Nuclear weapons

[O Really]

About 87,443, down from 110,000 last year.

[Vrede too]

More than I would have guessed, O Really.

Hiroshima Day

Seventy nine years ago.

There can't be many WW2 vets left.

Nor 1945 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[GoCubsGo]

More than I would have guessed, O Really.

Hiroshima Day

Seventy nine years ago.

There can't be many WW2 vets left.

Nor 1945 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ouch.

[Vrede too]

Ouch.

More pain:

Nuclear Submarine Captain Fired After Sex Video Claims Surface

A nuclear submarine captain has allegedly been fired for making a sex video while in command and sharing a steamy clip with a junior sailor aboard.

The decorated Royal Navy officer, who has reportedly met Britain’s Princess Anne, was also accused of sending graphic selfies, according to reports in the U.K.

The male officer, who has not been named, was said to oversee a Vanguard-class nuclear submarine armed with Trident Two missiles. He had reportedly moved on to a desk job when the incidents were reported and an investigation was launched....

Keep in mind, by definition a boomer captain and one other officer can launch ICBMs, no chain of command needed. Now, I'm no sexual prude, but I'd rather not be worrying about the judgement of Vanguard or any other boomer captains.

[Vrede too]

Was Hiroshima Necessary?
Why the Atomic Bombings Could Have Been Avoided

It’s time to end the myth that the US needed to drop atomic bombs to end World War II | Opinion

In truth, by June 1945, Japan had been militarily defeated, its once powerful Imperial Navy and air services capable of little resistance, according to Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, in his 1997 essay, “Was Hiroshima Necessary?”

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said of these bombings: “The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Most American military leaders criticized the bombings publicly after the war, including Truman’s chief of staff, Adm. William D. Leahy and even the well-known war hawk Gen. Curtis LeMay, who led the bombings over Tokyo, and who said in a press conference on Sept. 20, 1945: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.” When asked to clarify, LeMay said, “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

Gar Alperovitz — perhaps the historian who knows the issue best, having written the books “Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam” and ”The Decision To Use The Atomic Bomb,” with seven collaborators and 112 pages of endnotes — says that the 1990 declaration by J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, convinced him that the use of atomic weapons on Japan was unnecessary. Walker said:

“The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisors knew it.”

On Aug. 5, 2005, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, co-authors of “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” wrote an article in The Los Angeles Times entitled “The myths of Hiroshima.” In it, they said:

“The hard truth is that the bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper’s magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.” (Since the total American casualties in WWII were 405,000, the suggestion of an invasion of Japan taking one million or half a million American lives is ludicrous, and Bundy vacillated between one million and half million.)...

[Vrede too]

A Japanese organization of atomic bombing survivors wins the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

... The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it has awarded the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again," sending a message to countries that are considering acquiring or threatening to use them.

Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said Nihon Hidankyo, made up of survivors of the August 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nakasaki by the United States, has been instrumental in the global movement that has kept nuclear weapons from being used in conflict for 80 years.

“These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience and issuing urgent warnings against the spread of nuclear weapons,” he said.

Frydnes said thanks to their work, nuclear weapons have been stigmatized as morally unacceptable. But he added that the long-held "nuclear taboo" is now under pressure.

“The nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals,” he said. “New countries appear to be preparing to acquire weapons, and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons as part of ongoing warfare.”...

Idk about Nihon Hidankyo specifically, but I crossed paths with hibakusha, atomic bombing survivors, many times in the 1980s and 90s. Though now diminished in numbers their quiet commitment and resilience was always inspiring, and they could have won any year since then. Their cause is sad, but for their long overdue recognition: