If you could have leaked info about the US's weapons program in the 1940's and prevented The Bomb

[Snake Alchemist]

from ever being dropped, would you have?

I'd like to think I would. Not sure how long it would have delayed that monstrosity from coming into existence, but any amount of time would have been good.

[Swede]

1. Leak it to Stalin and Hitler?

Yep,peace and good will would have broke out.

[Snake Alchemist]

5. Not as a spy. Just to the US press and people. nt

[Swede]

7. And only the good folks would read it.

nt

[Snake Alchemist]

10. I would like to think the American people would make the right choice if they knew it was meant for

a civilian target and just some of the lingering effects.

[sharp_stick]

12. What would you have leaked

the plans? Everybody and their dog knew the research was going on. You would not have slowed anything down just sped it up considerably.

If you leak the plans I have a funny feeling that it would not be all gumdrops and happy happy dancing of peace around the world but a PDQ annihilation.

[Snake Alchemist]

13. Just the target locations and effects of radiation. nt

[FarCenter]

21. The targets were not chosen until late in the development, and radiation was not well understood

Bear in mind that the urgency of the project was to beat the Germans to the bomb, not the Japanese.

There was considerable sentiment during the last part of the war to reduce all German towns and cities to rubble and return them to an agrarian society. Only the start of the Cold War prevented harsh retribution.

[The Magistrate]

2. Fuck No, Sir: You May Have Won Dumbest Post Of the Month Honors Here

[Snake Alchemist]

3. I'm not as comfortable as you are with targeting civilians with atomic weapons.

Show me the way.

[The Magistrate]

27. You Seriously Need To Read Up On What Went On In Those Days, Sir

'Whirlwind, the Air War Against Japan' is a good modern work, and there is a study old perennial, 'A Torch To the Enemy', you could clearly stand to read.

Though of great importance, the atomic bombings in Japan were pretty much the 'cherry on top' of a horrendous campaign of incendiarism, adding only small increments to the areas of devastation, and not too large a fraction of the death total. Beware, buy the way, of modern figures for deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; these have become wildly inflated down the years....

[Snake Alchemist]

39. Not much different than these days I would imagine

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/12/syria-children-burned-alive_n_1339554.html

[The Magistrate]

42. You Lack Serious Intent, Sir: It Makes You Very Boring

[PCIntern]

47. good response Magistrate, as usual...

this is a seditious OP.

[Snake Alchemist]

49. Yep, I probably would have done everything I could to stop the war.

I am sure I would have been labeled a traitor during that time.

[qazplm]

35. depends upon your intent

1. if you think you'd save lives by doing so, you wouldn't have. We would have still attacked, just maybe different cities but let's assume you could have setback the program 10 years. The following problems remain:

a. we invade Japan by land killing far more people on both sides than the two atomic bombs did.
b. no one gets to see the effect of nuclear weapons first hand, thus setting the stage for use of stronger, and more numerous bombs in some conflict later.
c. The Soviet Union still continues work on THEIR bomb, get it first, and then the entire balance of power changes, possibly resulting in them being the first to use nukes...on us...in greater volume.

The Law of Unintended Consequences I think hits your proposal square in the jaw.

2. If the goal is just to not have nukes used it again hits on the following:

a. as stated elsewhere, we did not fully know the effects to begin with
b. just delays the first use, likely with stronger and more numerous bombs
c. has no effect on the Soviet Union

3. We were already targeting civilians with mass weapons then, fire bombs. How many people do you think died in Dresden because of fire bombing? Do you think the two nukes killed more people than we would have killed if we'd fire bombed multiple cities as part of or prelude to a land invasion of Japan?

Other than "nukes bad" nothing in your hypo appears well thought out, no offense.

[sharp_stick]

6. Ha Ha Ha... well put n/t

[FarCenter]

4. What information could you have leaked that would have stopped the Manhattan Project?

Leaker: We are working on a tremendous bomb that can destroy a whole city at once.

Man in the street: Awesome, wonderful, outstanding.

[Snake Alchemist]

8. I would like to think if people had learned the absolute destruction and devastation it would cause

and the fact it was meant for civilian targets, the public would have had a different reaction.

[cthulu2016]

14. No chance.

The public would have been far more supportive of its use than the people at the top were.

[Snake Alchemist]

15. I don't know that, but if true, that is scary and very disappointing. nt

[The Magistrate]

20. Try A Work Titled 'War Without Mercy', Sir, Then Get Back to Us

[Snake Alchemist]

23. Sounds like the manual used during the Bush years. nt

[The Magistrate]

29. People Without Interest In Learning, Sir, Are Of No Interest

[zipplewrath]

26. Remember what they had lived through

I don't think people often understand what they had lived through by then. 19 million men had gone off to war, in a country roughly 150 million folks. By 1945, everyone knew someone who had died. Every street had Gold Star Mothers. There were the reds star mothers too. The enemies of course had been completely demonized. Papers came out multiple times a day, and they all had front page stories of the war. Letters took weeks to reach people back home. Many things were "rationed", no one had bought a new car or new tires in years. You didn't go to a movie without seeing images of war. You turned on the radio to regular news casts describing the war. War bonds were constantly being sold. There were innummerable bond drives. Scrap metal was collected "for the war effort". recycling was seen as patriotic. Women were raising families "solo", they were working in factories. Washington DC was "afloat" in female clerks away from home.

The country by then was tired. War seemed to never end. The dead kept coming home. Not to mention the injured, and the POW's. People knew of the conditions in Japanese prison camps. They wanted it to be over. They wanted it to be over NOW. Quite the opposite, if the general population had heard what they were building, they would have wanted it sooner.

