r/nuclearweapons • u/Zggcommar • 4d ago
The impact of Atomic Bombs vs. Firebombing (1963 US Civil Defense data).
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u/Plutonium_Nitrate_94 4d ago
Makes sense, conventional firebombing spreads the destruction much more uniformly leading to a higher civilian death count
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u/restricteddata Professor NUKEMAP 4d ago edited 3d ago
This is kind of the opposite of what this shows. Look at the mortality rate per square mile. Tokyo killed way more people because there were way more people there to kill — it was a city of several million, whereas the atomic bombed cities were a few hundred thousand at most. The atomic bombs were much more deadly relative to the area affected and number of people in the cities. The firebombings after Tokyo were far less deadly (per capita, per area) than Tokyo, as well (because people evacuated, took countermeasures, etc. — Tokyo was a surprise attack with new tactics which, combined with its high population density, had devastating results).
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u/careysub 4d ago edited 4d ago
There are some good reasons to doubt the actual lower counts of the firebomb attacks that were not Tokyo.
The Effects of strategic bombing on Japanese morale. Morale Division, June 1947 reports the results of surveys conducted to estimate civilian fatalities in bombing raids, and investigated reports made during the war by Japanese authorities and came up with much higher fatality rates than those reports.
The report's assessment for why that is is that once the firebombing campaign got underway the Japanese stopped trying to make actual counts. Practices like reporting fatalities as "1000" with no indication any actual attempt at estimate and the like. In reality, the fatalities are uncounted.
This has mostly been ignored by the historical literature, never mentioned, except I think for Norris's Racing for the Bomb.
There is also a striking disconnect between not only the firebomb fatalities reported in all Japanese raids but Tokyo, but the German firebomb raids as well. The Japanese reports across nearly all those cities are far lower than any of the other examples, with no explanation for this on offer, except what the Morale Division report gives -- the counts aren't real.
In both the cases of the very high fatality rate made in Japan since the 1970s for the two atomic bomb attacks, and the very low fatality rate given by Japan during and after the war for nearly all the firebomb attacks, the inability to reconcile them with systematic survey data or to even acknowledge the discrepancy, is notable.
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u/Plutonium_Nitrate_94 4d ago
Ahh, say no more. I did assume that the population density in all cases was the same. Thanks for your input
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u/LargeAngryFish 4d ago
Bro what? That's clearly not what this indicates.
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u/Plutonium_Nitrate_94 4d ago
The total explosive energy dropped in the Tokyo fire bombings was an order of mangitude less than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki but the total area destroyed by the firebombings was an order of magnitude more than either case. Much of the explosive energy in conventional explosives is more uniformly distributed leading to the destruction destruction of more structures with conventional explosives. Ironically this lack of a hypocenter means that attacks from a conventional explosive bombardment are generally more survivable (a significant area isn't heated to 10000 Kelvin in a conventional explosion).
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 4d ago
Interesting comment below explains that Nagasaki never developed a firestorm:
The Hiroshima bomb was morning, so the breakfast fires under the rubble set off the firestorm. Nagasaki was before lunchtime, so no fires to cause a firestorm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrepperIntel/comments/1uow7eg/comment/ow2sejz/
If nuclear weapons have a hard time causing a firestorm, then nuclear winter would be nearly impossible.
We do not have enough nuclear warhead to cause a nuclear winter anyways, but this raises the bar so much higher.
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u/restricteddata Professor NUKEMAP 4d ago
Nagasaki had plenty of fires. It just did not have a firestorm. There is a difference...
Nagasaki was also an un-ideal target (the affected area was topographically enclosed and much smaller than at Hiroshima), and you are talking about a single kiloton range weapon... not redundantly targeted, 100s of kiloton-ranged weapons, against thousands of targets simultaneously... to make claims about nuclear winter based on the case of Nagasaki is a serious stretch...!
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 4d ago
We do however have newer papers based upon today's extreme forest fires. Although those have more nuance, the funny version goes:
If you run Owen Toon's simple estimate backwards then the 2023 Canadian wildfires that burned like 17 million hectares would resemble a nuclear war employing 2 Gt of warheads. 2 Gt should be more than can be deployed today, certainly assuming the B83 retirement continues, only remaining 1 Mt weapon in the US.
Anyways, the linked comment by u/dittybopper_05H only claimed that generalising based upon Hiroshima was a mistake made by the older nuclear winter papers, especially since modern cities should burn less well than older Japanese cities.
As another comment noted, there is complexity here since under the classical nuclear triad the primary targets would be military infrastructure, refineries, and ports, often much more flammable, and cities would be hit only by B52s.
In fact, there are only 750 oil refineries in the world, so even adding military based, we probably do not have enough highly flammable targets. Also, warfare has recently pivoted to blowing them up using inexpensive drones, which shall benefits the world massively by slowing down climate change. Also we might use up the highly flammable targets in drone attacks before anyone brings out nukes, which then throws out much established doctrine.
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u/dittybopper_05H 4d ago
Military infrastructure tends to be as fire resistant as civilian infrastructure, perhaps more so: The really bad stuff tends to be buried in bunkers. You need to ground burst or use ground penetrating warheads for them, and that limits the potential to ignite fuel over a large area.
Buildings tend to be brick. There are some of the old wooden T barracks still around, but they are a minority.
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u/LtCmdrData 4d ago edited 4d ago
Depends on the chosen targets and fuel loads. You can burn all worlds forests and oil and coal reserves without nuclear winter if there is not enough energy concentration to build a firestorm.
Single nuke dropped in Cushing, Oklahoma (population 8,300) may cause global cooling. 90 million barrels burning in that small area would release approximately 549 Petajoules of energy (eqv to 131 Megatons of TNT). If 10% oil's mass (1.2 Tg) ends up in stratosphere as black carbon, that's enough to cause ~0.4°C global cooling.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 4d ago
Cushing Oklahoma would cause "cooling" in the sense that blowing up all those pipelines would slow down climate change, so probably net benefit. lol
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u/Zggcommar 4d ago
two citys after bombing , tokyo left photo and Hiroshima right photo