As a physicist, my two cents on the atomic bomb.

[redgreenandblue]

I'll leave the discussion as to whether to drop it on Japan was right to the armchair historians, but as a physicists I can say this:

I think the bomb should never have been built.

The people who built the bomb knew, or should have known, exactly what they were unleashing upon the world. This is a weapon of a quality never seen before in human history, that had, and still has, the potential to bring about the end of civilization, and nearly did so a few times in the twentieth century. It is a weapon that is by its very nature uncontrollable and indiscriminate. It has no purpose other than to inflict mass casualties on civilians. And as a scientist you should be aware that when you build such a device, the politicians will find a reason to use it.

I think participating in the Manhattan project will forever be a stain on the legacy of Richard Feynman and the others.

[Journeyman]

1. I've always thought Einstein had it right . . .

“The release of atom power has chan­ged everything except our way of thinking…the solu­tion to this pro­blem lies in the heart of man­kind. If only I had known, I should have become a watch­ma­ker.” — Albert Einstein

[KingCharlemagne]

73. Stealing this quote for my Facebook status update. Hope that's OK and many

thanks for posting.

[Sherman A1]

2. You may be right,

However, it was a different time and vastly different circumstances in those days. Germany and to a lesser extent Japan were both working on their own versions of this weapon and we simply did not know if they would be successful. Would it not have been remiss by our leadership to proceed with development?

As you said there can perhaps be made an argument against dropping the bomb, I know this time every year many do post their thoughts on this subject, I personally believe it was a correct decision based upon the information at the time and what has since been made available. That said I understand there are those who will disagree with me and I believe they are fully entitled to their opinions, yet in any event none of us can dial the clock back 70 years and change those decisions. We can only hope and work for a world where these and hopefully all weapons will not be needed.

[MannyGoldstein]

31. Many of those on the Manhattan Project

were refugees from Germany or the countries it had vanquished. Heisenberg was in charge of the German atomic bomb program. There was good reason to believe that Germany had the intellectual and industral capacity to create a bomb - and use it. Not just to win a war, but with the end goal of exterminating whole populations.

[raccoon]

35. A horrible thought, but I think you got that right.

but with the end goal of exterminating whole populations.

[Whiskeytide]

44. And that is really it in a nutshell...

If either the Nazis or the Japanese military had gotten it first, there is little doubt they would have unleashed it as far and wide as their resources allowed them to. Both had already demonstrated the capacity to commit atrocities. What would the extermination of cities have meant to them?

We got it first - and the debate of whether we should have used it notwithstanding - the fact that we had it meant that anyone else that got it had to consider their own destruction as a very real consequence of using it. MAD was - is - a twisted psychology, but it was probably the only way we could have moved into the atomic age without incomprehensible global damage.

[MillennialDem]

50. In a sense though, the Germans and Russians had it right - I read up on something

that said both knew about the bomb but knew the war would be over by the time it was built. That's why they didn't commit much to it.

[Sunlei]

3. I think at that time if Japan had 'the bomb' they would have used it on us.

[Flying Squirrel]

11. But they didn't

And even if you could know that for sure, it doesn't change the morality of doing so ourselves. Just like the fact that the Japanese tortured our soldiers wouldn't make it ok for us to do so to theirs.

[Sunlei]

22. agree & you're right, doesn't change the morality.But Pearl Harbor was attacked &they fought to win

Hopefully our civilization has evolved in a better, more positive direction.

70 years ago is a longtime, a lifetime for many. I think time can heal all wounds if we can make some of humanity stop picking the scabs.

[Art_from_Ark]

65. Americans sometimes tortured captured Japanese soldiers

One of my friends who had fought in the Pacific Theater told me of a time when some guys in his unit captured some Japanese soldiers, put grenades in their mouths and pulled the pins as they threw their prisoners off a cliff.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

30. They would have to deliver it in order to use it.

The project to develop and build the B-29 bomber was probably as big as the project to create the bomb. And the effort to invade Tinian island and build a large air base was no small feat. Without that infrastructure, the bomb would have been useless.

