Hiroshima

[FoodFight]

Vonnegut wrote 'Slaugherhouse 5'. Joseph Heller wrote 'Catch 22'.

[Arcades057]

Good call, Coma. I'll pick them both up. BTW, I'm not in any way trying to minimize the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing. Personally I feel it was a war and we were trying to win it, therefore we acted like monsters.

[coma]

Vonnegut wrote 'Slaugherhouse 5'. Joseph Heller wrote 'Catch 22'. Whhops/ Your right. Thanks for the correction. Catch 22 is still a good book, war releated but I dont remeber the details. Somrthing about shellshock, I think. Read it 20 yeard ago. Slaughterhouse 5 is the one I meant. Good call, Coma. I'll pick them both up. BTW, I'm not in any way trying to minimize the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing. Personally I feel it was a war and we were trying to win it, therefore we acted like monsters. Didnt think you were. We had to win and I think, in the end, Japan and Germany ended up much better off. In the 70s, when I was a kid when we were getting our asses kicked with imports from them, people said they actually won.

[bassman]

I'm not going to comment on the whole "was Hiroshima a good or bad idea", but on a semi-related subject, I saw a documentary last night that had footage from Cherynoble......ouch. Actually worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I remembered reading about it in school but never had the full picture in mind until I saw this documentary. Man...it was harsh. Thanks again, History Channel!

[Khardis]

I hear many different things about the choice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From what I understand, their contribution to the war effort was minimal. I think they were both Terror to motivate suureneder. At least Hiroshima. Though I believe Dresden was revenge in part. You're right about it not being brought up much. I think that may be because Fat man and Little boy began the Atomic age, whereas Dreseden was just a "regular" War atrocity. There was a US POW camp there too, with a big POW painted on the roofs, but NAzi's played that trick alot. Kurt Vonnegut was in that prison and wrote Catch 22 about his experiecne in there and his presence in the Dresden Firebombing. Agreat book that I highly reccomend. There was so much horrific, evil sh!t, iy's impossible to judge right and wrong. Whats an atrocity, what isn't. In an all out war it seems like you may have to kill everybody to win as fast as possib;e. I am pretty certain that Hiroshima and Nagasaki werent disjointed form the war, they had a lot of scientists, and military hospitals there.

[Danny]

I'm not going to comment on the whole "was Hiroshima a good or bad idea", but on a semi-related subject, I saw a documentary last night that had footage from Cherynoble......ouch. Actually worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I remembered reading about it in school but never had the full picture in mind until I saw this documentary. Man...it was harsh. Thanks again, History Channel! man that chernobly is a creepy place, i think my mom was there like a few days before it happened, now you see those picks of the abandoned towns with those creepy paintings on the walls of peoples shadows and little kids all around town is like something from silent hill or forbidden siren *lack of a shiver down the spine smiley*

[Terran]

I'm not going to comment on the whole "was Hiroshima a good or bad idea", but on a semi-related subject, I saw a documentary last night that had footage from Cherynoble......ouch. Actually worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I remembered reading about it in school but never had the full picture in mind until I saw this documentary. Man...it was harsh. Thanks again, History Channel! Have you seen that webpage of that lady who drives her motorcycle through the area of Cherynoble....she cant step of the roads in my areas.... its a pretty interesting website.... I have ridden all my life and over the years I have owned several different motorbikes. I ended my search for a perfect bike with a big kawasaki ninja, that boasts a mature 147 horse power, some serious bark, is fast as a bullet and comfortable for a long trips. here is more about my motorcycle I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads. The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes. In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass or some tree that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again........ a few centuries from now. The Next Button is kindof small at the bottom of the page... http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

[Danny]

dont know about you but the way natures steadily moved back into an area we cant inhabit is kinda cool, those rusty old trucks'll get intertwined with vines and crap as nature re-asserts itself, give ti a century and itll give the phrase "concrete jungle" a new meaning. reminds me of an old lovecraft tale were a lake creature and a genie are looking around some millenia old ruins that are overgrown and the creature asks the genie the name of the race that lived there and he says "they were called 'man' ". to quote jurassic park, "life finds a way".

