Posted on 08/07/2015 4:56:59 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
That scientists actually knew so little says nothing about these questions that I've long wondered over:
Could radiation sickness have been anticipated?
Should radiation sickness have been anticipated?
I recall reading that John Wayne was filming a movie near a Nevada underground test and got terminal cancer as a direct result. Don't know if that's true.
Yes. They had already started the Cold War in 1944 with the establishment of the Lublin Committee in Poland. Nothing was going to change it. If dropping the bombs intimidated the Soviets as an unintended byproduct, I’m fine with it.
John Wayne got terminal lung cancer because he smoked three packs of cigarettes a day.
future bombs should be used as tactical nukes on Kyushu, dropping 2 or 3 days before our troops would hit the beaches in Operation Olympic.
But, if you are deciding whether to drop an atomic bomb on a populous city, resulting radiation sickness is probably down the list of considerations.
What I'm reasonably confident they did not anticipate was radioactive fallout or how persistent the radioactive contamination might be. There was no precedent by which they would anticipate it.
There was also the Baltic States. The Russians made it real clear that once reconquered from the Germans they would be kept by the Soviet Union.
interesting press releases.
At that site there is also this video of loading Fatman. At the bottom of this page:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/tag/fat-man/
During and after the war there was some experimentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium
Medical experimentation
See also: Human radiation experiments and Albert Stevens
During and after the end of World War II, scientists working on the Manhattan Project and other nuclear weapons research projects conducted studies of the effects of plutonium on laboratory animals and human subjects.[90] Animal studies found that a few milligrams of plutonium per kilogram of tissue is a lethal dose.[91]
In the case of human subjects, this involved injecting solutions containing (typically) five micrograms of plutonium into hospital patients thought to be either terminally ill, or to have a life expectancy of less than ten years either due to age or chronic disease condition.[90] This was reduced to one microgram in July 1945 after animal studies found that the way plutonium distributed itself in bones was more dangerous than radium.[91] Most of the subjects, Eileen Welsome says, were poor, powerless, and sick.[92]
From 1945 to 1947, eighteen human test subjects were injected with plutonium without informed consent. The tests were used to create diagnostic tools to determine the uptake of plutonium in the body in order to develop safety standards for working with plutonium.[90] Ebb Cade was an unwilling participant in medical experiments that involved injection of 4.7 micrograms of Plutonium on 10 April 1945 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.[93][94] This experiment was under the supervision of Harold Hodge.[95] Other experiments directed by the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Project continued into the 1970s. The Plutonium Files chronicles the lives of the subjects of the secret program by naming each person involved and discussing the ethical and medical research conducted in secret by the scientists and doctors. The episode is now considered to be a serious breach of medical ethics and of the Hippocratic Oath.[96]
Also from your site:
If you went to Tinian today, what would you see
and
a discussion on the luck of kukura
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/tag/tinian/
Thanks.
Yes, that, too.
Finally an answer on how many bombs and when available? The 3rd core would have been available Aug 16, but still in Los Alamos.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/tag/plutonium/
Truman actually put a “stop” on all further atomic bombings on August 10 — when the effect (if any) of the bombs on Japan’s high command was yet unknown. (He did not, it is worth noting, put a stop on firebombing: huge B-29 raids continued up until the surrender announcement.)
The core was cast sometime around August 13th, but still likely needed to be pressed and coated, ergo the need to take until August 16th to finalize. By August 15th, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be needed in the war. So it was kept at Los Alamos.
The third core, by now nicknamed the “demon core” for having taken two lives, would not go out with a whimper. By some accounts, it found its final disposition in the first postwar nuclear test, shot “Able” of Operation Crossroads, on July 1, 1946,
And finally the answer to the BIG question.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/05/beer-and-the-apocalypse/
Will beer survive the apocalypse?
Thanks for your reply! I searched the Internet for an answer and came up with very little info.
The movie in John Wayne question was the 1956 production of “The Conqueror” John Wayne as Ghengis Kahn and Susan Hayward as the Princess Botai.
It’s Hollywood folks what can I say :-)
IMDB listing of the move here... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049092/?ref_=nv_sr_1
An interesting post from IMDB regarding the supposed “cancer cluster” from the filming of the movie...http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049092/board/nest/193872130?ref_=tt_bd_2
John Wayne passed on June 11, 1979 23 years or so after the movie was filmed FWIW
Y’all have a great weekend I is off to work in a bit
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Thanks.
He's buried in Poplar, Wisconsin, about fifteen miles from Duluth/Superior. I had the opportunity to meet his widow, Marge Bong Drucker, for whom his P-38 was named. Kind, gracious lady. The Duluth mewspaper for this date places Bong's death above the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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