Pope condemns possession of nuclear weapons

  • Thread starter Thread starter TK421
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
It exists alright. But its exact composition and launch method are unknown. Published accounts indicate a rod just over 20 feet long made of tungsten. If that is the case, then Mach 10 is the best it can do. It is designed as an underground “bunker buster.”

The heat shield you are talking about is fictional.
 
edwest211 said:
Meteorite impacts are usually far less dramatic. Example: A man found a hole in the trunk of his car. When he opened it, there was a meteor on the floor.
Click to expand...
how do you explain huge meteor creators? Can you please give a link to this incident. We remember the recent events like this one


@undead_rat
There is no argument the world will come to an end and Christ will come back. The earth is quite old, after Christ it has been ticking along quite nicely for 2000 years. Weapons have come and gone in that time. There is no reason to think we will not be ticking along in another 2000 years.
I am sure in that time nuclear energy and weaponry will have been superseded and look ancient.
 
undead_rat said:
The US invasion of Japan was scheduled for November, 1945, three months after the A-bomb was dropped.
Click to expand...
:roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

Yes . . . with estimated allied casualties of 1,000,000, and an unknown multiple of that (not just two or three) in Japanese.

(and I categorically reject the civilian/military distinction: the US casualties would have been primarily farm boys, with a healthy bolster from the cities, had Japan not dragged the US into the war . . .)

And leaving aside the sheer naiveté of believing that the USSR would have invaded Japan on its own as nothing other than absolute conquest . . . from the Japanese standpoint, the choice between two bombs and an immediate surrender on the one hand, and soviet invasion and over fifty years of occupation and soviet rule are an easy choice . . .
 
Baloney. Japan was beaten. The Russians didn’t have that kind of trouble when they began to invade Japan.
 
In a vacuum, yes.

In the context of that other country killing thousands of your own innocent children on a daily basis, and a few times that of their own in doing so, failing to stop the war with the new super weapon would be hideously immoral and disgusting.
edwest211 said:
Baloney. Japan was beaten. The Russians didn’t have that kind of trouble when they began to invade Japan.
Click to expand...
Russia didn’t even declare war until after the bomb, and they started on occupied territory, not Japan.

Rightly or wrongly, our best intelligence estimated a bitter defense of the Japanese homeland, by civilians as well a military, largely without military weapons. These folks would have been slaughtered, although they were estimated to end up inflicting a million casualties.

It’s easy to play armchair general a half a century later with information and suppositions that weren’t available at the time.

Was it Dean Achens that made the comment that, hell, yes, it was political: how could anyone look a mother in the eye and tell her that we had the ability to stop the war before her boy died, but we didn’t?

Yes, Japan would have been defeated without the bomb. But looking at the islands that were fought yard by yard, as well as the holdouts decades later, the suggestion that it would have been fast or easy is pollyanic . . .
 
As a student of World War II history, I have a great deal of information, including statements from those in a position to know and understand what those atomic bombs meant. They condemned their use and said it was not justified. So, I am speaking for them, not me.
 
Gosh, I’m just relying on what the folks at the time, making the decisions, said, wrote, and knew, not just (other) self-declared students of WWII,.

Time to dump this thread . . .
 
Yes, it is. That part of the war is available in specialized, well-referenced books. And statements made in 1945 are available from publications from that year.
 
“dochawk said:
undead_rat said:
And leaving aside the sheer naiveté of believing that the USSR would have invaded Japan on its own as nothing other than absolute conquest . . . from the Japanese standpoint, the choice between two bombs and an immediate surrender on the one hand, and soviet invasion and over fifty years of occupation and soviet rule are an easy choice . . .
Click to expand...
I have heard this argument before: that the USA nuked Japan in order save them. I don’t buy it. Futhermore, Japan surrendered because their Emperor ordered them to; not because of the A-bomb. And the war-criminal Hirohito ordered that surrender because of two things: 1. The Russian declaration of war meant that Japan was finished, and 2. Truman violated his unconditional surrender obligation and offered Hirohito amnesty.

The Russians were all to ready to invade Japan, and everyone knows that.
Click to expand...
 
The Church has always said nuclear warfare is extremely difficult to justify in theory and practically impossible to justify in practice, given that it does not comply with the requirements for a just war.
 
The Russians sent one million men into Manchuria against 700,000 Japanese troops. That was August 8, 1945.
 
Military planners in the United States realized by 1954 that nuclear weapons, regardless of type, were totally impractical. However, when your enemy has ICBMs, you also build ICBMs. At this point, beam weapons are being deployed. Moving at the speed of light, it will be increasingly difficult to launch anything, much less nuclear-tipped missiles. A certain amount of nuclear weapons will be on hand but it appears they could be rendered obsolete, as well as impractical.
 
Last edited:
In a perfect world, EVERYONE should condemn nuclear weapons. If anyone has the duty to talk about what a perfect world should look like, I think it would be the Pope.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top