Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were "flattened" from a military sense. Certainly many people died but large portions of each city survived the attack, including the majority of their civilian and military populations and their productive capacities.

This is accurate. We have all been victims of the grainy black-and-white photos of the destruction that were deemed "newsworthy." Tragic though the human consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan were, the military consequences were not much above negligible (although the political consequences were - and are - immense, as we all know).

A 20 kiloton nuke, while powerful, isn't as powerful as people tend to believe. I read a study once in which even a moderate-sized American city the size of Nagasaki had to be targetted by 6 MIRVs in the 20 kiloton range in order to "destroy" it... destruction being defined as killing more than 50% of the population and destroying more than 75% of its industrial capacity. Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with the names of minor American cities and it was a few years ago so I've forgotten the name now.

I would be more interested in knowing the source of this information. A "20 kiloton nuke" is devastating when applied to a single rabbit. It is inconsequential when considered relative to the general powers of rabbit reproduction.

I dropped the bomb on my mother once years ago. She's been using it herself ever since. I rather wish I hadn't done, it embarasses the clergy.

Oh, wait, that was the "F-Bomb." Never mind.

I've never made it through 43 playing my ass off because of upgrades during beta. I'm about to hit 43 for the first time in PBEM. Who the hell knows what the f--k is going tpo happen with anything? This is a huge long winded beta. Some guys with no life and no heart attack may have gotten further but hell, we all know this is a long game.[X(][:)]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker
This is a huge long winded beta. Some guys with no life and no heart attack may have gotten further but hell, we all know this is a long game.[X(][:)]

This was a "long game" when it was published, Ron. It is now "the neverending story."

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker
This is a huge long winded beta. Some guys with no life and no heart attack may have gotten further but hell, we all know this is a long game.[X(][:)]

This was a "long game" when it was published, Ron. It is now "the neverending story."

Wasn't there a hot chick in the "Neverending Story"at least? We are all probably kinda pudgy, old, emblazoned with zits, more boring than an engineer, or some such. No hotties here.[8D]

A better question is this: What poor old punchbag played the '41 thru '45 BIG scenario in a PBEM as the Japanese and had the BOMB dropped one one of his few remaining resource centers?

If that guy exists, I'd like to commend him on his perseverance....I'm just hoping to make it to summer of '44 in my game

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Wasn't there a hot chick in the "Neverending Story"at least? We are all probably kinda pudgy, old, emblazoned with zits, more boring than an engineer, or some such. No hotties here.[8D]

Speak for yerself, you Canadian-type person, you...

32,000? It should be something like 20,000,000!

Our system is 1 per POUND of weapon. Now atom bombs are not that heavy - but their yield is on the order of 40,000,000,000 pounds!

In fairness, though, it is mostly wasted. "How many times can you make the rubble bounce" is the saying we nuki poos use? Damage would be a lot more if you could get it more places than just one! You only destroy utterly a very small area - compared to a metroplex. Good film perhaps - but it is not quite what we imagine it is. Conventional bombing with incendiaries is a LOT worse. At Tokyo, in April 1945, we killed more people than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. A lot more. We destroyed the records and the infrastructure (police, firemen, vital statistics offices and clerks) - so there was no way to count the casualties - or even survivors. A demographer (American) I met in Tokyo studying this matter estimated the total at over 600,000 dead - and it could be anywhere from half that to twice that (the chances diminish as you diviate from the center value).

Ok here is Hiroshima before

And here is Hiroshima after...

I still don't think the 10% to 15% reduction in heavy Industry is adequate for an Atom Bomb, even though there are a few other random damages

ORIGINAL: el cid again

32,000? It should be something like 20,000,000!

Our system is 1 per POUND of weapon. Now atom bombs are not that heavy - but their yield is on the order of 40,000,000,000 pounds!

I forgot the extra 3 zeroes (was thinking in kilos)...

I know we aren't talking Hydrogen Bombs here, but I can't imagine that the industrial output (heavy industry - not sushi bars and bagel shops) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were more than negligable after they were bombed....

I don't know, maybe the bombs weren't really that destructive after all...

I think the problem is that the photos are showing a primarily wooden structured area of the city (with some exceptions that survived). Most industrial buildings would be larger and made of heftier stuff I would imagine. Though I guess some light industry could be placed in smaller wooden structures. Someone would have to look at what the standard industrial building was made of at the time for Japan.

