If war broke out tomorrow....

[Dark Jaguar]

Well GR, keep in mind the idea is to drop one where they can see it, and THEN drop one on a city if that didn't do it. That MIGHT have been the better thing to do, though there's a chance that had they only seen it, while we were giving them time to surrender, they would have been rationalizing it within themselves since no one actually died and figure they could deal with such a weapon. That time to surrender might just be used to build up their courage to a point that when a city was bombed, they would still not surrender because they are no longer surprised. They likely figured that, and while there's a CHANCE simply showing the power before actually using it against them could work, I think they figured into that sort of psychology and decided their best bet was to attack them and put the fear into them. Why drop 2 you may ask. The second was to show that we had more than 1, and nothing more really. To show that that wasn't a fluke, and that it wasn't an accidental meteor. For example, how long do you think it would have taken for us to figure out it was a terrorist attack if rather than 4 planes being hijacked and crashed, they only crashed 1 of them? I remember that some thought after hearing of the first one, for a bit, that it was just some terrible accident. It's to show proof that it was certainly a planned attack and not some freakish event of nature (considering the sheer amazing power, and their mindset, they may assume we Americans are lying and claiming a fantastical event of nature as their own doing). Now, the thing is, it's clear that at the time they thought it was their only option to drop it directly onto some major cities, and it's clear they were convinced they needed to show them that it was truly them and not a freak accident of nature like a meteor. However, it's not clear that they needed BOTH bombs to hit cities. Perhaps they could have bombed a city and open country within view of another city. They would have to be far apart, but then one last thing. It's possible the Americans had thought the Japanese, trying to convince themselves of it being a natural disaster, would assume the sightings of the blast out in an unoccupied area were actually just people seeing the city blast, or at least that's what everyone would be told by the higher ups. Since humans back then were just as intelligent as we are now, you can't put it past them that they would think of these sorts of psychological elements of the attack. Indeed the very nature of the attack WAS psychology. No, it's clear that America after some thought was convinced that if they were going to use the bombs to end the war, the only sure way to do it was the one they chose, the rest were fraught with chances the Japanese would either not be afraid after seeing a demonstration and given time to think about it or the Japanese thinking it was a natural disaster of epic proportions. This was the only way to put a quick fear into them that would get them to surrender without much time to think about it and convince them that it WAS in fact humans who caused that massive catastrophe. Indeed, since they most likely had backups (remember GR, they DID have to test this weapon many times before actually using it, so they had more), they were merciful only in the sense that they ONLY used what they had figured they needed to, and didn't use ALL their bombs.