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saedii-gilwraeth-simp · 4 years ago

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Another World - TDC Holidays - Day 8

DISCLAIMER: ANY FICS I WRITE USING HISTORICAL EVENTS ARE NOT INTENDED TO PROMOTE MY OWN VIEWS ABOUT THESE EVENTS, THE PARTIES INVOLVED ETC. I AM ONLY USING THESE EVENTS AS INSPIRATION AND INSERTING CHARACTERS AS I SEE FIT

DAY 8

AU: 1945 JAPAN

POV: BILLY

They had been sent to investigate a hospital and kitchen being run out of an estate in the Saikai district. It belonged to some rich family that had seemed to have weathered the storm of war, although many were unsure of how they were still standing even in the collapsing economy.

Their general had put Billy in a group of just four, so as not to seem threatening and off they had gone, driving through the town to the front door of the estate. Tommy in the drivers seat had flashed his badge to a bored man who looked as though he was a staff member and they were allowed through up the curling front path. Martel whistled in appreciation and Billy met Pietyr’s eyes in equal exasperation. The two may not get on but they were united by a deep hatred of Martel.

“Alright gents, let’s keep it respectful and I’m sure the man of the house will understand our presence,” Tommy said as they exited their vehicle and climbed the staircase that could have used a good sweeping. Pietyr knocked on the door and it was answered by a young women. She stood at a small stature but her posture and bearing spoke to a rich upbringing. Billy, the chosen diplomat of the group, spoke as he offered his hand.

“Hello, ma’am, we were wondering if we could speak to the head of the operation running from this estate,” he said in English as Tommy translated. The young women watched them for a beat, before waving them inside and crossing the inner courtyard to a building that was filled with wounded and sick to the point where they were sitting around the door. The young women walks into the hall and they follow her, all four reeling as the smell of sick and heat hits them in contrast to the crisp autumn air outside. Billy didn’t miss the hateful looks they got shot but frankly he wasn’t surprised.

The young girl stops and looks around before she seems to spot someone.

“Arsinoe,” she calls. Billy sees a head poke out of the masses and deep dark eyes lock on the soldiers in the room that the patients are recoiling from. The person stands and begins to wade towards them, pulling latex gloves off of their hands and tugging a surgical mask away from their face, revealing a pretty women that looks similar to the girl they came in with. Although as she gets closer, Billy can’t miss the sharp scars stretching across her right cheek.

She reaches them and says something to the other girl in Japanese. The shorter women says something back and the nurse turns to them, gesturing for them to follow her from the room. They enter an office to the south of the courtyard and the woman gestures for them to speak. Billy begins again.

“We need to speak with the head of this operation,” Billy announces again. Tommy begins to translate but the women holds a hand up to stop him.

“You’re speaking to her. I’m Dr Arsinoe Queen, one of the owners of this estate and the person to talk to about this operation,” she says in an accented English, throwing air quotes up at the word operation. Martel scoffs beside Pietyr.

“Of course she understand English, why do we even need Stratford?” Pietyr rolls his eyes as Arsinoe watches him for a moment before saying something to Tommy who laughs. “What? What’d she say about me?” Martel questions the translator. Tommy turns to him.

“She said she wasn’t taught the English words she needs to tell you what she thinks of you,” Pietyr chuckles and leans forward to shake Arsinoe’s hand as Martel scowls. She graciously shakes Pietyr’s hand as the door slides open and two more people join them in the office. One is the short woman who had allowed them inside the estate and the other is slightly taller who resembles both of them. Billy assumes the three are related as the two smile and join Arsinoe.

“These are my sisters, Katharine and Mirabella. Kat helps identify and record the people we help and Mirabella works in our kitchens. Which one of you speaks for the group?” Billy raises a hand and Arsinoe nods before turning to her sisters, speaking with them briefly before turning back to them and examining their name badges “Mister Stratford, you can go with Mirabella to the kitchen and Misters Martel and Arron will go with Katharine.”

Billy’s three fellow G.I’s leave with the women and he is left alone with Arsinoe. She offers him a seat on the opposite side of the desk she sits at, patiently waiting for his questions.

“Our general wanted to know why you’re running this operation and how you’re funding it what with the country in complete collapse-“ Billy is cut off by Arsinoe slight sound of indignation, “what?”

“My country is in collapse because of actions on both sides of this war,” she points out. “We are running this operation because this our town is the closest city with people who could help those affected by the atomic bomb your president dropped on Nagasaki and we have the money to run it because we were smart and made a fortune from the war by playing the money game, not the ideology one. What else does your army want to know?” Billy watched her carefully.

“We had heard that you rejected American scientists when they requested access to the patients with radiation poisoning. Why?” Billy asked. Arsinoe stared at him for a moment before frowning.

“Because I knew that those scientists would do nothing to help those people. My country poked yours at the Harbour and failed to anticipate the reaction or the horrors that followed from both sides, but those bombs that your president ordered to be created and dropped on civilian cities are inhumane. And then your scientists want to experiment on the victims of their crimes and then leave them to die. Death by radiation poisoning is slow and painful and these people deserve to at least have someone hold their hands when they go. That is why I refused your scientists,” she says it calmly but Billy can hear the underlying sadness.

“I understand. I’m sorry we’ve come in demanding answers,” Arsinoe waves him off and the conversation continues.

He goes back to the Queen estate a week later. He wants to help so he goes on an off day. Pietyr and Tommy go with him, none of them wearing their uniforms. Katharine lets them in, with a blush in Pietyr’s direction.

Billy spends the day helping Arsinoe in the hospital ward, sharing soft conversations about how Japan was changing. Billy was happy to find that she could genuinely hold a complex conversation, even if it was while patching up her patients. Turns out they shared the same passion for food and literature and they were becoming fast friends.

Not that it stopped her from sliding acidic comments about the US army his way when a new ambulance load of burn victims flooded the complex. It was a mammoth task to record all of the victims and Billy nearly wanted to hurl at some of them. Instead he helped Katharine with triage. The ones who weren’t going to survive went to another portion of the estate where Mirabella was waiting and Arsinoe was in surgery, grafting skin for so long her sisters had sent him and his fellow soldiers back to base.

When they return the next day with some more soldiers to help, Billy finds Arsinoe in the medical ward, looking like she hadn’t slept. He sat with her in her office and when she drifted off on his shoulder, he didn’t stop her.

Three years later, Billy and Arsinoe watched as a plane lifted from the runway at Nagoya Air Base. Billy pretended he didn’t see Arsinoe wiping her eyes as tears slowly fell. No one had really expected it when Pietyr and Katharine had announced that they were going back to the states to get married and settle down, least of all Mirabella and Arsinoe. But the couple were happy and no one was going to stop them from continuing to be.

They waited for the plane to disappear before they left. Arsinoe seemed to recompose herself as they drove back to Saikai, her eyes watching towards the ocean. Billy took her hand to comfort her and she squeezed his hand. Neither spoke.

