Kinda Disturbing...

[apl]

I wish these guys would knock it off.

[lucky13]

I've always wondered, why is it ok for us to have WMD's but not anyone else?..........except Israel.

[Dogman]

Originally Posted by lucky13

I've always wondered, why is it ok for us to have WMD's but not anyone else?..........except Israel.

Because we know how to use them wisely, and no one else does....

[lucky13]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

[Treeline]

Ever hear of Lyme Disease? Guess how that started?

There was a Gov't lab on a little island off the New York coastline that was involved in biological warfare development in the early 1950s. Something got away. Everyone figured it was containable, but they forgot to take into account that a main bird migration route was right over the island. Deer ticks on the island became infected. Birds would stop there on their way to the best feeding areas around - the salt marshes just seaward of Lyme, Connecticut. Deer ticks like birds. Deer ticks like deer. Birds migrate and deer have wide ranges.

[dwillis45]

The Syrians, the Iranians, and the North Koreans will all eventually come around. First, however, they must undergo the same sort of national and historical development we experienced during and after WW2. The stages are pretty simple. First, they feel threatened by foreign aggression. A bomb is developed with basic offensive and defensive capabilities. Next, each nation expands it's capabilities until they can achieve parity with the aggressor in order to insure mutual self destruction and the elimination of the planet. Third, realizing the possibility of mutual self-destruction, each nation engages in a decade or so of talks and treaties aimed at eliminating or reducing the threat. Fourth, the aggressor nation--and thus the reason for weapons--dissolves or becomes less of a security threat. During this stage, weapons are maintained and stockpiled but become problematic due to age, wear and tear, and a general public disregard for nuclear waste and nuclear war. This is also the stage where each country's version of Jackson Brown takes the stage in protest of such weapons. A fifth stage involves a national political consensus that favors limits on nuclear proliferation. At this point, the nation considers the elimination of weapons but decides instead to limit the growth of such systems in developing nations.

These stages took roughly 50 years or more to occur in the United States--a full-fledged democratic nation with mature political institutions and a modern economy. So it will take time for the same process to take full effect in the Axis of Evil.

[legionserial]

Originally Posted by Dogman

Because we know how to use them wisely, and no one else does....

Yeah that knowledge comes from experience of using them I guess

[legionserial]

Originally Posted by legionserial

Yeah that knowledge comes from experience of using them I guess

It amuses me that the only country whose government are so keen to stop everyone else having nukes, are also the only country whose government have been insane enough to launch them on another country....twice.

[apl]

Originally Posted by legionserial

It amuses me that the only country whose government are so keen to stop everyone else having nukes, are also the only country whose government have been insane enough to launch them on another country....twice.

It would have been insaner not to.

[legionserial]

Originally Posted by apl

It would have been insaner not to.

What, twice?

What I don't understand is they wouldn't assassinate Hitler, or nuke germany, generally on the grounds of ethics, but were happy to nuke Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and kill tonnes of innocent people.

That said, I read an article on what American POW's in Japan had to endure this morning. After that I do feel less sympathy for the Japs. They were sick fucks.

[apl]

Originally Posted by legionserial

What I don't understand is they wouldn't assassinate Hitler...

Pert near impossible.

Originally Posted by ls

...or nuke germany...

The option was not available. Even if had been, the Reich was collapsing as fast as the Allies could advance. Not so Japan.

Originally Posted by ls

...happy to nuke Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and kill tonnes of innocent people.

It's not really fair to call the emotional consequences of what must have been gut-wrenching decisions between two completely unacceptable choices as happy. Do you think someone who decides to withdraw life support from a terminally ill loved one is happy to do so?

I picked up a book in a library and I can't find it anymore. But this book, a book of great mistakes in history, said the US telegraphed Japan after the first bomb and said "Surrender or it happens again." Japan replied, "We're not answering you while we deliberate," but it was translated, "We are delibrately ignoring you." I wish I could find that book.

[Beck]

Originally Posted by legionserial

It amuses me that the only country whose government are so keen to stop everyone else having nukes, are also the only country whose government have been insane enough to launch them on another country....twice.

Well Japan is pretty keen on stopping other countries from having nukes as well.

But anyway, the Allies killed many more Japanese through conventional bombing raids before nukes were deployed. Germany was ablaze as well. I guess you had to be there... back then I mean. My dad was, and to his dying day he maintained we were up against a determined enemy that just wouldn’t get it without a very bright light.

My dad was in the U.S. Air Force at the time in Burma preparing for a long and bloody push through Japanese held territory and ultimately an invasion of Japan. He and hundreds of thousands of others had a poor chance of surviving it.

We prevailed, and my dad lived to tell about it. I would rather have no war at all, but we had one and we had to win it.

Nukes are overrated in or culture. It’s a weapon capable of killing on a grand scale. But we had other means of mass destruction before and have discovered more since. I’m sure Brits who rode out the Blitz don’t feel any less abused than survivors of Hiroshima. And those Brits that did not survive the Nazi onslaught are just as dead, nukes or not.

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by apl

I wish these guys would knock it off.

maybe after a few more tests they won't have any more engineers to develop the weapons

[HangDawg]

Originally Posted by Treeline

Ever hear of Lyme Disease? Guess how that started?

There was a Gov't lab on a little island off the New York coastline that was involved in biological warfare development in the early 1950s. Something got away. Everyone figured it was containable, but they forgot to take into account that a main bird migration route was right over the island. Deer ticks on the island became infected. Birds would stop there on their way to the best feeding areas around - the salt marshes just seaward of Lyme, Connecticut. Deer ticks like birds. Deer ticks like deer. Birds migrate and deer have wide ranges.

Ahh I doubt it

from wiki


The first record of a condition associated with Lyme disease dates to 1883 in Breslau (formerly in Germany) where physician Alfred Buchwald described a degenerative skin disorder now known as acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans. In 1909, Arvid Afzelius presented research about an expanding, ring-like lesion he had observed. Afzelius published his work 12 years later and speculated that the rash came from the bite of an Ixodes tick, and that meningitic symptoms and signs in a number of case; this rash is now known as erythema migrans (EM), the skin rash found in early stage Lyme disease.[136] In 1911, parasitologist Andrew Balfour of the Wellcome Research Laboratory in Khartoum identified "infective granules" or spore-type "cysts" as the cause of persistence of spirochetal infection in the Sudanese Fowl.[137]

In the 1920s, French physicians Garin and Bujadoux described a patient with meningoencephalitis, painful sensory radiculitis, and erythema migrans following a tick bite, and they postulated the symptoms were due to a spirochetal infection. In the 1940s, German neurologist Alfred Bannwarth described several cases of chronic lymphocytic meningitis and polyradiculoneuritis, some of which were accompanied by erythematous skin lesions.

In 1948 spirochete-like structures were observed in skin specimens by Swedish dermatologist Carl Lennhoff.[138] In the 1950s, relations between tick bite, lymphocytoma, EM and Bannwarth's syndrome are seen throughout Europe leading to the use of penicillin for treatment.[139][140][141]

[Treeline]

Well, sure. The lab had to be working with something.