Truth be known, if Truman had waited one day longer to use it, and the population found out, they probably would accused him of treason.

[pnorman]

25. I was only 15 years old at that time.

But within the limited scope of my powers of observation, you are spot on!

[FarCenter]

16. Most bombings during WW II were of civilian targets

There was no public outcry against the bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo as far as I know of.

They were considered to be an appropriate retaliation for the bombings of Rotterdam, London, and other cities, as well as the attack on Pearl Harbor, etc.

The military theory was that the bombing of cities would demoralize the population and lead to "regime change" (or at least badly affect the overall economic output underpinning the opponent's military production).

[dionysus]

34. convention firebombs killed more in dresden.. i think you may need to read up...

[cthulu2016]

38. And, even more to the point, Tokyo

[The Magistrate]

40. Hell, Sir, Simple Starvation Killed Damned Near a Million In Leningrad Alone

The level of ignorance on display sometimes is appalling.

Romania, which most people barely suspect to have been involved in the thing, had more military casualties in WWII than the United States.....

[hack89]

44. The public had been watching entire cities being destroyed for several years

with no real protest.

The the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan did not raise the threshold of death in WWII - they were not even the deadliest air attacks on Japan. Hamburg and Dresden in Germany were just as deadly.

The public's reaction would have been "good, lets get this damned war over.".

[MrScorpio]

9. You can't put the genie back in the bottle

If not us, it would have been someone else.

How do you like those marbles?

[Snake Alchemist]

11. Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe no one would have ever come up with it. Maybe we would have 5 years later in a non-military capacity.

[LanternWaste]

17. I don't pretend to have the confidence in my own foresight and precognitive abilitie

I don't pretend to have the confidence in my own foresight and precognitive abilities to believe that any do-over I choose would result in a "better" world-- merely a different one. I'll let those with that confidence pretend to know...

[Snake Alchemist]

19. I have no idea what would have happened. Just which action I would have taken if I had the ability.

nt

[jwirr]

48. And there were conscientious (spelling?) objectors who protested the war in general but for the

most part the people who are trying to explain the attitude back then are correct. I was born in 1941 and grew up with the knowledge that we thought we did the only thing that would actually end the war. Was it right? I do not want to judge the actions taken. At least the war did not last 10 years.

[hughee99]

18. After years at war and millions of lives lost,

Can you think of anything you could have said to anyone that would have prevented it?

You could tell the Japanese leadership who wouldn't believe you until they see it for themselves. Hell, they didn't even surrender after the first one. You could tell the American people, who after years at war and with the daunting task of invading the Japanese home islands, might see this as the better option. Maybe there's some scenario I haven't thought of that prevents the bomb from getting dropped, but I don't see one in which information leaks make that happen (short of actual sabotage that prevents the physical bombs from getting dropped).

[Indianademocrat91]

22. 1,000,000 people would die

If the bomb never would have dropped, all estimates were that over 1,000,000 Americans and Japanese would have died as a result of a land invasion. Telling the American people in that time that you would rather have 500,000 US troops die, than 200000 Japanese, would not go over well. As terrible as it was, I don't think they had any other option once they knew it would work.

[Spider Jerusalem]

24. To what end?

I don't really think that a full-scale Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands would have been a better alternative. And nuclear weapons would have been developed anyway; the means and the science were there, it would have only been a matter of time before Britain, or the USSR, had nuclear weapons. It's one of those things where the state of human knowledge was sufficiently advanced that SOMEONE would have developed it at roughly the same time, if not the US. And the consequences of an invasion of Japan would have been much worse for both the Japanese and the Allies than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[brooklynite]

28. Would you have leaked the location and schedule of American bombers?

Think about the raid on Dresden; was that a more acceptable form of killing in your opinion? And if not, wouldn't you want to stop it? Where do you draw the line in a war?

[FSogol]

30. Finally an opportunity to use trash thread!

[HubertHeaver]

31. The 'trench rumors' in Europe said the bomb was ready in March.

It wasn't used in Germany because the German forces were pulling back so rapidly there was a real chance the bomb would hit too close to the advancing armies.

[dionysus]

32. .... you'd have been hung for treason, and rightly so... stupid OP...

[Snake Alchemist]

50. Not wanting attacks on civilians and war in general has always been controversial.

We humans seem to live to fight.

[DeadEyeDyck]

33. If only Eve did not eat that apple. N/T

[DefenseLawyer]

36. Hey Steve! If the moon was made of spare ribs, would ya eat it?

I know I would!



Cubs win! Cubs win!

[qazplm]

41. it's a simple question my friend!

What's your favorite planet?

Mine's the Sun!

[DefenseLawyer]

45. Always has been.

I like it because it's like the king of planets!

[slackmaster]

37. Absolutely not

[MineralMan]

43. If only early man didn't discover that chipping flakes

off some kinds of rocks created a sharp edge, we wouldn't have wars. Yeah...that's the ticket...you've gotta nip those things in the bud, I guess.

[cynatnite]

46. I miss the unrec feature. n/t

[badtoworse]

51. Only an idiot would have done that. - nt

[Paladin]

52. Not A Chance.

A U.S. invasion of Japan would have cost huge numbers of lives, both U.S. and Japanese, far in excess of the numbers lost in the two bombed cities. I'm glad I didn't have to make the decision, but I think it was the right one.....

[baldguy]

53. To what purpose?

You forget that Germany also had an active nuclear weapons development program. And they had MRBMs to deliver them to their targets.