TAG LIST: @nataliaarronn, @poisonerrose, @alwaysbored005

#three dark crowns #one dark throne #two dark reigns #five dark fates #kendare blake #queen mirabella #queen arsinoe #queen katharine #billy chatworth #pietyr renard #thomas stratford #nicholas martel #another world #holiday special 2020

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domesticadventures · 4 years ago

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i’m working on this fic right now that’s currently hovering around 25k words and that still sits in my drafts folder as “untitled document.” usually, for stuff this long, the titles occur to me a lot earlier in the process, because i know what it is i’m writing about and the title comes from that. but for the longest time, i looked at this fic perpetually open in a tab and wondered, what the fuck am i doing here? and then one day it just dawned on me, which is why i’ve been thinking about this:

in my freshman year of college, i took this honors elective class that was...i don’t even know what. it was like an english class but not. in retrospect it seems like they were always trying to get us to say something smart and winding up disappointed when we didn’t. and the only distinct memory i have from this class (other than the time they asked us all whether we thought truman did the right thing in choosing to order the atomic bombs dropped on japan, because what the fuck do you say to that?), is when one of the professors asked us to write an essay about what brought us there — to that university, that classroom, whatever.

something like that, at least. we all interpreted the prompt as “dutifully write approximately two dozen bland papers recounting the last few weeks of our lives,” i guess, because i remember exactly how the professor described the results: “just one damn thing after another” (this is not a man who had yet lived through 2020).

the problem is he wanted us to impose some kind overarching narrative onto our lives, but then he was middle-aged and we were eighteen. what was he expecting us to see?

my essay is lost to time, but i can imagine what i talked about based on my patchy memories and basic logic: the packing, the planning, the 600-mile drive. my parents taking me and my then-boyfriend around to see the sights. i’m sure it was a bad essay.

if i could have a do-over, though, i know exactly what i would write about. i wouldn’t try to recount the several weeks leading up to that class, now. i couldn’t even if i wanted to, because it’s like everything that happened has been recorded over with newer memories. i must have packed up my things for the move, but i’ve had more recent moves, bigger ones, remember more the frantic rush to fit all of our belongings into two pods so we could close on our house, move across the country. the drive along that same freeway i made again over a decade later, unremarkable on the way there but chaos on the way back, skirting the edge of a hurricane that dumped so much water along the roads that some of the road signs were almost completely submerged. even most of the sightseeing has been pasted over, the popular, insanely busy restaurant my family must have gone to replaced with the quiet night where i sat across a table from my roommate while another girl from our floor taught me to solve a rubik’s cube. i can’t even look back at the pictures, really, because when i broke up with that boyfriend, i deleted all the photos of him. and he was in every picture i was in from that trip. it makes flipping through the ones that still remain a bizarre experience, like i don’t exist in my own memories.

but there’s one thing that does stand out, the only story i would have written about if i had known to. it was after my boyfriend left but my parents were still around for a few days. we were doing the tourist thing, and we wound up squeezed into a little shop just off one of the main drags where they were selling jewelry, crystals, handmade soap in strange shapes. everything smelled like incense. for a fee, you could have a palm reading. and i was in that stage of my life where i thought it was stupid and fake but still wanted to see what this stranger would say to me anyway, where i wanted to find out if maybe some magic would happen. and anyway, my parents were paying.

i don’t remember what he looked like, what his voice sounded like, but i know he was a man because my mom didn’t let me go into the back room with him alone. i sat with my forearm on the table, palm up, and he looked at it carefully, traced a finger along the lines.

out of the dozens of things he must have said to me, i can recall only two. the first is that i had a mind that goes a thousand miles a minute and never stops. as a teenager, i thought he was telling me i was smart. as an adult, it sounds more like an anxiety diagnosis. but i was a kid and who doesn’t want to be told they’re smart? it was the kind of broad, easy stroke that you see all the time in horoscopes in the newspaper. that they apply to everyone is the point, as i learned in my social psych 101 course the following semester. that made me feel smart, too.

as an adult, mostly i feel like an idiot. but at least now i sometimes understand what the fuck is going on with me, like when he said the second thing that i remember, which is where he dropped the ball.

looking back at pictures of myself from that time is weird. i guess it wasn’t that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like it. it feels like looking at a different person. i might be overestimating my abilities here, but i like to think i see myself how he must have seen me, which is to say i look less like the endlessly awkward teenager still desperately trying to perform femininity that i remember being and more just like a typical kid. looking at past me as a stranger would, i imagine i look just like anyone else.

and so he could make some assumptions he thought were safe. i was young, college-aged, and i was in the touristy part of the city at the tail end of august. i was clearly a student. that my parents were there meant i didn’t live there, that i was moving there for school.

he said, you’re leaving a lot behind.

i almost laughed. by the time i started college, i had lived in ten different cities in five different states. i hadn’t stayed in one place longer than a few years since i was nine. i’d given up on making friends years before. i hadn’t even gone to highschool — i completed those four years of schooling on my own via distance learning. the only friends i had were on the same online video game where i’d met my boyfriend, who in retrospect i’d wound up dating mostly because he was pretty much the only guy who had ever shown any kind of romantic interest in me.

the palm reader didn’t know that i wasn’t leaving behind anything at all, that by this point i felt like a tourist in my own life. how could he have? i didn’t even know it yet myself.

just like i didn’t know yet that i would break up with my boyfriend a couple months later, or that i would leave this school after the first year and never come back, this school that had courted me, that had asked me to come and told me everything i had already done was enough, that i didn’t need to write an essay or jump through any hoops to prove i deserved a spot there.

this is what i would have written in that essay. that i was here in this city, at this university, for the same reason i was with this boyfriend: because i was lonely and it made me feel wanted.

but this was before i knew that. before i figured out i was queer, before i made queer friends, before fandom, before marriage, before so much of my life had happened. how could i have written about this at eighteen? how could i write about being lonely when i didn’t even know that’s what i was because i hadn’t yet experienced being not lonely?

all of this is to say that i thought at first that the fic was just one damn thing after another. and then i thought it was about loneliness, and it is, but it’s also about the next part — the realizing. it took me six months and 25k words to figure it out. but now that i have, i think pretty soon i’ll be able to come up with a title.

#rambling!#apparently this is what happens when i actually have a decent stretch of free time #personal #writing

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yanderepuck · 4 years ago

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I agree the atomic bombs were incredibly cruel. I do not think they were at all right. But I get saddened we’re so oft taught how wrong the Japanese internment camps & the atomic bombs were, but we barely acknowledge the severity of Japanese war crimes. A look at the Nanjing Massacre & Unit 731 can hurt sm, esp since US helped Japanese war criminals get away and kickstarted the Japanese economy in occupation while China went into the Cultural Revolution b/c of what Britain & Japan did to it.

I’ll be real. In HS when we talk about WWII, we only ever talk about the European side of it. Besides Pearl Harbor, you never hear about the Japanese. Once I got invested in WWII is only when I found out what the Japanese were doing to the Chinese and Koreans.

But lets say that’s why the US bombed Japan, because “they deserved it”. Why didn’t we nuke Germany then??? Granted the Allies didn’t know about the concentration camps until 1945, but still???

America had concentration camps??? America wouldn’t let Jews come over from Europe for safety. America is no better. America dropped the bomb to prove a point to Stalin, not because they were at war with Japan.

I wish my Great Pap was still alive, because he was in WWII, he was in the Navy, but no one knew where he was in the war until a few months leading up to his death. He would start talking in his sleep, and when he was awake he’d be asking where his wife was, or saying something about the war. It wasn’t until then that we found out he was in Japan, and I just really wish he lived a few years longer and I could have asked him things about it.

Lowkey just kinda word vomited and idk where I was trying to end this

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love-reinette · 4 years ago

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One Year Later

august 1946. nagasaki, japan.

Ft, Payne Zile Queen

How am I supposed to live without you?

