Bieber and a condom.

George H.W. Bush and a condom.

If only I hadn't taken the spare underwear out of my glovebox...

the bit on the us-soviet joint moon project was pretty fascinating.

would have really been something to see.

might make a pretty good alternative-history novel, actually.

rikdanger: FTFA: "It's now believed that the war would have lasted until at least 1947, but the implications would have reached way further into the future."

On top of all the things mentioned in the article, the Soviets had just started their invasions of Manchuria and other Japanese islands on August 8, the day after Hiroshima. I imagine that the Sovs would have wanted to partition Japan like they did Germany, and who knows what would have happened after that - likely that Korea would have ended up totally different, too.

This.

Had to nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure.

Tebow's mom and a blow job.

buttery_shame_cave: the bit on the us-soviet joint moon project was pretty fascinating.

would have really been something to see.

might make a pretty good alternative-history novel, actually.

Makes me wonder if Kennedy was killed just to keep the cold war going.

Wow, and I thought my backup plan to used a plastic baggie if I couldn't find a reststop was serious.

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Makes me wonder if Kennedy was killed just to keep the cold war going.



Now we're communicatin'.

"Fire On Warning" or something like that was the protocol that meant you had to get all your missiles out of the silos before the other guy's arrived to take them out.

How my work feels about Cracked:

"Reason for block ==> This Websense category is filtered: Tasteless."

First I'd heard of Kennedy/Kruschev's partnership... that's fascinating, and remarkably sad in hindsight. The delivery of the info might not be to everyone's taste, but Cracked frequently comes up with some real gems.

Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!

But if you thought the Americans weren't farking around, you don't speak Russian, which has 25 different words for sacrificing human life (not farking around being to Russians what snow is to Eskimos). Take for instance the phrase "mertvaya ruka," which means "dead hand" in Russian.

In America, that might be the name of a horror movie or a masturbation technique. In Russia, it is the name given to the giant border-wide robot installed around the city of Moscow whose only job is to kill you and everyone you've ever loved. The robot detected that a nuke had just been dropped. Ol' Dead Hand would run signals up to the silos to double check that nobody was responding. Upon confirming that the people with their finger on the doomsday button were dead (or on a piss break, whatever), the system automatically launched all the Soviet weapons at the United States. No talk. No getting permission. Not even engaging Jimmy Carter in a stern dressing down to see if you could get him to give you New York City. Mertvaya Ruka launched immediately, and cut out the middleman. And the first guy. And the last guy. It was a doomsday robot, is what we're saying here.

You're telling me Peace Walker actually exists?!

/where's Big Boss when you need him?

Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

And that myth is just an excuse the Allies made up to retroactively justify nuking the Japanese, I take it?

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Makes me wonder if Kennedy was killed just to keep the cold war going.

Uh, you mean the guy who first got us into Vietnam?

The real Plan B: Nixon contests the 1960 election, wins, and never sets an American boot in Vietnam.

thismomentinblackhistory: Fitzc

+1.

Errr.. Fitzcarraldo, even. Stupid Fark selection mechanism.

No cold war?
No hippies protesting Vietnam?
USA/Russia as world superpower partners?

Would that mean that the 60's and 70's culture and fashion would not have happened and we all would have worn 50's garb that slowly morphed into ultra-modern space-like clothing?
Like the Jetsons?

Jack Black 62: Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

Yeah, I have heard that nonsense repeated ad nauseam as well. The Japanese tried to surrender twice, but the US wanted to test their fun new weapon on civilian targets.

Real history, what the fark is it?

Hiroshima was were several armies were headquartered in addition to being a major supply hub, and Nagasaki was a major shipbuilding port and anchorage for the IJN. Funny how you complain about "myths".

/troll? I don't care. I've seen idiots legitmately hold this viewpoint.

Jack Black 62: Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

Yeah, I have heard that nonsense repeated ad nauseam as well. The Japanese tried to surrender twice, but the US wanted to test their fun new weapon on civilian targets.

Real history, what the fark is it?

They were trying to do a deal via the Soviets to give them a better deal. Nothing short of unconditional surrender was acceptable, the Japanese were not having that.

When you try to take over the world, you need to be slapped down hard. We had to drop two, not one, two to get them to give up.

Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Right, and those 500,000 purple hearts made in advance of the operation, those were made in 1945 - and ordered by people who didn't even know about the Manhattan Project - in anticipation of defending this "myth" years later?

My gawd, even after the napalming of Tokyo and the nuking of Hiroshima, the crazy bastards still wouldn't surrender. But a bunch of GI's invading would have been a cakewalk.

Liberal memes die hard.

We would have had to go through Tokyo like Scipio Aemilianus went through Carthage.

Jack Black 62: Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

Yeah, I have heard that nonsense repeated ad nauseam as well. The Japanese tried to surrender twice, but the US wanted to test their fun new weapon on civilian targets.

Bunnyhat: I don't care what the Crack haters say, that was an interesting read.

