EDIT: I see some upvotes/interest so I want to state a feeling that I have: that we would have never done this if we respected Laotian people or thought of them as our equals. Only by thinking of them as simple poor brown hill folk could something like this happen. If Norway invaded Sweden via Denmark, we would never have treated Denmark the way we treated Laos.
> From 1964 to 1973, as part of the Secret War operation conducted during the Vietnam War, the US military dropped 260 million cluster bombs – about 2.5 million tons of munitions – on Laos over the course of 580,000 bombing missions. This is equivalent to a planeload of bombs being unloaded every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years – nearly seven bombs for every man, woman and child living in Laos.
> Nearly half of Laos is now contaminated with unexploded ordnances (UXOs), explosive weapons such as bombs, grenades and land mines. Cluster bombs, explosive weapons that work by ejecting hundreds of smaller submunitions over a wide area, make up the majority of UXOs that plague the country. Cluster munitions pose an especially grave danger to civilians, according to specializing in the field of disability, because they are “highly imprecise and indiscriminate” weapons designed to “scatter explosives over swaths of land often hundreds of yards wide.”
> Of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped by the United States, up to 30 percent of them failed to detonate. These bombs were released on targets in a large shell or casing. Each of the casings contained roughly 600 to 700 small bomblets, or “bombies,” as they are often called in Laos.
> There are now close to 78 million unexploded bomblets littering rice fields, villages, school grounds, roads and other populated areas in Laos, hindering development and poverty reduction. More than 34,000 people have been killed or injured by cluster munitions since the bombing ceased in 1973, with close to 300 new casualties in Laos every year. About 40 percent of the accidents result in death and 60 percent of the victims are children. At this time, less than 1 percent of the UXOs have been cleared.
http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a...
So, in the comment section about an article about how two countries of white people went to war and dropped so many bombs that a century later some areas are still unusable, you are claiming that the only reason a country of white people dropped so many bombs on another country that a century later areas will still be unusable is because... the other country had brown people?
The points you make about Iraq, war profiteers, and context are all spot-on and very informative. Thank you.
Laos-the-country wasn't, but Laos-the-geographic-area definitely was. Rightly or wrongly, the US was bombing southern Laos because that's where the North Vietnamese supply channel was. It had nothing to do with the skin colour of the Laotians, and everything to do with the lack of political and military power of Laos.
In other words, is the rate of accidents high enough to de-mine and reduce the likelihood of future accidents?
In theory it sounds great to pay Laotians to de-mine fields in an organized and systematic manner, thus making quantifiable progress, progressively de-mining, and boosting employment. I don't know if it would work or if it's a realistic goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFY2vTW538
Edit: I found an amazing video of a man disarming a mine that I thought I'd share as well. I assume this is how they do it over there currently. "If you press that, blow up"
The issue with forcefully exploding mines is that a certain number might be defective, and/or unstable. Maybe the trigger doesn't work well enough - but maybe it can still go off - perhaps the main charge becomes unstable on its own etc.
There's a reason anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions are illegal (well, in/by civilized countries, anyway) - it's really, really hard to de-mine/clear up this stuff.
Interesting video.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munition...
Edit: Compare him to this guy[0] doing the same mine.
Edit Edit: Down that same rabbit hole I found this[1], I had no idea this stuff was so easy to find.
If it ends up taking until the upper end of their estimate, casualties from WW1 could span an entire millennium.
Many of the early "acheologists" (they were more like tomb raiders, invading egyptian tombs, stealing the contents, and shipping to Europe) died of misterious diseases, or got mad in some way, it is where the "cursed pyramid" trope came from.
Recently it was found out that the culprit for these, was mostly fungus, the fungus locked inside those places over thousands of years, would slowly fill the air with toxic stuff, that then would poison anyone breaking in, with effects ranging from poison-related death/disease, to poison-related brain damage (thus, madness).
Also, losing technology and weapons is not new, India Oral tradition has tales that scientists estimate they were already "mythical" 6000 years ago, and they talk about "giant metal arrows that create pillars of fire and light", "air chariots that shoot other air chariots with light" and "air chariots that fire arrows that follow heat"
Or Atlantis, that was already mythical in ancient Greece (what we know of Atlantis, is about ancient greeks writing about the Atlantis myth... so to them, Atlantis was already a mythical thing).
And of course, people would always stumble into random crap left behind by earlier generations.
For example recently something puzzled many historians, when in germany archeologists found a bronze-age battlefield with traces of having people from all countries in Europe (something kinda bizarre, since until then bronze-age was considered mostly isolationist), with signs of a large scale battle (bizarre because historians thought the population to be too small then, for that happen), and lots of signs of civilisation (advanced clothing and weaponry, including signs of that the soldiers involved were some kind of special forces, having expensive clothes and weapons, multiple scars on their bones, and yet were very strong and healthy).
