Accurate inputs are pretty important to forming assumptions. Here is one among the few—in the nuclear winter skepticism debate—I think needs to be reconsidered:
(1) That 50% of nuclear detonations have produced firestorms.
Below I explain why the number would be 100%.
If you read any of the several DTIC—OSTI archived papers (including Project Flambeau—see note at the end of this post) and the Manhatten Engineer District (MED) report about nuclear weapons effects in Japan, there is a common conclusion that Hiroshima was subject to a firestorm, but Nagasaki was not. The presumptive (but erroneous) explanation of “why” (it was not a firestorm) is repeated by Mr Hinge (above). It’s an urban myth, a conventional presumption, accepted by most authors since 1946.
This presumptive statement of fact (serving as an input assumption for analysis of nuclear winter probabilities) runs through the reports, journals, and blogs: “Despite the absence of a firestorm,”
The MED report contradicts itself—since what it describes is actually a real description of a real firestorm:
“Almost all homes within a mile and a half were destroyed, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly burst into flames as far away as 10,000 feet from ground zero. Of the 52,000 homes in Nagasaki, 14,000 were destroyed and 5,400 more seriously damaged. Only 12 percent of the homes escaped unscathed.”
There is conspicuous visual evidence that contradicts the long-running, “no firestorm in Nagasaki” conclusion. Examine these oft-reported photos of the Nagasaki nuclear clouds:
The Nagasaki post-detonation photos (above) show two cloud formations: (i) a mushroom cloud (left) and (ii) a pyrocumulus cloud (ie a fire cloud) on the right. The pyrocumulus cloud indicates a firestorm was triggered by the Fat Man detonation—which had a 20% to 25% greater yield than Little Boy (ie. the Hiroshima bomb) where a mass fire was reported and shown in post-detonation photos.
As Mr Hinge reveals, the Hiroshima pyrocumulus firestorm cloud, even in the most credible sources, is more often misidentified as a nuclear detonation mushroom cloud.
Here is another photo of the Hiroshima pyrocumulus cloud:
Congressional hearings (1946) reviewing the effects of the Japan bombings emphasize the Nagasaki fire effects, below; a clear indication it was a mass fire:
“The only actual fact that we could get at the end of the second month of study, at the beginning of October, was that at Nagasaki they had recorded the burning and cremation of 40,000 bodies.”
In summary, it is evident that the long-standing presumptive fact no firestorm was initiated by Fat Man is contradicted by the evidence. Any analytic factoring as to how many nuclear detonations in cities will produce a firestorm should be 100%. Firestorms are a physical fact of the ballistic effects of nuclear weapons when used on urban and suburban targets. All exposed fuels will burn and mass fires will occur.
I would, perhaps cynically, but realistically suggest that the omission of this “technical” historical fact about nuking cities is due to the distaste for the reality that nuclear weapons are, in urban areas, equally if not more lethal as fire bombs than as blast (ie pressure) bombs. Their thermal radiation instantaneously ignites a wide area (ie beyond the blast radius) of any exposed flammable materials. That is followed by a rapid conflagration, the adjacent ignition of any remaining flammables, the subsequent eruption into a mass fire, with hurricane-force winds, --- creating a complex self-propagating “firestorm”. A firestorm is usually identifiable at a distance by its pyrocumulus, firecloud.
(Note: But that may not be the only physics by which Black Carbon can enter the stratosphere. Apparently, Black Carbon may also enter the stratosphere by radiative forcing without a pyrocumulus event: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/2901/2023/ ).
The record reveals Fat Man triggered a mass fire in Nagasaki. The photographs indicate the presence of a pyrocumulus, smoke cloud. The question to ask in terms of inputs to a Nuclear Winter calculus is not how many urban and suburban nuclear detonations will produce firestorms. That will undoubtedly always be 100%. Instead, the question is, how many of those firestorms will be events that inject soot into the stratosphere? And in the case of mass fires, where they don’t end up cooling the troposphere, they will warm the troposphere by amplifying the greenhouse effect .
Ethical considerations: Bring this conversation down to earth
Here is a descriptive simile for Nagasaki, in an award-winning article by Douglas Fox, where he quotes observations of the effect of the WWII Allied bombing intended to create firestorms in German cities.
