Dresden & Tokyo

I notice it's the Atomic Era's birthday today.

I've read a lot of hand-wringing articles about how we should avoid nuclear weapons because of the destructiveness. Many of these statements are coming from a city that was wiped off the map 60 years ago by the first nuclear weapon. Of course the fact that it is now a thriving modern technological metropolis, a mere 6 decades later instead of uninhabitable for 60,000 years, has seemed to escape most observations today.

If the destructiveness of these weapons and the degree of human misery in the aftermath of their use is the measure of our repulsion towards them then we need not limit it to nuclear weapons. The incendiary attacks against Dresden and Tokyo were far more destructive and caused immense human misery afterwards.

Dresden
Tokyo

We must remind ourselves that it was these very nuclear weapons that we find so repulsive that have kept a Dresden or Tokyo from happening again in these last 60 years.

Then again... the third-worlders are doing the same thing with simple machetes.