I suppose I am wondering if the outcome/response to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombings would have been the same had they been dropped in a remote nearby location instead. Would Japan have recognised the potential of the bombs and responded the same way?
I don't know if this is a question for HistoryWhatIf, but I am mostly wondering if it was considered essential to drop the bombs on those cities as opposed to less populated area.
This gets asked here a lot. This section of our FAQ may be of some interest.
So obviously we can't know what would have been. But this issue was considered and thought about — and even petitioned for — before Hiroshima. I've written this up at some length here, as well as some of my own views, as a historian, as to whether this would have induced surrender. My basic thought is: probably not, by itself. (If you are of the school that argues that the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria triggered it, then you might think "yes, of course.") I do think it would have been a different moral situation to have demonstrated the bomb before using it on a city. But that was not what the planners were primarily concerned with.