Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Sorry about being a thread whore lately, but it appears the old grey matter has some questions it wants answered.

Sitting here watching a programme about the gradual developlments in design which lead to the current largest Submarine in the world (USS somethingorother).

And they were explaining the problems with launching Nukes from underwater (pressure differential etc) and how they were solved. Naturally, I guess as some sort of reassurance for the paranoid, they touched on how the order to fire said Nuke would happen. Presidential order, encrpyted, sent, decrypted, ratified by 4 senior crew members, order to fire given. So far so normal.

But it's how the Missile was launched on that particular Sub that made me wonder. Random Crewman has what looked like the top of an old school joystick, and just clicked the trigger. Thats it. A piece of plastic a single finger applies pressure to, and whoosh, off goes a god knows how many kilotonne warhead, rushing towards it's intended target.

And I wondered how many people would genuinely and honestly be able to perform that action. Not being even remotely military material, I really don't think I could. Sure, in the event of nuclear war it would likely be a case of 'hit them before they hit you', and by clicking that seemingly insignificant button, you could save thousands, potentially millions of your countrymans lives. But the price. The price might be nuking an enemy city.

I really don't think I could.

However, do you reckon the firing point is so inncuous to help the person using it disassociate from their actions, for fear of the sort of crisis of conscience I'd have overcoming their Military Duty? Would it be harder to do if the firing trigger was a massive Red Button labelled 'Kill Thousands' (exaggeration I know, but you know what I mean)??

My grandfather fought in WWII in the British Army. He often said that he was thankful that the US dropped the A-Bomb, because after fighting in Africa thru Italy he had come home only to be told to get ready to join the Pacific Theatre. It was the bombs that kept him in England instead of the south pacific.

So I could do it. I really could.

Malf would do it. I saw him touring the U 237, pushing every red button he could. He kept muttering something about "take THAT mother nature, " and "that'll shut the voices up." It was a bit disconcerting if you ask me.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
However, do you reckon the firing point is so inncuous to help the person using it disassociate from their actions, for fear of the sort of crisis of conscience I'd have overcoming their Military Duty? Would it be harder to do if the firing trigger was a massive Red Button labelled 'Kill Thousands' (exaggeration I know, but you know what I mean)??

Its pretty easy i think , find some hot blooded, quick tempered soldier + well set propaganda.

Have you ever heard of Stanley Milgram?

How about "Odds are if you're launching this they just killed millions of Americans already" stick?

I think that explains some of it, Frazz. Here's what I think explains the rest: Milgram Experiment

Gen. Lee Losing wrote:My grandfather fought in WWII in the British Army. He often said that he was thankful that the US dropped the A-Bomb, because after fighting in Africa thru Italy he had come home only to be told to get ready to join the Pacific Theatre. It was the bombs that kept him in England instead of the south pacific.

So I could do it. I really could.

It's not about the morals of Nuclear War, but a matter of personal Conscience. Whilst I understand that in the past and possibly at some time in the future, Nuclear Weapons will be the only answer to a problem, there is a world of difference from benefitting from the use, and actually being the Bombadier who opens the hatch and pulls the drop lever, or the man who hits the big red button.


Luna, I don't think they would ever let anyone like you described near Nukes. Just in case!

Oh the times they are a-changin'.

I wonder what Paul Tibbets felt when he did what he was expected to do.

Who?

Well, the question about Paul was whether he could have or should have known about the implications of nuclear war.
Edit: seems like he felt no remorse in hindsight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:Who?

Enola Gay pilot.

Well as he would have been in a bomber wing where some of his friends may already have been shot down, he might have been thinking: take that you mothers. Most likely he was thinking IDONTWANNADIEIDONTWANNADIE ok we're ok that flak was close WHAT WAS THAT? DONTWANNADIEIDONTWANNADIE
ok plane's shakey but we're ok.

that sort of thing.

He knew the power of the weapon he carried, he was the only one of the crew briefed on it, though the others had some idea as to what they were supposed to do. The welding goggles kinda gave it away.

You know, maybe if we start giving nuclear weapons funny names again as in WWII then it won't be so serious any more. Big bonus points if they are as big and clunky as then, they somehow look less threatening.

edit.

Perhaps I'm just looking at this from the wrong point of view.

Ah well. Good topic nonetheless I feel!

Well, with modern warfare the whole killing thing has become somewhat industrialized and distant, especially when liberally applying cruise missiles and IR equipment to the enemy.

BrookM wrote:Well, with modern warfare the whole killing thing has become somewhat industrialized and distant, especially when liberally applying cruise missiles and IR equipment to the enemy.

Respectfully I'll wait until someone comes on who's actually done the above say that before I believe it.

I probably could. Assuming I intellectually thought it was the best choice, I'm not about to get all emotionally choked up over a big red button.

I think that is why soldiers must obey orders.

