Atomic Bomb Effects

Effects of the Atomic Bomb Ryan McNall Southern Vermont College

In our vast history of events, we have learned a lot about radiation. One event in time that had a big effect on what we know about radiation was when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. This attack started the nuclear warfare age and gave the world an idea of what radiation can do to your body if it is used in the wrong ways.
Before the attack on Japan, the United States learned of new developments in science that could change the age of modern warfare. The uranium atom was a major factor in the development of atomic bomb when German physicists learned it was possible to split them in half to produce bombs
According to the article The Atomic Bomb, people who were very close to the bomb at the time of detonation, people who died instantly where left as black char on the ground because of the intense burns they got from the radiation (The Atomic, n.d). According to the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, most of diagnoses given to patients were also known as acute radiation syndrome. Someone who has acute radiation syndrome usually starts to see these effects between three hours to a few months after the explosion and exposure to a high dose of radiation. If the dose of radiation is low, the problem will become better over time however, on the other end of the spectrum if the dose of radiation is too high it can result in death in the two weeks following the attack. Most victims who died in the two weeks following the bomb explosion had severe abdominal damage and some also experienced bone marrow failure in the later end of those first two months (Acute, 2007). Some other problems people encountered after the bomb detonated included loss of hair, bleeding on different parts of the body, mouth and throat redness, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. In some cases, many people lost all of their hair depending on how bad the condition they were in. However, about two months after the bombing some people started to see their hair
According to the article Hiroshima Anniversary: What Actually Happened When the Atomic Bomb was dropped, people who had long term effects started to see those effects about a decade later. In 1956, cancer statistics increased tremendously which would later start a tumor registry done by Hiroshima and Nagasaki so they could take the data collected and learn how cancer can be a risk of a high dose of radiation. The article states that Leukemia would be the most fatal effect between two to eight years for many people and children. After the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation was formed to do studies on people who survived the attacks to see what kind of effects they encountered. Among the people who survived the atomic bomb in 1945, forty-six percent of the people who died were diagnosed with leukemia and another eleven percent of people died from other types of cancer between 1950 and 2000. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation found that the people who died from leukemia and cancer during this time were exposed to too much radiation from the bombs (Smith, 2014). Another long term effect that occurred after the attacks was the defects in future generation of the survivors. The most common birth defects in children after the attacks were anencephaly, cleft palate, cleft lip,