Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Little Boy and Fat Man--an anniversary

Little Boy [foreground] and Fat Man [background]

An anniversary in a way of the beginning of nuclear weaponry development and politics--the assertion of world power and dominance. The debate of the use of nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities is still current and probably will be for some time. It is a complex issue of politics and a nation's desire to curtail one nation's imperialism and the desire to end armed combat. This date of the deployment of Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 claimed an estimated 70,000 to 130,000 immediate loss of indiscriminate life and three days later the deployment of Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945 claimed an estimated 45,000 immediate loss of indiscriminate life. Numerical estimates of deaths after the bombings is lacking but burns, radiation effects, and genetic mutations certainly were manifest.

Little Boy

Fat Man

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