Atomic Bomb Live

The two atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan announced the dawn of the era of nuclear deterrence, but due to the immense power of nuclear weapons, mankind did not use them again for the next 60 years. Historical information can give us a detailed understanding of what kind of deterrence nuclear deterrence is, otherwise people only have boundless imagination.

At 8:12 a.m. on August 6, 1945. At 8:15:17, the atomic bomb "Little Boy" left the fuselage, and the plane then sprinted to the right to avoid its stunning impact. The "Little Boy" was an atomic bomb with uranium-235 as the main raw material, exploding at 14,000 tons of TNT yellow explosive.

43 seconds later, the detonation switch was pressed on time, at this time the atomic bomb "Little Boy" has been in the aircraft below the place close to 9,000 meters, the atomic bomb explosion began, it first retracted the peach-white and lavender flash, and then this group of light increasingly larger. On the plane, the dazzling splendor seemed to extinguish all the instruments, and Captain Tibbits recalled that the glow was as dense as the material that did exist, even recovering a graphite smell. The compressed pawn gas around the bomb took on an oppressive pale gray color and then burst back up. He was just about to warn everyone to be careful when the shockwave caught up with the plane and the crew was thrown up and down like toys. Immediately after, a second shockwave arrived.

Tibbits climbed up, and picked up the recording instrument, to record the first information. A huge column of smoke rose from the ground, with a white nucleus at the bottom, and a huge purple foam gushing out around the nucleus, and fires sprang up everywhere on the ground, like a huge coal stove with countless holes poked in it. The mushroom cloud gradually took shape. The surface had a rock-like texture. The height of the mushroom cloud soon surpassed the flight height of the aircraft, although the overall color is metaphorical, but also vaguely transparent a little purple light.

The survivors on the ground recalled that the light recovered at the beginning of the atomic explosion was a bright white Elsholtz, then quickly expanded and grew into a huge orange fireball, and began to dissipate the unbearable heat. The white ball of fire exploded and the intense light far exceeded the brightness of the sun, which seemed to make everything lose its original color and everything turned white.

Around the atomic bomb of high temperature and high-pressure air into opaque visible material, and quickly spread out, the speed of the shock wave reached 350 meters per second, the power of the shock wave tore apart the construction, people's clothes, and flesh like fine sand was blown away, the temperature of the center of the explosion reached 30, OOOoC, all combustible materials immediately sprang up the fire.

Directly below the atomic bomb blast site is known as the zero areas, the surface temperature reached 6,000 ℃, and the explosion generated a pressure of about 10 tons per square meter. In Area Zero, there was a private clinic, the Shima Emergency Clinic, which vaporized at the moment of the explosion, leaving no trace of it. The surrounding area of 1 km. All the surfaces of all the granite materials built melted, even the clay with a melting point as high as 1,260°C melted.

Panoramic view of the destruction

There were no survivors in the area within 500 meters radius around the area of zero.

The survivors within 1 km of the center of the explosion (though narrowly missing) did not even hear the loud sound of the explosion, as the shock wave and high temperature arrived before the sound and they were instantly unconscious.

From 2.5 km away from the center of the explosion, one could see the full extent of the mushroom cloud, with all the construction burning under its envelope, and the frantic fleeing crowd running along the river, those in rags, and others using river water to extinguish the flames on their clothing as they ran. Among the buildings pushed down by the shockwave and on fire, some people shouted for help, but people were too busy to help themselves.

Not only were there no strands of cloth left on the people fleeing in the streets, but the shoes under their feet had already burnt up, so people had to run barefoot. Dark-colored clothing absorbs heat more easily, so the only remaining strips of cloth on people's bodies are light-colored. But even those who appeared to be well-dressed were not immune, as the traditional Japanese kimono had dark markings that absorbed heat and burned the skin inside, and many elderly women were branded with the same scars on their skin as the markings on their outer clothing. The scorched ground was also on fire, and the streets were enveloped in flames and heat waves, and people could not distinguish their bearings long ago, and some rushed directly into the fire.

People's skin was torn off in whole chunks by the blast and then scorched by the flames. Many relatives and friends ran out of town, but as they ran they could no longer identify their companions because there was no skin left on their faces. Several women who were still conscious headed in the direction of the Hiroshima downtown hospital, all holding their arms flat forward so that the badly burned flesh would not fall off the bones and rub against their bodies. I don't know if it was the fear or the steaming heat on the ground that made everyone's hair stand on end.

