Nobel laureate, Manhattan Project pioneer and disarmament activist Hans Bethe has died at the age of 98: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-030705bethe_lat,0,5519927.story?coll=la-home-headlines
I love it how so many people who worked to bring us "the Bomb" then turned around and started being all, "Oh, we should disarm, we shouldn't use the Bomb!" Well thanks a fuckin' LOT, asshole. You fuckin' made the thing, you fuckin' hypocrite. What a great idea: make something that can destroy the whole fucking world and all the life on it, and then suddenly "think better of it" and renounce it and tell us we should dismantle it. You ever hear of "too fuckin' little, too fuckin' late"?! "Disarmament activist"? More like "fuckin' asshole who now wants to somehow repent for his role in bringing about the darkest, most evil creation the world has ever seen." If only humanity's so-called "geniuses" could ever conceive of what a great idea it is to NOT invent something, sometimes... They're so fucking smart that they can split the atom, and so fucking dumb that they can't see how horrible doing so will make the world... YOINK! I'm taking away your fuckin' Genius Card, Mr. Bethe. You ain't so fuckin' smart, after all. -Jeffrey
If the US had not developed the atom bomb, then surely another country would have, and 20th century history would have been very different. Perhaps much more hostile uses of atomic weapons would have resulted. Also, many argue that the atom bomb caused the developed nations to form lasting peace treaties because of the threat of total nuclear annihilation with little or no methods of defense. In fact, looking at the graphs showing the number of people killed due to war over the history of mankind, you see an exponential increase over the past few hundred years; but then there is this sharp cutoff right after the first atom bomb is dropped. Since the atom bomb, there has never been a major world war. Without it, millions more may have died. It is like suddenly the world shared in a collective "Oh Shit" when they realized their entire city could be flattened by just one small bomb, and that caused everyone to rethink war. It is unfortunate, however, that the US chose to actually use the bomb. They had originally planned to make a harmless public demonstration of what it could do for the world to witness. This is what the people developing the bomb thought was going to happen. Anyway, they could have at least dropped it in a relatively unpopulated area to make their point. Nevertheless I consider the development and introduction of atomic weapons to the world to be a very significant step in the history of life on earth. It was the first time terrestrial life forms created a means to rapidly destroy itself worldwide. It was bound to happen someday. This opened the world up to the idea that its people are responsible for the ultimate survival or doom of the planet. So in a weird way, the atomic bomb brought the world together to find peaceful solutions to ensure its survival. The atom bomb can almost be respected as a God-like force- a force much greater than oneself, and this forced people to lose their conscious egos and aggressive tactics or else face death. Having said all that, I would have also supported disarmament and the cessation of atomic weapons production. Once the point was made with the atom bomb, it was not necessary for nations to stockpile nuclear weapons. That was clearly childish behavior as who really needs to destroy the Earth 25 times over? So basically I can appreciate both the development of the bomb as well as the need to stop its overproduction and, obviously, to prevent its use. However, we face another complexity. The disarmament treaties were largely based on the assumption that ICBMs cannot be easily stopped. Now the US is developing newer, more powerful laser and kinetic weapons to help intercept nuclear threats. If such a defense is proven effective, then nations may be forced to make even more nuclear weapons in order to keep the balance of arms equal, and that would prompt the US to increase its production as well. But the opposite effect could happen. An effective defense could make nukes obsolete if they can simply be shot out of the sky with a laser every time. Then who would even bother using them? So what do all you folks think about antiballistic missile defense? Do you think it will upset the balance and cause more nuke production and result in more global insecurity, or will it make nuclear weapons obsolete?
