienced some intense ones, but nothing like the massive ones they have in Japan.
Leaving aside for the moment the DDoS issue, that link is currently working for me. Archived pages on that site are puzzling, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, I'm not sure what accounts for the difference.
imagine the decades of quakes US will set off with the bunker buster they are now developing for Pickaxe Mountain (Iran, solid granite rock, one mile deep)
billions more drained from our economy and I bet the irony is it will be nuclear somehow
People are critical of North Korea - very understandable since
the Juche ideology is absolute rubbish nonsense and North Korea
remains hostile to South Korea. However had, with the USA becoming
a rogue country now, I think it is time that many more countries
will need a small, defensive nuclear arsenal: South Korea, Taiwan,
Japan, Canada, the whole EU (that is, all EU members need protection
on their own; the USA can not be trusted anymore, Trump made that
clear while serving Putin as agent Krasnov).
One can say that more nukes are bad; that's true. However had, the
big old countries CONSTANTLY abuse smaller countries. This happens
again and again and again. So, since they don't stop their own
nuclear abuse and blackmail, the only response that is logical is to
more fairly distribute nukes. Of course a much better option would be
for all countries to give up nukes; perhaps that will happen one day
in the future though probably not, since when one refuses, others would
have to follow suit and also get nukes. So the only viable long-term
strategy is to have nukes, while also working much harder to improve
diplomacy.
Geopolitics is very complex, but at least those bigger states have a lot to lose. Under mass proliferation I can see a small country with an ideological nemisis deciding to just nuke them.
I've been thinking about nukes lately (way too much, in fact). And, IMO, the only people who want nuclear weapons are national leaders. If the US invaded North Korea tomorrow, then NK has three options:
1) Launch nukes at the US. The minute those missiles leave their silos, the US will launch theirs. Even assuming the best case of no other nations joining in, most residents of NK and many residents of the US are either dead or going to die soon. The leaders of NK are probably dead.
2) Fight a conventional war. NK will probably hold out fairly well using drones. If they learned from Iran's diffuse decision-making in the military, they'll do even better. They might hold off the US long enough for peace talks. Leadership has a chance to survive, more so if they flee to China or Russia.
3) Capitulate immediately. Leadership flees to China or Russia, and the US probably lets them. The citizens aren't massacred or conscripted into a massacre, and they go on living their lives.
For NK citizens, the order from best to worst is scenario 3, 2, then 1 (if NK had good human rights, the order would be 2, 3, then 1). For pragmatic leadership, it's 2, 3, then 1. For crazy leadership, it's 1, 2, then 3. In the long run, every country will have a crazy ruler.
And that applies to any two countries. If Russia invaded the US tomorrow, I'd prefer we put up a good fight with conventional weapons, and then surrender if that fails. No nukes. I would rather live a mean life under Putin than watch my family suffer radiation poisoning. At least there's a chance of improvement and rebellion with the former.
Thinking more about it, is there any good circumstantial evidence that nukes have deterred war? Conventional war between any major powers would be devastating to everyone's economy. When the USSR was falling apart, they knew it was because of their own system and choices. Was would have just made things worse. The US goes to war with weaker nations and still leaves before winning, because we're a democracy and wars are very unpopular.
There's a lot of people in this thread who see "North Korea" and "nuclear test" and get fired up but would otherwise shrug if it were instead, say, "Oklahoma" and "fracking".
The supplemental information is available and says: > Our earthquake catalog consists primarily of small events with magnitudes of < 2.0 and there were 1399 of them.
The cited Ren&al says: > The magnitudes of these seismic events primarily range from 1.5 to 2.5 and that there were 647 of them.
USGS (https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comp...) says that a magnitude 2.0 earthquake is the equivalent energy of 56kg of explosives, which is more than I'd want to be around but I think for people who actually use the stuff it's not a lot.
When gas extraction caused earthquakes in Groenignen, this site was very clear on prioritizing fossil fuel extraction over a few small tremors.
Oklahoma hasn't threatened to nuke anyone.....yet.
Oklahoma is part of US, and there were several threats! Just a few months ago against Iran!
Not Oklahoma but Trump has made nuclear threats from Maryland this summer...
But they did bomb their own people in the Tulsa Race Massacre
Could this be considered a good thing?
