If nuclear fallout lasts thousands of years, how did Hiroshima and Nagasaki recover so quickly?
Dear Cecil: If nuclear fallout takes thousands of years to dissipate, how did the Japanese return to Hiroshima and Nagasaki three months after the nuclear bombs exploded? Doesn’t the area stay radioactive and uninhabitable for thousands of years? — Dawna Boehmer, via the Internet Not necessarily, obviously. As nuclear explosions go, the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pretty clean. In fact, in the weeks following the bombings, American authorities trying to keep a lid on the deteriorating PR situation portrayed A-bomb damage as being just like that from conventional weapons, except that there was more of it. Those already dying of “atomic sickness” knew better. Only gradually did the world realize that, even if you can safely walk through the ruins of a bombed city soon afterward, the effects of a nuclear attack continue to show up for years. Atom bombs like the ones dropped on Japan produce two types of radiation: initial and residual. (I’m getting this from Hiroshima and Nagasa
