Imperial Charter?

[Condottiere]

There wasn't much left of the Japanese Navy, by that time.

 

[ottarrus]

They could have done offshore blasts to limit casualties and point out "That could have been Tokyo" They didn't have to start with cities. They could also have hit a fleet at sea, a purely military target.

Remember that though the U.S. may have had few bombs the Japanese not only didn't know that but would have assumed otherwise if they were willing to expend them in demonstrations.

[*crrrrk*] ATTENTION ALL HANDS, ATTENTION ALL HANDS. STAND BY FOR HISTORY LECTURE. THAT IS ALL. [*crrrrk*]
[you know, maybe I should start doing that every time my history soap box comes out... 'fair warning' and all that ]

The IJN didn't have a fleet. Ninety percent of their major ships, with some very few exceptions like Shinano, were already at the bottom of the sea. To put point on it, 75% of kamikaze attacks were IJN aircraft. Virtually all of them originated from land.

The Los Alamos scientists were unsure of what the effect of a sea detonation would be, but what they did know was that most of Japan's protein came from fish and wrecking the fisheries would be a poor occupation policy.

Lastly, as Condo pointed out, the bombs weren't just to induce the Japanese to surrender. It was also pull on Uncle Joe Stalin's choke-chain. RAND Corp. estimates and later NKVD /KGB files noted that Stalin wanted to push the Allies to beyond the Rhein and then force every nation East of there to become Communist buffer states.

One of the great dangers of history as a subject is incredible amount of 'yeah, but-ism' it has to deal with. Twenty-twenty hindsight is a degenerative disorder of the logic functions of the brain. You can only measure the intent of a decision [ESPECIALLY one as world-changing and strategic as the atomic bomb] ONLY by the information the decision-makers had at the time. Using a bunch of 'I Dream of Jeannie' wishful thinking devalues the moral and ethical weight of such decisions and renders it merely a triviality.

What Truman knew was this:
- Downfall was going to cost America and Australia hundreds of thousands of casualties;
- to emphasize that point, the War and Navy Departments put in an order for so many Purple Heart medals that it was halfway through the GWOT in Iraq before DoD had to order any new ones;
- LeMay's firebombing did not seem to have effected the Imperial General Staff into considering surrender;
- [note- don't get me started on the wingnuts in aviation and their 'Billy Mitchell disease' - the idea that strategic bombing could win a war by itself]
- the Manhattan Project was positively riddled with Soviet spies, and OSS and FBI knew many of them by name;
- the OSS suspected that the Soviets were hard at work on their own atom bomb, but could not estimate when that bomb would be tested;
- the Soviets were already dropping the Iron Curtain on Europe;

So Truman's decision had three closely linked goals:
- to compel the Japanese to surrender and thereby stop the killing;
- to reduce US and Allied casualties to the greatest degree while doing so;
- and to show the world [i.e. Joe Stalin] that if pushed too far the US would indeed use atomic weapons, that we were not the 'soft democracy' that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan accused us of being.

Last thing:
Regarding the reduction of American casualties, even as President Harry Truman sometimes still thought like the War One artillery battery commander he used to be [he eventually rose to become a Colonel in the Missouri National Guard]. The American way of war is to spend men if you must but preserve all of them that you can. We teach our officers to spend gunpowder instead of blood. From a strictly emotional standpoint, I believe that deeply effected Truman's decision.

 

[actionman]

How did the world react when two cities disappeared in a nuclear inferno?

They celebrated because they thought it was for the greater good. Why did they think this...

I know your question is rhetorical, but it bears commenting on.

One possible factor was the behavior of that country's armed forces in the regions they occupied.
Propaganda was another factor. People didn't distrust the media then as they do now.
A third factor I can think of was the government just did it, and what people thought or felt about it didn't matter a whit.
In the words of an East-Meg One general from Judge Dredd Apocalypse War: "The people? What have they got to do with it?"

 

[actionman]

Depends on whether there exists an actual Imperium policy as to why and when Exterminatus is carried out.

I think the policy is whenever the Emperor happens to feel like it.