Black rain was falling from the sky, mixed with the radioactive dust from the atomic bomb blast. A female elementary school teacher led her severely burned students, who were naked and holding their hands flat, to seek shelter. A man ran to the river to drink water, holding one of his eyeballs in his hand, the blood in his eye sockets mixed with the black rain flowing down to the cheap. The roadside rubble, a dead man's hands from the rubble, straight, the tip of each finger is still burning blue flames.

Forty-five minutes after the atomic bombing, on the bridge leading out of Hiroshima, people lined up sluggishly to take refuge, naked, all with their hands stretched out flat, like zombies, no one daring to put their arms down because of the burns.

Those who happened to witness the atomic explosion immediately lost their vision, some of them regained their scintillation after some time, but their vision was severely damaged, and others were blinded forever.

Bodies floated in the city's cisterns, and those who had barely breathed through the blast shock, fire, and radiation ran to the pools in desperation and thirst. Many plunged headfirst into the cisterns, their bodies still hanging on the edge, but never to rise again. The blood and charred flesh from the bodies turned the pool water into a pot of gravy. At the edge of the cistern filled with charred bodies, the body of a woman who had been carbonized in the nuclear blast did not fall, clutching her child in her hands.

On both sides of the road and in the square, people with severe burns were lying everywhere. Many people were not seriously injured after the shock wave from the atomic bomb, but the ensuing heat wave caused more people to die more painfully, the heat wave ignited construction, and the fires in Hiroshima burned for two full days after the blast.

There was a train station three kilometers from the center of the blast, and the wounded climbed aboard, but most died on the train. Because the residents of Hiroshima were not yet aware of the strong radiation hazard after the explosion, the nearby fire department and naval base sent a large number of rescuers. These rescuers arranged two boats parallel to each other and then laid a huge plank on the boat and laid the wounded on the plank. These large boats, which were connected all the way, took the people who were still alive to the Otake Marine Division Base for treatment.

In a Japanese-style castle in Hiroshima, 23 American prisoners were held, all of whom did not escape the disaster. Three had survived the blast and escaped, all wearing only white underwear and with their hands tied behind their backs, one of whom died under a bridge and the other two were stoned alive by the Japanese as they fled along the river.

Two actual atomic bombs

President Truman announced the use of atomic bombs on Japan. But the impact of the bombs on the Japanese ruling class was not as strong as the U.S. had expected, and because of the tight news embargo imposed on Japan, the public was not aware of the atomic bombings, so none of the resulting panic was as strong and pervasive as expected.

Because the Japanese official reaction was calm, the U.S. felt the need to conduct a second atomic bombing. The plutonium bomb "Fat Man" was loaded into the 8-29 bomber "Burke's Car". The primary target of the bombing was Kokura Arsenal, with Nagasaki as an alternate target.

On August 9, Burke's Car took off with the bomb on board, but because Kokura Arsenal was shrouded in smoke from the bombing of Yawata the previous day, the bombardiers were unable to aim during three hovering passes, and the target had to be shifted to Nagasaki as an alternate. There was also cloud cover over Nagasaki, but the bombardiers finally found the target in the gap between the two clouds during the second passage period of 8-29, and at 11:00 a.m., the "Fat Man" was dropped over Nagasaki with an explosion equivalent to 22,000 tons of TNT, killing 35,000 people in the instant.

The two atomic bombs used completely different materials and worked on different principles. "There are only two similarities between Little Boy and Fat Man: one is their three-step detonation system, and the other is that they both cause a catastrophe.

"Little Boy" is made of uranium-235, 3,048 meters long, 0.7 meters in diameter, and weighs 4.2 tons. "Little Boy" is a gun-triggered fission bomb with a long internal tube, a U-235 sphere and neutron generator at one end, and a bullet-sized piece of U-235 material at the other. A gas pressure sensor determines the appropriate detonation height, and the blast assembly ignites, pushing the U-235 bullet into the barrel and the sphere and neutron generator, triggering the fission reaction.

