Causes of Death from Nuclear Attack

Causes of Death

The immediate causes of death from nuclear attack are the blast wave, which can flatten heavily reinforced buildings many kilometers away; the firestorm, the gamma rays and the neutrons, which effectively fry the insides of passerby.

A school girl who survived the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the event that ended the Second World War, wrote this first-hand account of the event:

Through a darkness like the bottom of hell, I could hear the voices of the other students calling for their mothers. And at the base of the bridge, inside a big cistern that had been dug out there, was a mother weeping, holding above her head a naked baby that was burned bright red all over the body.

And another mother was crying and sobbing as she gave her burned breast to her baby. In the cistern the students stood with only their heads above the water, and their two hands, which they clasped as the imploringly cried and screamed, calling for their parents. But every single person who passed was wounded, all of them, and there was no one, there was no one to turn to for help. And the singed hair on the heads of the people was frizzled and whitish and covered with dust. They did not appear to be human, not creatures of this world.

Do you realize that the survivors would witness more subtle consequences of the war? (Quatations from Megan Jorgensen). Image: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)