210,000. That's a big number isn't it? You could fill up a classroom with 210,000 pennies. You could buy a mansion in Texas with $210,000. You could buy (not counting tax) 42,000 five-...five-dollar-footlongs. You could fill up three or four good-sized football stadiums with 210,000 people.
You could kill 210,000 innocents to end a war. It's quite a mind-boggling number- two hundred ten thousand is. But alas, the United States of America did just that in 1945.
It is understandable- somewhat, at least- to bomb locations of specific military affiliations (army bases, etcetera), but to vaporize 210,000 innocent, unsuspecting in the name of reducing the number of military casualties is... well, there are no words.
Just to put this into perspective, you may remember hearing in the video about what appeared to be a elementary or middle school that was "affected" (I use this term very loosely) by the bomb. By affected, I mean that four hundred kids went to school that morning, expecting to come home, and never made it back. Their parents probably were in no position to know that either, seeing as they were kind of...y'know...dead. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, one student somehow survived the cataclysmic blast, and lived with the knowledge that, in less than one second, four hundred of his classmates were gone. Poof. Bye-bye.
War is a sad thing. I believe that NBC chose to show this video in 1995 in order to remind us of this fact. As society approached the new millenium, technology advanced in leaps and bounds. Technology such as nuclear weapons, which had by then reached nearly-apocalyptic power. The video served as a reminder that, quite simply put, nuclear weapons are terrible terrible things, and that war only creates losers. Even if you win, you had to have lost something (usually your morals or dignity).
In war, even the winners are losers.
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Your intro to this piece was very powerful. We hear numbers so often that it is hard to put them into perspective, and you did just that. Whether or not I actually agreed with you about the horrors of nuclear weapons and war (which I do), it made me want to agree with you simply because you made the other side seem wrong, making this a very good piece of persuasive writing.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you wrote this piece, what you said and the style in which you said it. I didn't even think about when this was aired and it is true that they probably chose to air it partly because of the turn of the millenium. I also agree that it was a reminder that not all technological advancements are good things. I think that this might not have been so blatant but maybe a little deeper/subliminal.
ReplyDeleteYour writing style is really engaging, particularly your intro. Throughout the entire blog,you incorporate personality and character, which kept me reading it. While I agree that war is sad and everyone is a loser in it, I don't think that the film was trying to show us that necessarily. Nevertheless, your writing was very persuasive so you had me going for a while.
ReplyDeleteYou have done a fabulous job writing this, as others have stated your intro is very captivating. You have taken a more focused approach than I and may others have done, and I like that your's gives me a new perspective. I really enjoyed reading this and when you related 210,000 people to other items we were more familiar with is a very sophisticated tactic that I commonly see in newspapers! Great job!
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