Article reasoning that what ended World War II was not the atom bomb

[sethnintendo]

Ckmlb1 said:

Kasz216 said:

2) Scale, ignores the main fear of nuclear weapons, even before they got big. Which is that it literally only takes one bomb. There is no real defense or chance of inflicting casualties. 

Sure the Nuclear bombs weren't near the worst bombings to occur in the war, they however were the most "unfair."

At this point instead of trying to cause deaths here and there and negotiate for a better peace it just becomes something a lot more hopeless... even in the terms of just trying to lose but eek out something of value.




Russia was no doubt a major fear and played a big part in it... but Nuclear weapons in the end seems like what forced their hand.

Why would it matter that it was nuclear bombs instead of conventional weapons when 86 other cities were successfully attacked in levels equivalent to nuclear bombs in destruction and civilian casualties? Obviously the Japanese were unable to stop the destruciton of cities at this point by the US air power. 

My favorite weapon that wasn't used during WW2...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

"A reasonable number of destructive fires can be started in spite of the extremely small size of the units. The main advantage of the units would seem to be their placement within the enemy structures without the knowledge of the householder or fire watchers, thus allowing the fire to establish itself before being discovered.^" The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) observer stated: “It was concluded that X-Ray is an effective weapon.” The Chief Chemist’s report stated that on a weight basis X-Ray was more effective than the standard incendiary bombs in use at the time. “Expressed in another way, the regular bombs would give probably 167 to 400 fires per bomb load where X-Ray would give 3,625 to 4,748 fires"