What would history be like if Nuclear bombs did not exist?

a reply to: makemap

The more interesting speculation is what would our country be like if Al Gore won instead of the boy wonder.

originally posted by: visitedbythem
a reply to: Lumenari

Thats a trip.

Maybe they were used thousands or millions of years ago

Oppenheimer was talking about what used to be called Persia.

“If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of worlds.

[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.)”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

The Hopi were there once, before they moved to a better place.

Things to think about.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: makemap

The more interesting speculation is what would our country be like if Al Gore won instead of the boy wonder.

Not really...

Excessive taxation, food rationing, people dealing with "energy poverty"...

While Gore sat in his mansion and laughed at people like you while eating a Wagyu Ribeye for breakfast.

For someone who is into social justice and wealth equality, you really need to find some better heroes.

a reply to: jgarc028

The Russians had the manpower and machines at the end of the war to walk all over Europe.

As to the USA stopping them there, well you do realize it was a team effort and not just a US affair?

Without the threat of Moscow being totally annihilated and the head removed from the Chicken, Stalin would have taken the continent, blood gore and guts included.

And they had the motivation to do so, given their losses and devastation, which pretty much palled in comparison to what most other allied powers endured from there axis cousins.

Russian was just like America with regards to waking a sleeping dragon.

a reply to: jgarc028

They would have required the oil, ether for there own purpose or to ensure, America or China did not have it.

We were all crippled at the end and America was still fighting a war with Japan, what do you imagine the invasion of there mainland would have cost in men and resources without the use of nukes?

Too much for the American people to pay or endure, Russians did not give rats arse because they were not short of people, or resources if they had taken Europe by storm.

I think the USA and USSR would have eventually fought an all-out war against each other. Not immediately after the German surrender, but sometime before or shortly after 1950.

The final defeat of Japan would have been horrendously bloody. The USA was impatient to end the war, and was unwilling to wait for the naval blockade and conventional air power to force a capitulation.

Operation Downfall would have proceeded, making the Invasion of Normandy seem almost like a sideshow in comparison. Some 5 million U.S. personnel and 1 million Commonwealth personnel would have taken part. Half a million Purple Hearts were made in anticipation of expected casualties. Japanese resistance, both military and civilian, would have been fanatical. Combined casualties for both sides would almost certainly have been more than a million; far more than combined casualties for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki a-bomb attacks.

The Soviets might well have invaded Japan and would have been hard to dislodge after surrender. All of Korea and at least part of Japan might have become communist, and Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces would have been defeated sooner. No telling what would have become of Taiwan.

Thank God we perfected the atom bomb and had the B-29 to deliver it when we did. American soldiers and Marines wept tears of joy and relief when they heard about the bombings. They knew Japanese soldiers typically fought to the death, and an invasion of the home islands would be the ultimate meat grinder.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: jgarc028

You fire away pal.

Since we are playing what if, its just mere speculation anyhoo.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: jgarc028

The Russians had the manpower and machines at the end of the war to walk all over Europe.

As to the USA stopping them there, well you do realize it was a team effort and not just a US affair?

Without the threat of Moscow being totally annihilated and the head removed from the Chicken, Stalin would have taken the continent, blood gore and guts included.

And they had the motivation to do so, given their losses and devastation, which pretty much palled in comparison to what most other allied powers endured from there axis cousins.

Russian was just like America with regards to waking a sleeping dragon.

If the Soviets tried to conquer Europe with U.S., Commonwealth and Free French forces opposing them, they’d have to do it without the Lend Lease aid they were highly dependent upon.

No more spare parts or replacements for the 200,000 Studebaker deuce-and-a-halfs that were the mainstay of their field logistics. Or the 150,000 1.25-ton capacity 6x6s or the 80,000 jeeps we shipped them.

No more spare tires like the 4 million we provided. Warfare takes a frightful toll on vehicles and tires, making it extremely hard to maintain their numbers and operation — even for the USA in WWII.

We also provided a daily ration for every member of the Soviet armed forces, 15 million boots and we clothed them, too.

About 2,000 locomotives.

Almost 60 percent of their high-octane aviation fuel.

Munitions equal to 53 percent of total Soviet production, i.e., one-third of the ammunition available to them during the war.

Almost a million miles of field telephone wire (their favorite, uninterceptible, form of communication).

All their field telephones and radios were provided by us. The Soviet electronics industry was primitive in the 1940s. Before we supplied them with radios, their tanks and aircraft had to use hand signals, flags, flares and smoke to coordinate their actions against radio-equipped Wehrmacht forces. They were slaughtered by the Germans, who could direct their vehicles in overwhelming numbers to the weakest points in Soviet ground positions and aerial formations.

So if the Soviets tried to “walk all over Europe” as you so blithely wrote, they would have to do it without receiving any more of the materiel mentioned above, or the spare parts to maintain them, or replacements when they bit the dust.

Wikipedia: “It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.” Of course, US Army divisions were much bigger and had far more vehicles than Soviet vehicles. And most of the supplies we sent arrived at Murmansk, meaning they would have been enough to maintain much more than 60 big US Army divisions.

The United States provided the Soviets with 16.45 million tons of materiel during the war, equivalent to 75 percent of the tonnage landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945.

The combined bomber offensive of the RAF and US 8th and 15th Air Forces tied down the vast majority of German aircraft, giving the Soviets overwhelming air superiority for each of their offensives after 1944.

Because of the virtual absence of the Luftwaffe in the final year and a half of war, the Soviets could line up their artillery hub-to-hub with impunity for their massive bombardments, confident that they wouldn’t be bombed or strafed from the air.

That would not be the case if they fought the Western Allies, who not only had massive numbers of fighters to impose air superiority over the battlefield, but also massive numbers of medium bombers to interdict the Soviets’ supply lines and massive numbers of heavy bombers to hit rail marshaling yards and even ground units a la Operation Cobra.

