After Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima and Fat Man on Nagasaki, 175,000 people dead. 130,000 in Hiroshima; 45,000 in Nagasaki.
Most of the dead, particularly in Hiroshima, were centered at ground zero, 1,800 feet below the blast. 90,000 people were immediately vaporized in Hiroshima, not even leaving a piece to bury.
Because the blast was so intense, everything was scorched. In that moment of pure, nuclear intensity, time stood still for those people. When the clockhand swept a second away, the blast was already cooling and spreading.
Left behind on surviving chunks of the street below were shadows, anonymous and casual. Though families and friends could never know what happened to the people of Hiroshima that morning, those anonymous blast shadows they left behind said enough.
- or maybe I'm just an idiot with too much time on my hands, trying to lend weight to an inherently creepy DA account.