I don't think the Japanese military could have gotten one of those things over California. Maybe an underwater detonation on a submarine.

[Maedhros]

59. The Japanese launched submarine-borne balloons bearing firebombs against the Pacific NW

in 1945:

http://www.wired.com/2010/05/0505japanese-balloon-kills-oregon/

1945: A Japanese balloon bomb kills six people in rural eastern Oregon. They are the only World War II U.S. combat casualties in the 48 states.

Months before an atomic bomb decimated Hiroshima, the United States and Japan were locked in the final stages of World War II. The United States had turned the tables and invaded Japan’s outlying islands three years after Japan’s invasion of the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

I suppose something similar could have been used to deploy an atomic weapon.

[pnwmom]

4. The problem is that we weren't the only ones working on the bomb. So were our enemies.

The ones who attacked us.

[Ilsa]

6. One of our allies was working on it also,

and received help from an American communist working on the project.

[redgreenandblue]

17. Who is that "us" you speak of?

I find considering ones nationality as an important part of ones identity, dunno, creepy....

[Recursion]

5. What do you think about the argument that there have been no "great power" wars since 1945?

eg, that the bomb made a direct war between the USA and USSR impossible? We fought proxy wars, but I think there's an argument that MAD did keep the larger peace between us.

[Martin Eden]

15. I've made that argument for years

I also think the graphic devastation in Japan for all the world to see may have precluded subsequent use of this weapon. Once it became scientifically possible, construction of the bomb was almost certainly inevitable -- if not by us, then someone else. A first military use under different circumstances, possibly with the more destructive nuclear bomb, could have been worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I am of course speculating. What I am not doing is making a moral argument in favor of the bomb or dropping it on anyone. Given human nature and the history of war between nation states, I think what transpired is not nearly as terrible as other very possible scenarios.

[redgreenandblue]

16. I think that this is the result of a gamble.

The world tossed a coin and it came up heads, whereas tails would have had incalculable consequences.

Not a great fan of Russian roulette.

Arguably there was a prisoner's dilemma type of situation going on though....

[CTyankee]

20. I believe that is right. But to another point: it is my understanding that we developed

the atomic bomb because we believed Germany would soon get one. We dropped it on Japan because at that point the war Europe was mostly over and we won...

[HFRN]

28. if you're willing to take credit for luck in Oct 1962, Sept & Nov 1983, & Jan 1995

and who knows when else, I suppose that argument holds.......for now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident

[hunter]

32. I agree with that argument.

It's not anything the human species should take pride in.

Most people seem to be unaware of the shocking scale of the plutonium production facilities at Hanford.

There seems to be this comfortable notion that after the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki, the U.S.A. said "whoa!" and then backed off, up until the Soviet Union built their own bomb, thus igniting the Cold War. That's bullshit.

In fact the U.S.A. was so hell bent on building these plutonium bombs that we built over a hundred of them, and by 1950 they'd all been replaced by new and improved bombs.

[Recursion]

34. Yeah, that animation of every nuclear detonation since '45 was sobering

Good point

[Unknown Beatle]

7. The bomb didn't have to be used on Japan, twice.

Telling Japan that the US had an atomic bomb and then showing a demonstration of it's power to Japanese leaders would have been enough for them to surrender.

The US already had Japan on it's knees and it didn't need to use full force on them.

The US had to show the world what it was capable of doing with it's military might, so might as well incinerate innocent civilians.

Such a travesty.

[Adrahil]

8. What do you base that on?

Ever after Nagasaki there were those in Japanese leadership that wanted to fight on. It's very east to second guess people 70 years later, when the lives of millions are not YOUR responsibility.

[MillennialDem]

53. I don't really get how this is an argument by itself. There were many in the German high command

that thought the war should have never been started in the first place and Hitler thought that ALL of Germany should be destroyed because they didn't win.