[_liam_]

actually, it was recently revealed that you can live in pripyat, as it was always assumed that the radiation/mortality thing was a steady angle all the way, but it turns out its more of an L shape, and that a small amount of radiation actually hardens your cells to exposure! i'm sorry about how badly ive put it, ill draw a diagram or something maybe. but yeah, i was like "bull****" the whole way through the documentary but it had rats and stuff that live there and are fine, and most of the program was this guy showing people who were evacuated around this town. whole flats and schools are left untouched since 1986...you could film an awesome living dead movie there the creepiest place was the public swimming pool...brr

[Tricky]

Heres another link for those of you interested in chernobyl/pripyat the link directly takes you to photos of grafitti done by a tag crew there.Some say they desecrated a grave,others see it as art.Im undecided,but i cant deny some of the artwork is actually very good!the rest of the site covers normal photos taken there,it would indeed make a very good living dead setting as its the actual decay of a modern city as it falls to nature http://chernobyl.in.ua/en/ghost_town_graffiti/1 One thing though,im keen to see a pic of those giant mutant catfish that have been seen near chernobyl!anybody got any links?

[Mutineer]

The Imperial Army of Japan were ruthless bastards; they had it coming. Let us pray no one ever has to see the use of Nuclear Weapons again. Can we imagine the use of Nukes if the United States was not the first (and last and only) to use them ? What if Hitler had realized his goal of developing a Nuclear Weapon ? You'd be sure either the U.S., Russia or the U.K. would be here. Watch The Fog of War to see how close we came to Nuclear Armegeddon during the Cuban Missle Crisis; and not because we had the nukes; but because Castro had nukes and was crazy enough to use them. Scary ****e.

[Danny]

Heres another link for those of you interested in chernobyl/pripyat the link directly takes you to photos of grafitti done by a tag crew there.Some say they desecrated a grave,others see it as art.Im undecided,but i cant deny some of the artwork is actually very good!the rest of the site covers normal photos taken there,it would indeed make a very good living dead setting as its the actual decay of a modern city as it falls to nature http://chernobyl.in.ua/en/ghost_town_graffiti/1 One thing though,im keen to see a pic of those giant mutant catfish that have been seen near chernobyl!anybody got any links? then i dunno how big it could be but a few yers back a local guy found a cat fish bigger than an adult dolphin and tiwce as long in a muddy river near me, so god knows how big a mutant one could be if a natural ones like a cross between a slug and an anaconda. http://chernobyl.in.ua/en/ghost_town_graffiti/15 that one was creepy.

[EvilNed]

Watch The Fog of War to see how close we came to Nuclear Armegeddon during the Cuban Missle Crisis; and not because we had the nukes; but because Castro had nukes and was crazy enough to use them. No offense, but so far the only goverment crazy enough to use nukes are the US...

[coma]

The Imperial Army of Japan were ruthless bastards; they had it coming. Let us pray no one ever has to see the use of Nuclear Weapons again. Can we imagine the use of Nukes if the United States was not the first (and last and only) to use them ? What if Hitler had realized his goal of developing a Nuclear Weapon ? You'd be sure either the U.S., Russia or the U.K. would be here. Watch The Fog of War to see how close we came to Nuclear Armegeddon during the Cuban Missle Crisis; and not because we had the nukes; but because Castro had nukes and was crazy enough to use them. Scary ****e. Far as I understand it was Kruschev, not Castro, who was prepared to Nuke the US. Cuba was just another Cold War proxy like South Vietnam and South Korea. Castro needed the Soviet help to deter Imment inavasion, in his point of view, Justified by The Bay of Pigs invasion and numerous assasination attempts. It was avoided by JFK sending a lettter to Krushchev basically allowing him a way out by suggesting what he might say/ That was prompted by a letter Krushchev sent to JFK where he used a tiny bit of US propgandaish language to subtley indicate he was open to a solution. JFK picked up on that cue , shot a letter back and Kruschev allowed he waepons tobe withdrawn.

[CivilDefense]

A good book at the background goings on in WWII was Richard Overy's book Why the Allies won. The civilian population had no idea what was going on, just that they had no supplies etc. They suffered. However, what the Japanese did was absolutely inexcusable, the rape of nanking comes to mind. slavery, starvation and wholesale executions. If it takes a nuclear weapon to stop that sort of thing, I am afraid it had to be done. If not just to make sure it never happens again.