The energy being released in these many tiny earthquakes was always going to exist in this location. Much better to release it slowly via thousands of tiny earthquakes than all at once. Better to have 10k magnitude 3 quakes than one magnitude 7.
Geologic systems are more complex than this. Analyzing something like this as though it were a single system is wrought with the dangers of miscalculation.
You could locally release stresses on an incremental, short term basis this way in a local system, while at the same time increasing stresses on nearby systems which could fail even more spectacularly, especially if the increasing stresses are being moved from a less dangerous system to a more dangerous system.
I'm not suggesting the above is true in this case, but that you need to cast a pretty wide net with increasingly unknown (and perhaps unknowable) variables as you start to inject real changes into a local system and try to predict what those changes will actually do.
It's logarithmic so you'd need more like 30,000 magnitude 3 earthquakes to equal the energy of a magnitude 7. I don't think it's clear this is better. You can also make the argument that this may trigger the large earthquake that might not have happened for a long time.
Energy is logarithmic with magnitude, but if the underlying model is analogous to springs being loaded and suddenly released, that model is quadratic in energy with distance.
The article cites 1399 detectable follow-on earthquakes. If each of them represented a movement of earth an equal distance as compared to a single event, each of those movements would be 1/1399th in scale and therefore ~5x10^-7 in energy per event. (One two-millionth.)
I think that's clearly better.
So even if this does release pressure with no negative side effects anywhere it isn’t actually useful for preventing “the big one”.
It can go either way, you might get a relief of pressure or you might get an increased destabilisation in the region.
There isA study about fire fighting. If you shit down every fire quickly then eventually you’ll have a major black swan. If you let fires burn a bit more then you’ll avoid black swan effect that burns down everything
I’m not sure if “let fires burn a bit more” is exactly what we’re after but hazard reduction burns are absolutely a thing and are an essential part of fire risk management. I don’t think your post deserved to get slammed like that.
The region can build up resistance to big fires by having small fires.
Have you considered logarithms?
Are fires and earthquakes the same?
it would appear nobody here knows. We probably ought to shut up until a seismologist decides to chime in
What would a size scientist know about fires or earthquakes anyways
If you have an anvil hanging over your head, the potential energy that would kill you already exists. Slowly lowering the anvil makes sense. Damaging the rope holding the anvil doesn't.
I don’t think this is a good analogy.
If you have an ~~anvil hanging over your head~~ ton of compressed rock under you, the potential energy that would kill you already exists. Slowly lowering the ~~anvil~~ potential energy of the rock makes sense. Damaging the ~~rope holding the anvil~~ rock containing the energy doesn't.
Yeah, I mean, I understand the words you wrote. I don't think it's a good analogy.
It is entirely feasible that the same amount of potential energy, delivered either in small, successive amounts, but spaced out, proves to be tolerable, while a single large amount would be fatal.
That's what they said about slowly lowering potential energy.
But setting off small earthquakes doesn't just damage the rope, it also lowers the anvil. Also the anvil in our analogy is constantly getting heavier, so the chances of our rope holding forever are very low
I think this is analogus to lowering it bit by bit in small but manageable head bonks.
The issue is the mechanism of "lowering" it. You're not giving it more slack.
At least naturally, faults release almost all their energy in the few largest events. You never see enough small earthquakes that you would "release slowly" that amount of energy. It would really need to be several orders of magnitude of more energy being released slowly.
We set off explosives to control avalanche risk.
How does the energy for the nuke itself factor into the equation though?
We are not even remotely close to being able to predict this in a way to apply it reliably. Plate tectonics and volcanology are incredibly difficult to forecast anything short-term in.
Yeah, no.
Reminds me of a display at Chabot in the bay area. A bubbling volcano covered by a stable mass stays bubbling underneath, but shaking up the mass gives little bubbles a bath up and they break way for the big bubbles leading to a volcanic eruption. If you fragment a he soil at some point in the mantle of earth and there is pressure anywhere below, you could get yourself a new volcano.
This article does a very poor job of differentiating earthquakes people feel and care about versus magnitude 2 quakes that are like your neighbor dropping a book upstairs.
Makes me think of the fact that the UK officially has over 300 earthquakes per year, but any you would actually feel are unheard of.
How long until someone attempts to diffuse a pent up fault line via nuclear geoengineering?
