my bad, aren't places like Hiroshima still "radioactive" to some extent though? Like, aren't there elevated cancer rates? or is that more a matter of people who got irradiated at the time of the bombing?
EDIT: also, wouldn't objects that got hit by heavy doses of radiation also "hold" some of that... maybe not for generations I guess
Originally posted by inimalist
my bad, aren't places like Hiroshima still "radioactive" to some extent though? Like, aren't there elevated cancer rates? or is that more a matter of people who got irradiated at the time of the bombing?
Radiation form the bombs was gone within a year. I would think that the cancer rates are inherited from people poisoned by the initial blast but I'm not sure of that.
Originally posted by Bardock42
They say that the mushrooms for example are still radiated near Chernobyl.
ya, they only recently let people into Prypiat as well, weren't there radiation concerns?
Wiki says the levels now are "safe", but that it is still radioactive, "the level of radiation does not exceed equivalent dose of 1 ìSv (one microsievert) per hour.", whatever that means...
Originally posted by inimalist
ya, they only recently let people into Prypiat as well, weren't there radiation concerns?Wiki says the levels now are "safe", but that it is still radioactive, "the level of radiation does not exceed equivalent dose of 1 ìSv (one microsievert) per hour.", whatever that means...
Perhaps that's because Chernobyl is still going though or something.
Lol, I know absolutely nothing about this...
Originally posted by inimalist
ya, they only recently let people into Prypiat as well, weren't there radiation concerns?Wiki says the levels now are "safe", but that it is still radioactive, "the level of radiation does not exceed equivalent dose of 1 ìSv (one microsievert) per hour.", whatever that means...
Means harmless.
The sievert is how the amount of radiation absorbed by biological tissue is measured. A complete CT Scan gives you 8 mSv (800 times as much)
This isn't Chernobyl or a traditional nuclear weapon. The Neutron Bomb was designed specifically to depopulate areas and leave resources to be exploited which is why since it's inception, people have joked or been frightened by the prospect of its domestic applications. There are people in power in this country who don't give a flying **** if people live or die and are not willing to use any resources to help them but seem to be doing everything they can to harm them. Is it really that big of a leap to think that the same people who want to dismantle regulatory agencies and deregulate health care, thus killing hundreds of thousands wouldn't be opposed to wiping out entire populations domestically in a less subtle fashion? After all, Citigroup claims that you really only need the top 20% of earners to run the economy and labor analysts claim that 40% of all jobs can be outsourced since the US is the only actor in the global market place that does NOTHING to protect it's domestic interests.
Say I'm a powerful CEO or Banker or Politician who happens to have some degree of anti-social personality disorder since those career fields tend to attract those kind of people. I know this, I'm surrounded with like minded individuals who apart from a minority include everyone from narcissists to pure psychopaths. We function purely on a combination of self-preservation and blind adherence to ideology. We also have stakes by which we directly profit from human misery in one way or another, from stocks in defense, to stocks in insurance, to shares in wheat, to interests in banks that are beginning to get into collections. I know that I am effectively above the law because nearly every law I break is no longer enforced. What's stopping me from doing absolutely anything and everything in my power to make sure that as many Americans die as possible?
point of fact: the neutron bomb was designed to do maximum damage against soviet tank coloums, which conventional nuclear weapons would not necessarily cause enough damage to.
Being protected by heavy armor, tank operators have some protection against nukes, given they are X distance from the blast. Radiation, however, can penetrate tank armor, and thus, the neutron bomb was a counter to what was percieved as the Soviet invasion plan of Western Europe.
EDIT: and to your main point, what is stopping you is the law. You talk about lawlessness, and sure, there is huge political pressure for investigations against people with financial clout to be dropped, and few police agencies have the manpower or funds to do it even if they wanted to (which, I have to assume, there are at least a few police officers at all levels who would like to tackle these issues), but the fact is, the laws these people break are convoluted and at least a few degrees of seperation from the average citizen. Corporate CEOs are protected more by the fact that people don't associate their own poverty with such backroom deals and anti-trust actions, not by their own immunity to prosecution. If there is anything the Tea Party movement might actually represent, it is that people, when it hits them at home, are more than willing to demand "something" be done.
If a CEO pulled the equivalent of this "autogenocide" hyperbole you brought up, there would be no way not to proscecute them, else the people not willing to prosecute would be voted out of office. People who "get away with murder" are few and far between (if we mean the murder of American citizens) and even some of the most egregious examples, like Blackwater, have faced enormous grass roots oposition that has forced them, many times, to abandon plans for expanding. They were forced to change their name amidst bad press.
