hiroshima facts wrote in message . ..

Nuclear weapons may well be more costly that way, but you get what you
pay for.

I don't think there are any instances of conventional weapons killing
more than 10% of people in the affected area, and arguments here point
to even less than 10%, even for the most deadly use of conventional
weapons.


The trouble yet again is "Affected area" is being defined in a way
to increase the perceived lethality of the atomic attacks.

Also how many of those conventional attacks were against unwarned
populations? Try Pforzheim in 1945 for a very lethal conventional attack.

However, I have not seen any arguments that have credited the A-bombs
with fewer than 30% fatalities in the area affected.

How about we drop the "area affected" for the conventional bombs to
something like their known lethal blast area? In which case 90%
casualties can be expected, just be within so many feet of the bomb
going off. If we ignore anything outside this blast area, since after all
there will be only building damage, not destruction, we can make
conventional explosives quite lethal. Most of the area is actually
"missed" if you use the bomb blast radius.

By using more explosive per person killed, you also kill a greater
portion of the people in the area you are bombing.

There is the overkill factor, since the blast dissipates as the square
of distance, the buildings near the centre are hit "too much".

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.