At the end of the episode, the DARPA official cites figures claiming that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan during WWII brought an early end of the war and saved an estimated four to five million Allied casualties that would have occurred during an invasion of Japan. However, a 1946 report from the War Department's Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have surrendered by the end of 1945 without an invasion and without dropping the bombs. Furthermore, the actual number of deaths projected by the War Department (now the Department of Defense) for a land invasion of Japan numbered between 20,000 and 46,000. Even the exaggerated figures circulated at the time did not exceed a million.
more
