Watching the documentary on Channel 5 about the Hiroshima aftermath. I want to cry. It breaks my heart, the things we do to each other.
We’re the dominant species, and what we’ve learnt to do best is destroy things.
yup. and the thing with the atomic bombings, is that if you speak with any patriotic american about these, they will justify it on the basis of the masses of lives saved, by the two bombs preventing the need for a much bloodier and prolonged ground battle.
even if the minutae of militaristic strategy is lost on you, i think ultimately, the effects seen in Japan in the 1940s, gave gravity to the cold war which followed. i take some heart from the fact that, as i lived in england, surrounded by very many nuclear USAF and RAF bases, memories of Japan ensured none were used, nor targeted.
now if you really want to feel down in the dumps, see what we enlightened humanoid animals do to other species on this planet. does anyone want to ponder industrial farming practises or the hunting of animals to extinction? lovely!
We live on a beautiful planet yet we’re destroying it and everything on it including our own species be it directly or indirectly. Human greed is to blame and I’m sorry to say I don’t think we will ever curtail it.
We allow innocent babies and children to starve and the rich and wealthy to hoard their money. It breaks my heart when I see asylum seekers packed like sardines on boats or in lorries risking their lives to seek a safer place to live and bring up their children.
I don’t know the answer I just wish the world leaders would take action for the good of this worlds population.
Jan x
A very uncomfortable yet important film. And I can’t believe I’ve never before seen any comparable footage of the aftermath of the atomic bombs.
Sue
That film is the kind of thing that should be compulsory viewing, I believe. But whatever we do we’re not going to be able to alter the basic nature of the human animal.
I’ve said many times that I feel humans have outlived their time on this fair planet, and our destruction is inevitable and already on its way on its way. Our destruction at our own hands, of course. There’s so many ticking time bombs that we’ve set in motion, it’s just a matter of time.
Hopefully people don’t get too many ideas from films like Wall-e, and pack us off into spaceships to avoid the mess we’ve made, I don’t feel we deserve a second chance. Let the dolphins or the elephants get a chance of being dominant; a species with some genuine empathy, but more importantly, no wickedness…
These are links from my Tumblr account, so nothing sinister. Just some pics/gifs with captions, both pretty thought provoking, I think.
Dolphins: Month of sundaes
Elephants: Month of sundaes
The Japanese (who were the ISIS of their day) have a taste for eating Dolphins, so that might just leave Elephants to inherit the Earth, or more likely, Cockroaches.
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Yeah, they say it’s going to be the cockroaches that survive nuclear winter and so forth, don’t they. The insects will have the planet to themselves for a few millennia. Or maybe Earth will pass its use by date before another big mammal evolves enough to start getting ideas above its station, and become a black hole or something.
i wish we had a jokes thread…
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Trying to avoid stuff like that.
Every second thing seems to be about war lately. I know there are a lot of WW1 anniversaries (which mean we’ve got a whole four years of it), but it seems to be an excuse to have war-themed everything - as if there wasn’t already enough violence in the news, all day every day.
I do believe there are times war is justified as a last resort. I know for a fact I wouldn’t be here if nobody had stood up to Hitler’s Germany, as I had a Jewish grandma. If Hitler had ever made it to these shores, she’d have stood no chance.
So I find it impossible to say war is always wrong (same with IS - plainly evil - abducting and raping young girls, and forcing them to kill? Isn’t there a moral obligation to meet that with force? They’re not the kind of people to sit round a negotiating table - their form of “negotiation” is to behead someone, and stick the video on Youtube!)
BUT, whilst war may sometimes be inescapable if you need to resist evil, I do feel we’re being force-fed it with everything, at the moment. Sit down to watch/listen to a drama, it’s all about WAR. I want something to take me out of myself, and away from the daily death toll. Not another “gritty portrayal of life in the trenches”, or whatever the latest offering is.
I’m certainly NOT saying their sacrifice should be forgotten - I always buy a poppy, or almost always, assuming I pass a seller. But I don’t want whole seasons about it - although I suppose it’s important for younger generations, who probably don’t know much about it.
Hello fellow Humans…
Very odd topic this. What would any weapon of mass destruction do to help the worlds problems?
[PPMS] Peoples Passionate Money Solutions. They go wrong! I’m no expert on animals or insects but we seem to be the only species with sports, religion & technologies. Nature works wonders. Probably why I like watching nature documentaries.
We have enough problems already. I do like CGI & fantasy stuff. Escaping reality is good. Spark a healthy conversation with folk these days & it turns into talk of robots, war, politics & aliens. Talk about music & it gets heated. Anything creative, mechanical or society based too. It’s why we are becoming more introverted & less communal. Let’s hope we find some light or something.
