[aidenn0]

It really wasn't a black swan though because bombings of industrial cities were well established at that point; it is even possible that the bombing of Tokyo killed as many as the two atomic bombs combined (estimates of deaths for each have very broad ranges).

Earlier than that on the European front, there was Dresden, which killed about a third of as many that as the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Really, once the US established control of the air, they were capable of wiping out Japan's cities with conventional weapons.

[animal531]

The number of deaths can be both meaningful and irrelevant. For example, we can drop 1 regular bomb that kills 10000, or we can drop this new type of bomb that slowly eats the flesh off of 100 people, before they die very terribly (and unstoppably) a week later.

The second, just by its gruesomeness factor remains a black swan, irrespective of the number of deaths.

In the same vein the nuke might not be as deadly as all the bombings before it, but at the same time it was one new weapon (ie. a singular drop from a single plane) that did something totally new and horrific, thereby making it a black swan.