My point is, in any leadership you'll find people with whatever point of view you can conceive of (just look at the republican party)

I do think though that at very least the Allies should have seen how Japan responded to the Soviets going full bore into the war with the invasion of Manchuria.

[Adrahil]

57. One reason they were anxious to end the war, was the prevent Soviet expansion.

The Soviets were anxious to gobble up as much territory as they could before the war ended. They seized some territories that has been in dispute in the Russo-Japanese War (and retain control of that today), and they were frankly looking for more. As it was, the allies agreed to let the Russians take Berlin, despite the quite accurate fears that they intended to create a German vassal state.

But I doubt the Japanese would have been swayed by Soviet advances. The fact is, the war ended earlier because of the bombs. There were potentially a lot of routes Truman could have taken. I have a hard time faulting the one he chose.

[pnwmom]

10. They were crazy enough to attack us. I wouldn't assume that they'd have backed down

after a single demonstration bomb.

[jeff47]

24. If this theory was correct, why didn't they surrender after Hiroshima?

They only surrendered after the second atomic bomb was dropped.

If a demonstration would have caused them to surrender, wouldn't the first bomb have done the same thing?

[hifiguy]

40. And only then because Hirohito

Stopped the military with a definitive "no more" from what I have read over the years. As far as he knew the US had 50 more bombs.

[gratuitous]

37. Apparently, those in charge of military at the time agree with you

In fact, they didn't think we needed to drop either bomb on Japan:

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/

But the comforting myths excusing this horrific crime against humanity have been told and re-told so much in our country, that we no longer recognize our depravity.

[Adrahil]

9. So, you believe that if the Manhattan Project...

Last edited Thu Aug 6, 2015, 05:57 PM - Edit history (1)

Had not built the bomb, it would never have been built? Or is your post more just a wistful wish that such would have never been made?

[Android3.14]

12. You say that as if anyone had a choice

Either the Allies or the Axis Powers were going to develop it. I'm glad we did.

Additionally, the statement that it has no purpose other than to inflict mass casualties on civilians is short-sighted. From Project Orion to fusion energy, the Manhattan Project created a source of energy that has essentially infinite potential.

[Live and Learn]

13. I think it was more a race to who could build it first.

Not sure that excuses unleashing it though.

[HFRN]

27. that's the conundrum - one's own not doing it, does not mean it doesn't get done

nor does that fact justify one's own doing it

[skepticscott]

14. Sorry, but when you say

"It has no purpose other than to inflict mass casualties on civilians", you're dead wrong. It also has the purpose of deterring actual war and dissuading your enemies who have one from using theirs, exactly as happened for 40 years.

[The2ndWheel]

18. Should isn't a word that matters when it comes to human invention

It was can it be built, or can't it be built. Nothing more, nothing less. Should only comes when we try and figure out what to do with what we build, and even then, nobody can agree, so whatever we build usually ends up being used in every possible way.

[Hydra]

19. I think a bomb was inevitable

But I think Einstein was right too, and some of the Manhattan Project minds who were horrified at what they had built.

It didn't have to be them, it didn't have to be at that time.

[Shankapotomus]

21. The ironic thing is

you can say the same thing about the machine gun.

[Lee-Lee]

23. You can say the same thing about any weapon or method of war

People act as if the choice was the death and destruction of the atomic bomb, or peace and butterflies.

Its a false narrative and choice.

[jeff47]

25. Physics does not care if you do not like it.

Atomic weapons were inevitable, once the relevant physics had been discovered.

The US not building one would not have prevented any from being built.

[HassleCat]

26. Basically, no

Many of the scientists working on the bomb were very aware they would be working on the German version if they had not escaped from the Nazis. They knew these weapons would be developed someday, by somebody, and they figured it would be better if the United States was first.

