A Moral Argument for Nuclear Weapons
Is it right to develop nuclear weapons? Personally, I think that it is right to focus research on weapons of mass destruction, just because we get so much information on nuclear physics. When you look at the aftermath of the Manhattan project, during the late 1940s and 1950s, we got so much information about nuclear physics that we did not have before, and, although it led to the increase of nuclear weapons, those nuclear weapons were never used in combat. On top of that, we can use that knowledge that we gained from the Manhattan project and apply it to other things, such as in medicine, generating power, and identifying and dating materials. Although the use of nuclear weapons do have the ability to wipe out countries, they have never been used in conflict outside of the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Overall, the development of nuclear weapons can lead to further research on nuclear physics, which in turn can be used to advance medicine, engineering, and other fields.
It is certainly valid to focus on some of the positives to come out of the research done as part of the Manhattan project, although I think it would be reasonable to consider whether some of those discoveries might have been attainable without developing weapons along the way.
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