Scary to think about how that is now considered a "small" bomb.

I can only hope that those weapons are never again used against our fellow humans.

The dark "stem" was debris thrown up from ground level.

did it emit any radioactivity? Were the soldiers that worked on it during this period in any harm?

I'm just wondering if the explosives surrounding it as well as the bomb casing was enough protection to prevent harmful emissions from the Plutonium to harm any of the workers?

but since the mass isn't critical as in during the explosion it isn't that "hot" even near the plutonium core. Certainly not the type of radiation that is a concern as long as the exposure is normal work day. Now a days such workers would wear a film badge and it would hardly register the exposure if at all.

I know more than I'd hoped to ever have to learn about this miserable subject...

Plutonium gives off a form of radiation that travels only a short distance.

The actual alpha particle that carries the radiation is so large that your skin can repel it. Even, they tell me, a piece of paper can stop it.

But it radiates forever and so when it is ingested it remains in your body radiating cells for a long, long time. That is why it is so deadly. Just one bit of plutonium in the right place can kill.

Other forms of radiation like gamma can penetrate the skin because it has no mass to speak of. And can only effect a few cells before losing it's power. But if you ingest radioactive atoms, it's in there attacking cells constantly.

IDK, but there were probably alpha, beta, and gamma rays in and around the bomb. The plutonium is the most explosive atoms and that makes for more energy being released relative to size.

... this was the era of the Atomic Cafe, and we didn't know jack shit about the radiation or its effects. I have no doubt all kinds of people got a nasty dose during that process.

Radiation.

But of course, the nation was at war, and at this point in their lives, these soldiers' far more immediate concern involved the answer to the question, "Will I be doing hand to hand combat on the island of Japan?" than any worries about radiation.

... that radition poisoning existed. A large number of the scientists who worked on the development of nuclear power died early deaths of cancer for that very reason. Even they did not know it was dangerous.

That fact is what makes the annual "should they have dropped the bomb" argument so silly. Ethically speaking, the only difference between these two attacks and all the other massive bombings was the radiation poisoning. Since nobody even suspected the existence of radiation poisoning at the time, ethically speaking there was zero difference.

you have to ask yourself whose work all the hundreds of people involved in the Manhattan project had studied back when in HS and college.

Marie Curie had suffered from radiation sickness and had died of cancer. Every important physicist had heard of her.

And many of these people knew by heart the story of the young girls who had done the radium painting of the luminescent clocks and watches, back in the Nineteen Teens, and what happened to most of them. (One of those young women went on to be an anomaly - she was the only one in the group to live healthily past middle age. The researcher sent in to study her found gigantic and off the wall readings on the Geiger counter, but her body was as unaffected by her past career as if it had only involved sugar and butter at a bakery.)

60,500 + British Civilians
500,000 + Russian Civilians
67,000 + French Civilians
260,000 + Chinese Civilians

300,000 to 600,000 German Civilians
330,000 to 500,000 Japanese Civilians
50,000 Italian Civilians

Dead is dead.

More people were killed in single night fire bombings several times during WW #2.

On many occasions more than 100K people were killed in single battles during WW #1. If we are talking about sheer numbers, #1 made the atomic attacks look like a walk in the park. I am somewhat surprised to learn that people do not actually know this fact.

F*** "somewhat". I am flat out shocked to learn this. Have they stopped teaching people about WW #1?

The layers of material in the bomb should have blocked the radiation from core of the device.

There were many layers of materials between the core and the outer shell most of which offer decent protection.

Lead of course is the best material, and there was a lead shield within the bomb. This was primarily to block radiation from interfering with the on-board electronics of the bomb, side effect being that it would protect the handlers. The outer steel shell of the bomb would have also provided protection. Lead's effect on radiation is 1 half-value for every 1cm of thickness. Steel has the same effect at 2.5cm of thickness.

So, working outward from the radioactive center, you have many layers of many different materials consisting of aluminum, cork, felt, comp-b (two very thick layers), plastics, a dural shell consisting of 12 pentagonal sections surrounded by an armor steel shell (1,500 bolts to assemble), the ballistic steel case, lead liner, and outer steel shell.

