alt Hacker NewsThe number of casualties from the American civil war was estimated at 700,000 soldiers from both sides.
The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated at about 200,000.
Nuclear weapons have killed far fewer people then any other type in history, whereas the musket did some work.
And you know, a bunch of Romans with the pinnacle of technology - the sharp thing on a long stick - in the Battle of Carthage collectively had about 100,000 casualties and also demolished a city. And that was one of many battles in many wars.
The masses of man and ground into the masses of man in conflict, at scale, at every turn that we've had organized society. We live in a time where casualty scales are actually shockingly low in conflict.
Replies
You’re comparing a 4 year bloodbath to 10 minutes and being underimpressed? Also those weapons are several orders of magnitude less powerful than what they’re capable of today…
Battle of Carthage was also 3 years and was a siege of a city, so you know… not a lot of places for the people inside to escape. Also took about 20-50k expertly trained Roman soldiers vs a few trained guys in a plane pressing a button.
And sibling comment is right. The application of industrialization to the death process in WW2 and similar application of the idea (eg Pol Pot and Stalin) also led to death on an unprecedented scale.
> The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated at about 200,000.
Nice of you to omit the 50 million other civilian casualties in WW2, plus around 20 million military casualties a 5 million prisoners. Nothing in the classical world comes close to that left of destruction.
You literally refenced WWII. Which features a peek of people killed in military conflict. And yes, holocaust counts, civilian deaths by soldiers count.
Interesting perspective. One could argue that nuclear weapons are among the less harmful things invented, since they killed fewer people than knives, clubs, spears, guns, cars, cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos, coal power plants, and probably a lot of other things. Plus they probably prevent a 3rd world war with killing on the same scale as WW1 and WW2, tens of millions each.