You hear nothing as the world around you suddenly grows bright,
as if someone fired off a tungsten bulb at full power. Then the sound catches up with you, just
in time to hurl you across the room and smash you against the opposite wall. A blizzard of glass,
shrapnel, and concrete splinters tears through the room and rakes your body, leaving behind deep,
bloody tears in your clothing. The building around you rumbles as it breaks and showers
debris down upon you. A massive support beam crashes down, missing your head by inches.
You try to breathe but your lungs are instantly choked with dust, and by instinct you begin
trying to free yourself from the debris. Every breath just brings more choking dust,
and despite your numerous wounds your pressing need for fresh air overrides any feelings of pain.
You try and stand but your body doesn't respond, so instead you're forced to crawl towards a dim
source of light breaking through the gray cloud of dust. Moments ago it had been a perfectly clear,
sunny day- now you can barely make out the light of what you think is the outside through the haze.
The debris you drag yourself through has been superheated, and burns your hands and knees
terribly, but you have no choice but to keep crawling forward towards the light. You can feel
yourself asphyxiating from the lack of oxygen, your lungs struggling to pull in oxygen through
the thick cloud of dust that seems to have settled over the entire world. Finally, with blistered
hands, you crawl through a hole in the debris and fall forward, tumbling out onto the street.
The scene that awaits you is almost too much to believe.
Barely thirty seconds ago you had been speaking to your boss, seated at his desk with a window
behind him overlooking the street below. The sky was perfectly clear save for a few stray clouds,
and the sun shone fiercely. Outside, people went about their daily business-
unlike almost every other major Japanese city, Hiroshima had been left completely untouched
by American firebombing raids. You shuddered to hear the reports coming from across Japan
of massive firestorms started by the American bombs, leaving nothing but ash in their wake
and tens of thousands dead. A horrifying thought- but had the war gone differently
it would have been Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in ashes.
War was hell, but nothing could have prepared you for this.
The firebombing raids had sparked blazes that lasted for days,
but the once thriving city of Hiroshima has been reduced to ash and rubble in half a minute.
The destruction is almost too much to comprehend, and looming above you, filling the once clear
blue sky is a massive pillar of dust and ash miles high, topped with a foreboding mushroom
cloud that roils with soot-blackened clouds, spreading across the horizon at incredible speed.
You're lucky, you were over a mile from the detonation point, and looking in that direction
all you can see is a barren moonscape of rubble. Like most Japanese cities,
the majority of Hiroshima's buildings were made of wood, and the atomic blast instantly leveled
these. Only a few brick and mortar buildings are left standing across a landscape of ash.
Suddenly you feel the wind begin to pick up, and in the span of moments a hurricane force
gale tears through the shattered cityscape. Debris is sent flying by the hurricane winds, and you do
your best to flatten yourself as best you can while trying not to get blown away. Before you
another survivor is being picked up by the wind when suddenly a large wooden slat smashes into
them hard enough to send them flying. The impact is so sudden there isn't even a scream- you simply
watch their broken body get blown away into the smoky fog and haze that's settled all around you.
Just as suddenly as it began, the wind dies, leaving behind an eerie silence in its wake.
Other sounds begin to fill the void- the roaring of fires, the cracking and
breaking of buildings around you, and the high pitch screams of animals in distress.
No... not animals you realize. People. Survivors.
A man stumbles through the thick haze, his high pitch screams almost inhuman.
Finally- thankfully- his voice cracks and breaks, and his screams turn to loud,
ragged wheezing. His clothes hang on his body in shreds as he stumbles towards you, and it
appears that he's no longer wearing shoes. As he draws nearer you make a horrifying discovery-
it's not his clothes that are hanging off him in tattered shreds, it's his flesh. He was caught
out in the open when the bomb exploded, and the searing heat burned his clothing off in a flash,
melting and flaying his very flesh until it hangs off his bones in long, ragged strips.
Despite yourself you choke and gag from the vomit that fills your mouth.
Mercifully, the man slumps to the ground just a few feet away from you, his ragged
wheezing slowing and finally stopping. Death is a mercy for the horribly disfigured stranger,
but you can hear the screams of dozens- hundreds of others all around you in a similar state.
It's as if after the deafening silence of the massive blast the world had held
its breath for just a moment, and then began to scream in agony all at once.
As if on cue, your brain is now finally starting to recognize your own wounds and sorting through
the dozens of pain signals. Compared to others around you, you're in relatively good shape.
The blast threw you across the room, but you were lucky enough to be in one of the few brick
buildings in the city. The thick walls held up enough to shield you from the initial explosion,
but spalding from the massive blast showered you in a razor sharp blizzard of concrete shards.
Your hands and knees are thoroughly burned though, and blisters have already formed on the palms of
your hands from where you crawled over the superheated wreckage to get to safety. More
horrifying is your left arm- you remember standing in front of your boss's desk, the sunshine
coming in through the window behind you reaching up to your arm, bathing it in pleasant warmth.
This was the only part of your body exposed to the bomb's detonation several hundred feet above the
city center, reaching temperatures of a few million degrees in a matter of nanoseconds.
Even at a mile away it was enough to severely burn and blister your exposed arm,
and some of the blisters have torn open in your mad scramble to safety. Now the pain washes over
you with such intensity that you nearly black out, and have to fight your way back to consciousness.
You're thirsty. Incredibly thirsty- more thirsty than you've ever been before.
The temperature around you is easily over a hundred degrees, and you can physically feel
it getting warmer by the minute. Your tongue has swelled significantly, and now sticks
to the roof of your mouth. You have to find water, but looking at the wreckage around you,
you wouldn't even know where to look. Then you remember- the river. You have to get to the river.
