Does this make sense?

[MrFun]

I'm reading an article/essay titled Hiroshima: The Victims, by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II.

Here is the passage that I'm trying to make sense out of:

"First came heat. It lasted only an instant but was so intense that it melted roof tiles, fused the quartz crystals in granite blocks, charred the exposed sides of telephone poles for almost two miles, and incinerated nearby humans so thoroughly that nothing remained except their shadows, burned into asphalt pavements or stone walls."



Okay, I'm trying to wrap my brain around the mentioning of shadows being burned into the ground or in walls. So if anyone can explain what this means, I'm all ears.

[snoopy369]

Assuming it's not metaphorical, I presume he means that the blast caused human-shaped patterns to be made on the pavement because the blast hit the human, and therefore hit the pavement/etc. behind them less significantly in the area their body shielded than the area around their body.

My bet would be metaphorical though (the shadows of the people = their memories, things to indicate they were there, etc.)

[East Street Trader]

It is figurative.

Quite powerfully so.

[SlowwHand]

I don't know. A shadow is an image. I can believe an image being melded.

[Solver]

It's a not uncommon effect when there's extremely high radiation. Since nukes do have extremely high EM radiations, objects (people, trees, fences) absorb a lot of photons from the radiation, while the areas behind them (shadows) therefore get exposed to less radiation.

This shows the famous "shadow effect" - the discoloration caused by intense flash heating sihouetting undamaged surfaces that were in shadow. "Shadows" can be either dark, like normal shadows, if the heat caused bleaching of the surrounding area (common with pigmented paints); or light, if the surrounding area is darkened (e.g. by charring).

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Effects/index.html

[East Street Trader]

But you can't call that "burned into". It would be the opposite.

[snoopy369]

The shadow could be considered the outline around it, I'd suggest

[Wezil]

.

[Wezil]

..

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
But you can't call that "burned into". It would be the opposite.

Precisely.

When I viewed this images in a documentary, I assumed that the human blocked the radiation and that the area around the shadow was "bleached" by the radiation blast.

[MrFun]

Thanks for the photos you provided, Wezil.

As for the statement I quoted being entirely metaphorical, I thought it was at first too but, given the context in which I read it, and from its tone or whatever, I then changed my mind, and figured it couldn't be read as metaphorical.

[Wezil]

"The left photograph shows the stone steps of the main entrandce of Sumitomo Bank which is only 250 meters from the hypocenter. It is believed that a person sat down on the steps facing the direction of the hypocenter, possibly waiting for the bank to open. By a flash of the heat rays with temperatures well over a 1,000 degrees or possibly 2,000 degrees centigrade, that person was incineratied on the stone steps.

Up to about 10 years after the explosion, the shadow remained clearly on the stones, but exposure to rain and wind has been gradually blurring it. So, when the bank was newly built, the stone steps were removed and are now preserved at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum."

[MrFun]

wow . . .. .

[Blake]

It's one way to leave your mark on the world.

[chequita guevara]

What happens is that the blast whitens everything facing it, so a shadow, blocking the radiation, would prevent that area from being whitened.