[Warpy]

29. We oldest Boomers have grown up scarred by the bomb

The "duck and cover" cold war 1950s told us the world and everybody in it would probably end in a flash of light and indescribable heat. It could happen at any time. The 60s and subsequent years of nothing but conservatives in both parties screwing us told us that when it did, it would most likely happen through sheer stupidity and that we would be given no warning at all since conservatives like to "avoid panic" and the inconvenience of having bumper to bumper traffic with people trying to flee urban centers.

Quite honestly, I'm shocked that it has held together this long.

[hunter]

33. Ah yes, duck and cover...

... imagine little me huddled under my school desk with my little butt facing the vast aerospace factories of Los Angeles just a few miles away, the places where many of our parents and grandparents worked.

That will protect me from a Soviet missile, right?



Hah. We all knew we'd be vaporized right along with everyone building airplanes and missiles.

[Warpy]

48. I lived in DC during the worst of it

'Nuff said. No amount of ducking and covering would have saved my ass and even at the age of six, I knew it.

[Go Vols]

39. Don't see these signs much anymore either

[Warpy]

47. Yeah, I saw thosein every basement and subway station until the 70s

then they started to disappear.

[Go Vols]

49. The only one still around here I know of is on an old hospital

and looks alot like this one.

[Warpy]

56. I think they'd taken them down in my old hospital

because I don't remember seeing them.

There were a couple in Mass. General in the sub-sub basement in the winding corridors that led to the morgue in the 80s but that's because suits never went down there and told people to take them down.

[Codeine]

36. Better us than them.

We used it twice to end the war. I don't believe the Germans or Japanese would have shown even that level of restraint.

Everything that CAN be built WILL be built. In this instance I think the right people built it.

[cherokeeprogressive]

38. Were there other countries working on a similar weapon?

[MicaelS]

41. Have you read ANY of the history of that time? n/t

[cherokeeprogressive]

43. My question was purely rhetorical.

[MicaelS]

46. Sorry, my mistake n/t

[hunter]

63. Yes, but Hitler was meth-head racist insane. And Japan simply didn't have the resources.

The Soviet Union would have built their own atomic bombs with or without espionage, especially once it had been clearly demonstrated the thing was possible.

The technology of Soviet nuclear weapons was more home-grown than many in the U.S.A. would ever dare acknowledge, even as our own astronauts travel to and fro the International Space Station in Soyuz spacecraft these days.

The Russian pessimistic, just one step removed from hell, Shit, just make it work engineering is never a bad engineering philosophy. A good Yin-Yang compliment to the U.S.A. optimist style of engineering.

[MicaelS]

42. Hypocrisy on the part of some Physicists.

My opinion has always been that if the bomb has been available 6-12 months sooner, or the war lasted 6-12 months longer, then Berlin would have been the first target. Those who now condemn the use of the bombs on Japan would not have said a thing about their use on Germany. Their attitude would have been that the dirty Fascists got what they deserved.

The Nazis were executing more people toward the end of the war in the concentration camps because they had perfected the mechanical means of the Holocaust. How many Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and others might have been saved if the war in Europe had ended 6-12 months sooner?

Those scientists who worked on the bomb (many of the Jewish refugees from Hitler) did not seem to develop scruples until it was clear that Germany would no longer be the target. They knew for a fact that Berlin, and its civilians would certainly be the main target. They certainly didn’t have any concerns about German civilians being killed.

And for those who cry moral outrage I see no difference between the fire-bombing of Dresden, Tokyo and other Japanese cities and the atomic bombings. Dead is dead.

The Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. But too many people weep tears for the “victims" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if the Japanese did nothing to start the war in Asia. The Chinese suffered between 20-35 million casualties during the Japanese invasion of China (1937-1945). The Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” in field brothels where the women were forced to sexually service, as many as 70 Japanese soldiers a day. In other words these women were raped 70 times a day for years on end. Everywhere the Japanese conquered, they acted like barbarians toward Allied POWS and civilians. The Japanese beat, starved, tortured and executed men and women. They used living human beings as living test subjects in their infamous biological warfare Unit 731.