That said, the great majority of Imperial Emperors and Empresses haven't been idiots, so they don't order planets devastated lightly. But really it's about a vast sargasso sea of conflicting canon with chunks of things writers just made up bobbing in the morass.

 

[Condottiere]

Witnessing one, could be the impetus to secede, or convince the unconvinced to do so, en masse.

So that an object lesson can't be made separately.

 

[actionman]

I suggest you go looking for it and read it. it is something of an eye opener...

But a novel and a fictional history for a ttrpg setting are two very different things. In a novel, things have to happen and be dramatic. History is usually more of a long, trudging, miserable smear. IMO it's a mistake to consider the events in AotI canon, because those events are sculpted for dramatic effect and functions in the story structure. They don't have reasons to exist in the already published history of Charted Space.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Witnessing one, could be the impetus to secede, or convince the unconvinced to do so, en masse.

So that an object lesson can't be made separately.

Not much appetite for that after they saw what was done by the Imperium to Ilelish - the Imperial allows home rule, but always remember who wields ultimate authority.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I think the policy is whenever the Emperor happens to feel like it.

The Emperor is rarely aware of it until after the event, by the time the nature of the emergency reached the Emperor the Imperial authority on the spot has already made the decision.

That said, the great majority of Imperial Emperors and Empresses haven't been idiots, so they don't order planets devastated lightly.

You may want to read through the Emperor's list again... and Strephon is the ultimate idiot.

But really it's about a vast sargasso sea of conflicting canon with chunks of things writers just made up bobbing in the morass.

Agreed.

 

[Sigtrygg]

But a novel and a fictional history for a ttrpg setting are two very different things.

I disagree. MWM wrote Agent of the Imperium while he still owned the OTU lock, stock and barrel, the setting is referenced and detailed throughout the novel (especially if you have the version with the footnotes - wish it was in print). Then there are all the T5-isms that are in it.

In a novel, things have to happen and be dramatic.

Same in adventures written for rpgs, rule books and supplements not so much but an awful lot of games have fiction of dubious quality...

History is usually more of a long, trudging, miserable smear.

Which is written by the victor, interpreted by the "feelings" and prejudices of the modern historian (a lot of historians now write op-eds rather than history), the trudging smear is a good way to put it.

IMO it's a mistake to consider the events in AotI canon, because those events are sculpted for dramatic effect and functions in the story structure.

They are canon for Marc's setting, Mongoose doesn't use Marc's setting.

They don't have reasons to exist in the already published history of Charted Space.

The Mongoose history of Charted Space is very different to previous iterations.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

The Los Alamos scientists were unsure of what the effect of a sea detonation would be, but what they did know was that most of Japan's protein came from fish and wrecking the fisheries would be a poor occupation policy.

Lastly, as Condo pointed out, the bombs weren't just to induce the Japanese to surrender. It was also pull on Uncle Joe Stalin's choke-chain. RAND Corp. estimates and later NKVD /KGB files noted that Stalin wanted to push the Allies to beyond the Rhein and then force every nation East of there to become Communist buffer states.

Then they could have hit farm lands or a mountainous area with few people. They could then make it clear we PREFER not to destroy cities and huge populations but we CAN and WILL if needed. Same end result but with fewer casualties. Yes Stalin would also get the warning and understand that to occupy those territories he would be exposing his massed armies to single weapons that could devastate them as well as Moscow itself.

They also could have attacked a military base not built into a city. There were other options that would have the same result and the worst case of these being tried and failed is they would then have to nuke a city to show that they WOULD if they had to. It also would have made them look better in the history books for trying.

 

[Condottiere]

There was an option to nuke Berlin, but, as I understand it, the Germans surrendered before that became viable.

As I understand it, there really was curiousity as to what happens when you drop a nuclear bomb on an actual city, and if there would be a difference between a uranium and a plutonium warhead.

I don't know what the background radiation levels are in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nowadays, but apparently, a lot of earth and materials were trucked out, which sort of indicates that both sites were heavily studied.

 

[Sigtrygg]

They were both nuclear warheads, enriched uranium "gun" design for little bog and plutonium implosion for fat man. Radiological studies are still available to this day.

