The Atomic Bomb

Mk_6_nuclear_bomb

The world was seeing the end of World War II as the only Axis Power left standing was Japan. Germany was defeated and the Allies were so near in their total victory they could taste it. Japan had still some fight in them, refusing to surrender even though all of their war associates have fallen. Fire bombings from the Americans became a regular thing in Japan as planes dropped incendiary devices that destroyed properties and killed lives. But on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was filled with the sound of sirens that cautioned everybody. American planes were in sight in the skies of Hiroshima. Early warning devices like radars picked a lot of planes, “Necessary Evil”, “Straight Flush”, “Jabbit III”, “Full House”, “Top Secret”, and “Great Artiste” were some of the aircrafts that loomed over.

At 8:15 Japanese time, “Little Boy”, the nick name given to nuclear weapon, was dropped by “Enola Gay” a plane piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. It took 43 seconds for the bomb to reach its predetermined detonation height which was 600m above the city. The Enola Gay, which was named after Colonel Tibbet’s mother, felt the shock of the bomb after traveling 11.5 miles from the city.

There was destruction everywhere, not to mention the radiation brought upon by the nuclear weapon. Hiroshima was flattened out like a pancake with just a handful of structures left standing. Japanese people were killed, inflicted with burns, and suffered radiation poisoning. It was the very first day that the world saw the immense destructive power of atomic bombs, 2 days later, Japan was hit again.

As a race of intelligent beings, people in our world should have stopped making these weapons of mass destruction based from what we saw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But super powers just saw it as a signal to start making more. This started the arms race between America and Russia which gave way to the Cold War. It also inspired other countries to make nuclear weapons of their own increasing the number of nuclear warheads that seemingly holds the entire world hostage. Steps have been taken in the form of treaties to limit the number of warheads. The latest was in 2011 which aims to further decrease the number of warheads to 1,550.

Currently, according to the World Nuclear Stockpile Report, the total number of nuclear weapons is 17,300. It takes 16,000 warheads to destroy the whole world in an instant, but it only takes a few to cause destruction, radioactive poisoning, nuclear winter, to slowly wipe the entire human species off the map.

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