08:15, Sixty-one Years Ago
It was a hot, muggy summer day in the city and surrounding countryside, and although the nation had been at war for twelve years, the people didn't feel the need to be overly nervous.
Children were going to school, men and women were going to work.
A single plane flew overhead.
And at eight-fifteen that hot summer morning, the world changed irrevocably.
This is a rare picture taken by a Japanese photographer at a distance of 7 kilometers from the hypocenter of the world's second nuclear detonation. The target was Hiroshima, a southern port city of the Japanese Empire. Estimates vary, but there is general agreement that 86,000 human beings died almost instantly from the initial firebomb and the resulting heat flash and shock wave. Many of those who were left alive wished they were dead, burned and injured and dying slowly from the impact of so much ionizing radiation.
People who flippantly talk about using nuclear weapons need to remember these pictures. A recent commenter on a blog that I regularly peruse suggested that the way to pacify the unrest in the Middle East would be to use nuclear weapons on the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Setting aside the fact that we are outnumbered by the population of the Islamic world, we would run the risk of having the entire planet condemning us as terrorists and taking steps to either retaliate or find some way to contain us.
No sane, rational, intelligent person wants to use nuclear weapons. And I hope it stays that way.
Children were going to school, men and women were going to work.
A single plane flew overhead.
And at eight-fifteen that hot summer morning, the world changed irrevocably.
This is a rare picture taken by a Japanese photographer at a distance of 7 kilometers from the hypocenter of the world's second nuclear detonation. The target was Hiroshima, a southern port city of the Japanese Empire. Estimates vary, but there is general agreement that 86,000 human beings died almost instantly from the initial firebomb and the resulting heat flash and shock wave. Many of those who were left alive wished they were dead, burned and injured and dying slowly from the impact of so much ionizing radiation.
People who flippantly talk about using nuclear weapons need to remember these pictures. A recent commenter on a blog that I regularly peruse suggested that the way to pacify the unrest in the Middle East would be to use nuclear weapons on the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Setting aside the fact that we are outnumbered by the population of the Islamic world, we would run the risk of having the entire planet condemning us as terrorists and taking steps to either retaliate or find some way to contain us.
No sane, rational, intelligent person wants to use nuclear weapons. And I hope it stays that way.
posted by Walt at 6:31 AM
1 Comments:
"No sane, rational, intelligent person wants to use nuclear weapons."
Two operative words here, sane and rational. Could you use those words to describe bush and cheney?
Exactly, and that's the scary part.
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