Is it actually the case that deaths and injuries in H & N are distinctly worse than the deaths and injuries in the other 72 cities levelled by bombing in the few months prior to the H & N bombings?

  Before the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was the burning of Tokyo. Operation Meetinghouse, the early March 1945 raid on Tokyo that involved over 330 B-29s dropping incendiary bombs from low-altitude at night, killed roughly 100,000 people, and may have injured and made homeless an order of magnitude more. As with all statistics on the damage caused by strategic bombing during World War II, there are debatable points and methodologies, but most people accept that the bombing of Tokyo probably had at least as many deaths as the Hiroshima bombing raid, and probably more. It is sometimes listed as the most single deadly air raid of all time as a consequence.

~ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/09/22/tokyo-hiroshima/

▲ m-i-l 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> "Is it actually the case that deaths and injuries in H & N are distinctly worse"

Hiroshima and Nagasaki had radiation - many died in the following months from the "atomic bomb disease", now known to be acute radiation sickness, and many died in the following years from cancer, for example. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions_... for details of all the different ways a nuclear explosion can cause death or injury in the initial stage (1-9 weeks), intermediate stage (10-12 weeks), late period (13-20 weeks), and delayed period (20+ weeks). Bear in mind that the effects of radiation weren't well understood at the time.

Furthermore, all the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their children "were (and still are) victims of severe discrimination when it comes to prospects of marriage or work due to public ignorance about the consequences of radiation sickness, with much of the public believing it to be hereditary or even contagious"[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha

▲ voidUpdate 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Depends, do you consider death by burns and smoke inhalation to be worse than death by having your skin stripped off by the blast, your appendages completely burned off in an instant, people completely losing their mind, pregnant women dying and having their unborn children exposed to the open air? I've heard all of those in testimonies from survivors.

Yes, both of those events are terrible and shouldn't have happened, but which is "worse" probably depends on if you consider more deaths or worse deaths to be "worse"

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defrost 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I've heard all of those in testimonies from survivors.

You've read the testimonies of those that survived Dresden and Tokyo then?

Again, dead is dead, injured by temperatures that melt flesh is the same regardless of heat source.

Is there any reason to elevate death by atomic weapon above death by carpet bombing HE's and incendiaries?

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gonzalohm an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Hmm yes there are multiple reasons. If you were to survive a nuclear explosion you are probably going to go through a slow and painful death that can go from minutes to years.

Depending on how affected you are, you can become literally poisonous to touch. And that's just for people affected by the explosion. Then there are the people that won't be able to go back home because of radiation. That's a different kind of pain. And yes, bombs also can bulldoze cities, but at least you can recover and reconstruct

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voidUpdate 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I've not heard testimonies by those survivors, no, but I have heard about a lot of other burn victims and survivors in mass casualty events.

How about we both don't have nuclear weapons and also don't carpet bomb people?

	▲	anonymars 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		None of the ways of dying in wars sound particularly appealing to me; instant disintegration doesn't sound like the worst of them If we're going to move the goalposts, why don't we just move them to the logical endpoint and proclaim "why don't we just not have wars" Which, by the way, perhaps it's of interest to compare the frequency and severity of war before and after the invention of atomic weapons Anyway, I'd be curious to hear your ethical solution to the trolley problem? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲ brudgers 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The fire bombing of civilians was wrong too.

▲ dylan604 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Those other cities sustained multiple bombing raids dropping multiple bombs. These cities suffered this damage from solitary bombs with little to no warning. This whataboutism isn't really even comparing the same things. Yes, losses from any war/battle/excursion is horrible, but this is cranking the knob to an 11 while all of the other damage was 0.5 on the same logarithmic scale