It's a comically naive view on the dropped atomic bombs that this was in any way based on 'costs and consequences of the alternative'. The opposite is true, as is well documented in countless books and statements by the people involved at the time:

The key reasons they were dropped was (1) the cost of developing the atomic bomb at 2 billion dollars, and (2) to demonstrate this capability to the future enemies, the Russians.

But you're not alone in your assessment. Notably, recently dozens of cops watched kids being massacred for an hour, because the alternative would have been that officers could have been hurt, which is clearly unacceptable https://twitter.com/VAKruta/status/1529977770931113987?ref_s...

Let's not kid ourselves: had any party on the losing side of the war pulled that off, the people involved would have been hung as war criminals.