[Moderate right-winger]

Nuking Mecca presents unknown dangers, like wading in uncharted territory. Nuking a terrorist state's capital is realistic. Think how Japan reacted after we crippled their two cities. On the other hand, had we hit the imperial palace and killed their emperor, they would have fought to death and all the Japanese would have kept on fighting us. Remember the parallelisms.

[blogbat]

"Nuking Mecca presents unknown dangers, like wading in uncharted territory. Nuking a terrorist state's capital is realistic. Think how Japan reacted after we crippled their two cities. On the other hand, had we hit the imperial palace and killed their emperor, they would have fought to death and all the Japanese would have kept on fighting us. Remember the parallelisms."

Actually I disagree - the only reason we spared the Emperor was that we needed him to help rebuild Japan. Trust me, had they continued to fight, we would have systematically obliterated them. If you don't think that was our policy when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then you went to a bad public school, amigo. Japan was, by the way, also "uncharted territory", so that argument is specious.

[lentulusgracchus]

Talking about nuking Mecca just makes us all sound like a bunch of Rambo-mesmerized CHUDs. We're not going to nuke Mecca, but it might be useful if Osama thought we might. Then he wouldn't get to be the guardian of the shrines, which is his ultimate choirboy ego trip.

That all said, and if memory is a guide, a 50-megaton thermonuclear device creates a crater about six miles in diameter and 600 feet deep. That's with an air burst close to surface. (Someone correct my figures.) A penetration warhead of the same yield, detonating beneath the surface, would make a much bigger hole.

Fifty megatons is about what it would take to eject the involved mass of earth from the atmosphere and put it into orbit around the sun.

Not that there's any particular reason why I'd think of that.

[Chemist_Geek]

Think how Japan reacted after we crippled their two cities. On the other hand, had we hit the imperial palace and killed their emperor, they would have fought to death and all the Japanese would have kept on fighting us.

That makes waaaay too much sense for the un-American posters who wish to see our government suppress a religion.