The main bias attached to nuclear arms is from the 40 Megaton bombs made famous by the Russians in the cold war in my opinion. The US produced some larger warheads in this vein but due to better targeting systems decided that such power wasn't necessary to destroy the intended targets. Especially today, most warheads are much weaker than those of the cold war. The advent of MIRV and more advanced guidance systems have made 'large' nukes rather pointless (and a waste of fissionable material).

I've been to the Hiroshima Peace Park. They have models of the city before and after.

The blast damage appeared localised to a radius smaller than I first imagined. The long term effects (radiation sickness, thousands homeless & without food that need to be cared for...) seems to have as much effect, if not more, on the local infrastructure and production capability than the blast itself.

I think that the "spectre" of Nuclear war and the Cold war may have instilled a preconception (at least it did in me) of an entire nation (or world) looking like that photo above. But a single 16-20kT bomb focuses all that force in a 2 mile radius. (Heavy brick/stone/cement buildings were toppled in that radius.) Then the fires started add to the misery, and spread out.

If I recall correctly, Nagasaki had a bigger bomb used against it, but the damage was even more localised due to the terrain features.

As has been mentioned, other fire bombing campaigns achieved more widespread damage. The only difference being that those campaigns involved a lot more planes, over a longer period of time, than a single plane mission...

ORIGINAL: mlees

I've been to the Hiroshima Peace Park. They have models of the city before and after.

The blast damage appeared localised to a radius smaller than I first imagined. The long term effects (radiation sickness, thousands homeless & without food that need to be cared for...) seems to have as much effect, if not more, on the local infrastructure and production capability than the blast itself.

I think that the "spectre" of Nuclear war and the Cold war may have instilled a preconception (at least it did in me) of an entire nation (or world) looking like that photo above. But a single 16-20kT bomb focuses all that force in a 2 mile radius. (Heavy brick/stone/cement buildings were toppled in that radius.) Then the fires started add to the misery, and spread out.

If I recall correctly, Nagasaki had a bigger bomb used against it, but the damage was even more localised due to the terrain features.

As has been mentioned, other fire bombing campaigns achieved more widespread damage. The only difference being that those campaigns involved a lot more planes, over a longer period of time, than a single plane mission...

I know that B-29's did more with firebombing that the A-Bomb actually did (but that has already been nerfed in this game)

I also know, there ain't no way a 20Kton nuke will destroy a 60 mile hex.

But the industrial part of a city isn't evenly spread over a 60 mile hex - it's like any other city, Like Los Angeles where I came from - a flat costal plain surrounded by mountains with heavy industry localized towards the center. By the way - industry wouldn't have to be at Ground Zero to be effectively taken out.

I know we all have preconceptions - but if Nagasaki had 600 Hvy Industry and Hiroshima had 720 Hvy industry (in game terms) what percentage of war material output did those citys keep up the day after they were nuked? I just can't concieve that they only suffered a 15% reduction in output....maybe I'm wrong[&:]

EDIT: From the general report on Damage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki "
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by The Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946" (see here http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/index.shtml )

"In Hiroshima over 60,000 of 90,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged by the atomic bomb; this figure represents over 67% of the city's structures.

In Nagasaki 14,000 or 27% of 52,000 residences were completely destroyed and 5,40O, or 10% were half destroyed. Only 12% remained undamaged. This destruction was limited by the layout of the city.

The atomic explosion over Nagasaki affected an over-all area of approximately 42.9 square miles of which about 8.5 square miles were water and only about 9.8 square miles were built up, the remainder being partially settled. Approximately 36% of the built up areas were seriously damaged. The area most severely damaged had an average radius of about 1 mile, and covered about 2.9 square miles of which 2.4 were built up.
The next most seriously damaged area in Nagasaki lies outside the 2.9 square miles just described, and embraces approximately 4.2 square miles of which 29% was built up. The damage from blast and fire was moderate here, but in some sections (portions of main business districts) many secondary fires started and spread rapidly, resulting in about as much over-all destruction as in areas much closer to X.

An area of partial damage by blast and fire lies just outside the one just described and comprises approximately 35.8 square miles. Of this area, roughly 1/6th was built up and 1/4th was water. The extent of damage varied from serious (severe damage to roofs and windows in the main business section of Nagasaki, 2.5 miles from X), to minor (broken or occasionally broken windows at a distance of 7 miles southeast of X).



This is the games 10% to 15% loss of industrial capacity?