The wind is picking up again, this time blowing superheated gusts of air that spread fiery embers
amongst the ruins. Like a giant bellows, the gusts of wind feed the fires, growing them in size and
intensity. The fire moves incredibly fast, almost like a living being, and you watch
in horror as a patch of fire is suddenly whipped into a frenzy by the blowing wind,
jumping across the street and consuming a group of people trying to free others
from the wreckage. The would-be rescuers, and the victims still trapped in the ruins,
are incinerated in moments. You can't even hear their screams over the sounds
of the roaring flames and hundreds of other human beings in similar distress.
You've still got your shoes on, and you're grateful for that small mercy.
Several survivors around you have somehow lost one or both shoes in the blast,
and you can see their bare feet blister on contact with red-hot debris. But they push on anyway,
seemingly with the same idea as you- get to the river. To remain here means death.
Above you the massive mushroom cloud has now blocked out the entire sky, turning a bright,
sunny morning into dusk. Suddenly, big, fat, greasy drops of rain begin to fall from the sky,
and you're grateful at first, turning your head up and opening your mouth wide.
Your parched throat is eager for water- any water at all- but you choke as a few of the
oversized drops land in your mouth and you try to swallow them down. They taste of ash, and as you
watch people wipe the black rain off their faces you see the long, dark streaks it leaves behind.
It is ash. The ash of thousands of vaporized buildings, atomized vehicles,
bicycles, bridges, and... people.
The blast has caused a massive cloud of soil and dust, which is born upwards by the superheated
winds. At the top of the black column, the mushroom head above you has spread out for
thousands of meters in either direction, cooling and being condensed into rain as the pressure
drops with elevation. The raging fires set off by the atomic bomb have sent plumes of more dust and
moisture high up into the air, mixing with the atomic cloud. The two phenomenon combine a mile
over your head, resulting in massive, black rain droplets the size of your fingertip.
You're desperate for moisture, but fight the instinct to happily lap up the falling rain.
Others around you however can't help themselves, and try to drink their fill of the ominous black
rain. That will prove a fatal mistake, as the would-be survivors ingest massive quantities of
highly radioactive debris. The irradiated dust and ash will burn them from the inside, causing
horrendous damage before being passed by the digestive system. It'll be fatal in most cases.
You rush forward against the black rain and gusts of superheated wind.
The fires are raging in full force now, and you are being physically driven back
from the heat of intense flames as much as thirty feet away from you. Working your way
through the ruined city is like navigating an invisible maze, as you try to feel the safe,
cooler areas in between raging infernos. At some points you have to grit your teeth and plunge
between two massive fires, the radiating heat causing first degree burns on your exposed skin.
You see others attempt the same feat, but in their weakened condition they
collapse from the waves of heat and fall face forward. Some pitifully try to crawl forward,
but the fires are so intense that they slowly cook them alive even from a great distance away.
Finally, up ahead, there's a break in the debris. You know this city, your hometown, like the back
of your hand, but it's almost impossible to navigate through the fires, the thick haze,
and the pouring, black rain. There are no visible landmarks anymore to give you a
sense of direction- you can only guess as to the direction of the river based on the few city parks
that you pass by, some of the only areas void of any major destruction thanks to there having been
no buildings built on them. Here people have begun to gather as they seek refuge from the
blazing infernos around them. Some of the parks are too close to the burning buildings though,
and as the fire sweeps through the ruins and surrounds the smaller parks,
the people huddling for safety inside of them are slowly cooked alive.
You know where you are now though, or at least you know that you're close to the river.
You push against the pain and horror with the last of your remaining strength,
stumbling out of the debris and onto the sloping bank of the Ota river.
Your momentum carries you forward though, and you lose your balance as you roll down the bank
towards the river below. Your numerous injuries are aggravated by the fall,
and the blisters forming on the exposed flesh of your body are painfully ripped open once more.
But soon you're in the water, and despite yourself, feel relief for the first time
since your world became a waking nightmare. You're surprised though, the normally cool
river water is shockingly warm, heated by the massive firestorm overtaking the entire city
of Hiroshima. There's others here who rush to your aid though, and help pick you up.
You're all in similar shape, you are the strong ones, or the ones with the least serious injuries,
who managed to claw their way out of the hellscape that has become Hiroshima.
The rest are dead, and there's nothing anyone could have done to save them.
Finally, you can't bear it any longer and you plunge your filthy hands into the river and
scoop up mouthfuls of water you greedily choke down. The river water is black too,
choked by debris and ash from the city it runs through, but it's at least cleaner
and safer to drink than the black rain that still falls from the twilight sky.
You have no idea that what will come next is the death of tens of thousands more to horrible
radiation sickness, or infection from terrible third degree burns. You have no idea that in
just three days another bomb will be dropped over Nagasaki, another city so far spared the wrath
of war, only this bomb will be many times more powerful than the one dropped on your home town.
Like the people of Hiroshima, the citizens of Nagasaki have been spared so far on purpose,
as part of a grand experiment to see just how devastating the newly developed atomic bomb truly
is. They'll hear of your plight in a day or two, the reports from Hiroshima so astonishing that
most will outright refuse to believe it. One man who'll immediately accept the reality of
nuclear warfare though is Yoshio Nishina, Japan's chief nuclear physicist and head of the nation's
own efforts to build an atomic weapon. Confused by the devastation, he'll be dispatched to Hiroshima,
arriving within 24 hours and confirming the worst- the city has been the victim of atomic attack.
Now go check out America’s Nuclear WArriors,
Global STrike Command- or click this other video instead!