A lone figure stood in black, a bouquet of black roses in her arms. The wind brushed her hair in a gentle caress as she stood with her eyes closed. One year ago...her life had forever changed. She had never forgotten the solemn look on the two soldiers’ faces as they stood on her doorstep giving her the news. She had been cleaning the house, getting it ready for his arrival home. Clarisse was more than ready for the future. She and Payne had plans. They were going to go away together, that was for one thing. They each had healing to do. She was just beginning to feel better. As long as she didn’t go near the nursery door, which he had padlocked shut. It was something they were aiming to clean together. He also hadn’t wanted her to go in alone. That was her love. Payne Queen had loved her since she was 21 and she had loved him too. He was considerate of her in every way. Instead, his trunk sat in their living room. It was all she would get back. Letters filled with condolences, medals, all the things befitting his rank. Everything except him. She couldn’t even bury him. There was nothing left of him. Instead, there was a memorial plaque in the garden of her French chateau. It read his name and a quote from Beethoven, whom they both had admired. ‘Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.’ Pushing the thoughts from her still fragile mind, the vampire sighed deeply, walking through the barren landscape. Fog surrounded her, a gift, she supposed, along with the overcast sky. Perfect conditions for her to walk in the daylight hours. She raised her hand to the necklace she wore, a locket with his picture and a lock of his dark hair, and gave it a gentle caress. It had been with her all through her imprisonment during the war. She had managed to keep it and now, it was especially precious to her. Had it been a year already? A year prior, the United States had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan; one in Nagasaki and one in Hiroshima. The impact was still felt even now. People bore the scars both physically and emotionally. The war had ended shortly after, with the Japanese surrendering. No one dared to continue a war where such weapons could be used again. That they existed was horrifying to accept. No sort of weapon that could cause that much damage should be in the hands of humans. Still. Peace reigned. For now. Yet, for Clarisse, who had been working through her own traumas, this latest blow--the loss of her lover, it was nearly too much. She had spent a few months in a hospital, trying to make sense of things. But the stress, the trauma, the grief, all of it--it was too much. She had gone months without feeding, considering death an all too welcome choice. What was life if all she was going to feel was pain? She hadn’t a taste for it. Her friends had seemingly abandoned her--not a single one came to see her. None sympathized, nor expressed condolences. Whether they’d abandoned her or had too much in their own lives going on, Clarisse could not say, but it made her bitter. She who would have dropped everything if they needed her, was very much alone. It was this bitterness that had taken hold of her heart and her mind, and she had left the hospital as abruptly as she had arrived. Death came in the form of a mourning vampiress, one who did not care how many people she had to kill, but if it quelled her agony, she would do it. She had returned to Germany and weeded out the SS and Nazis, ripping them apart and leaving grotesque displays for all to see. The more they had begged her to stop, the more vicious she became. No one had stopped when she asked them to. Had they stopped when they'd tormented those in their camps? Yet one afternoon, she had heard his voice. “Risse...this isn’t you…” She had tried to dismiss it as her mind playing tricks, but she could feel his presence. He was surrounding her. If she closed her eyes, she would have sworn that she could smell his cologne and feel his hands resting on her hips. Clarisse kept her eyes closed. If they were closed, he was here. It was the first moment of peace she'd felt in months. “Payne…my love...” she uttered softly, tears rolling down her cheeks as she felt his lips press to her forehead and felt his sadness wash over her. She was disappointing him. That was more than she could bear. What good did this savagery do? It had brought her nothing but more pain. It had caused others pain, and it made her as bad as those she hated. And from that moment, she had resigned herself to honoring Payne’s memory. That was what had brought her here to this sacred place. And it was, indeed, sacred. So many thousands had died here. Lost their lives. Clarisse dearly hoped that someday, they would mark this place, as they planned to in Hiroshima, as a memorial. Though his name would not ever be listed amongst them, she wanted this to be somewhere she could visit and mourn with others. They too had the right to stand here and try to make peace with everything. However, the vampire was not inclined as to how to convinced the government to build a memorial. As she stood there, where the bomb had fallen one year prior, Clarisse let the energy fill her. It was, unsurprisingly, sad. Kneeling, she set the bouquet on the dirt and rested her hands on the ground, as if that would implore the earth to give up her lover. Tears rolled down her cheeks and onto the gravel. “My love, can you hear me?” she whispered. Her hands grasped at the earth, nails dug into it, and she wept, her entire body quivering as she openly sobbed, watering the ground with her tears. “I”m here. I came here for you. I came to bear witness.” She had wanted to come in the days just after the bombings but had been told it was far too dangerous for her to do so. The radiation and the fires--not to mention, she likely wouldn’t have been welcomed. The Japanese would view her as an outsider and it was better that she wait. Clarisse had finally given in and agreed to wait. Now, she was here. The silence was deafening. It was strange to be in a place where she didn’t need to block the thoughts and voices of others. It was simply that barren of life here. Her chest hurt as she took a deep breath. Had he been scared? Did he know it was coming? Had he sensed that there was something massive coming? Selfishly, she wondered if he'd thought of her before the bomb had landed, and cleared everything out for miles around. At least here, it hadn’t been as built up as Hiroshima, but still...equally as devastating. She had listened to accounts of it on the radio, read about it in papers, and magazines. She’d listened to people speaking of it. People were vaporized. Here one moment, gone the next. She hated to imagine that was what had happened to Payne, but as there was nothing left...she choked back another sob as the visual came to her mind and she clutched at the ground anew. “I miss you. I don’t know how to go through this without you. You’ve been a presence in my life since I was young. You’ve guided me. Loved me. Taught me. Protected me. What is my life now? I’m a broken thing, Payne, I swear sometimes you're here...I can hear you. I can feel you. But when I wake, it's simply darkness there,” she uttered. “Now I have to try and figure it all out. I don’t know who I am without you. I don’t know where I belong anymore. I called upon your mother and your father, I begged them to hear me...to give you back, but there was nothing. No one. I called to God and I pleaded with Him, and there was nothing. I have asked for help. I’ve begged for mercy. I have done everything I could possibly do...I call out to you and there’s silence. My biggest fear was to be alone...and here I am,” she whispered. “Alone.” Standing up slowly, she began to scatter the flowers, watching as the wind blew some away. “I am sorry to all who died here,” she apologised as if she had anything to do with the bombings. “I never would have wanted such a violent end, even for those who are my enemy. How many of you were just trying to live your everyday lives? How many of you were just here to help others? Every life here had meaning; had a purpose. And in the blink of an eye...” She shuddered, remembering images of the mushroom clouds. How many of those who had died were elderly? Young? Newly married? How many children died? There were so many questions and not enough answers. She shivered as cold air encircled her and she wrapped her arms around her frame. Once more, she felt his presence and as she closed her eyes again, she reached a hand out. Perhaps he could pull her through to wherever he was. Bring her from this place and into the next life--if there was one. She didn't know what to make of it all. Was it madness that had brought her here? Was she crazy, thinking he could take her from this place? She knew her mind was playing tricks and as she opened her eyes, she could make out a figure in the fog. She gasped softly, feeling a gentle sensation through her arm as if someone were brushing their finger along the length. She made a promise there, that every year, she would return. She would mourn the dead and mourn her husband. Though not legally married, they may as well have been. They called her his widow, why shouldn't she allow herself to accept the position--as unwanted as it was. The ambient surroundings seemingly came alive as bells began to ring in the distance and there was some singing. She didn't understand it but knew that they too were mourning the dead. It was time for her to go. The damp air was making her shiver and she was dirty. Not to mention, it wasn't bringing him back to her. Not that she really thought it would. Once she made her way back to her car, the driver drove her back to her hotel in silence. There was nothing that really needed to be said. Clarisse sighed softly as she stepped back into the plush building. Pausing as she passed by the grand ballroom. Within, someone was at the piano and they were playing 'Moonlight Sonata.' It took all of her will to make it to her room before sinking down onto her bed, weeping anew. Of all the songs....it could only validate that perhaps, even though he wasn't physically here, Payne was still with her. Reminding her, gently, to live. That she would endure, he would always be present in some way. And yet...it only hurt her more because she missed him so terribly. Demons were not all evil. Her beloved was not--and wherever he was, he had her heart and she had his. She knew that. He'd told her so countless times and if she hadn't, she doubted that he'd have come searching for her in the middle of enemy territory during a world war. Payne Zile Queen had left far too soon. But perhaps...he would live on. Through her.