I think it's under estimated

I'm inclined to agree with you, Big B. But maybe the number should be somewhere between 15% and 67%, to allow for Mogami's point that one WITP hex may represent more than one Japanese city. 40%, maybe.

Does anyone have a before/after pic of Hiroshima available?


i remember seeing a classified report as a kid (don't ask how) and it looked like it actually sank most of an island (although maybe it was just tidal flats and the pic taken at a different time of the tide.)

I find it interesting that people continue to point to the % of total buildings destroyed and fairly directly relating that to industrial damage. This is illusory.


Especially given the nature of Japanese construction it is highly likely that if 90,000 buildings were present in a given area and 60,000 were destroyed by blast and fire effects the majority of this damage ( especially of the blast portion of the damage done) would occur to residential ( wooden) buildings. So while 2/3rd of the buildings were destroyed the % of residential buildings destroyed would likely be much higher and the % of industrial facilities destroyed would be much smaller.


One also then needs to take into account the findings of the USSBS and German and Japanese experience during the war which found that in the absence of firestorms the physical destruction of factories rarely entailed the destruction of a significant portion of the means of production ( machine tools, presses etc). This would be even more so given the fact that the Japanese economy still comprised a large number of smaller, less specialised presses and tools than similar economic sectors in the American and even German economies. Interestingly the fact that the Japanese economy was less-developed than other economies actually helped them when it came to withstanding strategic bombing as there were fewer industrial sectors which absolutely depended on the functioning of a small number of highly specialised, large presses/tools capable of producing large amounts of items in a single ( or at most a very small number of processes... most of which were concentrated within the one factory). Instead they had a larger number of smaller and less specialised presses/tools which produced the same or lesser amounts of items via a larger series of consecutive processes often carried out in factories at some distance from eachother.

Sure they had to move machines from one area to another if a bombing raid destroyed much of the machinery at a given factory and therefore they did lose out in terms of opportunity cost BUT, and this is crucial, there was not the possibility to cripple a single strategic sector by destroying a small number of large, highly specialised fabrication tools/presses which simply could not be replaced within a reasonable timeframe as existed in the German and American economies.

So, less efficient but also much more able to withstand the effects of damage without reductions in production in critical sectors than either the American or even German economies. And that's without even taking into account the fact that most important industrial areas within a city are located not at the centre of the city but along rivers, canals and peripheries. From what I know of the aiming points they were pretty much aimed at the middle of the two cities and thus ould be expected to disproportionately effect residential areas.


So, there's 5 additional factors which would argue for the atomic strikes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki being far less effective than most people assume. Nukes are, as individual weapons systems, over-rated in the public's eye... What makes them devastating is not so much that a single nuke is a city-killer ( excepting of course the multi-hundred megaton nukes the Soviets designed in the 70s and early 80s in order to overcome the issues they had with their CEPs) but that they allow a huge amount of destruction to occur within a small time period with a small number of delivery systems.

Firebombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima with massive B29 raids would probably have done more damage than the nukes BUT it would have taken far more sorties over many nights and would have suffered far greater loss. So please don't let perception overrule the facts. Nukes just aren't as devastating as most people think. They just tend to cause more damage in an instant than would otherwise be possible without committing 100s of conventional bombers for several days...

So, why use nukes? Simple, if two nations face off and 1 has the ability to 33% devastate all of the other nation's cities and productive capacity in 1 day with no more than 1 sortie per city ( AND the capability to repeat these strikes for the next 2 or 3 days) and the second has the ability to 100% attrit the other nation's cities over 20 days by means of a thousands of bomber sorties per city guess which one will win? Hint, it isn't the one with the potential to completely destroy the enemy over time as this ability will be attrited more quickly by nuke strikes than it can attrit the nation launching those nukes.

Hi, 87 points worth was destroyed. 101 points damaged. Bet it scored a slew of points.
even on the map the Hiroshima hex shows more then 1 city (kure) You keep thinking 1 bomb is going to destroy 60 square miles. (The bomb destroyed 5 square miles)

BTW just to clear up what Mogami intended to say... I'm sure he meant to write "3600 square miles or 60 miles squared". This is the area of one hex.

To put that into perspective the bomb at Nagasaki damaged by the most generous estimate 42.9 square miles of that "hex" ( some of which was water and only a small portion of which was actually heavily built up...

So, we are talking about a bit over 1.2% of the total hex area effected by the A-bomb. So I hope it is now clear why a large city would not be as completely devastated by a nuke as many people here seem to think.