Useless information that could save your life

[Winters 0]

Yeah... it's called the French-Indian War here. But people don't study US history

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

yeah, that giant copper statue is now a lovely shade of green. stupid oxidation reactions and whatnot.

[Drake 53]

Yeah... it's called the French-Indian War here. But people don't study US history

Yeah. That was the specific North American segment of the Seven Years War. There were battles all over the world; notably in Europe, India, Africa, and the Phillipines. It marked the end of France's run as superpower and helped to strengthen the British Empire.

[Pandora 77]

Well I was thinking more along the lines of they helped you in the War of Independence ( aka the American Rebellion ), and gave you a giant copper statue which is now quite famous.

It's the Revolutionary War, and yes, they were a big help... they gave y'all someone else to shoot at. And I am well aware that the French gave us the Statue of Liberty. Frankly, they can have it back.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

but....but.....it's such a pretty green.

heh, i'm kinda surprised we didn't give it back. especially with calling deep-fried potatoes "freedom fries." :roll:

[Pandora 77]

I'm not a forgiving person. They can have it. We can replace it with a pissed-looking eagle flipping off the world.

[Drake 53]

With that attitude, no wonder no one else likes your country. :p

[Pandora 77]

Now let me make something perfectly clear: I'm not really a good representation of the current attitude of the American people. I wish I was, but even I will admit that if even half the people on ths planet had the same world views as I did, we'd all be six months deep into a global nuclear winter. So it's probably best.

Have I mentioned that only a few local members of the republican party are still speaking with me? Apparently I'm a liability now....

[Winters 0]

OUR COUNTRY IS AWESOME, but Europe is more awesome... except Russia, because they have Communists and wannabe Communists.

[Pandora 77]

*Remembers her promise to Andy to behave and swallows a barrage of retorts*

*sighs* Be glad I adopted you when I did.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

Pod, i used to be a fan of using nukes as well. but after watching a documentary on the Japanese A-bomb survivors i changed my mind. it's called White Light, Black Rain, and it's got some really incredible footage. it really is horrible what those things did to people.

[Winters 0]

But you have to consider the alternative. The actual invasion of Japan would have been just as bad or worse when it comes to number of losses, and it would have been far worse because it would have involved the slow destruction of Japan.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

60-something years later, those bombs are still killing people. we don't really know how the alternative would have turned out, so we can't really say if it would have been better or worse. but nukes don't just kill people at the time and be done with it, the survivors are dealing with the radiation effects the rest of their lives. even their children are at risk for possible genetic mutations.

Edited February 29, 2008 by Radioactive Isotope

[Winters 0]

Well, they were expecting around over one hundred thousand American casualties, mind you, that's just the American. The Japanese were not losing hope as fast as we were by then, and they were going to fanatically defend Japan, meaning that their own casualities would have been in the hundreds of thousands to the millions, and let's not forget the actually destruction of the countryside and buildings, which would have effected the overall turn around of Japan in the long term and the actual course of technological advancement.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

that may be so, but the nuclear power in the world today is some 400,000 times what Hiroshima was. there's a line in the documentary by one of the survivors that's something along the lines of "the suffering [from the bombs] needs to end with us." these people literally had the skin melting off their bodies. now a lot of them have cancer, pain, disfigurments, and the emotional pain of losing friends and family, and what they endured. thankfully something good came out of something so horrible, because studying the survivors has given us most of what we know about radiation and has helped tremendously with advances in chemotherapy and medical imaging, but to subject another people to such unspeakable horror should never be done.

[Winters 0]

The truth is, nuclear weapons will never be used by any soverign nation ever again. It's an act of war not against the country that you're fighting, but an act against humanity, meaning that the entire would would act against Russia, opps, I mean whom ever does the attack.

However, if a terroristic group were to do this, then we better hope they don't.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

i don't think people are worried about the governments condoning nuclear attacks. it's the whole "drop one on us, we'll drop one on you" thing. and actually, Iran/North Korea having Uranium is not in and of itself a bad thing. it can be used as a source of renewable energy. it's Uranium enrichment that you should worry about. that's what makes a bomb. and those countries have some crazy people in power. Plutonium is actually more destructive and more available than Uranium, but you don't here much about it for some reason.

[Winters 0]

The thing is, like I said, if anyone uses any nuclear weapons, I foresee the entire world ganging up on them, maybe even Russia, if they're not the one's that attacked.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

and the fact that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world a couple hundred times isn't helping

Russia's got a lot of old, abandoned reactors laying around that people find and then dismantle for the scrap metal without realizing they're getting exposed to rediculously high amounts of radiation.

[Winters 0]

Yes, but that's Russia's fault for not caring for it's own people.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

they may not have the resources to get rid of them. they're all left over from the Cold War and when the USSR crumbled money went bye bye.

[Drake 53]

You think so little of Russia when, not so long ago, they were a superpower rivaling that of the US. It's a very real possibility that the States could fall in a similar fashion some day.

Russia has very little money. It's not so much the fact that they don't care about their people, it's that they can barely afford to take care of them.

[Winters 0]

the USSR was never really a Superpower after Stalin. I believe it's a myth that the USSR was a Superpower. They were poor and the rules knew it, but they refused to accept it.

[Drake 53]

And the Cold War was...what exactly? Their power didn't come from money. It came from sheer size. During the World Wars, they won for the simple reason that they had the numbers to sacrifice AND they could out-live the enemy in their harsh winter environment. During the Cold War, they were powerful because they had a navy rivalling the US as well as plenty of nukes.

There's no doubt they were a superpower, even four decades after Stalin.

[Winters 0]

It was an illusion coming from the empire that Stalin started. I'm about 40% sure that the USSR did not really expand that much post-Stalin.