How Would A World War 3 Have Influenced Technological Development?

[Dayton3]

By the way, barely 200,000 people died as a direct or indirect result of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There is a lot of politics behind a number like that, while I believe nuking Hiroshima was wrong
but it was something that needed to be done and probably saved many lives. Maybe it saved 600,000 or a million or two million? the war would have dragged and it was used to save American lives and Japanese lives.
What happened after WW2 is these cities were left with many 'Hibakusha'. Atomic people who were messed up after the war but the Japan government acted like cheap skate scrooges. They refused to certify many or give them medical benefit. It's not too unlike how in the West we sent soliders off to the Nevada sands to watch the mushroom clouds and the US government refuses to call them atomic veterans because its going to get a huge medicare bill if they do.

Post a link to where I said any of those things.

Dayton3 at your best

Besides, between 1991 and 2003, the U.S. lost from 400-600 servicemen during the "containment" of Iraq.

ColGrn, Australis
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=78413
"I'd HATE to think that you'd just pulled that out of your ass"
" If there's a question that will force D3 to answer in a way that doesn't conform to his worldview, it'll be ignored."

BTW your opinions are often incoherent
but one thing you frequently claim Bush Jnr was better than his Father HW Bush and better than JFK

NO NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST.

Birmingham has a population 1 million, the greater urban area 3 million that's already more than half the number of Jews exterminated during WW2. How is Nuking Birmingham and cities like Minsk, Norfolk, Virginia not a nuclear holocaust?

I figured the number of Americans who died per year during the containment of Iraq to be around ONE TENTH of the total number of Americans who died in that time period due to accidents.

That seems a reasonable calculation given the U.S. forces deployed to an area.

A few cities lost to nuclear weapons is hardly a nuclear holocaust. Tragic but it in no way compares to a general nuclear exchange.

IIRC, in "The Third World War: August 1985" the estimated death toll in the Birmingham area was around 370,000 people.

Remember, only one warhead was used.

people forget, unless an urban area is flat out blanketed with nuclear weapons strikes or an incredibly large warhead is used (20 megatons for example) then the majority of the population of a major city will survive the attack.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Interesting topic. Just one question since I've not read the books: why Birmingham?

The U.S. president, British prime ministers, and other western leaders were meeting in London to decide what to do about Europe once the Soviet invasion was beat back.

the Soviets destroyed Birmingham because it was close enough to give a clear warning to the summit meeting in London without actually harming them.

The Soviets issued a warning roughly five minutes before the ICBM launch to indicate that this was in no way the beginning of a general nuclear exchange.

Mh. I'm not sure it makes sense, tho.

 

[USS KG5]

What really helped the US during WW2 was the only real direct hit the US suffered was Pearl. Sure it was bad, you had most of the Naval might destroyed by the Japanese sneak attack...

Actually, to be fair, Pearl Harbour was only bad in that the US was made to look a bit weak and stupid. The aircraft lost were easily replaced and the Battleships were of use only as monitors in WW2, there were very few direct actions between battleships in the Pacific, and none decisive.

Apart from that you are quite right, the only direct civilian casualties were three rednecks who found a balloon bomb!

and Hitler in a second wave of sneakiness had subs blasting US shipping on the East Coast.

Well sadly it took a long time to get a local convoy system operational along the US coastline, and the lack of a blackout silhouetted merchant ships and made them extremely easy targets. A big US cock-up.

A global nuclear war would be totally different.

Quite true of course - though I believe Dayton is talking about a gloves-on conventional conflict. This is a fairly massive "what-if" of course, as neither side as a whole ever really did anything but their utmost to avoid a direct confrontation, thank God.

 

[yellowdingo]

Then again there was a rumor that the US had what is termed a "Black Fleet"...From which Japanese Aircraft were launched to Assault certain Allied Targets to achieve what Diplomacy could not...

Bombing of Darwin, Bombing of Pearl Harbour...Just enough to keep the outrage against the Terrible Japanese going...right up to the Point where A US President refers to the Nuclear Bombing of Two major Japanese cities as the nuking of Naval Bases. Like New York and San Francisco are Naval Bases.

 

[Dayton3]

Then again there was a rumor that the US had what is termed a "Black Fleet"...From which Japanese Aircraft were launched to Assault certain Allied Targets to achieve what Diplomacy could not...

Bombing of Darwin, Bombing of Pearl Harbour...Just enough to keep the outrage against the Terrible Japanese going...right up to the Point where A US President refers to the Nuclear Bombing of Two major Japanese cities as the nuking of Naval Bases. Like New York and San Francisco are Naval Bases.

The fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from Nagasaki.

And the torpedos used against ships at Pearl Harbor were made in Hiroshima.

And the "Black Fleet" rumor is one of the most ridiculous in all of history.

 

[Neopeius]

The fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from Nagasaki.

No it didn't. It sailed from Etorofu Island in the Kuriles. Before that, it was in the Inland Sea. Before that, it was at its normal berth, Sakurajima

 

[Dayton3]

The fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from Nagasaki.

No it didn't. It sailed from Etorofu Island in the Kuriles. Before that, it was in the Inland Sea. Before that, it was at its normal berth, Sakurajima

Then it returned to Nagasaki.

Either way, Nagasaki was an anchorage for the Sasebo Naval District which made it a naval base by any definition of the word.

I personally don't care if Nagasaki and Hiroshima didn't have a single soldier or weapons plant within miles. They were a perfectly legitimate target.

 

[Neopeius]

The fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from Nagasaki.

No it didn't. It sailed from Etorofu Island in the Kuriles. Before that, it was in the Inland Sea. Before that, it was at its normal berth, Sakurajima

Then it returned to Nagasaki.

No. It returned to Hashirajima. Then it went on to Iwakima and then Truk.

In fact, the Combined Fleet was never in Nagasaki.

 

[USS KG5]

Then again there was a rumor that the US had what is termed a "Black Fleet"...From which Japanese Aircraft were launched to Assault certain Allied Targets to achieve what Diplomacy could not...

Bombing of Darwin, Bombing of Pearl Harbour...Just enough to keep the outrage against the Terrible Japanese going...right up to the Point where A US President refers to the Nuclear Bombing of Two major Japanese cities as the nuking of Naval Bases. Like New York and San Francisco are Naval Bases.

The "black fleet" idea is complete nonsense though. Like all conspiracy theories it depends entirely on a massive logical leap in order to make any sense, namely that the Japanese, or any nation, was not capable of independent aggressive military action. Of course they were.

It cannot be taken seriously in a historical context without some serious evidence.