![]() We can attempt to describe the events through numbers: at least 200,000 people killed by the flashes, firestorms and radiation tens of thousands more injured an unquantifiable inter-generational legacy of radiation, cancer and trauma. Yet those positive consequences cannot obscure the fact that on 6 and 9 August 1945, two of humanity’s most destructive objects brought the horrifying power of the atom onto two civilian cities. ![]() Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Women survivors of the atomic bombs.Deep ethics: The long-term quest to decide right from wrong.This article contains details some people may find upsetting ![]() The bombing ended World War Two, preventing further deaths from a protracted conflict, and arguably discouraged the descent into nuclear war for the rest of the 20th Century. Following the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – 75 years ago this month – the decision was justified only in terms of its outcome, not its morality. Killing a person with a butcher’s knife may be a morally repugnant act, yet in the realm of geopolitics, past leaders have justified their atomic acts as a political or military necessity. Before killing thousands, the leader must first “look at someone and realise what death is – what an innocent death is. When Fisher made this proposal to friends at the Pentagon, they were aghast, arguing out that this act would distort the president’s judgement. Before authorising a missile launch, the commander-in-chief would first have to personally kill that one person, gouging out their heart to retrieve the codes. That person would carry a heavy blade with them everywhere the president went. Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Fisher suggested that instead of a briefcase containing the nuclear launch codes, the means to launch a bomb should instead be carried in a capsule embedded near the heart of a volunteer. It involved a butcher’s knife and the president of the United States. ![]() In the early 1980s, the Harvard law professor Roger Fisher proposed a new, gruesome way that nations might deal with the decision to launch nuclear attacks. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |