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Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

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Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#61

Post by nabla9 »

defrost wrote: post #51
nabla9 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general human tendency to focus on single short term events seems to be the main cause. Let's compare using Wikipedia as a source: Atomic bombings in Japan: 50,000–246,000 casualties. Air Raids in Japan: 241,000–900,000 killed, 213,000–1,300,000 wounded, 8,500,000 rendered homeless. Mass killings of large civilian populations should not happen. I don't personally see nuclear weapons as worse than incendiary bombs…

The evidence we have is * one early bomb is more or less equivilant to one conventional HE + incendiary raid. * 2,000+ other bombs have since been detonated, a good number of which were orders of magnitudes more destructive than the early "first gen" bombs used on Japan. Nuclear war with the larger weapons that followed would be considerably worse than incendiary bombs, in physical destruction, in immediate deaths, a…

It's all about scale. Not about the type weapons themselves. All the testifying of the horrors seems irrelevant.

Using nuclear weapons only tactically against counterforce targets would not be that horrifying.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#62

Post by mordae »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #58

Phenomenal choice. While 80 years is nice- it's a blip on the timescale of history. I personally think we're a button click away from going back to the stone age. I know others will disagree, but it's not something you wanna take a gamble on. I think it's one of the reasons we have to be self sustaining on other heavenly bodies. And also why wars or proxy wars between nuclear powers are extremely foolish and should b…

Stone age? Hardly. More like 18th century.

I am more worried that we do not have that many attempts at rebuilding, because coal and oil are finite. OTOH a slower 2nd iteration might actually work better than this one.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#63

Post by krisoft »

lqet wrote: post #22
abe94 wrote: post #5

One of my friends grandmothers was an atomic bomb survivor - she was just a baby when the bomb hit and was blind the rest of her life. One thing I was surprised by was the number of survivors and also that there was at least one person who survived both bombs [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi

> A resident of Nagasaki, Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was bombed at 8:15 AM, on 6 August 1945. He returned to Nagasaki the following day and, despite his wounds, returned to work on 9 August, the day of the second atomic bombing. That morning, while he was being told by his supervisor that he was "crazy" after describing how one bomb had destroyed…

> That morning, while he was being told by his supervisor that he was "crazy" after describing how one bomb had destroyed the city, the Nagasaki bomb detonated.

That is one way to win an argument. Not that anyone would prefer that "win".

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#64

Post by Ekaros »

faggotbreath wrote: post #52
sandworm101 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On an individual level, we all have a variety of hammers over our heads. Cancer has killed far more people prematurely than nuclear weapons. Something like 500,000 people a year are murdered. Traffic/bicycle/pedestrian accidents also kill more than nuclear weapons. Even compared to a once-in-a-century nuclear war that perhaps kills a billion people, cancer will kill roughly a billion in the next century anyway. So, f…

[flagged]

Why does that figure looks really suspicious to me. So in nuclear exchange there is either already fully setup blocks or the responding party will pull in others in?

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#65

Post by squigz »

sandworm101 wrote: post #32
vasco wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I put a hammer over your head that can fall any minute you'll be worrying, but if you're born with the hammer over your head and your parents before you as well, it becomes less of a thing.

On an individual level, we all have a variety of hammers over our heads. Cancer has killed far more people prematurely than nuclear weapons. Something like 500,000 people a year are murdered. Traffic/bicycle/pedestrian accidents also kill more than nuclear weapons. Even compared to a once-in-a-century nuclear war that perhaps kills a billion people, cancer will kill roughly a billion in the next century anyway. So, f…

I'd like to think of myself as a rational person, yet I worry about it. Because it's not just a matter of math; the effects of a billion people dying at once would be far more detrimental than the deaths from cancer over a century.

(One might think this line of reasoning that some people apply is a coping mechanism to ignore the reality, but that might be a different conversation)

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#66

Post by petra »

sandworm101 wrote: post #32
vasco wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I put a hammer over your head that can fall any minute you'll be worrying, but if you're born with the hammer over your head and your parents before you as well, it becomes less of a thing.

On an individual level, we all have a variety of hammers over our heads. Cancer has killed far more people prematurely than nuclear weapons. Something like 500,000 people a year are murdered. Traffic/bicycle/pedestrian accidents also kill more than nuclear weapons. Even compared to a once-in-a-century nuclear war that perhaps kills a billion people, cancer will kill roughly a billion in the next century anyway. So, f…

Everybody dies so there's nothing to fear from war?

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#67

Post by LeonM »

kaon_ wrote: post #29

At home I have a book telling stories of Dutch WW2 survivors still living today. One of them was an eye witness account of the Hiroshima bomb. He was a POW and worked in a quarry or mine on the outskirts of town. He saw a single plane fly over. A bomb dropped with a parachute attached. Moments later he was flung to the back of the quarry and the city was gone. I would never have guessed there were eyewitnesses like t…

Which book is it?

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#68

Post by fifilura »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #58

Phenomenal choice. While 80 years is nice- it's a blip on the timescale of history. I personally think we're a button click away from going back to the stone age. I know others will disagree, but it's not something you wanna take a gamble on. I think it's one of the reasons we have to be self sustaining on other heavenly bodies. And also why wars or proxy wars between nuclear powers are extremely foolish and should b…

> And also why wars or proxy wars between nuclear powers is extremely foolish and should be stopped with great urgency.

The strict interpretation of that foreign policy is that any nuclear nation is free to invade any non-nuclear nation and abuse its citizens.

Where do you draw the line? If for example an ally is invaded by a nuclear nation. Should you intervene or just call peace?

Does the rule-of-law between countries have any relevance?

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#69

Post by melasadra »

As some other commenters have pointed out: It is lamentable that the focus is almost always on the atomic bombing itself instead of why it came to that point at all.

Many Asian countries feel scant sympathy toward Japan. From Indonesia to Malaysia to the Philipipines or even worse and for much longer, in Korea and China. In each of these countries the Japanese perpetrated massacre, forced labour, gang rape and forced prostitution in the millions. Even European women who were stranded in their former colonies were not spared. In fact their diaries are the foremost historical sources.

Their brutality is such that the hatred towards colonialist European nations were ameliorated and pretty much forgotten these days. It's sickening to me that outside East and Southeast Asia itself, most of the world only remember Nagasaki and Hiroshima when it comes to casualties in the Pacific theatre of WW2.

This sympathy felt even more misplaced considering even to this very day, unlike Germany, Japanese historiograpy deliberately downplays Japan brutality during occupation or that there was any aggression on their part at all. Most Japanese college mates in the US that I've talked to were not even aware that Japan occupied my country for years resulting in millions of casualties.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#70

Post by cynicalpeace »

mordae wrote: post #62
cynicalpeace wrote: post #58

Phenomenal choice. While 80 years is nice- it's a blip on the timescale of history. I personally think we're a button click away from going back to the stone age. I know others will disagree, but it's not something you wanna take a gamble on. I think it's one of the reasons we have to be self sustaining on other heavenly bodies. And also why wars or proxy wars between nuclear powers are extremely foolish and should b…

Stone age? Hardly. More like 18th century. I am more worried that we do not have that many attempts at rebuilding, because coal and oil are finite. OTOH a slower 2nd iteration might actually work better than this one.

"I know others will disagree, but it's not something you wanna take a gamble on."

Far more important than 18th century vs stone age debate is the fact that there are people in charge that would lead us down either path.

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