#[ my writing ]#[ drabbles ]#[ duqueen ]

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/why-some-japanese-pensioners-want-to-go-to-jail/

Why some Japanese pensioners want to go to jail

Japan is in the grip of an elderly crime wave – the proportion of crimes committed by people over the age of 65 has been steadily increasing for 20 years. The BBC’s Ed Butler asks why.

At a halfway house in Hiroshima – for criminals who are being released from jail back into the community – 69-year-old Toshio Takata tells me he broke the law because he was poor. He wanted somewhere to live free of charge, even if it was behind bars.

“I reached pension age and then I ran out of money. So it occurred to me – perhaps I could live for free if I lived in jail,” he says.

“So I took a bicycle and rode it to the police station and told the guy there: ‘Look, I took this.'”

The plan worked. This was Toshio’s first offence, committed when he was 62, but Japanese courts treat petty theft seriously, so it was enough to get him a one-year sentence.

Small, slender, and with a tendency to giggle, Toshio looks nothing like a habitual criminal, much less someone who’d threaten women with knives. But after he was released from his first sentence, that’s exactly what he did.

“I went to a park and just threatened them. I wasn’t intending to do any harm. I just showed the knife to them hoping one of them would call the police. One did.”

Image caption Toshio displays his own drawings in his cell

Altogether, Toshio has spent half of the last eight years in jail.

I ask him if he likes being in prison, and he points out an additional financial upside – his pension continues to be paid even while he’s inside.

“It’s not that I like it but I can stay there for free,” he says. “And when I get out I have saved some money. So it is not that painful.”

Toshio represents a striking trend in Japanese crime. In a remarkably law-abiding society, a rapidly growing proportion of crimes is carried about by over-65s. In 1997 this age group accounted for about one in 20 convictions but 20 years later the figure had grown to more than one in five – a rate that far outstrips the growth of the over-65s as a proportion of the population (though they now make up more than a quarter of the total).

And like Toshio, many of these elderly lawbreakers are repeat offenders. Of the 2,500 over-65s convicted in 2016, more than a third had more than five previous convictions.

Another example is Keiko (not her real name). Seventy years old, small, and neatly presented, she also tells me that it was poverty that was her undoing.

“I couldn’t get along with my husband. I had nowhere to live and no place to stay. So it became my only choice: to steal,” she says. “Even women in their 80s who can’t properly walk are committing crime. It’s because they can’t find food, money.”

We spoke some months ago in an ex-offender’s hostel. I’ve been told she’s since been re-arrested, and is now serving another jail-term for shoplifting.

Find out more

Japan’s Elderly Crime Wave can be heard on Assignment on the BBC World Service from Thursday 31 January – click here for transmission times

Or listen now online

Theft, principally shoplifting, is overwhelmingly the biggest crime committed by elderly offenders. They mostly steal food worth less than 3,000 yen (£20) from a shop they visit regularly.

Michael Newman, an Australian-born demographer with the Tokyo-based research house, Custom Products Research Group points out that the “measly” basic state pension in Japan is very hard to live on.

In a paper published in 2016 he calculates that the costs of rent, food and healthcare alone will leave recipients in debt if they have no other income – and that’s before they’ve paid for heating or clothes. In the past it was traditional for children to look after their parents, but in the provinces a lack of economic opportunities has led many younger people to move away, leaving their parents to fend for themselves.

“The pensioners don’t want to be a burden to their children, and feel that if they can’t survive on the state pension then pretty much the only way not to be a burden is to shuffle themselves away into prison,” he says.

The repeat offending is a way “to get back into prison” where there are three square meals a day and no bills, he says.

“It’s almost as though you’re rolled out, so you roll yourself back in.”

Newman points out that suicide is also becoming more common among the elderly – another way for them to fulfil what he they may regard as “their duty to bow out”.

The director of “With Hiroshima”, the rehabilitation centre where I met Toshio Takata, also thinks changes in Japanese families have contributed to the elderly crime wave, but he emphasises the psychological consequences not the financial ones.

“Ultimately the relationship among people has changed. People have become more isolated. They don’t find a place to be in this society. They cannot put up with their loneliness,” says Kanichi Yamada, an 85-year-old who as a child was pulled out of the rubble of his home when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Among the elderly who commit crimes a number have this turning point in their middle life. There is some trigger. They lose a wife or children and they just can’t cope with that… Usually people don’t commit crime if they have people to look after them and provide them with support.”

Toshio’s story about being driven to crime as a result of poverty is just an “excuse”, Kanichi Yamada suggests. The core of the problem is his loneliness. And one factor that may have prompted him to reoffend, he speculates, was the promise of company in jail.

It’s true that Toshio is alone in the world. His parents are dead, and he has lost contact with two older brothers, who don’t answer his calls. He has also lost contact with his two ex-wives, both of whom he divorced, and his three children.

Image caption Toshio is a keen painter

I ask him if he thinks things would have turned out differently if he’d had a wife and family. He says they would.

“If they had been around to support me I wouldn’t have done this,” he says.

Michael Newman has watched as the Japanese government has expanded prison capacity, and recruited additional female prison guards (the number of elderly women criminals is rising particularly fast, though from a low base). He’s also noted the steeply rising bill for medical treatment of people in prison.

There have been other changes too, as I see for myself at a prison in Fuchu, outside Tokyo, where nearly a third of the inmates are now over 60.

There’s a lot of marching inside Japanese prisons – marching and shouting. But here the military drill seems to be getting harder to enforce. I see a couple of grey-haired inmates at the back of one platoon struggling to keep up. One is on crutches.

“We have had to improve the facilities here,” Masatsugu Yazawa, the prison’s head of education tells me. “We’ve put in handrails, special toilets. There are classes for older offenders.”

He takes me to watch one of them. It begins with a karaoke rendition of a popular song, The Reason I was Born, all about the meaning of life. The inmates are encouraged to sing along. Some look quite moved.

“We sing to show them that the real life is outside prison, and that happiness is there,” Yazawa says. “But still they think the life in prison is better and many come back.”

Michael Newman argues that it would be far better – and much cheaper – to look after the elderly without the expense of court proceedings and incarceration.

“We actually costed a model to build an industrial complex retirement village where people would forfeit half their pension but get free food, free board and healthcare and so on, and get to play karaoke or gate-ball with the other residents and have a relative amount of freedom. It would cost way less than what the government’s spending at the moment,” he says.

