"Now I am Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds" - An Ode to The Atomic Bomb

klye (75)in #writing • 8 years ago

A haunting passage from the Hindu scripture the "Bhagavad-Gita" spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) who was a physics professor as well as a theoretical particle physicist. If you are unaware of who this man is I highly suggest you look into the history of our species. He was a key part in the "Manhattan Project" which yielded humanities first atomic bombs and served as the head of Los Alamos Laboratory during the second world war which saw worldwide casualty numbers over 60,000,000 people.

Atomic Weapons Are Mankind's Most Powerful Tool

No, it's not the internet or the advent of our latest and greatest technologies to come in the past 70 years but the A-bomb which harbours humanities greatest use of force. While some would disagree with this statement, no amount of information transmitted through the net nor any device currently known on this planet will ever be able to stack up to the sheer magnitude of force exerted from the detonation of an atomic device. Ever. Period.

_{( A gif taken from footage of a 1955 A-bomb test - google images )}

Both the Americans and Nazi scientists were working on atomic weapons by world war II. The theoritical power unleashed by these weapons was almost sure to win the war if either side was able to develop and deploy the weapon before the others did. Extensive above ground, below ground, under sea and high atmosphere atomic tests were performed with the first a-bomb nicknamed "Gadget" being detonated on July 16th 1945 at the Trinity site below:

_{( The massive 2,400 foot crater left by the first A-bomb "Gadget" at Trinity - source )}
The "Gadget" a-bomb had a yield roughly ekual to 20,000 tonnes of TNT being lit off at once and only one such device was created in its style due to complexity and cost. Other A-bomb's developed during the Manhattan Project were none other than the famous "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" of which the Little Boy design was dropped on Nagasaki effectively forcing the Japanese surrender.

_{( A picture of the "Little Boy" A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan - source )}

A cross section of the "Little Boy" A-Bomb Mechanism to show readers how it operated:

_{( A cross section illustration of "Little Boy" A-bomb showing firing mechanism - source )}

These weapons are capable of vaporizing everything close to their target and if by some miracle the initial blast didn't kill you the slow death of radiation poisoning was likely to kill you later on. An example of the sheer destructive force of the shock-wave of such a blast is seen below vs a conventional house, range from the blast unknown..

_{( A house is destroyed by an A-bomb shockwave - source )}

The sheer power of these weapons coupled with the fact they left behind massive amounts of background radiation made them an incredible doomsday weapon to be deployed against the enemies of the United States. However it was not the Americans that ended up creating the largest "Nuke" detonation on this planet but the Russians with their massive "Tsar" bomb featured in the video below:

As much as I am absolutely amazed by these incredible weapons off mass destruction I hope I never have to see a mushroom cloud with my own eyes in real time. Nuclear warfare is a 0 sum game with no winners which eventually would poison the entire planet and every living thing on it.

The scary part about all of this is of the 9 countries that have produced nuclear weapons some 15,000 of these devices still exist today.. That is basically enough to destroy the world 7 times over and kill every living thing on the surface. Terrifying yet mesmerizing.