Or another interesting one, here on HN someone shared recently about the people found dead on tar pits are frequently murdered, not just died there stuck, and research matched ancient roman legends (To the romans, it was a legend already), about how they heard that ancient countries threw prostitutes, adulterers, enemy nobility, and other undesired people into the tar, instead of giving them normal execution and burial.
Each one either ascends to the stars or collapses, but they all leave behind remnants that continue to shape the world for those who come after them.
Given the current political and environmental turmoil worldwide, it may not be too far-fetched that we humans of today are but one page in Earth's story. Whatever happens to us, the planet will live on and others may eventually take our place.
[1]: http://www.numenera.com/what-is-numenera/ [2]: https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com
Do you have a source?
Also I realise this sounds crazy out there, but if you're interested keep an open mind and read them. The actual copies and stay away from research authors like Childress.
It's all pseudoscience/"amateur" history though. As far as I know, no experts take it seriously.
I grew up in a religious household and even as a kid, I couldn't help but draw parallels between current technology or science fiction and religious icons or events, before I even knew the name for that concept.
For example, in Islam the Quran mentions a steed, made of light in some tellings, whose step takes it to the farthest point within its sight.. [1]
A craft that travels at/near the speed of light?
They also have the concept of seven skies, or heavens; could it be seven planets known at the time?
What about the different orders of angels in Christianity, flying beings (again made of light in some versions) each having an increasing number of wings?
And of course there are already adaptations of the story of Atlantis as an alien mothership that crashed into the ocean and eventually sank.
In any case it's fun to think about.
Ancient Indian mythology is creepy as fuck though, got to agree - they even mention units of time of sizes like 8.64 billion human years and longer mentioned in scriptures more than 2000 years old... I mean, I imagine they got to that by playing with exponentiation and logarithms for the first time while trippin' on some 'shrooms... but that's still a good creepy basis for some alternate history tales :)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_...
This map shows just how many people were exposed to fallout from a single nuclear test:
http://www.americanscientist.org/include/popup_fullImage.asp...
No it doesn't. That map shows the wind disbursement of detectable fallout over a course of days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Atmospher...
That map shows how exposure was effected.
It notes that today background radiation is increased by 5µSv per year.
xkcd helps us understand it https://xkcd.com/radiation/
So the yearly increased dose from testing... is like getting a dental x-ray, taking a short flight, eating 50 bananas, or spending 4 days in Colorado.
* I-131 has a half life of 8 days
* statistically significant cancer rate increases are only seen when exposure happened under the age of 20
* cancer risk peaked 15 years after exposure
* the 30-year survival rate for related thyroid cancer is 90%
(don't worry about drinking milk these days)
So if you were a kid at the time, it happened to rain in the short time when atmospheric I-131 concentration was high after a test, and you drank a lot of milk... you had a noticeably higher chance of a fairly low risk cancer around 1980. A real risk to be sure, testing was stopped for a reason, but let's not blow it out of proportion or claim millions of people are still at risk.
And don't forget to notice that your risk of dying in a war is drastically lower as a direct result of these weapons. A direct result of their creation has resulted in relative peace unprecedented in the history of human civilization. War between major powers now seems impossible and old fashioned, though unfounded fear of these weapons was used for decades after WWII as an inappropriate game to control populations and fight-out conflicts between states that could no longer actually go to war.
It is reasonable to feel aggrieved about risk you have not consented to simply because it is an injustice. Perhaps the injustice won't be visited upon me in particular but that is not the point.
You're more at risk getting an x-ray at the dentists office.
Also, why specify the continental US? Is irresponsible offshore testing somehow okay?
A small distance away from 'ground zero' of the nuclear test sites there is basically zero difference in background radiation from elsewhere in the US in 2016.
Here's some data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/10/the-h...
This is from Norway - they were close to the very large and frankly unsafe tests the Russians did. It claims some health-hazard, but then admit that the effective exposure of the population from all that testing was the equivalent of 2 medical x-rays. Not entirely benign, but not a massive health hazard either - and this is back in the 1950's right after the testing was done.
The lingering effects from nuclear testing in SE USA are really, really small and from a health perspective, completely irrelevant.
An airline pilot will be exposed to significantly more radiation than anyone living near the test sites.
I mentioned 'continental testing' because most testing in the US is not 'high yield'. The tests they did out in the Pacific were orders of magnitude greater, and there are almost zero health effects for anyone but the surrounding animals, granted the effects on sea life is not immaterial.
