this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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Nukes? The scary thing about Greenland is that the whole place is basically a handful of small towns. The 10 largest towns represent over 95% of the population. Forget nukes. A dozen large conventional bombs would be enough to genocide the Greenland population.
That assumes that bombing is effective, accurate and deadly, which is not the case.
Bombs have a 20% accuracy rate, where "on target" is about 2 football fields around the target lol.
Bombs have a 20% accuracy rate, where “on target” is about 2 football fields around the target lol.
Since when, WW2? And the type of bomb I was referring are things like this.
It would take ten of those to wipe out the Greenlanders as thoroughly as the historic genocide of the Native Americans.
Per your link: The MOAB was used once, has a 1 mile blast radius, and based on reports killed, depending on who you ask, "only terrorists - 90 of them" "a bunch of people including teachers and students" and "no one"
Hardly definitive. Also, a 1 mile bomb killing fewer than 100 people? Greenland has 52k people at a population density of 0.1/mile²
The MOAB was used to destroy a tunnel complex in Afghanistan. It killed around 100 people in a well fortified underground network. Imagine what it could do to a city or large town.
Your population density argument is bad, a third of the island lives in Nuuk.
And was dropped approximately 100-200 meters (ie 1-2 football fields) off target.
Being off target is irrelevant when your margin of error is only 12% of the blast radius.
And most large area bombings aren't a single bomb. Enough ordinance is typically dropped that it equals 10-20 MOABs.
And which conflict was resolved successfully by bombing?
Certainly Afghanistan was famously not resolved by aerial attacks, and the best result we have here so far is "its OK to miss with a $170,000 single bomb if it allegedly, unconfirmedly, kills between 0 and 90 people"
Not to mention this is a single data point and one debatably "accurate" hit does not suddenly make all air ordinance accurate.
There's an old saying that 'close only counts for horse shoes and hand grenades'. Bombs follow the same rule.
In this scenario the bombing would be solely for genociding the population, which wasn't the goal in Afghanistan. Accuracy is irrelevant when your goal is total destruction.
I mean that's what I'm saying - most bombs miss by more than is effective. Close counts for a hand grenade if you don't throw it in totally the wrong direction.
Edit: ...and so far the only counter argument is "once we dropped a single bomb that was too big to miss - a decade ago."
you dont have to convince me, of course, I just remain unconvinced
Your entire point is irrelevant to the discussion, though.
If the goal was to only kill enemy combatants without harming civilians, it would be relevant, but that's not what's being discussed. It doesn't matter if the bomb is a little inaccurate if your goal is the total destruction of a city. You just keep dropping them until the job is done.
Yeah, but I'm saying it doesn't work. Accuracy is only one part of it - but also you can't destroy a city without accuracy.
London, Dresden, etc have all been bombed for years at a time and still stand. I think you're over estimating the efficacy of bombs.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/moab.htm
Actually is has an accuracy of about 8 meters. Is it GPS guided.
your link is broken but the howstuffworks page is quoting from the Wikipedia, which sources the GPS guidance to an anonymous post on globalsecurity.org - itsself not a bad source - however the method of delivery is they open the back of the aircraft, push the bomb on a wooden pallet out the door, wait a few seconds, activate a parachute, wait a few seconds for the gps to kick in, whereby "fins" guide it to its location.
You'll forgive me for being skeptical about 8m precision on a remote-controlled parachute from 35,000 feet at 400mph using rudders
You need to improve your basic logic skills.
I'll happily concede if you've got a source?
Sure, but may I suggest: More bombs
Sure, just name a conflict that was resolved by bombing, with the exception of Hiroshima/Nagasaki- which im not counting because those were nukes, and Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway.
The comment just said that you could genocide most of the population. Not that it would resolve a conflict
A fair correction. I'll counter than the USA dropped more bombs than WW2 total on Vietnam, including dropping 100,000 tons of bombs on a 40 mile² area and a) didn't kill everyone, b) didn't even bomb every settlement in that area and c) lost.
Vietnam's population was a lot larger and the population was way less concentrated. Tiny concentrated population is a much easier matter to "deal with"
eh, I still don't buy it.
WW2 was gonna be over by the second Christmas, Ukraine was a month-long special operation, etc...
Do you have an example on a similar population/campaign?