[satvikpendem]

I recently went to the Hiroshima museum. I had originally thought that people simply vaporized when the bomb hit, but that is not the case. The museum shows how people's skin simply sloughed off and some were holding parts in their hands as they walked around to find their loved ones.

But the worst part was radiation poisoning. Many that did not initially get hit and burned directly went towards the center of the city to find their families and over the course of days, months and years, they almost always died a slow, painful death, with their teeth falling out and their skin and organs becoming necrotic.

Truly, everyone should visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki at some point, if only to understand what true horrors nuclear weapons create. And those are only atomic weapons of the 1940s, the hydrogen bombs we have today that fuse instead of fiss are orders of magnitude more powerful, but at least those under their effects (near the epicenter) will die a quick vaporized death instantaneously.

[mppm]

As an addition (and correction) to this, powerful thermonuclear weapons don't vaporize anyone either. They are targeted for high-altitude airbursts and kill through a combination of burns and building collapse, plus secondary fires, infection and breakdown of emergency services. The majority of the victims would not die an instant death.

For more information: https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html

[dredmorbius]

There are multiple lethal effects from nuclear weapons, and a person inside the 100 million Celsius fireball itself (TK-radius), yes, will be vapourised.

Fireball size depends on weapon yield. For a 1 MT weapon, the radius is roughly 870m, at 5 MT ~1010m, at 150 KT, about 250m.

Most US nuclear weapons yield between 600 to 2,200 KT (0.6 to 2.2 MT).

Whether or not individuals are within the fireball radius depends on the height of detonation, parameters of the nuclear explosion itself (shaped nuclear charges are theoretically possible, though I'm not aware whether any present weapons are designed as such), and of course the local population density.

Outside the fireball, the principle lethal mechanism is the shock wave, though thermal pulse can still provide severe burns, and initial and fallout radiation can also be lethal, though over longer periods (hours, days, weeks, or more).

Effects generally fall with the inverse cube law. Larger weapons also experience an inverse cube effect, such that a one thousandfold increase in weapon yield delivers only a tenfold increase in effects at a given distance.

People may be vapourised, though most within a blast effect area will likely not. They may however be severely burned if directly exposed to the thermal pulse. Near in, other lethal effects, which may be delayed by a few seconds, principally from the blast wave, should predominate.

Air-burst attacks would likely decrease vapourisation. Penetrating / shaped charges would have markedly different and highly directional effects.

Major Kong would not have felt a thing.

[bdjsiqoocwk]

I'm curious why effects fall with interest cube, when geometry demands that energy density falls with interest square...

[mppm]

Blast effect falls off approximately as distance cubed, because the overpressure wave deposits energy in the volume and disperses gradually. Thermal radiation, on the other hand, falls of as distance squared, more or less. This is why the main damage mechanism goes from radiation to blast to thermal as the bomb gets larger.

[justinpombrio]

Regardless of how big a bomb is, there's going to be a distance at which it's no longer immediately lethal. Inside that radius you die quickly, outside you die slowly.

[seatac76]

I had a similar experience, looking at the contorted metal lunchboxes and other household items was more terrifying, I always used to think things just go poof.

[userbinator]

You should also visit the Pearl Harbor memorial, to understand what lead to the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[gklitz]

I’ll assume that you are American, so you obviously don’t understand how tone deaf that suggestion is to the current thread. Imagine someone commenting on horrible Auschwitz’s is after they visit and someone commenting “you should visit the Reichstag building to understand what lead to it all”, or a thread about 9/11 and someone suggest visiting a museum about the conflict in the Middle East to learn what lead to the events.

Obviously we are talking about completely different types of events and magnitudes of death and destruction, and the very notion that you should try to find justification for murder by events you can correlate to people who share ethnicity or nationality with the victims is just a cruel insult to anyone with a hint of human decency.

[userbinator]

Ask what "hint of human decency" the Japanese had to attack a neutral country.

It seems you've fallen for the propaganda that they've been producing ever since. Regardless whether they'd be nuked they would've still suffered horribly.

[skeaker]

It doesn't really matter what the cause is or who did what or who "deserved" it. The sheer scope and magnitude of a nuke blots out anything else. I recommend you look up the film When the Wind Blows, which I believe is on YouTube now. It's an animated thing about a rural English couple and how their little world ends when their country is nuked. It is extremely tragic and grim and all too real, because it focuses on these people who could never have had a say in anything that happened to them and were victims of a system that never consulted them. Watching that film and then going to the national air and space museum and seeing the plane that dropped the bomb in real life shook me in a very real way when I realized the human cost of it all. The horror of it isn't that the agony it causes is unimaginable, but that it's completely real, that it has happened and could happen again to anyone or to everyone. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

[satvikpendem]

Indeed. I did find it interesting that the museum made no mention of the atrocities committed by the Japanese military in China as well, or even any discussion of Pearl Harbor beyond a mere mention that Japan attacked it. But then again, that doesn't really have anything to do with the suffering experienced by the populace, as the sins of the government should not be atoned by the governed.

[lifthrasiir]

It should be noted that up to 15% of all hibakushas were Koreans, who were seen as second-class citizens in Japan in spite of the government propaganda that annexed Koreans are given same rights as Japaneses. So the lack of statements about wrongdoings of the former Japan empire, including WW2, is certainly relevant here.

(Just in case, Nixon Hidangyo is clearly aware of this and has campaigned for proper recognition of Korean survivors for a long time.)

[satvikpendem]

I went to Korea after Japan and they in fact do have museums dedicated to this fact. It's quite enlightening to visit various countries who've been subject to the same historical events and see where each ones bias lies. I felt the same in Vietnam with their museums.