 

[ottarrus]

Then they could have hit farm lands or a mountainous area with few people. They could then make it clear we PREFER not to destroy cities and huge populations but we CAN and WILL if needed. Same end result but with fewer casualties. Yes Stalin would also get the warning and understand that to occupy those territories he would be exposing his massed armies to single weapons that could devastate them as well as Moscow itself.

They also could have attacked a military base not built into a city. There were other options that would have the same result and the worst case of these being tried and failed is they would then have to nuke a city to show that they WOULD if they had to. It also would have made them look better in the history books for trying.

And we're back to 'yeah, but'...
FBF, I caution you on letting 20/20 hindsight and common person-on-the-street morals cloud your judgement about strategic issues. At the executive level one has to come to terms with the idea that whatever one's decision is, people WILL die because of it. Your job as a national leader is to ensure as many of the bad guy's people die in exchange for as few of your guy's losses. That's the simple, ugly math of warfare.
People don't fight wars for the history books.
The fact is that Truman's decision to nuke two cities:
- Ended a war that had already cost almost 100 million casualties;
- Saved hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, Allied and Japanese casualties;
- And literally saved Europe from Soviet domination.
I completely understand why you find the atomic bomb generally and the nuking of two cities specifically abhorrent. You should. Everybody should. But you will note that nobody has seen fit to use one again, despite all the threats, where every other weapon we've developed has seen multiple uses. That is also a consequence of Truman's decision.
Something else to note: The US took extensive medical and video footage of the victims and consequences of using Fat Man and Little Boy. And they released that information to the world. Why? It was to instill a horror about nuclear warfare in every single person who could see a newsreel. And while this was propaganda, it also served the medical and scientific community as cases to study. My point is that deterrents don't deter anything unless one's opponent knows about them.

 

[ottarrus]

But a novel and a fictional history for a ttrpg setting are two very different things. In a novel, things have to happen and be dramatic. History is usually more of a long, trudging, miserable smear. IMO it's a mistake to consider the events in AotI canon, because those events are sculpted for dramatic effect and functions in the story structure. They don't have reasons to exist in the already published history of Charted Space.

Something I teach when I do Civil War demos in schools that I think is valid both for the Hiroshima discussion and in a Traveller context:

"History is not made by statues, or paintings, or videos. It is made by people, human beings just like you and me, and they suffer through all the faults and failings of being human. They have doubts and fears. They're too hot or freezing, they're hungry and thirsty, they lack sleep, they get ill, and they are acting on far, far, FAR less information than you have with 20/20 hindsight. And they struggle with the consequences of their decisions, knowing that each one will send people to die."

 

[actionman]

I disagree. MWM wrote Agent of the Imperium while he still owned the OTU lock, stock and barrel, the setting is referenced and detailed throughout the novel (especially if you have the version with the footnotes - wish it was in print). Then there are all the T5-isms that are in it.

We're talking about different things. I was speaking in a general sense in that initial sentence. It's the same issue with biographies and movies.

Of course, one can write a book a declare the events in it to be canon in one's ttrpg setting, as MWM did.

There's writing a novel about an incident in one's ttrpg setting, and then there's writing a novel in which story structure and writing technique exert pressures on the events of the story, and then shoving those events into the reality, the what-is-true, of the canon setting. Now we have Bland glassing planets, having naval captains shot, assassinating Empresses, and doing all kinds of things, and it's all canon, all truth in the setting.

A novel which creates events and inserts them into the setting, that must be done very carefully to make sure the events in the novel are consistent with the setting. If not, it is an ill-fitting tool which can create significant damage to the setting.

EDIT: Reviewing my prior post, I should've made it clearer what I was getting at. I know it's canon, because MWM said it is. It just think he made a mistake in doing so.