But he also suggests that the tendency for Japanese courts to hand down custodial sentences for petty theft “is slightly bizarre, in terms of the punishment actually fitting the crime”.

“The theft of a 200-yen (£1.40) sandwich could lead to an 8.4m-yen (£580,000) tax bill to provide for a two-year sentence,” he writes in his 2016 report.

That may be a hypothetical example, but I met one elderly jailbird whose experience was almost identical. He’d been given a two-year jail term for only his second offence: stealing a bottle of peppers worth £2.50.

And I heard from Morio Mochizuki, who provides security for some 3,000 retail outlets in Japan, that if anything the courts are getting tougher on shoplifters.

“Even if they only stole one piece of bread,” says Masayuki Sho of Japan’s Prison Service, “it was decided at trial that it is appropriate for them to go to prison, therefore we need to teach them the way: how to live in society without committing crime.”

I don’t know whether the prison service has taught Toshio Takata this lesson, but when I ask him if he is already planning his next crime, he denies it.

“No, actually this is it,” he says.

“I don’t want to do this again, and I will soon be 70 and I will be old and frail the next time. I won’t do that again.”

You may also be interested in:

Megumi was a baby when her parents separated and her father disappeared from her life. But years later her mother told her he wanted to reconnect. Megumi began to see Yamada regularly. She thinks he is her father, and that Yamada is his real name – but this is a lie.

Read: I hire a man to pretend to be my daughter’s dad – and she doesn’t know

Join the conversation – find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Matthew Kroenig has witnessed firsthand the growing fear that nuclear war is imminent.

A professor at Georgetown University, he’s taught an undergraduate course on nuclear weapons and world politics for the past decade. He always asks the same question on the last day: How many of his students think they’ll see nuclear weapons used in their lifetime?

For many years, no more than one student would raise their hand. That made sense, he told me, because in those days, “talking about nuclear war was like talking about dinosaurs — it’s just something from the past that won’t be something in our future.”

But the past couple of years have been different. When he asked that question again this spring, roughly 60 percent of his students raised their hands. What’s more, he agrees with them. “If I had to bet at least one nuclear weapon would be used in my lifetime,” says the 40-year-old Kroenig, “my bet would be yes.”

Kroenig and his students are not alone. A January 2018 World Economic Forum survey of 1,000 leaders from government, business, and other industries identified nuclear war as a top threat.

The widespread concern is understandable. Last year, it seemed a nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea was on the horizon. India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed enemies, could restart their decades-long squabble at any time. And the US and Russia — the world’s foremost nuclear powers — have had warheads pointed at each other since the earliest days of the Cold War.

President Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office has increased worries of a potential nuclear war. In January, a poll showed about 52 percent of Americans — many of them Democrats — worried that the president would launch a nuclear attack without reason.

Then presidential candidate Donald Trump attending a rally against the Iran Agreement at the Capitol on September 9, 2015. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

So what is the risk of a nuclear war, really? After speaking with more than a dozen experts familiar with the horrors of nuclear conflict, the answer is that the chances are small — very small.

But that may not be too comforting, says Alexandra Bell, a nuclear expert at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “The chance is not zero because nuclear weapons exist,” she says. And the damage would be incalculable; all it takes is just one strike to conceivably kill hundreds of thousands of people within minutes and perhaps millions more in the following days, weeks, and years.

What’s more, that first strike could trigger a series of events, leading to a widespread famine caused by a rapidly cooling climate that could potentially end civilization as we know it.

Below, then, is a guide to who has nuclear weapons, how they might be used, where they could drop in the future, what happens if they do — and if humanity could survive it.

Hiroshima, Japan, after the dropping of the atom bomb, in August 1945. Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Two countries have nearly all the world’s nuclear weapons

Nations typically want nuclear weapons for two reasons: self-defense — why would anyone attack a country that could respond with the world’s most destructive bombs? — and global prestige.

Not every government can afford them because nukes take billions of dollars to build, maintain, and launch properly. The proliferation process is also risky, MIT nuclear expert Vipin Narang told me, because seeking a nuke makes a country a potential target. A nuclear bomb-seeking country is typically vulnerable to attack.

Today, only nine countries own the entirety of the roughly 14,500 nuclear weapons on Earth. That’s down from the peak of about 70,300 in 1986, according to an estimate by Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris of the Federation of American Scientists.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Two countries account for the rise and fall in the global nuclear stockpile: Russia and the United States. They currently possess 93 percent of all nuclear weapons, with Moscow holding 6,850 and Washington another 6,450 (which is smaller than the 40,000 that Russia, then known as the Soviet Union, had in the 1980s and the roughly 30,000 the US had in the mid-1960s through mid-70s).

During the Cold War, each side built up its arsenal in a bid to protect itself from the other. Having the ability to attack any major city or strategic military position with a massive bomb, the thinking went, would make the cost of war so high that no one would want to fight.

But two developments in particular led to the precipitous drop, Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, told me. First, Russia and the US signed a slew of treaties from the 1970s onward to reduce and cap parts of their nuclear programs. Second, both sides learned to hit targets with extreme precision. That negated the need for so many bombs to obliterate a target.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

The US and Russia, though, still maintain thousands of nuclear weapons while the other seven countries — the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea — have no more than a few hundred. Still, every country has more than enough weapons to cause suffering on a scale never seen in human history.

The question, then, is not just who might actually use the weapons they own, but how? It turns out it’s a lot easier to launch than you might want to believe.

The way leaders could launch their nuclear weapons vary.

For example, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could likely order one without any checks on his authority. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, would put the country’s forces on high alert if it detected an incoming nuclear-tipped missile, Russian forces expert Pavel Podvig told me.

The Russian military could respond in kind if troops noted a loss of communication with Putin and it confirmed nuclear detonations elsewhere in the country, Podvig added. While we can’t say for certain what Putin would do, it is definitely possible that he would order a nuclear strike first if he felt he needed to.

Still, he says Moscow would only respond to being attacked. “Only when we become convinced that there is an incoming attack on the territory of Russia, and that happens within seconds, only after that we would launch a retaliatory strike,” Putin said during a conference in Sochi on October 18.

And if Trump decided to attack, say, North Korea with a nuclear bomb, it would be hard to stop him from doing so because he has complete authority over the launching process.

“The president can order a nuclear strike in about the time it takes to write a tweet,” Joe Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation that works to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, told Vox’s Lindsay Maizland in August 2017.

Here’s how the American system works:

1) The president decides a nuclear strike is necessary

It’s unlikely that the United States would turn to nuclear weapons as a first resort in a conflict. There are plenty of nonnuclear options available — such as launching airstrikes to try to take out an adversary’s nuclear arsenal.

But the United States has consistently refused to adopt a “no first use” policy — a policy not to be the first one in a conflict to use a nuclear weapon, and to use them only if the other side uses them first. That means Trump could theoretically decide to launch a nuclear strike before an adversary’s nukes go off in America.

In the heat of battle, the US military might detect an incoming nuclear attack from North Korea and the president could decide to respond with a similar strike.

Either way, the president is the one who ultimately decides to put the process of launching a nuclear strike in motion — but he still has a few steps to complete.

2) A US military officer opens the “football”

Once the president has decided the situation requires a nuclear strike, the military officer who is always by the president’s side opens the “football.” The leather-clad case contains an outline of the nuclear options available to the president — including possible targets, like military installations or cities, that the US’s roughly 800 nuclear weapons ready to launch within minutes can hit — and instructions for contacting US military commanders and giving them orders to launch the missiles with warheads on them.