Your leftist sources and friends believe the Soviets were unbeatable in WWII and could have waltzed into Berlin without any help from the UK and USA. But that’s a childish fantasy. Leave the serious discussion of WWII to folks who’ve studied it for decades, who’ve read hundreds of books and studies about it, and aren’t wed to an ideological position on the major combatants.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: makemap

The more interesting speculation is what would our country be like if Al Gore won instead of the boy wonder.

If Al Gore had won you'd be rowing your boat to work because sea levels would have risen hundreds of feet by now and you'd be paying much higher carbon taxes while Al Gore flew around causing more global warming.

a reply to: Scapegrace

I never even listed any sources you Muppet, left or right. x

And funnily enough, neither have you.

Anyhoo kind of gland the Soviets stopped, like any other sane person.

Ile give you a little hint all the same, the world is not, and never has been, as simple as right or left.

a reply to: makemap

If Nukes had not been developed Biological weapons and chemical weapons' already existed and they would simply have been made ever worse (they indeed both have existed for many thousands of years such as in ancient Assyria were gas hand grenades were used during sieges to kill those inside enemy city's and fort's) and using dead animal's and people to spread disease among hostile populations.

Actually compared to those two Nukes even with there devastating radiation are relatively clean.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: jgarc028

They would have required the oil, ether for there own purpose or to ensure, America or China did not have it.

We were all crippled at the end and America was still fighting a war with Japan, what do you imagine the invasion of there mainland would have cost in men and resources without the use of nukes?

Too much for the American people to pay or endure, Russians did not give rats arse because they were not short of people, or resources if they had taken Europe by storm.

America was far from crippled by war’s end. Yes, we were running low on riflemen, who suffered most of the casualties, but so were the Soviets. It’s a myth that they had endless numbers of men to expend; they were scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel by war’s end.

Our industry on the other hand, was cranking out more materiel than we needed at war’s end, and it was being deliberately scaled back in anticipation of switching over to consumer products at home.

The continental United States was barely scratched during the war, and had at least half of the world’s industrial capacity.

We were completely self sufficient in oil and food, to such an extent we were able to provide most of the fuel needs and much of the food for the UK, and a large proportion of war materiel for the Commonwealth, USSR, China and Free French.

The United States had the most powerful and capable navy and air forces in the world. We were cranking out so many new pilots and aircrew we had to reduce the number of flight school students and redirect them to other service branches.

The USA produced — by far — the most oil, steel, aluminum, coal, explosives and food in the world.

Ford alone produced more war materiel during the war than Italy.

So to say we were all pretty much crippled by the end of the war is not entirely true.

As I already stated, we were running low on riflemen in the ETO, but so were the Soviets. There’s an oft repeated myth that the Soviets had a bottomless manpower pool, possibly because of the huge size of the Red Army and its callous willingness to sacrifice its soldiers.

One reason the Soviets had a larger army in Europe than the US Army is because it had almost no navy, while we had an enormous one.

Their air forces were also much smaller because they concentrated almost exclusively on fighters and ground attack bombers like the famous Sturmovik, the most widely produced military aircraft of all time.

But the USA produced almost 100,000 aircraft per year at its peak, including heavy and medium bombers and transports.

We were also fighting another full-scale war against Japan. If the Soviets had attacked the Western Allies, the war against Japan could have been put on the back burner, so to speak, with our submarines alone maintaining a crippling blockade against the home islands. Marine, army and air units could have then been transferred to the ETO, although it would have taken months to get them there.

There was a largely untapped pool of black US Army personnel who could have been repurposed as riflemen, as they were during the Battle of the Bulge emergency.

If necessary, we could have transferred navy personnel to the army if the Soviets attacked us, since the u-boat threat would no longer exist in this scenario, and the Japanese navy was utterly defeated by May 1945.

a reply to: makemap

More than lightly the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima disasters would not have happened, so there is that.

a reply to: Scapegrace

The United States had the most powerful and capable navy and air forces in the world

The U.S. Navy only became the largest more or less at the end of WW II Before that The Royal Navy was the largest.

it remained the major naval power up until 1944-45 when it was overtaken by the American navy.

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: makemap

More than lightly the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima disasters would not have happened, so there is that.

actually we probably would have had even more of them, and worse. remember the scientists seemed to think it was quite safe. how many of those scientists ended up killing themselves due to playing with an unused core of a bomb without any protection? they also seemed rather surprised b y the damage radiation did beyond the actual power of the initial blast. so without dropping the bombs the first reactors likely would have had even less protection and safety built into them then they did.

Japan would have been decimated as they were willing to fight to the death until the bombs were dropped and their God Emperor surrendered. The fire bombings alone were actually far worst than the nukes, so think of a few more years of that and then a long ground war were everyone dies along the way.

On the other side of the world we would not have had a cold war with Russia and EU would have most likely went to war with them and for us instead of Korea it would have been a Russia war in the 50s. Much of the Middle East would be different today too, so to be honest not having nukes would put the US and EU in a huge advantage compared to the rest of the world that could have seen China, India, Middle East and so on still under EU/US control even today.

a reply to: generik

The demon core eh?

It was involved in two critical accidents if I'm not mistaken.

But why would they have had such a thing if Nuclear bombs were not on the cards, considering the core was intended for use in a third nuclear weapon?

If my Auntie had balls she'd be my uncle.

a reply to: Freeborn

In this confusing day of age, i think there is an op for just that kind of scenario.

a reply to: andy06shake

Lol.

I first became aware of the phrase after reading some Bill Shankly quotes.....imagine his and Cloughy's take on things like that?

Entering the fourth week of sobriety.....not good.