"How can that be possible?" I was thinking...
Demaging Effects of the Atomic Bomb
Thermal Heat - Intense thermal heat emitted by the fireball caused severe burns and loss of eyesight. Thermal burns of bare skin occurred as far as 3.5 kilometers from ground zero (directly below the burst point). Most people exposed to thermal rays within 1-kilometer radius of ground zero died. Tile and glass melted; all combustible materials were consumed.
Blast - An atomic explosion causes an enormous shock wave followed instanteneously by a rapid expansion of air called the blast; these represent roughtly half the explosion's released energy. Maximum wind pressure of the blast: 35 tons per square meter. Maximum wind velocity: 440 meters per second. Wooden houses within 2.3 kilometers of ground zero collapsed. Concrete buildings near ground zero (thus hit by the blast from above) had ceilings crushed and windows and doors blown off. Many people were trapped under fallen strunctures and burned to death.
Radiation. People exposure within 500 meters of ground zero was fatal. People exposed at distances of 3 to 5 kilometers later showed symptoms of aftereffects, including radiation-induced cancers.
Bodily Injuries
Acute symptoms. Symptoms appearing in the first four months were called acute. Besides burns and wounds, they included: general malaise, fatigue, headaches, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, abnormally low white blood cell count, bloody discharge, anemia, loss of hair.
Aftereffects. Prolonged injuries were associated with aftereffects. The most serious in this category were: keloids (massive scar tissue on burned areas), cataracts, leukemia and other cancers.
The physicist Albert Einstein did not directly participate in the invention of the atomic bomb. But as we shall see, he was instrumental in facilitating its development.
In 1905, as part of his Special Theory of Relativity, he made the intriguing point that a large amount of energy could be released from a small amount of matter. This was expressed by the equation E=mc2 (energy = mass times the speed of light squared). The atomic bomb would clearly illustrate this principle.
But bombs were not what Einstein had in mind when he published this equation. Indeed, he considered himself to be a pacifist (a new word I learnt, meaning someone opposed to violence as a means of settling disputes, One who loves, supports, or favours peace; one who is pro-peace; One who avoids violence; One who opposes violence and is anti-war). In 1929, he publicly declared that if a war broke out he would "unconditionally refuse to do war service, direct or indirect... regardless of how the cause of the war should be judged."
Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks. About 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.
On Aug. 6, 1945, At 2:45 A.M. local time, the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber loaded with an atomic bomb, took off from the US air base on Tinian Island in the western Pacific. Six and a half hours later, at 8:15 A.M. Japan time, the bomb was dropped and it exploded a minute later at an estimated altitude of 580 +- 20 meters over central Hiroshima.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certified "hibakusha," or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said.
He past away on monday 4th Jan at the age of 93, reported by ABC news.
Yamaguchi, an engineer by trade, was on a business trip to Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 when the world's first atomic bomb, code named "Little Boy" by the United States, left him temporarily blind and deaf, and with serious burns covering his body.
Three days later Yamaguchi had returned to his home in Nagasaki where less than 2 miles away the second bomb, "dubbed Fat Man", was dropped.
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