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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Semi-related discussion, in which this link was mentioned: "How WW2 bombs across the Pacific are found and destroyed, decades after war" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41314166#41354620>.

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I had to sign off that I am not concerned of the likely undetonated bombs underneath my home when buying my apartment this year. In Hamburg, Germany, there are so many bombs still under buildings, because buildings were put on top hastily.

The bombing of Hamburg is a shocking event. The scale of it was so immense that it was used as a justification for nuclear attacks on civilians. The argument being ‘What’s the difference? Tens or even hundreds of thousands die in either event’.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_...

Wasn't Operation Gomorrah a response to the Operation Blitz that was conducted by Germany earlier?

I can see that German Blitz is reported to cause 40.000 civilian deaths, similar to Allied Gomorrah. So if anything would be shocking, it should probably be Blitz, not Gomorrah?

The Blitz was an 8 month campaign targeting cities all across Britain. Operation Gomorrah had a comparable death toll within one city over eight days. It sounds like the density of destruction from Gomorrah was a lot greater.

I'm pretty shocked by both, aren't you?

Well, true, if we consider those without context. But context is key. There's attack and there's retaliation. British bombings for me aren't nearly as shocking as aggression of Germans.

Just a few days ago, a refinery had to be shut down and evacuated because an old unexploded WW2 bomb was found.

https://www.ogj.com/refining-processing/refining/operations/...

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