a small-scale nuke on a city

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Welcome to CITY XX

Population: Average

1st Life ♥ ♥ ♥

Sunlight streams down from a baby blue sky as you wander through the busy, bustling streets of City XX. Tall, shiny gray buildings loom over you as you pass hundreds of people on the sidewalks and roads.
But wait.
Suddenly, there’s a bright white light, and then, you’re gone.

YOU HAVE DIED

 

So, what just happened? One moment you’re in City XX, the next… gone.

A nuclear bomb had just been detonated in the heart of City XX on March XX, 20XV at 9:21 in the morning. In just a mere millisecond, everything with two kilometers, including you, was evaporated by giant ball of plasma as hot as the sun. It’s akin to cooking an egg on the road on a hot day, only think of not just cooking it but burning it into nothing. Just gone.
Okay, then. Let’s try again, not within those two kilometers.

 

 

TRY AGAIN

2nd Life ♥ ♥

You’re inside a large building, drinking the morning mix at a warm cafe in the neat lobby. In an instant, you see a white flash. Thankfully, you only noticed it due to the glow emitted onto the glazed table and cup of mix. Some of the people who were directly looking at the flask would not be able to see for a few hours. No matter. You’re alive.

…Or not. You see, that white flash is still extremely hot and releases a scorching thermal pulse that sets everything within 13 kilometers on fire. After just a few milliseconds, you’re burning alive. Anything flammable, especially you, is a victim of the flash.

YOU HAVE DIED

The stages of a nuclear bombing are split into phases. Your first two lives experienced Phase One of a nuclear bombing, which happens in just a second. Remember the little girl with a balloon who waved to you when you saw her on the street? Or the old lady you helped cross the road to visit her new grandson? How about the man playing his guitar on the side of the road, or the family strolling by with their children? All these people you’ve passed either dissipated or burned to death. The devastation doesn’t end there, though.

The next phase is not much different, however. It only takes a few seconds. The people in the city are noticing that something is off, but it’s too late for them. In Phase Two, after the pulse, a violent shockwave arrives. Faster than the speed of sound, a balloon of hot, compressed air forms as the heat and radiation from the blast grows. Winds that put hurricanes and tornadoes to shame blast across the mangled city, and the few buildings who managed to escape the fire are flattened almost instantly. Unanimously, gas stations explode and fire spreads across the ruins, raging from the decimated, burnt rubble. Every building within 175 square kilometers topples like game of dominoes, trapping millions of people under tons of rubble, with smoke to keep their lungs company. Like a storm of evil souls on a rampage to reach heaven, a mushroom cloud rises into the sky, composed of billions of ash and residue from the fires. In a few minutes, a dark blanket is pulled over the sky, an ominous foretelling of City XX below. Mercilessly, it engulfs more and more oxygen, leaving nothing but a 50 feet deep crater behind.

So… let’s try again.

 

TRY AGAIN

3rd Life ♥

Safely in your house 21 kilometers away, you text away at your phone, messaging your friend. But then, you see a glow emanating from the flash through your windows.

< Yooo do you see what’s happening outside? There’s this glowing ball in the sky!

> Woah, really? Send a pic!

You open your camera app to snap photos of the hot ball expanding across City XX in the distance. However, you’re not out of danger. Unsuspectingly, you don’t realize that the shockwave is still coming towards you. A blast smashes your windows, exploding the glass with fury and scattering millions of shards into you and onto the floor. They slice your skin like scissors against paper, and in doing so happen to sever major nerves in your systems.

YOU HAVE DIED

YOU HAVE LOST

 

And that’s the ending scene of Phase Two. But there’s still a Phase Three. A nuclear explosion is NOT a natural disaster, where help can arrive almost immediately. So, in the next few hours and days, almost millions of people with snapped bones, lacerations, severe burns, and other possibly fatal conditions will have NO help–no food, water, medicine, electricity, or communication. In the next minutes and hours, thousands more die from injuries. Responders can’t come close to the explosion because of the radiation.
Oh, right. The radiation. Within the first few days, any survivors exposed to the most radiation die. Radiation rips the DNA in your cells apart. At first you’ll feel sick or dizzy, then worsen to being delirious, emaciated, and incapacitated. That’s not all. Depending on the surrounding weather, survivors may also experience a horrifying black rain.
All the hospitals nearby are overworked (like how they are during the pandemic, possibly even more) as there are more patients than they are equipped to handle- tens to hundreds of thousands of people who need immediate attention. Take Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose people suffered longer than the explosion.

 

HIROSHIMA

• uranium bomb
• 80,000 people killed instantly
• 50% of people killed from burns
• 50% of people killed from radiation contamination
• cancer and birth defects lasted for generations

 

NAGASAKI

• plutonium bomb
• 74,000+ people killed

 

Nukes aren’t mythical creatures. They’re real. They kill. And there’s no turning back. But perhaps the most chilling thing about a nuclear bomb is that no one knows how to prepare for one.

 

written by Saanvi Gutta

edited by Ms. Roberts and Keerthi Selvam

 

REFERENCES

Kurzgesagt (Director). (2019). What if we nuke a city? [Video]. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ

Rowley, L. & Ferris, J. (Directors). (2018). What happens when a nuclear bomb hits [Video]. New York Magazine. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lChLpK8kQr4

 

IMAGE SOURCE
Holloran, N. (2020). Simulation of a Nuclear Blast in a Major City [Film Image]. Nerdist. https://nerdist.com/article/nuclear-bomb-impact-city-documentary-short-nobel-prize-research/