In the grand scheme of things, nuclear tests are a non-starter in terms of public health. Nothing has come of it.
Nuclear energy is a little bit of a different story, but even there there is a lot of hysteria and misinformation.
Well, yes, obviously. That's why I asked.
> This is from Norway - they were close to the very large and frankly unsafe tests the Russians did. It claims some health-hazard, but then admit that the effective exposure of the population from all that testing was the equivalent of 2 medical x-rays.
That is such a misrepresentation that you are basically lying. The article says the effective exposure was equivalent to sixty X-ray mammograms, or two whole-body CT scans. A single CT scan has an estimated 1/2000 chance of causing a fatal cancer[1], a reasonable risk if it's used to diagnose a much more dangerous existing condition. The population of Norway in 1956 was 3,460,000--that means ~3,500 deaths from the equivalent of two unnecessary CT scans, in Norway alone.
Additionally, from your article, "Exposure to nuclear radiation during months three and four of pregnancy [due to fallout over Norway, 1956-1966] was associated with reduced educational attainment, high school completion, and adult earnings. Such exposures were also associated with reduced IQ scores among boys at 18 years of age. A one standard deviation increase in ground exposure reduced high school completion by about 1 percentage-point among men, and by about 2 percentage points among women."
> The tests they did out in the Pacific were orders of magnitude greater, and there are almost zero health effects for anyone but the surrounding animals
This is also a complete lie. Read any account of Castle Bravo alone, and the radiation poisoning and birth defects inflicted on the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, which the US government covered up for decades.
[1] http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/diagnosis-staging/ct-scan...
> The exposure of the Norwegians was 2 medical xrays
A whole body CT scan delivers way significantly more radiation than a typical "medical xrays".
"The authors cite estimates that Norwegians in the hardest-hit areas were exposed to an annual radiation dose equivalent to about twice the dose one would receive from a whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan, and about 60 times the external dose from an X-ray mammogram."
Come on. That's not the same as getting an X Ray for a broken bone. This is a 1/1000 chance of fatal cancer directly from the radiation exposure.
> Norwegian exposure was well within regular medical norms = fact.
No, now you're straight-up lying again. Norwegian exposure was double that of a dangerous and uncommon medical procedure.
And then you're completely ignoring my point about the Castle Bravo disaster and cover-up, and deploying argument-by-distraction. (Car crash deaths are bad! Therefore, cancer deaths don't matter!)
Let's get back to the original point. You said: "follow on health effects from nuclear testing on the continental USA are negligible. You're more at risk getting an x-ray at the dentists office." I clearly can't trust your unsourced statements on this subject, so I really would like to see a credible source, please.
If think of exposure to radio isotopes in terms of 'chest x-rays' you need to study more.
Wait, isn't this still happening or are you referring to the Soviet Union?
We’re still evacuating entire cities every week because some new WWII ordnance was found, and has to be defused.
Or you learn that they found some 500lbs bomb half a meter below your school’s football field, with an unstable system that could explode every minute.
You just learn to live with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minefields_in_Croatia
It was a bit unnerving seeing all the signage in the hills above Dubrovnik when I visited.
"The southern Adriatic Sea has represented a major dumping area of war residues of both conventional and chemical weapons for almost a hundred years"
http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=64f53412f4d84603b277...
In the case of the Irish Sea, which was the main MoD dump since around 1920, 14,600 tons of Phosgene, and by 1949 the RAF alone had dumped 137,000 tons. It ceased being used in 1973. [1]
In the Baltic fishermen catch upto 3 tons of munitions each year.
BP turned up quite bit of unexploded ordnance while exploring for their now infamous Gulf of Mexico rig.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1488371/MoD-dumped-mu...
[2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/world-war-ii-muni...
[3] http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14141378-world-wa...
Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work.
Technically, the shells being found now are the buggy ones, that didn't explode when they were supposed to.
My point is - we as a society should be actively distilling in everyone the reverse of the results of the stanford prison study - you are responsible for your actions, even if someone else tells you it's ok or even orders you. Because in the end, as the attacker, you always have a choice, when it's just you and someone else.
In the end it's just a person against another person, just because someone told them that the other guy is bad. Everyone should be taught to question that. Probably he/she is just as scared as you are.
I recently watched "Lessons of Darkness" (documentary by Werner Hertzog) again and the scene where a woman describes soldiers coming into her home and stepping on the head of her infant was just haunting, because I could not stop thinking of, why would anyone do that. In that moment, it's not your superior ordering you - it's you making the decision to be the terrible torturer.
Please, just walk away.
It's strange to realise that there are still many people yet to be born who will die as casualties of WW1 and WW2.