Was the nuclear bomb good or bad?

Answer 1

The answer to this question is bound to be controversial. While probably no one would disagree that nuclear bombs are nasty things, some would argue their existence has had an overall beneficial effect, and some would even argue that their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was good in that they saved more lives that they took.

The number of people who died as a result of the nuclear bombings in Japan was almost certainly in excess of 150,000, and possibly in excess of 250,000. Most of these people were civilians, and most, in fact, were women or children. Many of them died horrible deaths.

The argument is made, however, that several million people, including millions of civilians, would have died horribly if the war had been brought to an end through conventional invasion. The simple facts of the history of the war indicate this is possibly true. And in fact it would possibly have been true even without an invasion of Japan because the war was still raging in China. Nevertheless, even this assertion is surrounded by controversy, because there are indications that the Japanese were contemplating surrender before the bombings happened.

There have been no other military uses of nuclear bombs in the sixty five years from that date to this (2010). The threat of their use has had interesting implications. While people in the nuclear age have worried about a nuclear war, the fact is that in some parts of the world, wars have happened less frequently since the bombs became available. In Europe, for example, in those sixty-five years, the only opposed military action was the Bosnian War of 1992-1995. Prior to WWII, years with no wars in Europe were the exception, rather than the rule, and through much of history they were rather rare.

As nasty as nuclear bombs are, they are really not much worse than some other military weapons except for one thing. Unlike other weapons, they have the potential to destroy everything people universally admire. They could destroy not only all humanity, but most forms of animal life we cherish.

From an ethical point of view, they bring new questions to the fore. With nuclear bombs, we are forced to consider such subjects as war itself, other peoples, and foreign ideas, from a different perspective. We may have given lip service to considering others in the past, but now we are required to try to understand them by a threat of losing everything. The attraction of war is not what it used to be.

Ultimately, the answer to the question of good or bad will depend on who is making the answer. There may be a simple, objective answer, but the only thing I can say with certainty about it is that anyone who claims to know the absolute truth is probably exaggerating their own knowledge badly.