People these days find it easy to take some moral high-ground when they are not involved in a war to the knife for the future of civilization. Hindsight is easy.

Finally, I personally think if Truman had not used the bomb out of moral scruples, and Operation Downfall had gone ahead, then America would have suffered terrible casualties. The truth about the bomb would have come out. And I think Truman would have been impeached.

[Spider Jerusalem]

45. It would have been built, regardless.

If not by the USA first, then by someone else--the Germans and Japanese were both working on developing a bomb, let's not forget; they didn't get there first, thankfully, but if the Manhattan Project hadn't it would've been the Soviets or the British or the French or someone else. The theoretical knowledge was already out there and a LOT of people were working very hard on making it practical; someone would have done, anyway, regardless of whether the Manhattan Project had succeeded or not. Just like someone else would have made a powered flight if the Wright brothers hadn't, or someone would have built a locomotive if George Stephenson hadn't, or someone would have come up with an efficient steam engine if James Watt hadn't. The theory and most of the technical capability being out there makes it pretty much an inevitability.

[AllFieldsRequired]

51. You guys/gals fascinate the hell out of me, your intellect, the shit you think up.

[Cleita]

52. Actually, they opened the gates of Hell and I don't know what it will take to close them again.

I think all uses and knowledge of nuclear power need to be consigned to the graveyard to be gone forever.

[Motown_Johnny]

54. But Germany also had an A bomb project

and it was impossible to know how far along they might have been.


It seems like America not building the bomb would have been one hell of a gamble. Eventually, it would be built by someone.

[still_one]

55. Since Germany was working on the same thing at the same time, there wasn't much choice

Last edited Thu Aug 6, 2015, 06:26 PM - Edit history (2)

Yes, it is easy to look in retrospect, but at the time when the development was going on, it was a race to develop it before Germany. The invasion of Europe stopped its use in Germany in its tracks.

For Japan it was also analyzed.

It was estimated in an invasion of Japan 50000 Americans would have lost their lives, and several times more that number for Japanese

Here is an article which addresses this very question

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-atomic-bomb-had-not-been-used/376238/

Even if the atomic bomb was NEVER used in WWII, your assertion that the bomb should never have been built, is a nice goal, but not realistic, since there is no doubt Russia, China, or some other country would have developed it regardless.

[One of the 99]

60. Thanks for posting

I really hate when people revise history and then look back to pass a moral judgement.

[dogknob]

58. Oppenheimer

[Rex]

61. I agree, but the war made this into a horse race between us and Germany.

ONE of us was going to get the bomb first. I agree, I think a scientist has an obligation to NOT help destroy the planet if they can help it. Yet this one point in time...had we not invented the bomb first, the Germans would have had it and used it on London.

Sadly, we use technology to hurt others in the maximum way possible and it is morally wrong. For any and all.

[MADem]

62. They had no clue, at least not until they were well along in the process.

By then the management of the effort was out of their hands.

Day of Trinity is a good read on this topic.

[hifiguy]

64. Hard to say.

The generally pacifist Einstein was so terrified by the idea that the Nazis might get the Bomb that he personally urged Roosevelt to create what became the Manhattan Project. Many major atomic scientists played roles in the MP, inclding Niels Bohr, who visited Los Alamos as a consultant.

And Feynman's legacy is pretty bulletproof at this point

[quaker bill]

66. NPR had interviews this am

While I tend to agree with your point of view, one of the workers made the point about the indiscriminate killing that was already going on with conventional explosives and incendiaries. Many, many millions had already died in that war by conventional means.

They knew the bombs would kill many people, but bringing an end to the war was the goal. Other paths existed but they likely would have met or exceeded the death toll from the two bombs.

It was an atrocity for sure, but just two more in a massive series of them. The fire bombing of Dresden had a massive death toll but involved no nuke. The lack of a nuke did not make it better.