I'd fathom that would be sufficient to protect from leakages.

Uranium 235 has a half life of 700 million years. Which means that, despite it being radioactive, short term exposure would be safe. In fact, the pits were handled by physicists using nothing but gloves for protection.

The real acute danger doesn't come for these types of radioactive elements until critical mass is reached.

They used it at a comic con. Someone managed to sneak it online for a bit. It was really powerful. And actually made Godzilla seem edgy.

Unfortunately, it got pulled. And they use a different footage in the theatres. Instead of the "wow" of the original trailer, the one they are using gets laughter.

I would bet money the usual suspects were outraged that they were using the bombing of Hiroshima in that manner. Which would make sense, except that Godzilla was originally written as an anti-nuke device which made the original trailer perfectly appropriate.

Of course, the first person to whom I mentioned that responded that he had no idea Godzilla contained an anti-nuke message. So....

From a cultural standpoint, Godzilla is fascinating. Only 9 years after the bomb drop, Japan film-makers crafted a response, a blending of the new atomic age and Japan's ancient myth of fire-breathing dragons.

But it was more than that. Godzilla also epitomized Japan's collective remorse for WWII. Godzilla was their continuing punishment for 'causing' the bomb drop in the first place.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

I googled for more info and pictures. I don't understand what kind of person decides to create more of this kind of weapon after seeing the horrible devastation it causes. Nor do I understand why the technology wasn't banned worldwide for any purpose after this carnage.

all of the people that worked on these project all died soon after the Manhattan Project was finished.

It is a good read, and I am amazed that we are still alive today, with all the accidents that have happened during the cold war with nuclear weapons.

It's an island in the Marianas. I had a relative on the island when both bombs were loaded and dropped.

You might enjoy this story and song. The songwriter, Joe Crookston, tells about his grandfather's experience on Tinian.

I have Joe's CD with the same title. I always play the song on August 6th.

bookmarked

...but it's almost comic watching the B-52 backing over the bomb pit, guided by hand signals from the soldiers.

However, knowing the ultimate purpose of the activity made me wish that some little accident would occur to abort the mission, that history would change, and that the defused and unexploded Fat Man was now lodged in some museum as a permanent reminder of the horrors of war.

My father was a Chemical Engineer and worked in the petroleum and ceramics industries before and during the war. His employment in a critical industry was the reason he wasn't drafted. After the war he joined the Chemical Engineering Division of Argonne National Laboratory and worked in the nuclear energy field. I still have one of his mementos - a small clear plastic block containing a black stick about 1/2" x 1/2" x 2". The inscription in the block reads:

ON DECEMBER 2, 1942
MAN ACHIEVED HERE
THE FIRST SELF-SUSTAINING CHAIN REACTION
AND THEREBY INITIATED THE
CONTROLLED RELEASE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY

The 'black stick' is a piece of graphite from CP-1 (Chicago Pile-1), the first nuclear reactor which was built under the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. The demonstration of the chain reaction lasted 28 minutes. Then, Arthur Compton, head of the Metallurgical Laboratory, notified James Conant, chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, by telephone. The conversation was in an impromptu code:

Compton: The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.
Conant: How were the natives?
Compton: Very friendly.

That's part of the history, too, and history doesn't change.



The website Restricted Data - The Nuclear Secrecy Blog, where the Silent Nagasaki video originated is run by Alex Wellerstein and has a lot of very interesting information and history:



I recommended spending some time browsing around the site.

Thanks for the post, rug!

Thanks for posting this.

and by "genuine" I mean "something other than semi-porny fantasizing about us getting nuked"
http://books.google.com/books?id=r5p4Ko4oP2cC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

like a couple of years earlier, how many lives would have ended up being saved.

kick

I wanted to add a columnist for the New York Times Nicholas Kristof writes a great deal about human rights. However the great defender of human rights wrote a column defending the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. I refuse to take anyone seriously who calls himself a defender of human rights, but defends the use of the atomic bomb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/opinion/blood-on-our-hands.html

Also before anyone says I'm ignoring conventional bombing that is wrong as well.