Hiroshima, morning of August 6th, 1945. World War II seemed to be coming to an end. Japan was already showing clear signs that its defeat was only a matter of time, but the country continued to fight back.
Little did the Japanese know, but that day would be marked forever in the history of mankind. However for Eiso Nomura it was a morning like any other. He was working in the building that controlled fuel rationing in the city when he heard a deafening explosion.
When he was finally outside, Eiso saw an apocalyptic scenario: There was nothing else there anymore. Only eight employees managed to escape the concrete building after the bombing. But Mr Nomura ended up becoming the only survivor.
And so the world was experiencing the devastating power of an atomic bomb for the first time . [ANIMATED NOSTALGIA] Hello, my dear friends! How's it going?
I’m Felipe Castanhari and a new project is being launched here today, it's called Animated Nostalgia. Today I’m going to show you the devastating effects of an atomic bomb. However so I can do that, I’ll need to turn myself into a completely animated being.
Alright then! Cartoony and big-nosed. And since I’m in cartoon-mode, I’d like to ask you to leave your like and subscribe to the channel if you are not already subscribed!
Have you done it yet? Have you liked the video and subscribed? Good, so now it's time to visit Hiroshima.
The detonation took place just 170 meters from Mr Nomura's work. He escaped only because he was in the basement at the time of the explosion. Eiso Nomura would be known as the survivor who was closest to where the bomb was detonated.
Thousands of other residents of Hiroshima were not that lucky. A good way to understand the effects of the Hiroshima bomb is to come to the site of the explosion - called the hypocenter - and imagine what happened. Right now it’s 8:15 AM.
It’s at this point that the <i>Enola Gay</i> plane releases the bomb called <i>Little Boy</i>, that weighs more than four tons. And of course <i>Little Boy</i> is no ordinary bomb: It carries more than 60 kg of uranium. But what's the use of uranium in an atomic bomb?
Well, after a bomb is detonated, the nucleus of a uranium atom is broken down by a neutron in a process that is called nuclear fission. This creates a chain reaction across the uranium, leaving the bomb's temperature millions of degrees hotter than the Sun's surface. When Little Boy finally explodes.
. . at about 600 meters high and with the power of 13,000 tons of dynamite, Hiroshima is illuminated by a huge flash.
A moment later, more than 300,000 people in the city hear a deafening bang sound. The explosion creates a gigantic ball of fire which is 30 meters in diameter. It burns at more than 270,000 degrees.
The heat is so intense that clock hands merge with the viewfinder, forever recording the exact moment of detonation: 08 hours and 16 minutes AM. The explosion releases more than 200 radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere and the soil is bombarded with radiation from neutrons and gamma rays. Hiroshima is instantly contaminated by radiation.
The thermal energy released devastates everything within a radius of one kilometer. Building's parts and statues built with metal melt down. Houses and buildings made out of wood are on fire.
Some internal organs of humans and animals closest to the explosion evaporate instantly. Many people are completely vanished. All that remains of them are their nuclear shadows, which appear when a body blocks extreme thermal radiation.
These shadows are the only witnesses of the last moments of life of those victims. As if it weren’t enough, a wave of infrared energy sweeps across the city, burning the skin of people furthest from the hypocenter. All of that you just saw happens just a second after the detonation of the bomb.
The shock wave released by the explosion spreads at a speed of 1200 km per hour, bringing flames throughout the city and destroying everything in its path. Within seconds, the survivors see more than 60,000 buildings disappear instantly. A black cloud caused by explosion, fire and destruction of the buildings, turns the day into night.
The fireball in the sky reaches almost 275 meters in diameter, causing the temperature of the ground below to rise to almost 4000 degrees. Someone who'd observe this fireball from 9 kilometers away would see a luminosity ten times stronger than our Sun’s. An atomic mushroom-shaped cloud then begins to form, sucking in the city's overheated air and thereby making any flammable material catch fire.
Many fires turn into firestorms that spread throughout Hiroshima. In less than a minute, more than 70,000 people are dead. Radioactive waste in the atmosphere begins to fall in the form of dust.
The rain from nuclear ash causes thousands of survivors to develop radiation-related illnesses, especially cancer, which will cost the lives of at least 90,000 others over the years. Ten minutes after the explosion, the atomic mushroom cloud is 18 km high. Below that, Hiroshima is already a ghost town.
And the nightmare is just starting for the Japanese: Three days later, not far from there in the city of Nagasaki, another atomic bomb called the <i>Fat Man</i> is dropped in Japan. It’s even more powerful, with more than 6 kg of plutonium and an explosion capacity equivalent to 21 thousand tons of dynamite. The explosion was devastating.
The number of Nagasaki victims is believed to have reached to 80,000, but it could have been even worse. Unlike Hiroshima, which is a relatively flat city, Nagasaki is in a mountainous region. When the shock wave hit these hills, its strength and heat were directed upward, away from the city.
This dissipated much of the destructive energy, saving thousands of lives. The American attacks on the city of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 1945 have ended World War II. But the world would not be free from conflict after that.
Years later, the Cold War between Americans and Soviets would leave the whole world scared to death of a new nuclear attack. The Cold War is over, but that fear is still there. The effects of the first nuclear bomb ever used in history serves us as a warning: A new war could bring an even more powerful weapon, capable of destroying not only a city, but all of humanity.
Could that be? Do you think this could really happen? Leave your comment down below.
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