March 9-10, 1945: U.S. firebombing of Tokyo engulfs 15.8 square miles of the city, killing about 100,000 people. @wellerstein on the human toll of firebombing of Tokyo, & the events it is often compared to: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.http://ow.ly/wLzW30nYvoV
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How does it compare to Dresden?
Roughly: if Dresden was 25,000 dead (high realistic estimate) and the attack area was 2.5 mi^2, then that's a mortality rate of 10,000 dead per square mile, which is higher than the Tokyo firebombing but less than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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But, also have to take into account that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 1 plane/bomb each while Dresden/Tokyo required hundreds of planes and thousands of bombs each.
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Totally. The point I try to get at in the article, though, is that any way you slice it, the mortality rates of an atomic bomb are significantly higher than that of firebombing — they are not *quite* equivalent activities in this sense.
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After a decade on Twitter I believe this is the first time I have ever seen someone post a statement, someone ask a serious follow up, and someone qualified give a useful answer.
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