Why didn't the US nuke the Soviet Union before they got nukes themselves?
Why would they?
>>959511
To defeat communism? The Soviet Union was a powerful threat to the US.
Because the US did not yet have the capacity to manufacture nukes at a fast enough rate to obliterate the Soviet Union; most wargames of 'Operation Unthinkable' play out with a Soviet victory/stalemate even after several atomic bombs have been dropped.
Furthermore, the US - the west in general - was incredibly war-weary. Truman would have been committing electoral suicide if he started another war.
>>959538
Also, maybe, the Americans didn't want to kill millions of people needlessly. Christ.
I can't believe we built these things, not as in I can't believe we were able to, but people tested and progressed the technology instead of shutting down the project after Trinity. Even for a superpower in the middle of war, how could anyone in the military who even barely grasped the gravity of nuclear weapons not decide that a line needed to be drawn to show the difference between warfare and geopolitical upper-hands, and insanity?
>>959547
>needlessly
>>959508
It wouldnt exactly go down well with the world if the USA just suddenly obliterated the USSR as soon as WW2 finished. The next nation to get Nukes would probably nuke the USA just out of precaution.
>>960289
After 6 years of horrible war, I think they just wanted to get it over with quickly, by all means necessary.
>>960289
Someone was gonna build them.
Nazi Germany had a nuclear program, so the Americans/British had to get there first.
>>960335
>>960340
I can understand using their influence to end the war, but the whole standoff during the Cold War and the monumental preparation to use them on millions of innocent lives just gets to me. I know that neither side could just abandon nuclear weapons or the enemy would have the upper hand, but the almost eager sensation to unleash a thousand suns on untold millions just seems so detached from humanity to me.
>>960289
I'm concerned and pessimistic. The city I see out of my window will likely burn in flames this century
we just cannot help ourselves
>>960383
Given how close to open warfare soviets and NATO came during cold war even WITH the nuclear threat, we probably would've had WW 3 already without them.
>>960289
Stop being such a winy fucking cunt. It's not that bad. No nukes today fired between two nuclear powers could even reach the other without being knocked out of operation on the way. You're not going to die from one any time soon.
>>959547
>worries about damage caused ever stopped politics
>>959538
Oh god not you again
>unbeatable glorious Soviet Union
>US was war weary Soviets weren't
>>960383
World leaders don't treat these issues with human empathy in mind. They act in the interest of the state, which is going to favour it's own survival first.
>>960442
Wouldn't matter how war weary the Soviets were at the end of WW2, as long as Stalin wasn't the rest didn't matter. Also, in the European theater, the Soviets were definitely the strongest for the most part in the cold war.
>>960289
If you want to avoid violence, be prepared for it and let it be known.
Not that the powers concerned wanted to avoid violence per se anyway, just pointing out that any idea would reach the same conclusion of adopting nukes after a long enough thought process.
>>960383
Well casualties in wars have steadily gone up every century, so why would you consider some ambiguous number of "millions" some kind of line between humanity and inhumanity? Seems arbitrary.
Was it any more human to drop nukes on civilians? To bomb civilian targets to rubble?
>>960439
Yes, and?
>>960475
Got any proof to your claims?
>>960423
Ballistic missile defense systems have a fairly low success rate, and are generally fairly easily countered by just piling more nukes onto whatever target is being defended.
The good news is that nuclear winter is bullshit, so as long as you're not in the path of the nukes you won't be completely fucked.
>>960423
>could even reach the other without being knocked out of operation on the way.
This is wrong. For so many reasons.
>>960491
Not him but fucking M.A.D?
And the fact that nobody has nuked anybody ever since those two Nip Bombings?
>Gambling the security of the entire free world. for the sake of liberating some Slavs from communism.
>>959547
>female muslim gesturing photo
>didnt want to kill millions of people "needlessly"
Libcuck confirmed.
>>960650
>The good news is that nuclear winter is bullshit, so as long as you're not in the path of the nukes you won't be completely fucked.
Not bullshit, just often exaggerated. Still big enough to cause a sharp drop in food production for a year or two, assuming full-scale nuclear war.
the US even today doesn't have the delivery systems to accomplish that
Nukes are overrated
>>960695
Not really. The Nuclear Winter scenario relies on a bunch of flawed assumptions, including
>every nuke getting through with 100% success rate
>nukes blanketing cities for maximum effect
>every single city behaving exactly like Hiroshima
>sunny, dry weather all over the world to facilitate firestorms
Sure, an all-out strike scenario would kill millions, and many major cities would be completely fucked. But apart from large swaths of North Dakota that are getting fucked by direct strikes and Kansas (downwind of Colorado), farming areas are going to remain largely unaffected.
>>960726
This guy disagrees with you, and doesn't even assume that all nukes detonate: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html Of course, I'm hardly an expert, but I think I'll believe him over you unless you have better sources.
>>960737
He's right though, all the analyses that support nuclear winter are incredibly flawed, for the reasons he gives, and the fact that that majority of nukes used would be grouped together against single targets, and nukes hitting cities in the first place.
