About: Nuclear Weapons Taboo   Sponge Permalink

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Many creators of Japanese media either lived through the Second World War, or have parents or grandparents who lived during the war. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left deep wounds on the Japanese psyche when it comes to the discussion of atomic weapons. If there is a weapon treated in a similar manner to nuclear ones but isn't referred to as such not because of censorship, but because it doesn't make sense in that setting, it's a Fantastic Nuke. Almost any series involving a Wave Motion Gun involves this. Compare Never Say "Die". Examples of Nuclear Weapons Taboo include:

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  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo
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  • Many creators of Japanese media either lived through the Second World War, or have parents or grandparents who lived during the war. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left deep wounds on the Japanese psyche when it comes to the discussion of atomic weapons. If there is a weapon treated in a similar manner to nuclear ones but isn't referred to as such not because of censorship, but because it doesn't make sense in that setting, it's a Fantastic Nuke. Almost any series involving a Wave Motion Gun involves this. Compare Never Say "Die". Examples of Nuclear Weapons Taboo include:
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  • Many creators of Japanese media either lived through the Second World War, or have parents or grandparents who lived during the war. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left deep wounds on the Japanese psyche when it comes to the discussion of atomic weapons. Therefore, any time a series needs a powerful Forgotten Superweapon, instead of an actual nuclear weapon (even if those are available), a bit of Applied Phlebotinum will be introduced that has the destructive effect of a nuclear weapon, but a different name. Great pains will frequently be taken to stress that these aren't actual nuclear weapons, even if they can level whole cities and/or destroy the world. Any series that does decide to use nuclear weapons will usually portray them as A Bad Thing that must be destroyed at all costs, and only used by the most evil of villains. This taboo is even stronger in Japanese works, where the Three Non-Nuclear Principles are generally portrayed as being upheld long into the future in all but the most pessimistic of stories. So far, this is Truth in Television. No nuclear weapons have been used in armed conflict since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Two small direct wars (USSR vs China during the Sino-Soviet split and India vs Pakistan during the Kargil War) and several more proxy wars have been fought between nuclear powers without nuclear deployments taking place, though both NATO and Soviet combat doctrine for a hypothetical land war in Europe would have involved the deployment of battlefield [i.e. tactical] nuclear weapons. Contrast our modern attitude about nuclear weapons to fiction of the pre-war eras in which devastating super-weapons were romanticized to the point of being able to end all war forever. For example, Alfred Nobel believed that if such a tremendously powerful weapon could be devised, the potential war casualties would become so high when compared to any possible gains that nations of the world would abandon warfare altogether. Following this, there would be no need for the weapons themselves, and everyone would just hold hands and get along. When real-life superweapons appeared at the end of World War II, military and political leaders still considered nuclear weapons to be really big bombs, but not inherently different than any other munition. The Nuclear Weapons Taboo only came as people learned about the hideous and lingering effects of these weapons and came to realize that nuclear war could push humans to extinction. If there is a weapon treated in a similar manner to nuclear ones but isn't referred to as such not because of censorship, but because it doesn't make sense in that setting, it's a Fantastic Nuke. Almost any series involving a Wave Motion Gun involves this. Compare Never Say "Die". Examples of Nuclear Weapons Taboo include:
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