America at the Atomic Crossroads | Hacker News Reader

America at the Atomic Crossroads

newyorker.com

65 pointsmarkmassie16 comments

'Between 1946 and 1958, the equivalent of more than two hundred million tons of TNT was detonated (on the inhabited Marshall Islands by the US Military) — like a Hiroshima every day for almost forty years.'

...

The local language grew full of horrible expressions for birth defects: “jellyfish” (babies born without bones), “grapes” (spontaneously aborted clumps of tissue), “turtles,” “octopuses,” “apples,” “devils.” The Crossroads tests were the beginning of one of the more disturbing American nuclear legacies—a trade of flesh for knowledge.

It's far more complicated than a simple TNT equation. If the nasty stuff is the radiation, that isn't directly proportional to the size of the explosion. Each test was unique, with specific bomb designs that produced more or less proportional radiation. Later bomb designs were in fact much 'cleaner' in that they produced proportionally less radiation than an equivalent number of "Hiroshimas". The largest bomb ever tested (the russian "czar bomb") was also likely the cleanest, producing the least radiation per kiloton. (Interesting fact: The czar design was changed at the last minute to reduce its yield and radiation potential in light of the american tests.)

And even the total amount of radiation is also beside the point. The real nasty is the amount of radiation dropped onto and into people, the fallout. Bombs high in the atmosphere produce far less fallout than those on the surface or close thereto. Then one can get into square-area v volume maths that explain why fallout in rain (concentrated into 2d on the surface) is so much more deadly than fallout dissolved in ocean water (diluted into a 3d ocean). This is an important distinction when talking about the post-tsunami radiation events.

If was a horrible series of tests with little regard for local inhabitants, but that is no excuse for false equivalences.

Horrible indeed. Makes one wonder what the Soviets got up to when the US is supposedly the "good guys".

They may have been just following our example.

'Meshcheryakov, the Soviet physicist, like all of the international observers, was not allowed to see any more than the reporters. But he still saw much. The mushroom clouds from Able and Baker interested him some, but he was more taken with what he saw in the people around him. The Americans, he told Moscow, were not in any way interested in disarmament. Rather, they were training their armed forces to integrate nuclear weapons into their military doctrine.'

Yes, when it comes to atomic atrocities, the United States is vastly more culpable than any other nation state. The Soviet Union excelled in different realms, such as imposing starvation (Ukraine), halting movement (all Soviet republics), and restricting information (all) on its vassal states.

To be fair, the latter realms are very much within the reach of any autocratic state; its just that not many are either foolish or powerful enough to make use of them.

> The Americans, he told Moscow, were not in any way interested in disarmament. Rather, they were training their armed forces to integrate nuclear weapons into their military doctrine.

Of course, disarmament doesn't really make sense: once science has discovered something, it can't be undiscovered. Integrating every new discovery into one's doctrine (even if that integration is, 'we'd rather not') is far more mature than pretending something doesn't exist.

I'm in the middle of reading _Command and Control_ by Eric Schlosser: if it is to be believed, then in the immediate wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was a widely held opinion (possibly approaching a consensus) even among the upper ranks of the US armed forces that atomic weapons should either be banned outright or placed under the sole control of a world authority, maybe even a world government.

Curtis LeMay (IIRC) stated that those two were by far the preferable options: but failing those, it was imperative that the US had "the best, the biggest, and the most".

Disarmament can make sense from a game theoretic point of view if the parties involved can verify destruction of weapons, and monitor production.

"The Americans, he told Moscow, were not in any way interested in disarmament. Rather, they were training their armed forces to integrate nuclear weapons into their military doctrine."

If you look at the relative size of the two armies and (especially) the size of the tank corps, you'll understand why that was.

The United States wasn't about to give up nukes if it meant its interests in Europe would be at the mercy of a massive Soviet tank invasion.

As with their space program, we actually have no real idea to what lengths the Soviets went to in terms of human cost. It's entirely likely that they were far more blase about the safety of everyone involved. In most areas of research and development, the Soviets were known for flying by the seat of their pants(the same could be said for the US shortly after the war, but that changed significantly in the coming decades).

> "The Americans, he told Moscow, were not in any way interested in disarmament. Rather, they were training their armed forces to integrate nuclear weapons into their military doctrine."

As others have pointed out, this is only a surface-level interpretation of what was going on.

If you haven't yet, check out Noam Chomsky - he holds the US up to their supposed 'good guy' status - fascinating. Andrew Bacevich, a retired Colonel, also has lots of interesting things to say on this. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFpXFFPEZ9w

Thanks, that was a great speech. Why isn't this man running for president...

Well he doesn't believe in governments for one. And his very far left views make him unelectable.

Am reading his book called Breach of Trust. An easy read, but very compelling. I'd vote for him for sure.

The last woman nailed it on the head

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