Self destruct, nuclear weapons.

Watching BBC today I saw what Hiroshima looked like immediately after the bomb. Totally destroyed.
So many dead.

Some have gone so far as to call it a war crime. Evidence has surfaced that the bomb was used, 'after' Japan was on the ropes.

Not at all what we were led to believe.

This kindled a feint flicker of a memory. Of a  time when the leader of Pakistan said that they would eat grass if they had to, but we would never abandon the nuclear program.

This was in defense of the massive drain that the nuclear program represented. And the total destruction of the fabric of their society and the ensuing poverty it represented.

I am not suggesting that Pakistan is a 'failed state'  and that this was a result of a generation of taxes sunk onto the search for nuclear weapons, and other 'interesting' projects.
That would be an oversimplification of a much more complex matter.
I am however counting Pakistan amongst the casualties of nuclear weapons. The poverty,  "fertile ground" for all kinds of crazy; all a result of nuclear weapons and the mad dash to develop them at any cost.

If we expand the definition of countries destroyed by nuclear weapons, to include countries that battered their own economies to shreds in the pursuit, of these weapons.
(Weapons that could never; should never be used.), We might see a lot more people in that queue.

So many people impoverished, health care systems decimated from lack of funding, infant mortality returning to dark ages, while the wealth of a generation was ground to the dust. Dust the was then fed to the centrifuge.

All for a weapon that could never be used. Not ever.

They are not alone in this.
North Korea, Iran and a host of other, "wealthy" nations, rich in potential, pissed it all away in the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

It is clear that the weapons were destructive to places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki that experienced the barrel end, but less is known about destruction to countries that broke their backs in pursuit of the weapons.

Some would argue that even those countries who seemed to succeed, with their programs while keeping their economies from imploding, even they were victims. Their economies and quality of life were also thrown into the centrifuge.

Almost as if they blew themselves up and their countries lay in ruin, post-apocalyptic ruin, by their own hands.

Without the mushroom clouds to tell them what hit them.

It reminds me of the honor virus that I got a few years ago.

"You have just received the honor virus. Because we don't have any computers or programming experience, this virus works on the honor system. Please delete all the files from your hard drive and manually forward this virus to everyone on your mailing list."

Thank you for your cooperation.

2015-8-6