No reason to think this is true, All the major powers (US, Russia, China) have extensive underground testing capacity. All the recent powers have only done underground testing (Pakistan, India, North Korea). China was the last country to do an above ground test, in 1980, the 22 tests they've done since then were all underground.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-ukraine-nuclear-miss...
About as many Marshallese live in USA as on the islands.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd26yxxx3lo
"These are not nuclear explosions," Wright told Fox News on Sunday. "These are what we call non-critical explosions."
"Americans near historic test sites such as the Nevada National Security Site have no cause for concern," Wright said. "So you're testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry, and they set up the nuclear explosion."
"The Marshales caught by fallout got 175 wrenchons of radiation. These are fishing people, savages by our standards.
So a cross-section was brought to Chicago for testing. The first was John, the mayor of Rangala Battle. John, as we said, is a savage, but a happy aminable savage."
Reminds me of this scene from Arrested Development https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/28b0326d-cba4-4d26-8c54-977f04b...
I don't think it does. No one will mess with you if you merely have one bomb let alone the US which has 5k+ warheads and a triad of delivery mechanisms. Blowing up nuclear bombs anywhere for "testing" purposes is stupid.
> The cost is negligible
Environmentally, not at all neglible. Financially, probably since we fund our military more than anyone else.
I do agree that this costed less American lives than other options, and that in war most options are shitty. Inevitably, most involve civilian deaths. But the guy who picks the "let's mass kill civilians" is not going to get sympathy from me.
So no, I don't accept the "more people would have died" argument. Less US soldiers, yes. And it's not like the other side wasn't committing war crimes anyway.
I didn't drive my car into a brick wall yesterday, but just because it didn't happen doesn't make it "fabricated evidence" that it was a much better choice for me not to drive my car into a brick wall.
I know my priors. Do you know yours?
Here's another hypothetical: "We wanted to limit future soviet influence in Japan and were willing to flatten two cities full of civilians in order to do that"
https://time.com/6297240/atomic-bomb-expert-oppenheimer-inte...
The Wikipedia page on the debate about the bombings is very informative. I've seen what I consider to be strong arguments that the Soviet invasion of the Sakhalin Islands and potential invasion and occupation of Hokkaido.
I'm also disappointed that the critics to my original post failed to engage with the central question: What was the rush to bomb Nagasaki if not to ensure the US got to further intimidate Russia? (and test both a uranium-based bomb and a plutonium-based one)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing...
From the above Wikipedia page:
Ward Wilson wrote that "after Nagasaki was bombed only four major cities remained which could readily have been hit with atomic weapons", and that the Japanese Supreme Council did not bother to convene after the atomic bombings because they were barely more destructive than previous bombings. He wrote that instead, the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and South Sakhalin removed Japan's last diplomatic and military options for negotiating a conditional surrender, and this is what prompted Japan's surrender. He wrote that attributing Japan's surrender to a "miracle weapon", instead of the start of the Soviet invasion, saved face for Japan and enhanced the United States' world standing.[120]
Prime Minister Suzuki said in August 1945 that Japan surrendered as quickly as possible to the United States because Japan expected the Soviet Union to invade and hold Hokkaido, an action which would "destroy the foundation of Japan".[121][122]
"Any myths about this history you want to debunk or set the record straight on?"
"The big one was that the Japanese were ready to surrender and would have surrendered even if we had not dropped those bombs. I think that is a myth. Oppenheimer seems to have believed that the weapon was used against a country that was about to surrender—as he puts it, essentially defeated. The Japanese were essentially defeated—that’s true. Their fleet had been sunk and their cities had been burned. But they were not ready to surrender."
"Did the bombs lead to the Japanese surrender on Sep. 2?"
"Two atomic bombs forced them to. The dominant reason [the U.S.] used the bomb was to end the war. [The U.S.] thought the only way to end the war was to use these two terrible weapons."
Sounds like a good recipe for all current and future wars. /s
Maybe, just maybe because Japan was so close to surrender that there even was a coup attempt to prevent him from surrendering?
After the US took Japan, we reinstated the emperor, wrote their constitution, and used Japan as an imperial outpost to threaten Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and Russia, which we do to this day. In the case of Korea, we invaded in the 1950s and never left, setting up a puppet state. Okinawans and many Koreans want the US military out of their countries.
This was an acceptable trade to the Japanese elite, because the communists would have removed their monarch in the name of liberty!
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...
Would you support Russia flattening few Ukrainian cities with nuclear warheads in 2022 to finish this war early? Or "it is different"?