EDIT2: further, for as much as we might think members of the military are hot headed, alpha male, type A personalities, there is absolutly no reason to think the American military, as a whole, would stand for anything close to killing as many Americans as possible. I don't think your extremist rhetoric helps your point at all, and this is comming from someone who agrees with you in principle generally.
Market manipulation causes global famines and local economic depressions, lack of access to health care kills tens of thousands, lack of safety standards and enforcement in drugs, food, and water results in tens of thousands of deaths annually, social policies encouraging stratification, conflict, and poverty resulting in lower life expectancy due to any number of factors based on social and economic class.
Just because it isn't some organized, maniacal conspiracy but rather individuals acting within the same ideology, doesn't mean autogenocide doesn't exist.
I am not sure that actually is a point of fact, inimalist. You drop a nuke anywhere near a tank and it is dead. Cold War tanks were built to survive in areas that had been nuked, not to... survive nukes.
Neutron bombs were developed so as to be able to nuke enemies without destroying cities and other infrastructure. Maybe there was some vague thinking about it affecting tanks a long way from the blast radius (but as a neutron bomb is a relatively short ranged weapon, I doubt it), but certainly the primary thinking was about collateral damage.
As for Chernobyl- that was different because that was a 'malfunctioning' reactor. The whole area was full of 'hot' material producing radiation. It also threw out enough radiation to get into the water table, I think, which would leave the effects lingering in the soil.
As for DJ... you've kinda gone of the deep end into paranoia there. Yes, it IS that big of a leap, and more.
Originally posted by Darth Jello
Market manipulation causes global famines and local economic depressions, lack of access to health care kills tens of thousands, lack of safety standards and enforcement in drugs, food, and water results in tens of thousands of deaths annually, social policies encouraging stratification, conflict, and poverty resulting in lower life expectancy due to any number of factors based on social and economic class.
Just because it isn't some organized, maniacal conspiracy but rather individuals acting within the same ideology, doesn't mean autogenocide doesn't exist.
yes, when you temper your rhetoric, you do make good points
Originally posted by Ushgarak
I am not sure that actually is a point of fact, inimalist. You drop a nuke anywhere near a tank and it is dead. Cold War tanks were built to survive in areas that had been nuked, not to... survive nukes.Neutron bombs were developed so as to be able to nuke enemies without destroying cities and other infrastructure. Maybe there was some vague thinking about it affecting tanks a long way from the blast radius, but certainly the primary thinking was about collateral damage.
my main source is wiki, which only passingly mentions building penetration.
The direct quote from them is:
Neutron bombs could be used as strategic anti-ballistic missile weapons or as tactical weapons intended for use against armored forces; in fact, the neutron bomb was originally conceived as a weapon that could stop Soviet armored divisions from overrunning Western Europe without destroying Western Europe in the process.As an anti-ballistic missile weapon, an ER warhead was developed for the Sprint missile system as part of the Safeguard Program to protect United States cities and missile silos from incoming Soviet warheads by damaging their electronic components with the intense neutron flux.
Tactical neutron bombs are primarily intended to kill soldiers who are protected by armor. Armored vehicles are extremely resistant to blast and heat produced by nuclear weapons, so the effective range of a nuclear weapon against tanks is determined by the lethal range of the radiation, although this is also reduced by the armor. By emitting large amounts of lethal radiation of one of the most penetrating kinds, ER warheads maximize the lethal range of a given yield of nuclear warhead against armored targets. At the same time, modest fallout shelters of ordinary design will protect civilian populations.
which I suppose does mention not destroying western europe in the process of destroying mechanized armored divisions more efficently, but I think the tactical aim was much more "how do we kill soviets" than "how do we save europeans". Unless you have a source?
Either way, though neutron bombs aren't as destructive as their nuclear counterparts, they still have considerable destructive ability, I would imagine larger than conventional bombs at the time (apparently they are 1/10 as powerful as a nuke of the same size), so the idea that you could pound a city with them and not destroy the infrastructure is somewhat laughable.
You have just used wiki as a source?
You have just used an UNSOURCED bit of wiki as a source?
Did you not even see the huge signs on the article saying there was a problem as it was unsourced?
Be better than that. Geez.
Neutron bombs explode in the kilotons. Obviously that would damage a city but it wouldn't level one in one go like megaton warheads do. Meanwhile, though, the point was that you could use them to destroy army columns and not destroy the cities nearby, not that you use them on cities and leave everything intact.
Drop a conventional nuke on the column and you still have a dead column, but you also wipe out anything useful in the area.