"Col. MacStuff, press that red button.
Sir yes sir
(button clicked)"

And to answer your question:

No, I could not. That's why I am not in the army.
I have great respect for soldiers, I just dont like orders.

"Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?"

"No, I don't think I do, sir, no."

"He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

Could I? Maybe. I'm certainly not the military type, so its unlikely that I would ever be entrusted with such a responsibility. However, I'm also fairly indifferent to human life when it comes to matters of geopolitics, so that's at least one inroad to the big click.

I think a lot of people are going to respond 'Yes' to this for a number of different reasons I won't really get into.

But personally, it's all gray areas. It's all dependent on the situation. What country? What ethnicity? What region? What belief structure?

I could very easily kill people very different from myself and those around me, black Nigerians of the Muslim faith who have a strict caste system. I could nuke them pretty quickly. I don't see them as people living next door to me, I see them as a set of stereotypes mish-mashed together.

If you want me to drop the bomb on a Sweedish city or an Irish town I might hesitate. Is it an option to even not drop this bomb? These people are predominantly white Anglo-Saxons. I'm not certain if I could wipe them off the face of the earth without a little explanation.\

I'm not saying any of this to sound racist, I'm just making a point. It'd definitely be harder for me to fire a weapon like that if I had the feeling people very similar to me that I could put into reality in my head were going to be killed. But people that I can't sympathize with because I don't share anything in common with them would be easier to kill. But even then, it's why I will never let myself be put into that situation. I simply couldn't do it.

Cheers to Typline for his honesty.

Orkeosaurus wrote:"Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?"

"No, I don't think I do, sir, no."

"He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

O-P-E baby. OPE.

Click...

Now that is taken care of, I wonder if someone made a mistake in giving me that order... oh, well, I want a taco.

If the button I was pushing came with a huge manual to morals and the like I doubt the button would be there at all, so click away, cause it don't get more simple than just pushing the button.

Manchu wrote:I think that explains some of it, Frazz. Here's what I think explains the rest: Milgram Experiment

Hmmm... so you take a job where you are being paid and were trained to do a job, yet no one accounts for this? Right... I fail to see exactly how relevant the Milgram experiment is even to itself quite frankly, there are simply to many variables to account for in such a limited tests with obvious external factors that warp the sense of true evidence to verify the initial hypothesis. Too much water not enough rice if you ask me. On that same note I like sushi, and I would simply not push a button if I was busy eating sushi with the people that some dude with a funny hat that is my boss when I pop in the Submarine said I should kill for some reason.

To simplify is to understand from a narrow perspective, to do so then elaborate beyond the rational limits of a person under orders to do something is just odd...

There have been many cases of soldiers "fragging" their CO's due to the rash and seemingly hateful orders they had spout, furthermore there obvious inability to rationalize a situation. In a tiny room, with a bunch of trained soldiers, and a single button being waited on hand and foot you have an obvious game-plan and if you aren't on the boat, you need to seriously reconsider your career choice. The dynamic and highly faceted nature of this discussion simply will not be accounted for in full without a serious amount of research and cross-referencing of existing materials.

I would go even further and say that any indecision would likely be due to a persons ability to stand up for what they believe in first and foremost before ending up in front of said "button of apocalypse". It is like the guy who made dynamite, then turned around like OH SNAP! people are going to kill each other with this stuff... Captain freaking obvious to the diggity-dizzam rescue if I may be so obliged to I say so myself.

"Note"
What would you do questions always make me laugh a bit, just because they fail to account for so many factors that the question could entail. The only thing stopping someone from pushing a button is a key/code/etc... beyond which you must be at least this tall to ride; being a midget would not help much if the button was say... attached to the ceiling?

If im honest, yes.
ive always had a talent for dehumanising people and forgetting about things so it wouldnt be that hard.

Typeline raises an interesting point in whether there is a choice to drop or not drop.

For sake of argument and the spirit of the thread, the bomb is going to be dropped/launched anyway (The President/King/Prime Minister) has ordered it. It's literally whether you personally could be the one to actually pull the trigger. If you don't, the Nuke is still launched.

If it was the other way, then I don't think many people would.

LunaHound wrote:Its pretty easy i think , find some hot blooded, quick tempered soldier + well set propaganda.

Only a liberal indoctrinated, rabid western otaku with a lack of political or military history would say such a thing. See how how much fun crass, uniformed generalizations are?


It is hard to say without context really but I have no reason why I could not do it just as a general hypothetical.

If you won't do it then someone else who obeys first and thinks later does.

BrookM wrote:If you won't do it then someone else who obeys first and thinks later does.

Does no one on this board know a soldier or been in the military? What is this? The pile insults on soldiers thread?

If there was absolutely no other option, I'd refuse to do it if it was going to hit a civilian target or even a military target amongst civilians. I'd rather be taken outside and shot than do that.