"Now just hold on,"
Said the little bomb,
"If you were just to hold my hands
Then time would stop
The plot would flop
And jumbo would be safe to land" ~ Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, 10cc, Sheet Music (album), (1974)

Bombs are any of a range (short or long distance) of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy.  Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanical stress, the impact and penetration of pressure-driven projectiles, pressure damage, and explosion-generated effects.  A nuclear weapon employs chemical-based explosives to initiate a much larger nuclear-based explosion.  Bombing or bombardment is the use of bombs, particularly when done as part of a campaign of directing multiple bombs towards a series of strategic targets.  A bomber is a person who sets up, sets off, or drops bombs.

Quotes

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It is now apparently part of the normal doctrine of those who advocate this system that no distinction can be made between combatants and non-combatants, and that a perfectly legitimate and indeed necessary method of warfare will be the wholesale destruction of unfortified cities and their inhabitants. ~ Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
There's no need to worry so much. You won't actually be dismantling the bombs. That's not for amateurs. What we'll try here instead is a temporary freezing method. Here, look at this. This is a C4 bomb. It's live, you can see it pulsing. Now you spray this on the sucker and......there we go. Simple, huh? The spray freezes the detonator instantly. ~ Hideo Kojima, Tomokazu Fukushima
  • It is now apparently part of the normal doctrine of those who advocate this system that no distinction can be made between combatants and non-combatants, and that a perfectly legitimate and indeed necessary method of warfare will be the wholesale destruction of unfortified cities and their inhabitants. No doubt there will be countervailing efforts to prevent such things happening; but there is, at any rate, one section of military thought which believes that the only way to stop the bombardment of the cities belonging to one belligerent will be the bombardment of the cities belonging to the other.
  • Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap either — not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination instead of death. A child who touched one wouldn't have his hand blown off.
    • Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten : Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things (1986).
  • Their [antiwar movement] mantra was: "Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country." Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, "Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one"? "Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women." "Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones." "Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime." I could go on. (I think No. 4 may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the "doves" to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to reread themselves saying things like, "The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic."
  • Stillman: There's no need to worry so much. You won't actually be dismantling the bombs. That's not for amateurs. What we'll try here instead is a temporary freezing method. Here, look at this. This is a C4 bomb. It's live, you can see it pulsing. Now you spray this on the sucker and......there we go. Simple, huh? The spray freezes the detonator instantly.
  • My solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese Communists] frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power — not with ground forces.
    • General Curtis LeMay, as portrayed in Mission With LeMay: My Story (1965), co-written with MacKinlay Kantor, p. 565; in an interview two years after the publication of this book, reported in The Washington Post (4 October 1968), p. A8, LeMay said, "I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age. I said we had the capability to do it. I want to save lives on both sides." He claimed that this was his ghost writer's overwriting.
  • For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man — when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live — for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live — for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know — fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

See also

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