Quote:Ebony wrote:Three Metropolitan areas.
A friend is of the opinion that Japan is the first post-apocalyptic culture on Earth. I can see the evidence of that claim. Seventy years ago, the Empire of Japan, which had never experienced true defeat prior, was swatted aside in two definitive shows of force by the United States, that left two metropolitan areas destroyed and changed the paradigm of how war was waged. Shortly after that, core tenets of Japanese culture and religion were systematically dismantled, but they were not completely rewritten. As a result, the people of Japen have had to fill in the blank spots left, as well as figure out how to survive in the post-war world. They didn't have a slow decline, like the British Empire, but rather a short and fast removal. They've had to recover ever since, and I think they're still recovering.
Tokyo may not have been nuked, but the firebombing that was delivered there was arguably just as bad - no radiation, but the damage done was far more comprehensive and complete over a larger area. It was like shoving it in the Emperor's face, saying, "And you think the nukes are bad? This is what we can accomplish with conventional bombs! And there's a lot more where those came from."