Another podcast I've been enjoying is Hardcore History. It's long, detailed analyses of many different topics. Eight hours on the Mongol conquests? Yes please!
One I've just listened to has put a great spin on nuclear bombs. We all think of them as being this horrible thing that enabled the destruction of entire cities. But that's not so. The bomber does that. Many cities were destroyed just as completely from the air without atomic bombs, and World War 2 was the first time this was possible. WW2 didn't introduce the horrors of the atom bomb, it introduced the horrors of strategic bombing of civilian population centers. Atomic bombs are just one special class.
Being antinuclear is all well and good, but the horror is bombs of any kind pointed at population centers. Now, we finally have weapons that can hit what they're pointed at, unlike WW2. If there's a military target in the middle of a city, we won't kill nearly as many civilians hitting that target as we used to.
But it's still a horror. Let's not forget that.
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