3) Trump talks with military and civilian advisers

The president is the sole decision-maker, but he would consult with civilian and military advisers before he issues the order to launch a nuclear weapon.

A key person Trump must talk to is the Pentagon’s deputy director of operations in charge of the National Military Command Center, or “war room,” the heart of the Defense Department that directs nuclear command and control.

The president can include whomever else he wants in the conversation. He would almost certainly consult Gen. John Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, since Hyten is responsible for knowing what the US can hit with its nuclear weapons. But Trump would likely also include Defense Secretary James Mattis, National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in that conversation as well.

The chat also doesn’t have to be held in the White House’s Situation Room; it can happen anywhere over a secured phone line.

If any of the advisers felt such an attack would be illegal — like if Trump simply wanted to nuke Pyongyang despite no apparent threat — they could advise the president against going ahead with the strike.

Last November, Hyten publicly said he wouldn’t accept an illegal order from Trump to launch a nuclear attack. “He’ll tell me what to do, and if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen?” Hyten told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum last year. “I’m gonna say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’”

He continued by outlining what the military could consider an illegal order: if a nuclear attack isn’t proportional to the actual threat, for instance, or if the attack would cause unnecessary suffering. However, what does and doesn’t constitute a “legal” order is still up for debate and was the focus of a congressional hearing last November.

Either way, if Hyten refused to follow the order, Trump could fire him and replace him with someone who would carry it out.

4) The president gives the official order to strike

After the conversation, a senior officer in the “war room” has to formally verify that the command is coming from the president. The officers recite a code — “Bravo Charlie,” for example — and the president must then respond with a code printed on the “biscuit,” the card with the codes on it.

Then members of the “war room” communicate with the people who will initiate and launch the attack. Depending on the plan chosen by the president, the command will go to US crews operating the submarines carrying nuclear missiles, warplanes that can drop nuclear bombs, or troops overseeing intercontinental ballistic missiles on land.

5) Launch crews prepare to attack

The launch crews receive the plan and prepare for attack. This involves unlocking various safes, entering a series of codes, and turning keys to launch the missiles. Crews must “execute the order, not question it,” Cirincione told Maizland.

6) Missiles fly toward the enemy

It could take as little as five minutes for intercontinental ballistic missiles to launch from the time the president officially orders a strike. Missiles launched from submarines take about 15 minutes.

And then the president waits to see if they hit their target.

Those that have nuclear weapons, many have argued, will never use them. The destruction and human devastation is so unimaginable that it’s hard to believe a world leader will launch them again, they say. But no one can guarantee they won’t be used at least once more — and that possibility keeps most nuclear experts up at night.

They disagree wildly as to what the next nuclear use might look like or how it might happen, but they almost unanimously cite the same three risks.

1) US vs. North Korea war

The potential nuclear conflict between the United States and North Korea worries most experts — and likely most people on Earth.

That makes sense: Trump and Kim, the North Korean premier, spent most of 2017 threatening to bomb each other with nuclear weapons. Kim actually gained a missile capable enough of reaching the entirety of the United States, although questions remain about whether it could make it all the way with a warhead on top and detonate.

A painting on a float representing President Trump and Kim Jong-Un pushing the nuclear red button at the Basel Carnival in Switzerland, on July 25, 2018. Andia/UIG via Getty Images

Still, there remains a genuine fear — perhaps slightly allayed now following Washington and Pyongyang’s diplomatic thaw — that the leaders might escalate their public squabble into a nuclear conflict.

In February, Yochi Dreazen wrote for Vox that “a full-blown war with North Korea wouldn’t be as bad as you think. It would be much, much worse,” in part because “millions — plural — would die.”

As Dreazen recounts, the US would likely have to send in around 200,000 troops to destroy Kim’s nuclear arsenal. Seoul, South Korea’s capital, would soon — if not already — lie in ruins due to North Korea’s large artillery capabilities.

None of that may even be the worst part:

Bruce Klingner, a 20-year veteran of the CIA who spent years studying North Korea, told me that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had stood by in 2002 as the US methodically built up the forces it used to invade the country — and oust Hussein — the following year. He said there was little chance that Kim would follow in Hussein’s footsteps and patiently allow the Pentagon to deploy the troops and equipment it would need for a full-on war with North Korea.

“The conventional wisdom used to be that North Korea would use only nuclear weapons as part of a last gasp, twilight of the gods, pull the temple down upon themselves kind of move,” said Klingner, who now works for the conservative Heritage Foundation. “But we have to prepare for the real possibility that Kim would use nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict, not the latter ones.”

In effect, any attempt to overthrow the Kim regime would prompt North Korea to launch nukes at the United States. Washington would almost certainly respond in kind, leading to one of the worst wars in world history.

2) US vs. Russia war

Few experts discounted the idea that the US and Russia could yet engage in a nuclear war despite a decades-long standoff. After all, they’ve come close a few times.

Here are just two examples: In September 1983, a missile attack system made it seem like the US had launched weapons at the Soviet Union. One man, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, decided it was a false alarm and didn’t report the alert. Had he done so, Moscow likely would’ve responded with an actual nuclear strike.

Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer known in the West as “The man who saved the world’’ for his role in averting a nuclear war over a false missile alarm, died in May 2015 at age 77. Pavel Golovkin/AP

Two months later, a too-real NATO war game — Able Archer 83 — made the Soviets believe Western forces were preparing for an actual attack. Moscow put its nuclear arsenal on high alert, but ultimately, neither side came to nuclear blows.

Today, two main reasons explain why a US-Russia nuclear fight is a major concern.

The first is the most obvious: Moscow just has so many nuclear weapons. Russia is the only country that could match the US bomb-for-bomb in any conflict. The longer Moscow has its weapons, the thinking goes, the higher the chance it uses them on the US — or vice versa.

The second reason is the most troublesome: Washington and Moscow may be on a collision course. Russia is expanding further into Europe and encroaching on NATO territory. There’s even fear that Putin might authorize an invasion of a Baltic country that once was a part of the Soviet Union but is now in NATO. If that happens, the US would be treaty-bound to defend the Baltic country, almost assuredly setting up a shooting war with Moscow.

Experts disagree on what would happen next. Some, including the Trump administration, claim Russia would use nuclear weapons early in a fight as a way to “escalate to deescalate” — do something so brash at the start of a conflict that it has to end before it gets even worse. Others say Russia would use the weapons only if its forces are on the brink of defeat.

Magnets depicting Russian President Putin and President Trump on sale in Helsnki, Finland. Alexander DemianchukTASS via Getty Images

But Olga Oliker and Andrey Baklitskiy, experts on Russia’s nuclear strategy, wrote at War on the Rocks in February that Moscow’s “military doctrine clearly states that nuclear weapons will be used only in response to an adversary using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction,” or if the country’s survival is in doubt. In other words, they say Russia would only use nukes in retaliation or to avoid certain extinction.

Washington, of course, would likely respond with its own nuclear strikes after Moscow dropped its bombs. At that point, they’d be in a full-blown nuclear war with the potential to destroy each other and much of the world (more on that below).

3) India vs. Pakistan war

India and Pakistan have gone to war four times since 1947, when Britain partitioned what had been a single colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. The worry today, though, is that a fifth conflict could go nuclear.

