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News and Discussions => History & Trivia => Topic started by: Marlin on Dec 15, 2007, 06:39

Title: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: Marlin on Dec 15, 2007, 06:39
I have not done this for a while so here is a little exercise for your search engines.

The Hiroshima blast caused complete devastation for a radius of one mile. How close to ground zero did someone survive?
Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: wlrun3@aol.com on Dec 15, 2007, 07:09
Quote from: Marlin on Dec 15, 2007, 06:39
I have not done this for a while so here is a little exercise for your search engines.

The Hiroshima blast caused complete devastation for a radius of one mile. How close to ground zero did someone survive?


   ..."By 1960, the US arsenal had increased to 18,638 bombs and warheads yielding 20,500 megatons...1.4 million Hiroshimas..."

   Arsenals of Folly, Richard Rhodes 2007

Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: ddklbl on Dec 15, 2007, 10:48
Quote from: wlrun3 on Dec 15, 2007, 07:09
   ..."By 1960, the US arsenal had increased to 18,638 bombs and warheads yielding 20,500 megatons...1.4 million Hiroshimas..."

   Arsenals of Folly, Richard Rhodes 2007



Nice, but that doesn't answer the question.  I think any further thoughts of yours should be directed to the PolySci forum...

QuoteThe distance from the exposed site of each A-bomb survivor to the hypocenter was measured utilizing a geographic information system, based on aerial photographs available for photographic survey, which were taken on July 25, 1945, in advance to the bombing, obtained from U.S. National Document Library in July 2002. The object was 597 A-bomb survivors with exposure distance less than 1km, classified into division 1 in confirmation of the exposure site in the survivor data base of Hiroshima Univ. A-bomb Medicine Research Institute. It was able to determine the exposure sites of 540 persons (90.6%). The number of survivors with exposure distance less than 800m was 40, and that of farther than 1km was 38. The average of the difference between the exposure distance assumed so far and the distance measured by this study was about 32.3m. It is necessary to confirm the exposure site with a high accuracy in location also for survivors exposed at farther than 1km (http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200414/000020041404A0349052.php).

Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: Cathy on Dec 16, 2007, 12:21
TABLE C: Percent Mortality at Various Distances Distance from X,
in feet - Percent Mortality 
0 - 1000  93.0% 
1000 - 2000  92.0 
2000 - 3000  86.0 
3000 - 4000  69.0 
4000 - 5000  49.0 
5000 - 6000  31.5 
6000 - 7000  12.5 
7000 - 8000  1.3 
8000 - 9000  0.5 
9000 - 10,000  0.0 

From http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml
Kinda' general but the best I could find late at night!
Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: TENN-1 on Dec 16, 2007, 01:27
QuoteOf the survivors, Akiko Takakura was among the closest to ground zero at only three hundred meters. She was twenty years old at the time, and she had just started her morning routine at her job in the in the Bank of Hiroshima.

"Well, it was like a white magnesium flash. I lost consciousness right after or almost at the same time I saw the flash. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in the dark. I heard my friends, Ms. Asami, crying for her mother. Soon after, I found out that we actually had been attacked.

Eyewitnesses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Written by Alan Bellows on May 3rd, 2006
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=522
Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: Gwyd on Dec 16, 2007, 02:14
That's pretty good stuff!  I work with a guy who was in the nuke Navy but never got wet...he was at that facility in SE Idaho that used to be an Army experimental power plant.  That's the one where the three guys got fried back in the early '60s.  The reactor vessel jumped 9 feet up and speared one of them to the ceiling with the stuck control rod.  The History Channel did a great cover of it on their "Engineering Disasters" series.
Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: Melrose on Dec 16, 2007, 08:38
Among others... Akiko Takakura was among the closest survivors to the hypocenter of the blast. She had been in the strongly built Bank of Hiroshima only 300m from ground-zero at the time of the attack.

http://www.inicom.com/hibakusha/akiko.html (http://www.inicom.com/hibakusha/akiko.html)

Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: wlrun3@aol.com on Dec 16, 2007, 01:23
Quote from: ddklbl on Dec 15, 2007, 10:48
Nice, but that doesn't answer the question.  I think any further thoughts of yours should be directed to the PolySci forum...



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Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: Marlin on Dec 16, 2007, 01:38
Excellent response and discussion, karma around (most of you  ;) that is).
Title: Re: Hiroshima survivor
Post by: Marlin on Dec 16, 2007, 01:41
Quote from: Gwyd on Dec 16, 2007, 02:14
That's pretty good stuff!  I work with a guy who was in the nuke Navy but never got wet...he was at that facility in SE Idaho that used to be an Army experimental power plant.  That's the one where the three guys got fried back in the early '60s.  The reactor vessel jumped 9 feet up and speared one of them to the ceiling with the stuck control rod.  The History Channel did a great cover of it on their "Engineering Disasters" series.

He has got to be pretty old, it was just a mound of dirt with a road out to it when I got to Idaho in 71.