A Horror of the Atomic Bomb

How could a bomb wipe out five-square miles of buildings and kill tens of thousands of people? The Atomic Bomb or nuclear bombs are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. Atomic bombs have been used only twice”both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II. The Atomic Bomb to date is the deadliest weapon to be discovered so far. When the Japanese Combined Fleet bombed Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II, the United States then took approximately four years to create the atomic bomb and disintegrate two of Japans major cities near the end of World War II.

When Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and his combined fleet bombed Pearl Harbor; it had dealt great amounts of damage to the harbor and killed a couple thousands of citizens. Of course, the most important consequence of the attack on Pearl Harbor was the American declaration of war against Japan. While this was expected, Japan thought the US would be entering the war with a crippled and broken navy. Despite the efforts of the bombing runs on December 7th, the United States Navy wasn't nearly as hindered as it was meant to be.  (The Consequences).

After the bombing on Pearl Harbor, the United States began experimenting with numerous weapons to fire back at Japan. The United States then found a weapon that could wipe out a city or a population. Japan's attack on pearl harbor led us to make the deadliest weapon on earth, the Atomic Bomb.  By drawing the United States into World War II” Awaking the Sleeping Giant,”the Japanese engaged a formidable foe that eventually led to their total defeat in 1945. (The Consequences). After the Japanese Fleet bombed Pearl Harbor; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the official declaration war on Japan. The United States had then tested with numerous elements in secrecy of the public in Alamogordo, New Mexico; the U.S. finally set off the very first test of the Atomic Bomb. The question now became”on whom was the bomb to be dropped? Germany was the original target, but the Germans had already surrendered. The only belligerent remaining was Japan. (History.com Editors). The United States was ready to show Japan what the U.S. as really made of. The next target was the two major cities of Japan.

The Atomic Bomb is the harshest weapon known to man that could eliminate a city full of buildings and citizens. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. finally entered the war with the strongest navy fleet and weapons that any country has ever seen. Finally, on the morning of July 16, in the New Mexico desert120 miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated. The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves 10,000 yards away to observe as the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized (History.com Editors). The Atomic Bomb weighed at least 9,000-10,000 pounds since the weapon made smoke arise 40,000 feet into the air and had to pack a punch that felt like 15,000-20,000 tons of dynamite.

The Atomic Bomb had to be made from a fissile element, which is material capable of sustaining a nuclear fission chain reaction. such as Uranium or Plutonium. The tower it was on, had to be made from numerous pieces of steel to support the weight of the bomb, but it was vanished into thin air after the nuke was detonated. In the battles, in which they used the Atomic Bombs, they dropped them using colossal size parachutes. The U.S. then knew that instead of the United States citizens being afraid of Japan; that Japan should now be afraid of the U.S. They harness the forces that hold the nucleus of an atom together by using the energy released when the particles of the nucleus (neutrons and protons) are either split or merged. (How do nuclear weapons work?).  An Atomic Bomb takes the purest energy there is, which is the theory of splitting an atom, and the bomb holds all the pressure inside its shell until it hits the ground and causes a mushroom shaped cloud to appear. When the nuke detonates; there is a great deal off heat that rapidly gets hotter and less dense because of the surrounding air. When the smoke, debris, and heat reach at a certain distance in the air; a vacuum type reaction happens and all the air that is surrounding the fireball of intimate death then goes inside the fireball and pushes out the debris and heat causing a mushroom cloud.

On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of a new and most cruel bomb.'. (History.com Editors). Hiroshima is a city that is 130 square miles large, and just a bomb wiped out 90% of just that one major city. The Japanese Emperor did not know that the U.S. had another bomb that could eliminate that much of a city. The bombs killed over 100,000 people in less than a week, and more then 30,000 more over the course of the next few years because of radiation exposure. the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber...The plane dropped the bomb“known as Little Boy . it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, (History.com Editors). The bomb had to be carried by a specially created airplane that could do two things, which was to make sure the bomb stays still throughout the flight from start to finish and could handle the amount of weight that was put into the airplane. If the plane was not modified; then the pilot would have probably died when the plane fell from the sky because the bomb weighed a ton. Or the airplane would have hit slight turbulence and make the bomb hit the side of the plane, and then the bomb goes off in the cargo area.

This bomb was made with a very rare element, which would later cause mass destruction to one of Japans manufacturing center with approximately 300,000 people in the city. The bomb was very heavy because it was full of uranium, so that the chain reaction would not only stop at one of the element particles but keep on reacting with other fissile particles in the atomic bomb. Hiroshima's devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender..., drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb Fat Man....More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast.... Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb's effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles. (History.com Editors). The bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was a much wider and heavier bomb than the one dropped on Hiroshima. The reason being is because the U.S. wanted to show the Emperor that the Japanese imperial army needed to surrender, or the United States would keep dropping the new and most cruel bomb.

The Atomic Bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was made from plutonium, and one particle of plutonium is a little bit heavier but does a lot more damage to a target. When the new and improved plutonium Atomic Bomb hit the Nagasaki area the U.S. had thought it would throw debris in all direction, but since the bomb hit between two mountains the debris had just imbedded itself into the side of the mountain. The Atomic Bomb had done great damage to both cities in Japan, and with the newly and updated research on the Atomic Bomb; we now have approximately 4,000 nuclear warheads ready to be deployed on any opposing forces that threaten the U.S.  the United states also has the second biggest stockpile of nuclear warheads in 2018.

The Atomic Bomb are weapons of mass destruction that if a country had enough it could wipe out an entire country in just a few hours. The Bombs have a special element inside the shell called a Fissile element, which uses nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. These bombs have only been used twice, and both were used three days apart by the United States against Japan. They used these bombs as a consequence of the Japanese Combined Fleet Bombing Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Atomic Bomb was the deadliest weapon to use and certainly the most expensive in World War II. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. then took four years to create the deadliest weapon to man also known as the Atomic Bomb.  Which country would be next to feel Americas wrath?

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