I saw a post on here showing the ‘shadow’ of a boy standing near the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bomb explosion, it’s not actually his shadow but just the spot that didn’t get ‘bleached’ by the damage of the explosion. I read that he was vaporized in quite a lot of comments on this case but one comment explained that the boy wasn’t actually vaporized, but how did he actually die? Where is his corpse or what’s left of it? How is the damage of atomic bombs different than ‘normal’ bombs used in wars?
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When a nuclear device detonates, the first thing that happens is a massive release of radiation – gamma rays and neutrons. The vast majority of these are absorbed by the air surrounding the device, heating the air up to incandescent temperatures. Some of that radiation may travel much further, and irradiate objects on the ground. The heat of the air will also re-emit radiation as light at longer frequencies, ranging from UV to Infrared.
So for the boy on the ground, and the ground around him, the first thing to hit will be gamma radiation, and lower frequencies. Depending on how close he was to ground zero, this may have been a lethal dose of radiation, but it would not kill him instantly. Following the gamma radiation comes UV and IR radiation. The gamma, UV and IR radiation are what bleached the ground, and imprinted his shadow on the ground. The UV would cause sunburn, and the IR physical burns. Again, he may have been close enough to be vapourised, but I suspect not.
As the atmosphere heats up, it expands. This massive expansion of superheated air is the source of the shockwave that follows the initial radiation-based flash. Under the detonation point, people and buildings are pounded flat. Further out, the shockwave is pushing away with tornado-strength winds, knocking buildings over and throwing people into rubble and surviving structures. The wind feeds fires started by the intense radiation. This is most probably the fate of the boy – irradiated, burned and thrown by the shockwave. There may well have been no identifiable remains, or the body may have burned in the resulting fires.
>How is the damage of atomic bombs different than ‘normal’ bombs used in wars?
Conventional explosive bombs generate a shockwave and shrapnel by detonating a chemical explosive. This generates a ball of hot gases that propel the metal casing and materials round the bomb over a wide area, causing damage. There is no burst of radiation, and so the heat generated is limited to that of the explosive. The shockwave is very similar, but does not have the scale of destruction that can be achieved in a nuclear device. The Hiroshima bomb delivered an explosion similar to about fifteen thousand tons of TNT explosive, in a device that was only 64 kilograms. Based on the largest WWII bomb, it would have taken one thousand five hundred Lancaster bombers to deliver 10 ton “Grand Slam” bombs all at the same time. That number of planes and bombs did not exist at the time.
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