The issue on real faults is they span massive areas. The San Andreas fault system spans basically the entire coast of California.
Even if we could identify the right points there's a big liability shift both legal and political between doing nothing and intentionally setting off an earthquake that would be hard to predict the size of. It's part of why ~~proscribed~~ prescribed burns fell out of favor, it's way easier to do nothing and blame nature than defending damage caused by intentional acts. It gets into messy areas where it's hard to convince people that the damage was lesser than it otherwise would have been in the future.
Typo: prescribed burns.
One of the most ridiculous pairs of approximate homophones in the English language.
Proscribed = forbidden. Prescribed = recommended/required.
Whoops, thanks.
>It gets into messy areas where it's hard to convince people that the damage was lesser than it otherwise would have been in the future.
Morbidly adjacent, the US is still getting dragged over the coals for using nukes on Japan rather than a ground invasion.
The main reason is there are alternative paths where neither were required. Japan was already fishing around for diplomatic end to the war with the major sticking point being conditional vs unconditional surrender and their main condition iirc was protection for the Emperor which the US ended up not messing with significantly anyways (at least in terms of execution for various war crimes committed by Imperial Japanese forces). That's usually the main argument I see and honestly I see the points there, Japan really was putting out fairly significant feelers about a possible negotiated end to the war before the Soviet Union was able to pivot to the Far East theater.
We'll never /really/ know what the outcome of a negotiated peace would have looked like since it was obviated so soon after it started by the bombing and Japan's unconditional surrender afterwards. We don't really know how much that path would differ from the outcome of the unconditional surrender turned out to be. The main point is it's not an either or situation between bomb and the bloody full on land invasion scenarios as presented by the bomb apologist [0] camp.
[0] I mean this in the neutral dictionary sense of simply "one that defends a controversial position", just to clarify.
>The main reason is there are alternative paths where neither were required. Japan was already fishing around for diplomatic end to the war with the major sticking point being conditional vs unconditional surrender and their main condition iirc was protection for the Emperor ...
This is not true. While there were peace feelers put out by the civilian members of the Big 6, the military hardliners blocked each of them. (Most accounts also state that part of their conditions would be to be given the islands in the South Pacific that the allies had just conquered.)
Even AFTER an atomic bomb had been dropped, the military had unacceptable demands:
>...Three members held out for three additional terms: Army Minister General Korechika Anami and the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, General Yoshijiro Umezu, and Navy, Admiral Soemu Toyoda. These additional terms included: 1) Japan would disarm her own forces; 2) Japan would conduct any “so-called” war crimes trials of her own nationals; and 3) there would be no occupation of Japan. This last term would assure the continuance of the Imperial system and Hirohito’s seat on the throne. These positions would be referred to as the “one condition” and the “four condition” Japanese peace terms. Under the Japanese governing system, however, the Big Six could only act when unanimous. With a three to three split, they were deadlocked.
It was at this point that Hirohito intervened:
>...At the end of the theatrical demonstration of the deadlock, the emperor spoke. He stated he had given serious consideration to the situation at home and aboard. He then announced his support of the “one condition” offer. He and Japan must “bear the unbearable.” The Big Six and later the full cabinet made Hirohito’s decision official government policy. The American and Allied reply accepted the Japanese surrender offer, except that it stated clearly that the emperor would be subordinate to the occupation commander. This produced another dispute as to whether Japan could accept these terms. The emperor intervened again to announce he was satisfied with the American cable.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japans-surren...
Even after all this, hardline military officers attempted a violent military coup to destroy the Emperor's recorded surrender broadcast and keep the war going.
I talk in more (somewhat ramble-y) detail here [0], but I think I can put a more succinct version of the anti argument here, the main argument is that to morally justify the extreme act dropping atomic bombs on those cities requires an extreme set of justifications to the level of "it was the only option short of a bloody millions dead between both sides home island invasion" that history doesn't necessarily support.
