Talk:Nuclear weapons and the United States
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This article was originally meant to be a sub-set article of The United States and weapons of mass destruction, going into detail about the history of the U.S. program and ending with a bit about the current stockpile and delivery system status. I am imagining that articles of this nature could be constructed for all of the main countries on the WMD template, though obviously it takes time to do so (the initial writeup here took about five hours time, a tremendous effort of procrastination). There was previously no page on Wikipedia which unified the historical and current approaches to the U.S.'s endeavor specifically, so it seemed like a worthwhile addition. Any thoughts on improvements and changes would be appreciated; I tried to cite all of the sources for figures I used.
I would personally like this to be kept as jargon-free as possible (it should be generally accessible to anyone who understands the basics of U.S. history and nuclear weapons, and there are many other sites which try to be extraordinarily comprehensive in such things), but I understand that with this subject such is not always the case (and I may have committed a few abuses myself in this respect). My original text likely has lots of grammatical atrocities in it (such is what happens when I crank out copy), and so I am appreciative of anyone who corrects any you see!
I have tried to be neutral in my descriptions of things, I apologise to people who feel I should have leaned more one way than the other. --Fastfission 21:22, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I edited a couple of sentences about delivery systems: the original text implied that the aircraft used in WWII to deliver Fat Man and Little Boy were special designs made solely to carry nuclear weapons; of course the B-29's used were actually conventional aircraft designed for traditional bombing. The aircraft used were, however, heavily modified. I hope I captured the intent of the original author. I also slightly toned down the wording of the requirements for bomb assembly: the early weapons required special experts, but not necessarily Nobel Prize level physicists.....I think the current version is more accurate and less colloquial. 6/13/05 KMC
- Well, In particular I was referring to Luis Alvarez, who I'm faily sure was involved in the final assembly for the Fat Man unit. But anyway, you're right, it is a little cheeky, especially since a number of the other people involved in the assemblies never did win such Prizes! --Fastfission 18:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Infobox
I made a little infobox for the side. I wondered if anybody objected to it. This seemed like an appropriate article for such a thing -- a brief summary of the basic numbers and dates. I figured that a map of the world was more useful than the flag of the country for something of a military nature. If nobody objects, I'll make it into a generic template, so that it could be used in other articles of a "((Country)) and nuclear weapons" format. --Fastfission 19:18, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Does it have to be so BIG?!
- Somebody changed the image file to a high-res one. It's fixed now. --Fastfission 04:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Name change?
I think the name of this article is a bit odd. Perhaps a better one could be found? Lord Anon
- It is modeled after The United States and weapons of mass destruction and the rest in the WMD series. I'm not sure what is better about reversing them. --Fastfission 01:22, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Honestly, I think it was better the other way around, considering I think this model of article could be developed for a number of other countries. I think Iran and nuclear weapons makes more sense than Nuclear weapons and Iran, because the subject is really Iran (and its work or lack of work towards said weapons, which they don't currently have). I can't find any other great analog articles off-hand -- all of the sub-articles linked from the article United States are in the format of "X of the United States" which doesn't really work here. Anyway, those are my two cents on it, any other input would be appreciated. --Fastfission 01:46, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Patronizing words, request change
"The debate over the ethical implications of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, begun in private amongst scientists and statesmen during the war, has continued to this day, both in the lay populace and amongst scholars"
Sorry to nitpik, but I find the combination of terms 'lay populace' and 'scholars' rather offensive and patronizing. Why is a view of mass death and destruction segregrated with this description ?
I would replace lay populace with general public and scholars (?) with something more appropriate like military experts, military historians, military strategists. The word scholar has somewhat loaded and outdated overtones of superiority. Also it may not be strictly relevant; the opinon of a "scholar" may not be as informed as that of someone with experience militarily.
- How about, "general public and historians"? "Lay public" isn't meant to be a patronizing term but I don't mind changing it. The point is that it is something in debate both about people casually discussing it and people whose jobs it is to discuss and study such topics. --Fastfission 13:53, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] DU
What about DU weaponry? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.54.202.82 (talk • contribs).
- Depleted uranium weaponry really doesn't have much to do with this page in my view. DU weapons are not nuclear weapons in the slightest. The strongest statements against them are that they might be considered very weak radiological weapons, but even that is a pretty silly thing to say given how weakly radioactive they are (and their radiation is not in the slightest the property which makes them a useful weapon). --Fastfission 14:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reclassification of Cold War Missile Numbers
I read today the US is reclassifying numbers of missiles from the cold-war era. Will this impact Wiki in any way, ie government censors coming in here and editing or anything? I would hope not.
- No, it won't. What this means in practical terms is that when declassifying documents in the future and potentially with documents currently in archives the government is blacking out old stockpile data. That does not mean that they will attempt to curtail previous or even current publication of such data, or estimates of them. There is very little legal precedent for the latter when the sources in question were undeniably in the open literature originally. (Unfortunately for Igor Sutyagin this is not the case in Russia.) In any case if there were policies which sought to censor the public domain Wikipedia would be pretty down the chain of important places to go (since our info just parrots that of other places). --Fastfission 18:32, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