The power of "Fat Man" comes from the plutonium-239, which is 1.524 meters in diameter, 3.25 meters long, and weighs 4.5 tons, making it a little fatter than "Little Boy. "Fat Man" is an implosion-triggered fission bomb, and its implosion assembly consists of a reflective layer of U-235 spheres and a core of plutonium-239 surrounded by a highly efficient explosive assembly. When the eye-like arrangement of the explosive assembly ignites, the resulting shock wave compresses the core and begins the fission reaction.

Although "Fat Man" was more powerful than "Little Boy," Nagasaki was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the blast site was relatively far from the city, so the damage was less than that of Hiroshima.

The fires caused by the high temperature of the nuclear bomb after the explosion are the most lethal weapons, and they cause more casualties and destruction of buildings than the shock wave generated by the explosion.

In Hiroshima, the heat wave in the impact plain was rampant. Footprints were everywhere all houses were not spared. A large number of buildings burned at the same time, and the hot air rose, creating a vacuum between the buildings, which then caused a tornado-like firestorm. The fire also spread along the wrapping layer of the city's power lines and heating pipes, and out of a total of 90,000 large and small buildings in Hiroshima, 62,000 were reduced to ashes in the fire. The moment the atomic bomb exploded, it almost destroyed all medical facilities in Hiroshima, leaving tens of thousands of injured people without treatment. There were 55 local hospitals in Hiroshima, 52 of which were destroyed in the explosion: there were 150 doctors, 65 of whom died in the explosion, and the rest were seriously injured.

Nagasaki was slightly more fortunate in that it was located in a mountainous area, with a mountain range separating the city's living quarters from the military-industrial zone, and there was no firestorm here, but wooden structures within a few kilometers of the center of the atomic blast did not escape destruction. 11,000 of the 52,000 homes were destroyed by fire.

The most striking record of the disaster is not the dismembered buildings or the charred people, some dead and some still alive, but the human figures left everywhere.

On the walls and floors near Area Zero, many dark shadows in human form remained, as if their owners had died too suddenly in between, and these shadows had not yet had time to fade, even in the daytime, but also let people feel a chill. Each shadow represents a victim here turned into dust, the moment of the atomic explosion generated by the high temperature accompanied by the light radiated out, any nearby creatures will be instantly vaporized, the part of the ground or wall blocked by them to withstand the temperature is not as high as the surrounding parts, the color is also different, the dead therefore left their own shadow.

There is a high school near the site of the explosion, the explosion was when a total of 150 students in outdoor sports, all in their own shadow into ashes. Physicists who came to the site of the explosion quickly calculated the exact position of the bombs when they exploded based on the length and angle of the shadows.

The two atomic bombs turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki from military-industrial towns into two scorched lands with unimaginable power. All the survivors and those who came to both places could not believe that this was the work of human power.

Professor Yoshio Renko, an authority on nuclear energy research in Japan, had just arrived in a plane over Hiroshima, and he was already certain that "there is no weapon with such destructive power except the atomic bomb." On the ground, scientists measured the area of the ruined city and determined that, after mankind had become familiar with the incredible energy contained in atomic nuclei, it was finally still the Japanese's turn to experience their power first.

To properly verify the power of the two bombs, a large number of Japanese scientists and engineers, led by Japanese nuclear physicists, came to the two ruins, despite the danger of nuclear radiation. After fieldwork and measurements, they found that the shock wave pressure from the explosions was comparable to that of a tsunami. Except for those particularly strong reinforced concrete constructions, everything else built came close to collapsing. Within 2 kilometers of Area Zero, all wooden structures were burned to ash, and twice that distance away, infrared light turned wooden utility poles into charcoal.

Even a few kilometers away from the explosion site. The destructive power of the atomic bomb is no less powerful than that of a conventional bomb attack. The scientists saw the entire city as if it had been crushed by a giant road roller. But they would never suspect that both cities were destroyed by a bomb in an instant. Because all the clocks that could be found were resting at the same time.

The two bombings certainly achieved the strategic objectives previously set by the U.S. forces, the Japanese Second Army stationed in Hiroshima was destroyed, while the Japanese Mitsubishi Arsenal set up in Nagasaki was reduced to a twisted mass of scrap metal.

"More than 140,000 people died as a direct result of the Little Boy explosion, and hundreds of thousands more suffered from radiation sickness. If the number of deaths from radiation sickness is added, Little Boy killed 230,000 of the 328,000 Hiroshima residents, while Fat Man killed 70,000.