Nuclear Shadows
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| This photo credit of gensuikin.org |
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| Credit to imgur.com
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What are these captivating phantoms, painted in the form of grainy, old photographs? They're shadows, burned into the steps and walls of Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. The shadows paint snapshots of what people were doing the instant the bomb erupted. The flash from the bomb going off is so bright and hot that it actually bleached and burned any material it touched- think what happens when you leave something paper or plastic out in the sun for a few weeks, but happening in less than a thousandth of a second. The shadows are literally just that- areas of surfaces that were shielded from the bomb's light by something or someone. Bear in mind that Little Boy (the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima) and Fat Man (Nagasaki) are among the smallest nuclear bombs that were ever made by the United States. The upper photo is classically held to be the shadow of a man who was waiting on the steps for the bank to open. The lower photo is of a man with a ladder, and I'd venture to speculate that what's in his hand is a bucket of some sort.
Now, I don't think these people were vaporized, since the materials their images are burned into seem to be in pretty decent shape. It's difficult to say if they could have survived, though, and to say that they were burned would be more of a euphemism than an understatement. It's easy to speculate that the burns would not be unlike the sort you see in lightning strikes, where clothes catch fire a melt to people, jewelry melts onto the body, and clothing patterns are burned onto the skin, with the addition of second or third degree burns and cataracts or blindness. Their shadows, though, have persisted to this day. The shadow from the first picture is still visible in a museum dedicated to the bomb in Hiroshima. Alas, nothing is truly permanent, and any shadows that were not shielded have faded with exposure to the elements. If they haven't done it on their own, I would ask you to commit these awesome testaments to the power of the nuclear weapon to your memory. If you're interested in learning a little more about the awesome destructive force of these weapons, the movie Barefoot Gen is a good place to start.
Fight The Fear
Thankfully, nuclear weapons have only ever been used twice in warfare. I expect (and hope) that we won't have to ever raise that number. Severe burns, environmental damage, genetic mutations, lingering radioactive waste, what's not to be afraid of? Nuclear energy. Nuclear energy isn't well understood by the general public or the mass media, and it's often associated with the likes of nuclear bombs, when they're about as close as an IV needle is to a sword. There's a circulating perception that after a nuclear bomb, an area is rendered hazardous to live in for decades, when that isn't and wasn't the case. People have continued to live in Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the bomb, with the only ill health effects occurring in bomb survivors (including developing cancers (about an extra 400 cases per 10,000, so a 4% increase[1]), anemias, and other long-term health consequences years after the fact). When the Chernobyl reactor went up, it released about four hundred times the amount of radioactive elements released by Little Boy. Pretty scary, right? Until you realize that, at least among the atomic bomb testing that was tracked, several countries released 100-1000 times that amount through nuclear weapons testing between the 1960's and 70's alone, and that hasn't killed us.[2]Though it was evacuated (with good cause, as the radioactive Iodine could and did cause a few thousand extra cases of Thyroid cancer in the area very close to the reactors), there are now people living in Pripyat again, getting along fine with the slightly elevated background radiation levels. In fact, the wildlife has flourished there for years. Most of the really bad stuff also has pretty short half lives, and burns off to negligible levels within a few weeks or months. Within a year or two, post-nuclear areas are generally safe to be in.
Still not convinced? Think I'm pulling your leg? Let me ask you what you think of coal power. They're contributing to global warming, the bastards, you might say. Well, that's not all. An average coal fire power plant puts out 100 times more radioactive elements in daily operation than your average nuclear power plant. In an interview with Scientific American, an associate lab director told the magazine that experiencing an adverse effect from the radiation from living near a nuclear power plant was about a one in one billion event, compared to one in ten to one hundred million from a coal fire plant. [3] Translation? You're ten to one hundred times more likely to suffer an adverse health event from the radioactive ash from your local coal plant than you are from your local nuclear energy facility, and the world is absolutely covered in coal power plants. Where are the crowds screaming to tear down the coal industry that's permanently poisoning the world with its radiation? If there are any, they're few in number, and for good reason. The same article I just cited also states that you're about four times as likely to get struck by lightning than you are to suffer any health consequences from either sort of power plant- not to mention that lightning's more apt to kill you. Not only that, but even living in the shadow of a coal plant, the amount of radiation you experience on a daily basis is only 0.1% above background radiation- you can get more than that from natural uranium concentration in naturally occurring rocks.
Still, you wonder, what can you do to make the world a better place? If you're worried about protecting you and yours, and you live close to a nuclear reactor, it wouldn't hurt to purchase a bottle of Potassium Iodide tablets. Just beware of sellers with outrageous prices or claims, one tablet should be as good as another- and don't take it prophylactically, because it shuts down your thyroid to keep it from taking up radioactive Iodine. That means it'll only protect your thyroid, and only protect it from radioactive Iodine- which is a big one after a meltdown- so don't go running around in fallout like you're superman. Your best protection is still distance and shielding. Also, you could always try growing mushrooms. ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ ; http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2013/11/radiation-ahead-eat-a-black-mushroom.html )
If you want to make the world a better place, there's lots of choices. You can donate to organizations dedicated to keeping peace or promoting nuclear non-proliferation; You can educate yourself and others on nuclear energy and how safe it really is (there's a course taught by the University of Pittsburgh coming up soon at https://www.coursera.org/course/nuclearscience ); You can educate yourself on fusion power (which produces no radioactive waste, only Helium) and write your politician to push for us to become the first country to power itself with a truly powerful and clean energy source.
Still, you wonder, what can you do to make the world a better place? If you're worried about protecting you and yours, and you live close to a nuclear reactor, it wouldn't hurt to purchase a bottle of Potassium Iodide tablets. Just beware of sellers with outrageous prices or claims, one tablet should be as good as another- and don't take it prophylactically, because it shuts down your thyroid to keep it from taking up radioactive Iodine. That means it'll only protect your thyroid, and only protect it from radioactive Iodine- which is a big one after a meltdown- so don't go running around in fallout like you're superman. Your best protection is still distance and shielding. Also, you could always try growing mushrooms. ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/ ; http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2013/11/radiation-ahead-eat-a-black-mushroom.html )
If you want to make the world a better place, there's lots of choices. You can donate to organizations dedicated to keeping peace or promoting nuclear non-proliferation; You can educate yourself and others on nuclear energy and how safe it really is (there's a course taught by the University of Pittsburgh coming up soon at https://www.coursera.org/course/nuclearscience ); You can educate yourself on fusion power (which produces no radioactive waste, only Helium) and write your politician to push for us to become the first country to power itself with a truly powerful and clean energy source.
Sources & Citations