Protesters hurl stones towards police and paramilitary men during clashes on the outskirts of Srinagar, India, on October 16, 2018. Waseem Andrabi/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

After decades of testing, India officially became a nuclear power in 1998. Islamabad, which had started a uranium enrichment program in the 1970s, soon joined New Delhi in the nuclear club.

Two of their fights — the 1999 Kargil War and the 2001-’02 Twin Peaks Crisis — happened with fully functioning nuclear arsenals, but ultimately, neither country chose to use them.

But the opportunity keeps presenting itself. Each side claims the other has violated an ongoing ceasefire in the contested, but India-administered, Kashmir region. The region continues to be roiled by violence; for instance, six people were killed in separate instances on September 27.

The dispute over Kashmir is a key reason for current India-Pakistan tensions — and has the potential to spiral out of control.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Some fear that India and Pakistan may reach for the proverbial nuclear button sooner rather than later. Here’s just one reason why, according to an April report by Tom Hundley for Vox:

The Pakistan navy is likely to soon place nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on up to three of its five French-built diesel-electric submarines. … Even more disturbing, Pakistani military authorities say they are considering the possibility of putting nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on surface vessels. …

Pakistan says its decision to add nuclear weapons to its navy is a direct response to India’s August 2016 deployment of its first nuclear submarine, the Arihant. A second, even more advanced Indian nuclear submarine, the Arighat, began sea trials last November, and four more boats are scheduled to join the fleet by 2025. That will give India a complete “nuclear triad,” which means the country will have the ability to deliver a nuclear strike by land-based missiles, by warplanes, and by submarines.

In effect, India and Pakistan are in a nuclear arms race, and historical enemies will soon patrol dangerous waters in close proximity with nuclear weapons aboard their vessels.

While there’s no real indication a fifth India-Pakistan war is on the horizon, it’s possible one flare-up puts both countries on the path to a nuclear crisis.

Wild card: Trump’s temperament

Cirincione, the head of the Ploughshares Fund, told me the risk of nuclear war is increasing because of one factor: Trump.

“He is the greatest nuclear risk in the world, more than any person, any group, or any nation,” he said. “The policies he is pursuing are making most of our nuclear risks worse, and he is tearing down the global institutions that have reduced and restrained nuclear risks over the last few decades.”

Activists marches with a model of a nuclear rocket during a demonstration against nuclear weapons on in Berlin, Germany, on November 18, 2017. About 700 demonstrators protested against the escalation of threat of nuclear attack between the US and North Korea. Adam Berry/Getty Images

Here’s what he means: The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, released in February, lowered the threshold for dropping a bomb on an enemy. Basically, the US said that it would launch low-yield nuclear weapons — smaller, less deadly bombs — in response to nonnuclear strikes, such as a major cyberattack. That was in contrast with previous US administrations, which said they would respond with a nuke only in the event of the most egregious threats against the US, like the possible use of a biological weapon.

The document also calls for more, smaller weapons on submarines and other platforms to attack enemies. Many experts worry that having tinier nukes makes them more usable, thereby increasing the chance of a skirmish turning into a full-blown nuclear war. (Think, for example, of the US-China trade war escalating to the point that Trump thinks his only option is to launch a smaller nuke, or how Trump could respond to Beijing after a devastating cyberattack on US infrastructure.)

Plus, increasing the arsenal in this way would partially undo decades of the US’s work to stop nuclear proliferation around the world.

Some experts, like Georgetown’s Kroenig, say having smaller tactical weapons is actually a good idea. Our current arsenal, which prioritizes older and bigger nukes, leads adversaries to think we would never use it. Having smaller bombs that America might use, then, makes the chance of a nuclear conflict less likely. “It gives us more options to threaten that limited response,” Kroenig told me. “We raise the bar with these lower-yield weapons.”

But the Trump risk may have less to do with what kinds of bombs he has and more to do with his temperament. Take his tweet from January 2 toward the end of his spat with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader:

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018

While tensions with North Korea were high early on in Trump’s presidency, he has yet to face a situation, like his predecessors did, where it seemed nuclear war was likely.

The 13-day Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, where the Soviet Union had secretly placed missiles in Cuba — just 90 miles from the US mainland — comes to mind. Members of President John F. Kennedy’s team, especially his military advisers, called for airstrikes on Cuba and even an invasion.

But Kennedy decided to set up a blockade of the island and try to work out a diplomatic settlement with the Soviets, in part because a military confrontation might turn nuclear. Ultimately, the situation ended when they agreed on a deal: The Soviets would withdraw the missiles from the island, and the US would take out its missiles in Turkey. Before that conclusion, both sides came as close to nuclear war as ever.

Customers gather to watch President John F. Kennedy as he delivers a televised address to the nation on the subject of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 22, 1962. Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

How would Trump handle himself in a similar situation? Would he resist the urges of some in his military brass to strike an enemy — perhaps with a lower-yield nuke — or would he simply tweet out a threat in a hair-trigger moment?

The fact is we don’t know — but what we do know about Trump makes his demeanor in such a situation a potential, even if very small, nuclear risk.

Here’s what happens in a nuclear attack

The theory around whether someone might drop a nuclear bomb takes away from the most serious matter in these discussions: the human and physical toll. Simply put, a nuclear strike of any magnitude would unleash suffering on a scale not seen since World War II. And with the advances in nuclear technology since then, it’s possible the devastation of the next nuclear strike would be far, far worse.

It’s hard to picture what the effect of a modern-day nuclear attack would actually look like. But Wellerstein, the nuclear historian, created a website called Nukemap that allows users to “drop” a specific bomb — say, the roughly 140-kiloton explosive North Korea tested in September 2017 — on any target.

So I did just that, detonating that North Korean device on the Capitol building in the heart of Washington, DC — and, well, see for yourself:

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Roughly 220,000 people would die from this one attack alone, according to the Nukemap estimate, while another 450,000 would sustain injuries. By comparison, America’s two nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945 killed and injured a total of around 200,000 people (granted, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had smaller populations than the Washington metro area).

It’s very likely that North Korea wouldn’t launch just one bomb, but multiple at DC and likely some at New York City, the West Coast, and possibly US military bases in Guam and/or Hawaii.

But for simplicity’s sake, let’s focus on the effects of this one horrible attack.

The center yellow circle is the fireball radius — that is, the mushroom cloud — which would extend out about 0.25 square miles. Those within the green circle, approximately a 1.2-square-mile area, would face the heaviest dose of radiation. “Without medical treatment, there can be expected between 50% and 90% mortality from acute effects alone. Dying takes between several hours and several weeks,” according to the website.

Radiation poisoning is a horrible way to die. Here are just some of the symptoms people sick with radiation get:

Nausea and vomiting

Spontaneous bleeding

Diarrhea, sometimes bloody

Severely burnt skin that may peel off

The dark grey circle in the middle is where a shock wave does a lot of damage. In that 17-square-mile area, the bomb would flatten residential buildings, certainly killing people in or near them. Debris and fire would be everywhere.

People in the bigger yellow circle, a 33.5-square-mile area, would receive third-degree burns. “There’s a bright flash of light,” Brian Toon, a scientist and expert on nuclear disasters at the University of Colorado Boulder, told me about when the bomb goes off. Those exposed to the light, which would stretch for miles, would get those burns if their skin were exposed. The light would also “easily ignite fires with flammable objects like leaves, twigs, paper, or your clothing,” he added.

The victims may not feel much pain, however, because the burn will destroy pain nerves. Still, some will suffer major scarring or have the inability to use certain limbs, and others might require amputation, according to Wellerstein’s site.

