I know this is just a meme, but I’m going to take the opportunity to talk about something I think is super interesting. Physicists didn’t build the bomb (edit: nor were they particularly responsible for its design).
David Kaiser, an MIT professor who is both a physicist and a historian (aka the coolest guy possible) has done extensive research on this, and his work is particularly interesting because he has the expertise in all the relevant fields do dig through the archives.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read him, but he concludes that the physics was widely known outside of secret government operations, and the fundamental challenges to building an atomic bomb are engineering challenges – things like refining uranium or whatever. In other words, knowing that atoms have energy inside them which will be released if it is split was widely known, and it’s a very, very, very long path engineering project from there to a bomb.
This cultural understanding that physicists working for the Manhattan project built the bomb is actually precisely because the engineering effort was so big and so difficult, but the physics was already so widely known internationally, that the government didn’t redact the physics part of the story. In other words, because people only read about physicists’ contributions to the bomb, and the government kept secret everything about the much larger engineering and manufacturing effort, we are left with this impression that a handful of basic scientists were the main, driving force in its creation.
That’s how it is in almost every field, isn’t it? The ones who designed the space shuttle were not the same ones turning wrenches and welding on the actual vehicle.
I’ve read somewhere that he never regretted building the bomb, because he believed it prevented more wars/deaths from happening. Maybe I can find the article
Edit: Found it. https://12ft.io/proxy?&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.derstandard.de%2Fstory%2F3000000180215%2Fzehn-fakten-ueber-j-robert-oppenheimer It’s german though. He even sued an author who wrote a play where oppenheimer was struggling with his doings
I think he was right in that belief. Invasion of Japan by US forces would be far more deadly and devastating to both nations in terms of lost lives.
Apparently the purple hearts manufactured in anticipation of such an invasion during WWII are still awarded today with about 120k still in stock.
Uh huh.
So why did they need to drop two?
The conventional ordinance dropped on Tokyo killed many more people than Little Boy killed in Hiroshima. The Japanese barely surrendered after the nuclear attacks. I would suggest listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History miniseries Countdown to Armageddon if you want to know more.
lol wtf does “barely surrendered” mean? It was an unconditional surrender that happened less than 2 weeks after Hiroshima!
Again, the first bomb is debatable and I’m not interested in arguing about that. But the second was unjustified. 3 fucking days
The Japanese were prepared to fight to the last man, woman, or child to defend the home islands. They were geared for war in a way that is hard to understand from a modern perspective. They were propagandized heavily.
The other thing to recognize was that the USSR had declared war on Japan the day before Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. This violated the Soviet-Japanese non-aggression pact. Before this there was hope that the Soviets could advocate for better terms for Japanese surrender. The Japanese Supreme Council was firmly opposed to ending the war. After Nagasaki, Hirohito intervened in the council and ended the war.
This is propaganda. The Japanese aren’t bug people. They wouldn’t actually fight to the last man, woman, or child.