The core thrust that undermines the this or that between bombs and traditional invasion justification for dropping the bombs is that a) the Emperor was already exploring possible peace deals and b) ultimately the Emperor was able to override the extreme militarists in the war council and accept the peace after the bombs. A lot of the pro-moral-bomb argument presupposes that the shock and awe of the atomic bombs were a prerequisite for the change in stance and that anything short of a full invasion of the home islands would not achieve shift large enough to get to a peace deal. (and that to achieve that impact required them to be used on a city)
Ultimately I think (and I know this is extremely hard to prove ahistorically) a naval blockade and shelling/arial campaign that devastated what little military might Japan had left would have lead to the same shift as the bombs and that the casualties from that would be lower or at least less morally weighted as the intentional atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When that shift would happen and how to weigh the deaths morally are going to vary a lot from person to person though and I accept that.
> Even after all this, hardline military officers attempted a violent military coup to destroy the Emperor's recorded surrender broadcast and keep the war going.
A coup that ultimately fails though. I don't think anyone really argues that there weren't fanatical elements remaining even after the bombs were dropped. Their existence doesn't mean peace required the bombs however, the big question is what were the conditions that would reduce their power to the point the peace could be accepted. We have one example in the bombing but that doesn't mean that was the only option.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757977
If nuking Japan wasn't necessary and excessive then why didn't they surrender after the first nuke was dropped?
I think this single image from 1945 captures everything about the situation with Japan at the time, and what went into the decision making.[1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps#/medi...
I think very few people on the anti-bomb side would seriously argue there wasn't a split in the Imperial government and a lot of preparation going into defending against a potential US invasion attempt. At the same time however there were the beginning of diplomatic efforts to explore a negotiated peace from minority factions in the Japanese government partially backed by the Emperor, these (to me) undermine the "it was the only option" argument supporting the bombings morally. I found this article that talks a bit about the feelers (even though it gets side tracked about a supposed early-1945 prototypical peace "offer" that closely matched the eventual status post war, though that's an interesting read and an important bit of info about how to treat and examine reports of things like that). [0]
The main thrust of the anti-moral-bombing argument is essentially that the MAGIC intercepts we know happened for sure of their early diplomatic feelers indicate that the Emperor and some minority factions were beginning to develop the terms for a possible surrender and that combined with the main reasons for the US bombing not being directly oriented towards defeating Japan but were already looking to their next adversary, the USSR, weakens the argument that the bombing was ultimately more moral way of ending the war. We know for sure from Truman et al's own writings at the time show that their only concern wasn't the least bloody end of the war with Japan and they wanted to demonstrate the bomb to the USSR, I think that's pretty undisputed history even by the pro-moral-bombing side of the argument.
I tend to agree that it's unlikely Japan would have been able to stand up to a US blockade when we were already able to safely park battleships off their coast before the bombs were dropped and ultimately the Supreme War Council would have been overruled by the Emperor the same way they were after the atomic bombs were dropped. How quickly would the pro-negotiation side have gained power with a blockade of the home islands? That would have been a pretty safe operation for the US at the time.
The biggest question marks in the whole thing are largely impossible to answer how many more defeats would the militarist side have to suffer before accepting a surrender that looks like the eventual post war status. The insistence on unconditional surrender is also a thing that's difficult to weigh morally. If the US insists on a condition it knows is unacceptable how much does that shift the moral blame for Japan not accepting the ultimatum of an "unacceptable" condition or bomb?
Sorry if it's a bit jumbled, I'm bouncing between work and this and I'm not a great essayist to begin with.
Too long; You rambled too much there in the middle: the main argument of the antibomb remains that it's unlikely that a full or even partial invasion of the home islands would have been ultimately required and the atomic bombing of civilians is so morally bad that it requires an iron clad "there was no other option to end the war" (or the only alternatives were far bloodier; eg a full home island invasion) which the Japanese feelers about negotiating a peace undermines.
I think ultimately if we could part the curtains of time for both sides and show the post war outcome to both sides Japan would have accepted a surrender that lead to that future.
[0] https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-japanese-...
Thank you for the post.
> Too long; You rambled too much there in the middle […]
Is this Claude’s suggestions for editing your post??
Nah, that whole thing is pure human. I originally had simple "tl;dr" but this felt more true and acknowledging of my poor self editing/thought organizing plus a little self deprecating. [0] Somethings that smell of llm speak are common in their output because the llms are mirroring human writing patterns after all.
The only LLM sourced thing in there is I found the nuclear secrecy blog post in a citation link but I then read it myself to try to avoid cherry picking a portion of an article that ultimately shut down my own argument.