Go read OPpenheimer, he knows his shit and explains it well.
https://desustorage.org/k/search/username/oppenheimer/page/1/
>>960766
not hitting*
>>960766
>over 4500 posts of some namefag
How about no.
>>960670
>M.A.D
How is that relevant?
It is not moral worries that make M.A.D a thing. It's mere self preservation.
>And the fact that nobody has nuked anybody ever since those two Nip Bombings?
Again, self preservation?
What he was trying to argue was that there were some moral quarrels involved. I pointed out that moral quarrels have never (for the most part/in bigger scales) prevented any amount of damage being caused that political causes may have required.
>>960678
>liberating
Is that what they teach you in American schools?
>>960786
>Is that what they teach you in American schools?
Yes
>>960737
Just after a brief skim:
>doesn't really go into depth as to methodology for the whole nuclear winter beyond "it happens."
He doesn't really explain the mechanisms behind the burning, leaving out pretty vital factors like the amount of material being lifted into the atmosphere, the intensity of fires, and cities in different areas behaving differently to the nukes. Pretty much, he doesn't seem to justify his projections for amount of debris being put into the air via the nukes and the resulting fires.
He does seem to avoid the biggest flaws of the Nuclear Winter scenarios - namely having nukes targeted seemingly exclusively to cause a nuclear winter. He at least seems to know what he's doing by discussing things like ground bursts, differing yields, and failures due to ballistic missile defenses, but he seems to completely ignore the fact that a significant portion of missiles are targeting the other guy's missiles.
Instead, he seems to be working under the assumption that all major cities are just going to be blanketed (Moscow in particular). While that may be fairly true for many places (just look at a nuke map of the Northeast), it's generally taking the same flawed methodology used in countless other studies that "prove" nuclear winter.
>>960784
While I'm usually cautious about believing people on a chinese cartoon message board, OPpenheimer really seems to know what he's talking about, and generally backs up his arguments incredibly well.
Of course, I'm not going to expect you to scrounge the archives to find something to refute your own argument, but I'd definitely suggest you check out nuke threads on /k/ every once and a while to see if OPpenheimer's there.
>>960786
>It is not moral worries that make M.A.D a thing. It's mere self preservation.
>moral worries
You were talking about damage.
>worries about damage caused ever stopped politics
>MUH MORALS
Moving goalposts much?
M.A.D. is quite up there in the description of "damage."
>>960694
>looking for subtext in reaction images
>>960491
Proof of what claim?
>>960862
>worries about damage caused ever stopped politics
>>959547
>he thinks that was an issue for the ruling political elites
>>960289
Nuclear weapons are the only thing that prevented a third world war, you left-wing piece of shit.
>>960766
>Believing whatever over-glorified tripfags have to say
End your existence
>>961746
He gives sources
[spoiler]Unlike your faggy ass[/spoiler]
>>960786
Nigga there were like 13 people that actually liked the Bolsheviks most people would have just wanted them dead. But Hitler was actively killing everybody and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And then they got paranoid as fuck the West would try to kill them again so I guess I have to become patriotic now.
>>959508
What would this accomplish? There was no capacity to nuke the USSR into submission. Several Hiroshimas would only put so much of a dent in Soviet industry and military might, and while the USSR couldn't conventionally retaliate against the US directly because
>Soviet
>Navy
it would instead retaliate against the rest of the Allies. Starting a war possibly more bloody than WW2 itself, with unclear endgame that could very well be the entirety of Europe being subjugated under Communism.
Maybe if the US literally dedicated its entire industry to developing thousands upon thousands of warheads for the purposes of a decisive strike against the USSR, that would work.
>>960786
Yes cuckmeister, liberating.
t. Slav
>>959508
"...Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had aquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it." - General Curtis "Bombs Away" Lemay
>>960289
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJktzceO-Bc
So /his/, when did you learn to love The Bomb?
It was the policy of Roosevelt himself to court the good graces of the USSR. During the the war he stated his policy as "giving the soviets everything they ask for, and asking nothing in return" in the sincere hope that this gesture of good faith would make the soviets more agreeable when establishing a lasting post-war order.
Near his death bed, he had begun to realize the Soviets had no intention of working amiably with the west and were dead set at taking all they could get their hands on. It was one of Roosevelt's greatest failures not to recognize the USSR as sharing nothing more than a common foe with the west.
>>960875
Off the top of my head, America really didn't want to target large swathes of German cities at the beginning the strategic bombing of Germany and preferred precision daytime bombing instead of carpet bombing the entire city at night like the Brits wanted.
Politicians and members of the military aren't something other. They are human. They temper pure pragmatism with the realities of human morality and the longterm repercussions of acting immoral.
>>962480
(continued)
Oh, and there was a lot of pressure from the church in Spanish colonies and from Europe itself for the Spanish colonies to treat natives better as the accounts of cruelty began to sink in.