 

[actionman]

Then they could have

I think we as contemporary people frequently don't really conceptualize the horrific brutality of that war. The firebombing of Tokyo had already claimed more lives than either of the atomic bombings. The war had to end. The U.S. had so little weapons grade uranium that the manufacturers had to use captured German uranium. Demonstration strikes that didn't cause maximum destruction may not have compelled a Japanese surrender, and the war would've dragged on, the invasion of the Home Islands would've gone ahead, and hundreds of thousands more would've have died. I don't know why the atomic bombings are accorded so much horror and revulsion while the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese civilian populations are ignored.

 

[wintertraveller]

MWM wrote Agent of the Imperium while he still owned the OTU lock, stock and barrel, the setting is referenced and detailed throughout the novel (especially if you have the version with the footnotes - wish it was in print). Then there are all the T5-isms that are in it.

I see things this way.
Agent of the Imperium was entertaining and worthwhile reading for any Traveller.

The Mongoose history of Charted Space is very different to previous iterations.

I agree there are some differences. Some of the differences are improvements and some differences are a source of irritation.

I think that Mongoose's 3i/Charted Space content is overall closer to Classic Traveller than any version in between.

I think that MWM's choice to pass the torch to Mongoose says a great deal about the care that Mongoose has provided their iteration.

I suspect this has been challenging to do while still publishing game content that sells well enough to survive.

Mongoose seems to have grown past startup into going concern, and I am glad for it. It means more Traveller.

 

[Endie]

I think we as contemporary people frequently don't really conceptualize the horrific brutality of that war. The firebombing of Tokyo had already claimed more lives than either of the atomic bombings. The war had to end. The U.S. had so little weapons grade uranium that the manufacturers had to use captured German uranium. Demonstration strikes that didn't cause maximum destruction may not have compelled a Japanese surrender, and the war would've dragged on, the invasion of the Home Islands would've gone ahead, and hundreds of thousands more would've have died. I don't know why the atomic bombings are accorded so much horror and revulsion while the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese civilian populations are ignored.

A major part of that dichotomy is that the Soviet Union funded and supported several civil society movements in the west that were aimed at removing or making unacceptable the western nuclear deterrent in order to weaken their Cold War enemy. They didn’t do the same about carpet bombing or incendiary bombing.

 

[Condottiere]

I heard several green movements, renewable energy, and/or anti nuclear power generation, as well.

Self serving, since the modern Russian state wanted to be the primary source for natural gas for Europe.

Anyway, there was a build up, probably two decades long, that emphasized strategic bombing, which did come into fruition, I think, in the Spanish Civil War, and the Germans, implementing it in Poland, Holland, and Britain, and the British and Americans, demonstrating how it's really done, on German and Japanese cities.

The shocking part is more about the fact it's a single warhead, and radiation, whereas, upto this point, you had long bomber streams, that released thousand of tonnes of high explosives, and incendiaries.

 

[ottarrus]

As to MWM's Agent of the Imperium.
Whether he owns the franchise or not, Marc Miller is the guiding spirit of Traveller. And he will be the Emperor for as long as anyone signs on the Beowulf. It's like saying that WotC doesn't listen to Ed Greenwood when he has an idea for the Forgotten Realms [they DO listen to him and often run with his ideas].
IMTU, Agent of the Imperium is absolute 100% canon. Period. End of discussion.
And the novel is where I get the Imperium's reluctance to scrub annoying worlds to avoid inconvenient problems. I very much like the mechanic of the Dakhaseri to illustrate the moral and ethical dilemmas of strategic decision-making. I like that the Jonathan Bland personality is still very much human even after his harvesting and that the process didn't turn him into a sociopath.
Oh, there are issues involved with it...
- Bland's statement that the other wafer personalities are useless because all an opponent had to do was wait the wafer timer out is silly. If Bland can just hand off the wafer to the next crewman with a wafer jack, the other personalities can too.
- Earlier canon by Miller and Chadwick says that the Third Imperium reached TL 15 during the Solomani Rim War, so there isn't a courier able to J-6 during the 6 and 700s. Sorry, Marc, but that one was an 'oopsie'.
- Regarding the Arbellatra chapters, didn't ANY of the other Emperors of the Flag activate their wafers too?
- It would have been interesting to see a conflict between two parties with Bland Agents active at the same time.