[0] eta: Also I thought some people might take tl;dr offensively so softened it with the self deprication.
Should Japan have A-bombed the US then? https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/what-am...
No this is apologizing for a fascist and suicidal regime. One day people will make this claim about Russia in their current Ukraine war even though it’s painfully obvious Russia is not seeking an actual diplomatic solution, and I will view them with the same distain as I view you now
> One day people will make this claim about Russia in their current Ukraine war
They might, it would be a sore excuse to nuke Russian territory or bomb Moscow a-la Dresden in 1945. The fact that Americans cannot imagine resolution to war without nuclear violence is exactly how Crimea was annexed and lost. If you ignore proportionality, then your adversary can test your patience and win every time.
This is why asymmetric warfare is so popular in Russia and China, and why it pisses off Americans so consistently. Nuclear weapons give nations a false sense of security, it doesn't protect you against subtle escalation like widespread corporate hacking, political blackmail, proxy conflicts, border harassment or industrial overmatch.
The complicating part to that is there's not the same Supreme War Council populated by militarists vs the Emperor split in modern Russia, there's just Putin. To match scenarios there would have to be an oligarch council in Russia pushing continuing the war while Putin put out feelers and that's not what's happening.
Also nothing about the anti-moral-bomb argument hinges on apologetics for Japanese actions just arguments that the bombs were unnecessary to achieve the end to the war. The only assumption is that there was some set of conditions and peace deal short of the two bombs that would lead to the emperor overriding the war council and surrendering.
There is no excuse for the second bomb.
Yes there was. They didn’t surrender, and the US intended to make it look like they had an enormous number of bombs even though the next was going to be weeks away
If the need was /just/ to demonstrate the existence of a second bomb implying a continuous pipeline/supply, that didn't have to happen in a city.
If they can’t build high speed rail along the corridor then surely they cannot geo engineer it either!
Below ground nuclear geoengineering should be legally much simpler especially if it's deep enough to not significantly impact mineral rights claims.
That feels very optimistic.
Nothing nuclear is easy. People will want to make sure you are not going to contaminate the atmosphere, or the aquifers. Not just on the day of the explosion, but long term. They will want to know your plans about how you will contain the nuclear contamination for thousands of years.
And then everyone and their uncle will sue you for any property damage they think they suffered as a result of your engineering. Which can be everyone who owns real estate for hundreds of miles?
But apart from those things there are really no major legal problems with it.
Who said anything about engineering... Do it the American way -- mine the entire fault with nukes, set them off simultaneously, broadcast the entire thing live and sell ad time!
So possible in less regulated countries but not in the US. Here I think it would be far too much of a legal liability.
It's been theorized and allegedly attempted - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tectonic_weapon
Project Plowshare says hello:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
The soviets reportedly used nukes to cap uncontrolled leaking oil wells - https://www.npr.org/2010/06/04/127473704/stopping-a-spill-th...
nuclear acupuncture
Never, fer get it, in a word, insurance.
Sounds like a plot for a Superhero movie ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_(1978_film)
Dibs on Otisburg.
More like a bond villain plot. Nefarious under the guise of altruism. And a volcano lair.
Not exactly a superhero movie, but The Core (2003) is kinda related
Personally I was thinking of the Bond movie "A View To Kill" (the plot to destroy Silicon Valley through activating the San Andreas fault).
That might be tempting if the techbros achieve their post-democracy ideal... ;-)
Imagine if they trigger the California Big One and all of LA, San Diego and the SF Bay (and innumerable towns) are swallowed "because of man-made actions", I wouldn't want to be the Governor or President to approve that one lol
The long delay is the interesting part to me. How do they distinguish earthquakes triggered by the test from normal background seismicity?
Sounds like climate change induced disasters, and why it’s so easy to not take responsibility.
Basically, they gave their land Atrial Fibrillation through strong extrasystoles.
It isn't geological destabilization. They've awakened Godzilla.
*They’ve awakened Pulgasari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulgasari
Curious how we never get articles about the harm caused by western countries nuclear tests...
Well, they haven't conducted any since 1996.
> Since the treaty's opening for signature in 1996, only sixteen nuclear tests have been conducted, all by non-signatory states: Pokhran-II by India and Chagai-I by Pakistan in May 1998, and six tests by North Korea from 2006 to 2017.
because they're not doing them anymore
20 km isn't that far away but still shocking. (No pun intended.)