[quote=“PUDDLE”]
What would any weapon of mass destruction do to help the worlds problems? [/quote]
By being the ultimate solution? Wipe the slate clean and let the planet heal itself. Though nature can provide its own by putting a nice big asteroid in our path. Without Bruce Willis etc. to save us we’d be doomed…
Sorry for making such a grim thread, guys. I should have just watched some Studio Ghibli to distract myself rather than sharing my misery!
Arrrrgh i just wrote a big thread and it went…
Spare a thought for the thousand of servicemen who died after witnessing the hydrogen bomb tests in Xmas Island.
My father being one of them. They hadnt got a clue what they were doing, and just stood on the beach. He witnessed two of them in the fifties. So even after Hirishoma they were still testing these bombs.
Many died afterwards but the MOD refused to give them compensation.
Look on google about it.
My father finally succumbed to his illness which could have been directly from the tests but the MOD were not interested.
Yet the Australian government gave their servicemen compensation.
I think with the bomb in Hirioshima, so many thousands of people had died already in the war over 5 years, perhaps Trueman was just shell shocked and acted too rationally…he was pressurised i believe to finish the war.
A bad call was made I feel, but we cant ever go back and make it right, all we can do is to learn to live with it, and hopefully learn a lesson by it.
However, with the world as it is right now, overpopulation is causing so many issues.
All we can do is teach our children to respect our planet.
However, every morning when i get up and take my dog over our park for her walk, the park is full of rubbish. Its like no one cares.
The rain forests are being stripped to make housing.
In my small town alone every available space is being used for housing.
We dont need another hydrogen bomb as we are going to implode our own planet eventually when it cant sustain all our bodies anymore lol…sobering thought isnt it.
Gutted I missed it. Will have to look it up on catch up… Paolo, have a chat with Americans about their Native American ethnic cleansing - they love that !!! 
I agree unless people know the full story of why the bomb was dropped it makes it all sound awful, but they were breaking the Geneva convention constantly by acting out horrendous atrocities on POW camps, and were warned to stop, they chose not too.
10 of the worse.
Laha Airfield Massacre
February 1942
Alexandra Hospital Massacre
February 14–15, 1942
Palawan Massacre
December 14, 1944
Japanese Occupation Of Nauru
August 1942–September 1945
Akikaze Executions
March 18, 1943
Indian Ocean Raid Massacre
March 18, 1944
Sook Ching Massacre
February–March 1942
I-8
March 26 and July 2, 1944
The Death Railway
June 1942–October 1943
The Massacre Of Manila
February–March 1945
The last one was horrendous… so we need to keep into perspective why Truman took the action he did and sadly it was innocent people again who suffered for the atrocities of their armys.
My grandad always had a dislike for them. Nasty baskets they are, he would say, but not more to his young grandson. We look at it with 2015 eyes, I guess you’d see them different in 1945…
This is one of these unknowables. I think it undoubtedly hastened the end of the war, but impossible to quantify whether the suffering and mortality of allowing it to continue would eventually have exceeded that caused by the bombs.
On the positive side, for the only country EVER to have had nuclear weapons deployed against it, Japan has (ultimately) fared rather well. I know that cannot erase the catastrophic suffering and loss of the time, but it didn’t become an uninhabitable wasteland - it recovered and eventually flourished.
Tina
Yeh true but then why drag it all up again now? Its done its over, nothing can be done to change it.
Why cant we have something positive on the television now its all doom and gloom…or what happened years ago when I was young. Havent the young people now got things to look forward to in their lives that can be shared on these programmes?
My father watched 2 hydrogen bombs go off on tests, why not show a documentary on that and the aftermath of all the service men who blindly and innocently went to Xmas Island not having a clue how it would end up effecting their lives and their families lives, and still now they are suffering and their families are too including mine.
Not one red cent of compensation was given for putting these men into the unknown and many of them died through the after affects.
I think the bombs actually calmed everyone down in an odd way and perhaps because of that with all the problems we have had including the cold war, the bombs in Japan actually sobered everyone up a bit.
It is, particularly because the multi-nationals know this, but just don’t care because it’s profit before everything.
Lots of the population cares, but most are stuck between a rock and a hard place because corporate planet earth makes sure that most of us don’t have the space, funds or resources to be self sufficient. My opinion, anyway.
Relevant image
i would sooner look at the british and their efforts in canda, australia and all other places in between.
for as nasty as the americans have been through recent times, the british still lead the world when dealing with (and clearing away) ‘recalcitrant locals’.
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Tell me about it -_- The British Empire is not part of our heritage to be proud of.
I wonder what nation is the least unpleasant…so minute atoll out in the south pacific that white man has never set foot on, maybe…