Are you sure? Even from this article - Pacific Islanders came out and even licked the "snow" curious what it is, yet only a single death is attributed to it. Shouldn't they all have died if it's as bad as you say?
But moreover, many of those people likely died due to complications down the road. The US government has done a poor job of accurately tracking the deaths of even US service members years after their exposure to radiation. You might not die right then, but you'll live a significantly abridged life.
> many of those people likely died due to complications down the road
Nitpick - with that interpretation of "already dead" I was "already dead" from the day I was born.
Or cancer 10 years down the road (unless you die of a car accident before that, or are treated with modern transplant/chemo therapies)
Meanwhile, the US performed unethical radiation experiments on its own citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...
This one is particularly noteworthy:
> In 1957, atmospheric nuclear explosions in Nevada, which were part of Operation Plumbbob
> determined to have released enough radiation to have caused from 11,000 to 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer
> leading to between 1,100 and 21,000 deaths
Do you really need enemies when you have such a government looking out for your well being?
Governments (via their agents) of the 20th century killed more than 7x more people than were murdered by fellow civilians. This is not counting wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide#:~:text=After%20study....
It's difficult to differentiate between "government" and "business", particularly where the two entities are strongly interrelated, as with both the Nazi and Soviet states.
You've omitted the case of Britain, who killed off a quarter the population of a country, largely through business interests:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
Estimates of deaths in the business-operated slave trade run as high as 60 million, at a time when the total global population was 500m -- 1 billion (1/16th to 1/8 of today's population, very roughly 1/6 to 1/2 that of the WWI--WWII period). Recordkeeping was not especialy precise, as contrasted to the IBM-tallied slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany.
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/Slavedeathtoll/slaver...
https://besacenter.org/ibm-holocaust/
Discussions of who's to blame and fingering "government" gloss over far too much to be especially meaningful except in ideological debate.
Rummel himself described his figures as "little more than educated guesses."
-- Wikipedia, citing Rummel, Rudolph (2003) [1997]. "Statistics of Mexican Democide: Estimates, Calculations, and Sources". Statistic of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (hardback ed.). Charlottesville, Virginia: Center for National Security Law, School of Law, University of Virginia; Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University. ISBN 9783825840105. Retrieved August 31, 2021 – via Freedom, Democide, War at the University of Hawaii System.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Rummel
His numbers for China might also be revised downwards.
Keep in mind that this period involves war (WWII and the Chinese Communist Revolution), as well as famine (the Great Famine of 1959--61). The latter has estimates ranging from 15--55 million lives lost. It should be noted that famine was a frequent visitor to China over the previous century, with famines noted in 1810, 1811, 1846, 1849 1950--73, 1876--79, 1896--97, 1907, 1920--21, 1928--30, 1936--57, and 1942--43, prior to succession by the Communists. Most of those involved a million or more dead, several tens of millions. It might be more accurate to describe Communist China as having stopped the history of famine in the country.
To play devil's advocate some, it's not possible to know but.. how many millions of Americans would have been killed and/or subjugated if America had a timid and weak military in world war 2?
If we gave up our arms after world war 2, would the Soviet Union have tried to spread communism throughout the world and how many millions of Americans would have died as a result?
I think people are inherently tribal and conflict is inevitable. Having a strong, sometimes inept government that is mostly trying to do the right thing for their people seems to be a lot better to me than having a leader with absolute control like stalin who murdered millions intentionally.
None? If the idea is that the US would have been invaded by the Axis seems unlikely, as all of their goals were fairly localized to each of Germany, Italy, and Japan. I don't think the Quirin Gang confounds this speculation, but of course anything is possible when imagining alternate futures of the past. ;)
>I think people are inherently tribal and conflict is inevitable.
Yeah, apparently!
How was conquering Russia, Europe, and Africa a local goal? How was conquering all of the indo pacific a local goal?
You honestly think Hitler would have been content to keep Europe, Russia, and Africa forever? You don't think he would have wanted to conquer more? Appeasement and naivety didn't work too well for those that used it.
Power vacuums are not imaginary concepts. Regimes will expand to fill them.
LD50 for prompt exposure is 4-5 sieverts. 1 sievert of exposure translates to about a 1% lifetime cancer risk.
Now, if you're inhaling the ash that's another matter. At that point you're probably dead.