A mother tends her injured child, a victim of the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima. Keystone/Getty Images

The biggest circle encompasses the near entirety of the air-blast zone: a 134-square-mile area. People can still die, or at least receive severe injuries, in that location. The blast would break windows, and those standing near the glass might be killed by shards, or at least shed blood from myriad cuts.

Those who survive the bombing and its effects will have to walk through burning rubble and pass lifeless, charred bodies to reach safety. Some of them will ultimately survive, but others will succumb to sustained injuries or radiation. The wind, meanwhile, will carry the irradiated debris and objects — known as fallout because they drop from the sky — far outside the blast zone and sicken countless others.

As for Washington, it will likely take decades and billions of dollars not only to rebuild the city but clean it of radiation entirely.

It’s worth reiterating that all of the above are estimates for one strike on one location. An actual nuclear war would have much wider and more devastating consequences. And if that war spiraled out of control, the effects after the conflict would be much worse than the attacks themselves — and change the course of human history.

It’s possible you have an idea of what a post-nuclear hellscape looks like. After all, disaster movies are obsessed with that kind of world. But scientists and other nuclear experts care deeply about this issue too — and their research shows the movies may be too optimistic.

Alan Robock, an environmental sciences professor at Rutgers University, has spent decades trying to understand what a nuclear war would do to the planet. The sum of his work, along with other colleagues’, is based on economic, scientific, and agricultural models.

Here’s what he found: The most devastating long-term effects of a nuclear war actually come down to the black smoke, along with the dust and particulates in the air, that attacks produce.

People walking through the ruins of Hiroshima in the weeks following the atomic bomb blast. Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

In a nuclear war, cities and industrial areas would be targeted, thereby producing tons of smoke as they burn. Some of that smoke would make it into the stratosphere — above the weather — where it would stay for years because there’s no rain to wash it out. That smoke would expand around the world as it heats up, blocking out sunlight over much of Earth.

As a result, the world would experience colder temperatures and less precipitation, depleting much of the globe’s agricultural output. That, potentially, would lead to widespread famine in a matter of years.

The impact on the world, however, depends on the amount of rising smoke. While scientists’ models and estimates vary, it’s believed that around 5 million to 50 millions tons of black smoke could lead to a so-called “nuclear autumn,” while 50 million to 150 millions tons of black smoke might plunge the world into a “nuclear winter.”

If the latter scenario came to pass, Robock told me, “almost everybody on the planet would die.”

Let’s take each in turn.

1) “Nuclear autumn”

A nuclear fight between New Delhi and Islamabad could cause a “nuclear autumn.”

“Even a ‘small’ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombs,” Robock and Toon, the University of Colorado Boulder professor, wrote in 2016, “could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threatening the global food supply.”

Here’s why: an India-Pakistan nuclear fight of that size could emit at least 5 million to 6 million tons of black smoke into the stratosphere.

At that point, American and Chinese agricultural production, particularly in corn and wheat, would drop by about 20 to 40 percent in the first five years. It’s possible that the cooling would last at least a decade, plunging temperatures to levels “colder than any experienced on Earth in the past 1,000 years,” Robock and Toon wrote.

Ira Helfand, a board director at the anti-nuclear war Physicians for Social Responsibility, calls this scenario a “nuclear autumn.”

As many as 2 billion people would be at risk of starvation even in that “limited” range, he estimates, most of them in Southeast Asia, Latin America, North America, and Europe. “The death of 2 billion people wouldn’t be the end of the human race,” he told me, “but it would be the end of modern civilization as we know it.”

The effects could get worse. The lack of food would drive up prices for what sustenance remains. Surely there would be worldwide skirmishes — and perhaps wars — over remaining resources. The situation could get so bad that we might see another nuclear war as states try to seize control of more food and water, Helfand fears.

That’s a scary scenario — but it could be even more horrifying still.

2) “Nuclear winter”

The absolute doomsday scenario is a “nuclear winter.” For that to happen, the US and Russia would have to use about 2,000 nukes each and destroy major cities and targets, Toon told me. Each country would effectively take out the other — and likely bring down most of humanity as well.

According to Robock and others, the roughly 150 million tons of black smoke rising from burning cities and other areas would spread around to most of the planet over a period of weeks. That would plunge surface temperatures to about 17 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the first few years, and then around 25 degrees Fahrenheit for a decade on average.

The Northern Hemisphere would suffer the coldest temperatures, but the world would feel the impact. “[T]his would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race,” they wrote.

Global precipitation would also drop by around 45 percent. Between that and the cold, almost nothing would grow, ensuring those who didn’t die in the nuclear firefight soon would of starvation. And if that didn’t do it, the depleted ozone layer — a side effect of a major nuclear war — would allow large amounts of ultraviolet light to make it to the surface. That would harm nearly every ecosystem and make it harder for some humans to go outside. “A Caucasian person couldn’t go outside for a few minutes before getting a sunburn,” Toon told me.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Some experts, however, disagree with the conclusions of Robock and his colleagues’ work. In 1990, five scientists who coined the term “nuclear winter” reneged on their findings, saying it was overblown. And in February 2018, Jon Reisner and others in a government-backed study wrote that the impact of smoke in the atmosphere would be bad, but not as dire as Robock’s crew have predicted.

Still, the point remains the same: A nuclear war would almost certainly affect thousands or millions of people not directly caught in the fighting. Its effects would reverberate, sometimes literally, around the planet.

That’s why some don’t ever want to run the risk of a nuclear conflict — and are trying to do something about it.

There’s only one surefire way to stop the future use of nuclear weapons: remove them entirely.

Former senior US leaders have made this case for years. Four of America’s elder statesmen — former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Sen. Sam Nunn — wrote in 2007 in the Wall Street Journal that they wanted to see “a world free of nuclear weapons.” Having nukes in the Cold War made sense, they said, but now they’re “increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”

Worries over nuclear weapons have led many to push for a nonnuclear world. Beatrice Fihn, whose International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, is one such person. She and her team helped get 69 countries to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations, although none of the countries that have nukes signed on to the measure.

It will take 50 countries to ratify the treaty for it to become international law; so far, only 19 have done so. And while Fihn hopes she will see another 31 countries ratify the treaty, she thinks it’s already having an effect.

International campaign to abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) activists in front of the American Embassy in Berlin, Germany, on September 13, 2017. Omer Messinger/Getty Images

“The treaty is going to change a norm and will change expectations of behavior,” she told me. It will put pressure on countries not to pursue nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, she continued, because it acts kind of like a “no smoking” sign that makes it harder for smokers to light up.

The problem is it’s unclear, and rather unlikely, that the world will destroy all the nuclear weapons on earth.

The nine countries that have them consider them useful for their protection. North Korea’s Kim, for example, believes he needs nukes to ensure his regime’s survival because they deter an invasion from a foreign country like the US. And Elbridge Colby, who until earlier this year was a top Pentagon official, in October wrote in Foreign Affairs that the US should consider nuclear weapons as a key tool to fend off global challenges from Russia and China.

What’s more, while Russia and the US have reduced their arsenals significantly over the years, neither side has seriously pushed for complete disarmament.

That means the chance that a nuclear bomb is dropped sometime in the future — and perhaps in our lifetimes — is more than zero. If that frightens you, it should.

The mushroom cloud produced by the first explosion by the US of a hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific. SSPL/Getty Images

Original Source -> This is exactly how a nuclear war would kill you

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