Damian Gerow wrote:

I can only see two reasons for bombing with
nuclear weapons: hate and stupidity.

That being said, you'd have to *really* hate someone (or an entire country) to actually /use/ a nuclear weapon.

That's nonsense. I can think of several entirely ethical uses of nuclear weapons, with the usage not motivated by hate but simple utility:

1. You have a large invading fleet approaching your nation. A few nukes out in the middle of the ocean could handily take out the fleet without getting any innocent bystanders. (This scenario occurs in one of Poul Anderson's novels.)

2. You have a large invading army crossing an uninhabited wasteland. Again, tactical nukes would be useful and ethical here. Use airbursts, though, to avoid producing a lot of fallout.

3. Power generation. One scheme I once read about for a fusion reactor involved digging a deep cavern, exploding a nuke within it every once in a while, and having the resulting heat drive your electrical generators.

4. Interplanetary transportation of a massive payload. Project Orion, anyone?



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