Historical Note: The Most Important Day of the 20th Century

I knew that it was coming up, and today I really thought about the 60th Anniversary of Hiroshima, which took place on August 6, 1945. --------------------------------------- In quickly glancing at preliminary articles this evening re: the above, a lot of them seemed to focus on how this anniversary has become a focal point of anti-nuclear and peace groups. Beyond its acknowledged role in ending WW II, I am more interested in the broader, larger-scale effects of what happened that day and what it has come to represent. --------------- Other than representing the first use ever (of only two instances) of nuclear weapons in wartime, Hiroshima was the dawn of the nuclear age. Having grown up during the '80s Cold War period, plus being a history guy, there was a certain collective awareness of the risks of nuclear war during that time. Nowadays, the danger of a global superpower confrontation has subsided while the destructive capacities of terrorism and extremism have heated up. (a brief geo-political history of the last 20 years!) Nevertheless, we still live in the nuclear age. Thousands of Cold War nuclear weapons still exist, and, even if the probability is lower, the possibility of worldwide devastation still remains (credit goes to Dinger for the above thought; it was a slogan on a poster). --------------------------------------- Brief geo-political update: right now the threat is more regional, due to proliferation, and a lot of the mechanisms that were in place during the Cold War to prevent a crisis from escalating are simply not present in a lot of these situations. For example, compare U.S.-Soviet relations and what they knew about each other compared to U.S.-North Korea (no formal diplomatic relations, and NK is the most isolated country in the world). Also, India and Pakistan do not a lot of the crisis control/prevention technology and lines of communication that existed between the US-USSR. -------------------------------------------- I don't wish to extensively debate nuclear power in general or whether Truman's decision was right (despite plausible arguments to the contrary, ultimately it was). To me the anniversary of Hiroshima is a moment for reflection, to think about the massive, nearly incomprehensible power of nuclear weapons and the effect it has had on the Earth's future.