What would the world be like today if nukes were never invented. What would change in our history?
>>584644
There would have been a third world war between the US and the USSR.
>>584657
What makes you say that? I would think far more likely is you'd have a massive conventional buildup by the west in Germany; and then a rough balance being maintained. The Soviets can't compete with the manpower and industrial resources of the West, but the West won't want to go to the expense and the multiple millions of people that would die to take out the USSR. Stable.
>>584657
Between NATO and the USSR, you mean. Even Operation Unthinkable was planned as a joint effort.
>>584644
The real shit, though, would've been Operation Downfall. A conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands would've been horrific for everyone involved. The sheer slaughter, on both sides, would've rivaled the Eastern Front, and would've scarred US/Japanese relations for decades and perhaps even centuries, assuming there was even a Japan to have relations with by the end of it.
There's a reason the US has never had to manufacture any new Purple Hearts since the 40s; we're still using up the stockpile made in preparation for Operation Downfall.
>>584644
What happened to her?
>>584689
Yeah, ethnic Japanses people would be an endangered species.
Shit woulda been brutal.
>>584689
Ethnic Japanese would've went the way of the Native Americans. Culture, language and customs mostly lost with no chance of repopulation.
>>584689
Do you really think Downfall is likely though? Conventional bombing had wrekced the Japanese rail infrastructure, and starvation was likely in 1946, something that would accelerate if the U.S. decided to blockade the home islands, which they definitely had the fleet to do so.
I question whether or not Truman would have made the call to go ahead when Japan is effectively neutered everywhere except China itself, and China had managed to endure for quite a while anyway, they're not going anywhere.
>>584718
gotta get that island before the commies do.
>>584718
Army really wanted Downfall.
Navy suggested starving the nips out, and everyone in the room turned on Navy.
Downfall was going to happen if the Soviet Union hadn't invaded Manchuria
>>584742
With what navy? The one that the U.S. was thinking about providing them and didn't actually have to go through with that?
>>584749
Do you have a source on this? Everything I've read said that Downfall was an incredibly tentative thing that hadn't gotten anything even close to a clear go-ahead.
>>584718
>I question whether or not Truman would have made the call to go ahead
Political pressure would've probably driven it forward, regardless, especially once the Soviets rolled into Manchuria. Americans wanted the war over and done with, Churchill wanted Soviet power checked at all costs; getting it all over and done with quickly was what literally everyone wanted.
>>584765
>Downfall was an incredibly tentative thing
Oh no, it was planned in detail, and had been for a long time. X-Day for Operation Olympic, the initial landings on Kyushu, was scheduled for November 1945, in fact. Deception plans had also been laid. It was a thing that was very much going to happen if Japan had not capitulated when they did.
>>584668
World War III almost erupted during the Yom Kippur War, when the Russians threatened to intervene but the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons if they did, so they backed down.
>>584806
And if the Americans had threatened to use massive conventional force instead, the Russians wouldn't have backed down?
The only reason that the collective West didn't have conventional forces on the ground that were a match for the USSR was their belief in the nuclear deterrent as a strategy, which was way cheaper.
In a world with no nukes, you're going to see a shit ton of forces in Western Europe eyeing the Soviets for the duration of the cold war.
>>584817
But they did?
There's a reason the US has bases out the wazoo in the former West Germany.
Another interesting idea: what if we see a breakthrough in anti-missile technologies making nukes obsolete? How does the world shape itself now?
>>584853
They would just build more nukes, in order to overwhelm such defenses.
Its one of the reasons the US didn't go ahead on Star Wars.
>>584853
>>584843
>There's a reason the US has bases out the wazoo in the former West Germany.
They're mostly occupation and/or missile bases. NATO's strategy since the 60s at the very least was to use nuclear weapons to defeat and deter even conventional Soviet attacks in Europe, because the balance of force was heavily tilted in the USSR's favor.
>>584856
That, and the worry that such a defensive plan will be detected before it can be enacted, frightening the other side into launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike before the defenses are up and running.
>>584697
Candid photo of one of the Romanov girls.
