 |
| On August 6, 1945, 8.15 am, the uranium atom bomb exploded 580 meters above the city of Hiroshima with a blinding flash, creating a giant fireball and sending surface temperatures to 4,000-C. Fierce heat rays and radiation burst out in every direction, unleashing a high pressure shockwave, vaporizing tens of thousands of people and animals, melting buildings and streetcars, reducing a 400-year-old city to dust. [1] |
"Fire and fury"...that sounds tough until you denigrate 755 career diplomats an adversary expels in a retaliatory move for [them] interfering in our last election cycle. 755 professionals, their families...and children that will be displaced stateside just as schools are starting. It sounds strong, but when Kim Jong Un thinks it's crazy, it likely is. There will be no "cost savings" or reduction to any payroll, as unbeknownst to most of us, Moscow hasn't raised their flag above our capital (yet). It's an obvious dodge, diverting attention from the ongoing Russia investigation, "playing chicken" with extinction for an ego; the plot for a poorly scripted reality show we're all haplessly in.
We cannot continue "government by tweet and bluster." We cannot call ourselves a federal republic when our leader undermines his own citizens. We cannot continue as a nation, a PLANET or a species.
He was aptly described as a "chaos agent" during the primaries. He proves it daily.
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed about 250.000 people and became the most dreadful slaughter of civilians in modern history. However, for many years there was a curious gap in the photographic records. Although the names of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incised into our memories, there were few pictures to accompany them. Even today, the image in our minds is a mixture of devastated landscapes and shattered buildings. Shocking images of the ruins, but where were the victims?
The American occupation forces imposed strict censorship on Japan, prohibiting anything "that might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility" and used it to prohibit all pictures of the bombed cities. The pictures remained classified 'top secret' for many years. Some of the images have been published later by different means, but it's not usual to see them all together. This is the horror they didn't want us to see, and that we must NEVER forget: [1]
 |
| Image Source: [1] |
 |
| Housewives and children were incinerated instantly or paralysed in their daily routines, their internal organs boiled and their bones charred into brittle charcoal. [1] |
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August 1945) were the first of their kind. "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"+ were their code nicknames. If this "fire and fury" bluster sounds "familiar," it was likely borrowed from this far more presidential source. 45's impressive uncle likely explained a lot of things to the young millionaire, but his by now well known infamously short attention span, he likely missed a few salient points. Half-life+ is measured in thousands of years, for example. The current yield of thermonuclear versus atomic devices has been proposed to not be measured in mere TNT or megatons, but Hiroshimas.
The pictures above are vile, ugly and a reflection of a dark part of our national soul. "Hindsight being 20/20 vision," our actions may have tragically been utterly and arrogantly unnecessary. [2] We have danced on the edge of this scalpel for three generations that has been the background for a field known as dystopian science fiction, until Carl Sagan's salient warning now bears the hindsight of prophesy. [3] "Duck and cover" drills have become a part of our history of gallows humor, as currently our two malignant narcissistic* heads of state act like prepubescent boys, comparing the size of their phallus symbols, erect and ejaculating like pyromaniacs over the fires of Armageddon. A universe as well as what's left of the Earth will go on.
Humanity: it's been a good run.
1. Hiroshima, the pictures they didn't want you to see, Fogonazas
2. The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did - Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie? Ward Wilson, Foreign Policy
3. “We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Related links:
How Do Nuclear Weapons Work? Union of Concerned Scientists
*Malignant Narcissism: Collision of Two Personality Disorders, Rhonda Freeman Ph.D., NeuroSagacity, Psychology Today [Note: since I am not a psychiatric professional, this is not breaking the "Goldwater rule." I am merely a citizen observing the obvious.]
No One Should Have Sole Authority to Launch a Nuclear Attack, by the editors of Scientific American, Policy & Ethics
Powerful Pictures Show What Nuclear ‘Fire and Fury’ Really Looks Like, Rachel Brown, National Geographic
Trump Doubles Down on Threats Against North Korea as Nuclear Tensions Escalate, Peter Baker, New York Times
#P4TC:
Catharsis... March 31, 2013
M.A.D... July 20, 2014
+Half-Life... August 5, 2016
The Minutes... January 30, 2017
The Physics of Doomsday... July 24, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment