The Effects of the Atomic Bomb - A History in Pictures
An animation of the "mushroom cloud" created when the atomic bomb bursts.
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/st/~plewis/page5.html
The energy from the atomic bomb consisted of the blast (about 20 kilotons of TNT),
the heat (up to 7000 degrees F at the center), and the radiation.
A diagram showing the effects of the blast based on distance from the hypocenter.
Information derived from: www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/data.html.
The mushroom cloud that burst over Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945. When the first bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane Enola Gay that dropped the bomb, wrote in his journal, "My God, what have we done?" The question continues to be asked today, sixty years later.
Shigeru, a Japanese middle school student, was sent to school with a simple lunch on the morning of the blast. Three days later, as his mother wandered through the ruins looking for his body, she found him with the lunch box held tight under his stomach. The high temperatures melted and charred the food that he never ate.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/Stage1/S1-2E.html
Shinichi, then a toddler almost four years old, loved to ride his tricycle.
When the bomb hit, he and his tricycle were both badly burned; he died later that night.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/Stage1/S1-2E.html
Showing some of the aftereffects of the radiation: leukemia, or blood cancer, levels rose among bomb survivors. Even 40 years after the initial blast, some are still first experiencing the results of radiation poisoning.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/Stage1/S1-2E.html
A man suffering from burns after the initial blast. Aside from the high temperature, the radiation levels were high enough to kill him in less than 30 days. A survivor recalled, "Wherever I walked I met [people burnt and injured by the bomb]. . . . Many of them died along the road - I can still picture them in my mind - like walking ghosts."
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/Stage1/S1-2E.html
The charred remains of a boy lie 700 meters from the hypocenter of the blast in Hiroshima. "When I came down to a bridge, soldiers of the Akatsuki troops were picking up a tremendous number of corpses out of the river bottom using landing crafts. All corpses were completely naked. Some corpses remained their hands up, others twisted the legs in agony. They were bloated up by water in pale white. The scene was too eerie to recall even today," said survivor Takeharu Terao. (http://www.coara.or.jp/~ryoji/abomb/a-bomb2.html) Aside from the thousands killed, psychological trauma still plague many survivors of the blast.
http://www.ask.ne.jp/~hankaku/img/naga3.gif
