YESTERDAY, AUGUST 6, was the 81st
anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. August 9 will be the 81st
anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Both cities received widespread
destruction with total deaths estimated at around 210,000 civilians.* The Hiroshima
bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, used Uranium-235 as its explosive core, while the
Nagasaki bomb used Plutonium-239, with yields of 15 kilotons of TNT and 21
kilotons of TNT1 respectively.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS BELOW are of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the days after the bombings. One should note that while
the Nagasaki bomb was more powerful than the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, the damage to the city was less and the death toll lower.
This is because the bomb was dropped slightly off target, whereas the earlier Hiroshima
bomb was dropped on the city centre, not far from city hall, where the building’s
skeletal remains at ground zero can be seen in the distance on the left bank of the Ota River. Hiroshima is on a flat river plain where there are few natural obstacles to deflect the blast and fire. The city of
Nagasaki, by contrast, sits in “an amphitheater of steep
coastal slopes and peaks”, which absorbed and deflected some of the 21 kT blast. Both cities were destroyed and tens of thousands died in an instant with many more succuming to injuries and radiation poisoning in the days, weeks and months after the bombs fell.
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| HIROSHIMA |
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| NAGASAKI |
THE DRAWING BELOW is from the book
Unforgettable Fire—Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors, published by
Pantheon Books, 1977.
"The girl was injured on the chest
and covered with blood. She had no shoes on her feet. Still able to think clearly
she avoided the many splintered things on the road and trudged towards her home
where her family was waiting for her.
Passing through Matoba section,
the girl and I came to the area called Kojin-machi Akebono-cho. On both
sides of the road there were temples. Everywhere was a sea of fire. No road was
open for us anymore except for a narrow path and that was barely passable. The clothes
which we earlier had dipped in water had already dried so much that they were
almost to the point of burning. There was no time to lose. We dipped our
clothes in the water that was stored in an air-raid shelter and dashed through
the fires desperately.
‘Awfully hot! Is this the end of
my life?...Oh God!...Help me!’ I murmured and prayed.
When we managed to come to a
safer place, we looked back at the path we had dashed through. It was the most
frightful scene I had ever witnessed in my life. Yet even at this safer place, I
found many dead bodies lying in the air-raid shelter, under fallen trees, and
everywhere. When we final arrived at the girl’s home at Nakayama section, the
darkness of the summer’s night was already falling upon us.”
CHEERS, JAKE. ____________________________________
* Figures include immediate deaths from the explosions and those later
succumbing to radiation burns and radiation sickness by the end of 1945.
1. “TNT” stands for “trinitrotoluene”,
a compound that has a chemical “punch” less than dynamite but is more stable
with a longer burn rate, making it useful as a propellant in firearms, bombs
and artillery shells. Dynamite’s higher shattering effect (“brisance”) and
shorter burn rate is aided by the addition of nitroglycerin, a relatively
unstable substance, which gives dynamite a “higher detonation velocity, a
sharper shattering effect, and more chemical energy per kilogram than TNT.” Dynamite is a “high explosive” useful in mining, excavation, and blowing shit up.
TNT
is used as the “benchmark” from which to gauge the relative power of various
explosives including nuclear weapons. For comparison, the explosive potential
of today’s nuclear weapons are orders of magnitude greater than those
early bombs at the end of WWII. For example, 1 megaton=1000 kilotons=1,000,000
tons. Recall that the Hiroshima detonation was roughly 15 kilotons or 15,000
tons of TNT. Just a burp by today’s standards!
👉The
largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was in 1961 over the Novaya Zemlya
archipelago in Russia’s far north. Dropped from a high-altitude bomber, the
explosion registered as 50 megatons or 50,000,000 tons of TNT. The Nagasaki
bomb (“Fat Man”) yielded 21 kilotons or 21,000 tons of TNT.
💥DID YOU KNOW that a Plutonium-239 sister to the Nagasaki bomb, was the one they tested at the Alamogordo (nicknamed "Trinity") test site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945? The bomb's builders didn't bother testing a Uranium-235 bomb because they knew it would work with its relatively simple firing mechanism. The bomb with the Plutonium core was triggered by explosive charges surrounding it, forcing the core to implode and in doing so releasing a tremendous burst of light, heat and blast. The scientists at the Trinity test site weren't sure if it would work. But it did. And here we are.💥
👉WE CAN REST EASY, HOWEVER, with the assurance that
modern nuclear arsenals rarely keep in stock warheads with over one or two megatons of explosive power (something about overkill, I should think). And, should anyone want to get an
understanding of what it would be like to live in a city when a 1 Mt nuclear
device is detonated they should read Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear
War. [A word of caution for those who
like to read in bed: Be prepared or you’ll shit the sheets for sure! Ed.]
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