So does that mean the Korean Peninsula is no longer a geologically safe region from earthquakes going forward? That's scary.
The entire Pacific region was full of volcanoes already. It's not a place you want to go if afraid of tectonic activity.
Never has been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_South_K...
There have always been earthquakes in Korea. They are just typically quite weak. Though the south region that is closer to Japan has experienced some intense ones, but nothing like the massive ones they have in Japan.
If you keep tickling the lamp.. dont be surprised when the genie pops out.
Or better put:
Fuck with pachamama.. and she will have the last laugh
Endless captcha loop for me, is there an archive? (archive.ph etc. has the same issue for me)
sure, https://archive.is/xjmvA
That is the same site as archive.ph with the same issue :/
Also they are known for abusing javascript on client browsers to DDoS someone they didn't like.
On Chrome, blocking javascript for each of these worked for me: [.]archive.fo [.]archive.is [.]archive.li [.]archive.md [.]archive.ph [.]archive.today [*.]archive.vn Also, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...?
Leaving aside for the moment the DDoS issue, that link is currently working for me. Archived pages on that site are puzzling, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, I'm not sure what accounts for the difference.
That headline is tabloid tier bs. They haven't established anything close to causation. Do better, science.org.
imagine the decades of quakes US will set off with the bunker buster they are now developing for Pickaxe Mountain (Iran, solid granite rock, one mile deep)
billions more drained from our economy and I bet the irony is it will be nuclear somehow
People are critical of North Korea - very understandable since the Juche ideology is absolute rubbish nonsense and North Korea remains hostile to South Korea. However had, with the USA becoming a rogue country now, I think it is time that many more countries will need a small, defensive nuclear arsenal: South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, the whole EU (that is, all EU members need protection on their own; the USA can not be trusted anymore, Trump made that clear while serving Putin as agent Krasnov).
One can say that more nukes are bad; that's true. However had, the big old countries CONSTANTLY abuse smaller countries. This happens again and again and again. So, since they don't stop their own nuclear abuse and blackmail, the only response that is logical is to more fairly distribute nukes. Of course a much better option would be for all countries to give up nukes; perhaps that will happen one day in the future though probably not, since when one refuses, others would have to follow suit and also get nukes. So the only viable long-term strategy is to have nukes, while also working much harder to improve diplomacy.
Geopolitics is very complex, but at least those bigger states have a lot to lose. Under mass proliferation I can see a small country with an ideological nemisis deciding to just nuke them.
I've been thinking about nukes lately (way too much, in fact). And, IMO, the only people who want nuclear weapons are national leaders. If the US invaded North Korea tomorrow, then NK has three options:
1) Launch nukes at the US. The minute those missiles leave their silos, the US will launch theirs. Even assuming the best case of no other nations joining in, most residents of NK and many residents of the US are either dead or going to die soon. The leaders of NK are probably dead.
2) Fight a conventional war. NK will probably hold out fairly well using drones. If they learned from Iran's diffuse decision-making in the military, they'll do even better. They might hold off the US long enough for peace talks. Leadership has a chance to survive, more so if they flee to China or Russia.
3) Capitulate immediately. Leadership flees to China or Russia, and the US probably lets them. The citizens aren't massacred or conscripted into a massacre, and they go on living their lives.
For NK citizens, the order from best to worst is scenario 3, 2, then 1 (if NK had good human rights, the order would be 2, 3, then 1). For pragmatic leadership, it's 2, 3, then 1. For crazy leadership, it's 1, 2, then 3. In the long run, every country will have a crazy ruler.
And that applies to any two countries. If Russia invaded the US tomorrow, I'd prefer we put up a good fight with conventional weapons, and then surrender if that fails. No nukes. I would rather live a mean life under Putin than watch my family suffer radiation poisoning. At least there's a chance of improvement and rebellion with the former.
Thinking more about it, is there any good circumstantial evidence that nukes have deterred war? Conventional war between any major powers would be devastating to everyone's economy. When the USSR was falling apart, they knew it was because of their own system and choices. Was would have just made things worse. The US goes to war with weaker nations and still leaves before winning, because we're a democracy and wars are very unpopular.