It is hard to make moral judgments on specific acts out of historical context. There is little about WWII that was not one atrocity piled upon another. Which is the greater atrocity? Hard to say as there are too many to list.

[jimlup]

67. I too am a physicist

and gave a great deal of thought to this while finishing my dissertation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I studied the history pretty closely and came to a slightly different conclusion than you (though similar.)

My take was that the physicsts who knew and were capable of considering the moral implications of their actions were scared. They were frightened of Nazi Germany and rightly so. They knew Heisenberg was working for Hitler. Thinking of how outstanding he is as a theorist I would be pretty scared too.

After the Einstein/Szilard letter it was sort of a run away train. I think physicists like everyone else are human and subject to situational circumstances. Until Germany was defeated it would have been hard to see over the war fear that "Heisenberg was ahead." Once Germany was defeated the cat was all but out of the bag.

As a graduate student at Lawrence Livermore (I was a University of Michigan student collaborating on my Ph.D. thesis experiment at LLNL.) Most of the physicists at the lab reluctantly participated in weapons research as a convience. Some had the luxury of being able to pursue their own research with out this diversion but many others justified their situation as "someone will do it so I might as well. At least it pays the bills."

Personally, I came to the conclusion that I would not use my skills to work on weapons and so I left the laboratory and finished writing my Ph.D. back in Ann Arbor. It was interesting to see how my career tracked in the direction of weapons research. If I had not taken the initative to leave the lab I would have ended up tracked into the weapons testing diagnostics group.

I have not thought about this for years but often come back to it on the anniversary of Hiroshima. I know Hiroshima was wrong. I studied this history very carefully. I like 6 out of 7 of Truman's Generals discovered that the bomb was not necessary and that Japan had already been defeated. Truman, in my opinion, was a little boy on a runaway toboggan. He really wanted to use his new toy and didn't have the moral maturity to recognize the human implications.

Ironically, I think the use of the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did become a deterent to the use of atomic weapons by both superpowers during the cold war and later for all of the nuclear capable nations. We will see if this moratorium holds. I genuinely hope so.

[redgreenandblue]

70. Thanks for your perspective.

Do you have any links regarding the opinion of the generals you mentioned? I would be interested in further information on that.

[jimlup]

74. A quick search...

yielded the following:

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

I admit that I saw this fact in a post on this the 70th anniversary. In my research I encountered both Leahy and Eisenhower's quotes. I saw the statistic (6 out of 7) in a Huff. post article this past week I believe.

The generals were aware of the situation in Japan. Most interesting in my opinion was the interplay between Japan's war council and the Emperor. I found a Ph.D. thesis later published as "Japan's Decision to Surrender" very interesting (don't recall the author and it is very difficult to find in print.) The war council was hardly aware of what had happened. The only thing that they really knew was that they had completely lost contact with Hiroshima. They didn't know the extent. My conclusion is that it was really the Soviet declaration of war that pushed Japan over the brink and not the A-bombs. It may have been coincidence but I doubt it. Truman rushed the date of the bombing to proceed the Soviet declaration. My suspicion is that he wanted to use it and was afraid Japan would surrender before he had a chance.

A good reference is:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Decision-Use-Atomic-Bomb/dp/067976285X

[Takket]

68. history pretty much agrees...

that without the bomb the war would have just dragged on and on, and more lives would have been lost....

what I question is the target. what if we had flattened some farmland nowhere near a city? casualties could have been less than 100 and surely the Japanese would see scorched earth in every direction and the US could have said next time it will be your homes, not your crops and farm animals.

drop bomb number 2 closer to a city.... and then if they still won't stop, then you attack maybe a small village?

[ThoughtCriminal]

69. It's not stamp collecting

XKCD.COM




But physics is still my favorite...

[davidpdx]

71. If you are saying the bomb should have never been built, then by default you are saying

it never should have been dropped. You can't drop what doesn't exist.

[Marrah_G]

72. People need to think "should we make it" before asking "can we make it"