Each point would make an excellent alternative-history novel (love those, if anyone has a good non-mainstream one since I've read most of them, list it.)

Probably already read this, but The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss was a good read.

Heh. A funny and interesting Cracked article from which I actually learned something. Broken watch and all that, perhaps.

Winner:

"The world record for the number of people saying 'shiat' simultaneously was shattered that day."

I hope whoever raced down a runway to cut off a bomber full of nukes got a *very* nice retirement.

I can't decide if I am disappointed or impressed that they didn't work in a Strangelove reference re: the doomsday device, though.

Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

I'd argue that Okinawa was a better example to use than Iwo Jima. And yes, Jack Black is either an idiot or a troll.

Jack Black 62: Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

Yeah, I have heard that nonsense repeated ad nauseam as well. The Japanese tried to surrender twice, but the US wanted to test their fun new weapon on civilian targets.

Real history, what the fark is it?

Um, the Japanese approaching the Soviet Union about brokering a peace on favorable terms is not exactly attempting to surrender. For one, the Soviets never replied because THEY wanted to invade manchuria...which they actually did do. You want to be pissed at a government about that you should be mad at the Soviets who not only didn't reply to the Japanese entrities but never mentioned anything to the US. They also neglected to mention to the US their intentions to invade.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while the Emperor and a number of his advisors wanted to surrender the hardcore military high command most certainly did not. They even tried a coup to unseat Hirohito to put someone up there who wouldn't surrender. It was only after his military attempted to depose him that Hirohito went on the radio directly to the Japanese people and whoever else was listening stating Japan's surrender.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Allied position was nothing less than unconditional surrender would end the war. A brokered peace would not have been accepted under stated policy even if the Soviets had relayed the Japanese desire for a negotiated settlement. Take into account with the fact that it would be the Emperor and his aids negotiating for this peace when his generals wanted to fight (and the political structure at the time meant the military was by far more powerful than the Emperor aside from symbolism) and a negotiated peace was a non-starter on every front.

Operation Downfall WOULD have resulted in millions of deaths. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were demonstrations of Japan's undying fanatical resistance. US troops would have had massive military and civilian resistance from every corner of Japan. Coupled with large stockpiles of arms that Japan was saving solely to resist an invasion they knew was coming and the fact that the Japanese had correctly guessed the invasion beaches chosen by the US means that the worst case casualty scenario wasn't unlikely. You could make the argument that its doubtful a million US soldiers would die, but its a guarantee that millions of civilians would have. People biatch about the atomic bombs but ignore that we killed far more people firebombing every major city on the home islands before using either bomb. Your not pissed about the civilian deaths at all, your fixating on the use of a single weapon that was thought of at the time as a really big conventional bomb. The knowledge of persistent radiation effects and generational mutations after using said weapons were not yet known.

But feel free to rewrite history. Oversimplying the complex political machinations ongoing in Japan at the end of the war, Russias obscuring of its own goals of conquest in the East, and the direct evidence of the ferocity of Japanese resistance as the war progressed is surely the best way to describe the end of the largest war in human history.

Jake Havechek: When you try to take over the world, you need to be slapped down hard. We had to drop two, not one, two to get them to give up.


We had to drop two! Not one, two! Two to get them to give up! Ahahaha!

Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

I see that you've never played Hearts of Iron III.

ronaprhys: Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

I'd argue that Okinawa was a better example to use than Iwo Jima.

Seconded. I wonder if the casualty estimate is just for the ground forces in the invasion or if it includes casualties in the invasion fleet. The US Navy had nearly 5,000 killed off of Okinawa, mostly from kamikaze attacks.

Luckily that rate of kamikaze attacks wouldn't be possible in a mainland attack, IIRC. I believe they were basically running out of planes with which they could attack and we were mounting more and more effective methods of countering the threat.

Polish Hussar: ronaprhys: Jake Havechek: Jack Black 62: I see they are still perpetrating the myth that Operation Downfall would have had millions of casualties.

Pretty damn close, tough. The Japanese loyalty to country and Emperor ensured that you'd have to check every bowl of rice in case some papa san jumped out and capped your ass. Iwo Jima was a good exercise in how far the Japanese would go.

I'd argue that Okinawa was a better example to use than Iwo Jima.

Seconded. I wonder if the casualty estimate is just for the ground forces in the invasion or if it includes casualties in the invasion fleet. The US Navy had nearly 5,000 killed off of Okinawa, mostly from kamikaze attacks.

Nimitz casualty estimate for the first 90 days included naval casualties, everyone else just did ground forces. Whether or not that translated to the oft-heard million+ global figure I don't know.

I've heard different versions on Dien Bien Phu. This version seems to omit the part about America promising support and withdrawing it (and this repeats itself throughout US history... Bay of Pigs, Desert Storm).

Why would you use nukes? Gas up the B52s and annihilate the area.

I bet if FOX News Channel was around they would have called the kamikazis "homicide pilots".

Who the hell was Vladimir Khrushchev? I thought his name was Nikita.