“The winds swirled into flaming tornadoes that swept up people and turned them into “human torches.” Balls of fire shot out of buildings. Within 60 minutes, a spiraling pillar of smoke had swelled into an anvil-shaped thunderhead that towered 30,000 feet over the city.”
Note: Project Flambeau—“flambeau” is French for “torch”, and literally means “beautiful flame” or “beautiful light”. Below the URL will take you to the article, “Inside the Firestorm”, by Douglas Fox, High County News, 2017, where he poignantly connects the firestorms of war with the firestorms of today’s climate change-driven super fires (ie Ft McMurray, Camp Fire/Paradise, Los Angeles et al)
Thanks for the comment and engagement, but I’m not sure the sources you list demonstrate that there was a firestorm at Nagasaki (which, if true, would raise the concern about nuclear winter at the margin).
Certainly, there was a huge fire at Nagasaki—much like large scale forest fires and other mass conflagrations—and your sources support that fact. However, such fires do not seem to inject stratospheric soot in the absence of a firestorm—it was predicted for both Iraqi oil well fires and conventional mass forest fires where ultimately a stratospheric soot injection/climate shock did not manifest.
Instead, it really seems to need a firestorm. This is not just a big fire that kills many people and burns many things—as a nuclear weapon is certain to do over a city. A rolling fire may burn the same area or event kill as many people, but it will not inject the same soot, it is the self reinforcing firestorm “cell” that is the key here.
Claiming Nagasaki was not a firestorm is an observation about the nature of the fire that formed, and the resulting soot lofting (notice, the iconic photo of Hiroshima’s soot “anvil” was not matched to my knowledge by a similar photo from Nagasaki—as there wasn’t a firestorm to loft it, just a massive conflagration). I carried out no battle damage assessment at Nagasaki—and I have no basis to do so, I’m simply going on what was reported—if you have a source that explicitly reports a firestorm cell forming above Nagasaki I would be very interested to read it. However, the academic consensus seems to be that there was not one—and from what I understand planners were even disappointed by the fact, there doesn’t seem to be any form of coverup if that was your concern?
If you do think that Nagasaki resulted in a firestorm and soot lofting however, that would push concerns upwards for a climate shock in the event of a nuclear conflict—which I am certainly concerned about too.
Accurate inputs are pretty important to forming assumptions. Here is one among the few—in the nuclear winter skepticism debate—I think needs to be reconsidered:
(1) That 50% of nuclear detonations have produced firestorms.
Below I explain why the number would be 100%.
If you read any of the several DTIC—OSTI archived papers (including Project Flambeau—see note at the end of this post) and the Manhatten Engineer District (MED) report about nuclear weapons effects in Japan, there is a common conclusion that Hiroshima was subject to a firestorm, but Nagasaki was not. The presumptive (but erroneous) explanation of “why” (it was not a firestorm) is repeated by Mr Hinge (above). It’s an urban myth, a conventional presumption, accepted by most authors since 1946.
This presumptive statement of fact (serving as an input assumption for analysis of nuclear winter probabilities) runs through the reports, journals, and blogs: “Despite the absence of a firestorm,”
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/nagasaki.htm
The MED report contradicts itself—since what it describes is actually a real description of a real firestorm:
“Almost all homes within a mile and a half were destroyed, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly burst into flames as far away as 10,000 feet from ground zero. Of the 52,000 homes in Nagasaki, 14,000 were destroyed and 5,400 more seriously damaged. Only 12 percent of the homes escaped unscathed.”
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/nagasaki.htm#:~:text=Almost%20all%20homes%20within%20a,of%20the%20homes%20escaped%20unscathed.
There is conspicuous visual evidence that contradicts the long-running, “no firestorm in Nagasaki” conclusion. Examine these oft-reported photos of the Nagasaki nuclear clouds:
https://m.toppersnotes.com/current-affairs/blog/nagasaki-day-QFWv
The Nagasaki post-detonation photos (above) show two cloud formations: (i) a mushroom cloud (left) and (ii) a pyrocumulus cloud (ie a fire cloud) on the right. The pyrocumulus cloud indicates a firestorm was triggered by the Fat Man detonation—which had a 20% to 25% greater yield than Little Boy (ie. the Hiroshima bomb) where a mass fire was reported and shown in post-detonation photos.
https://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2020-07/reality-check-atomic-bombings-hiroshima-nagasaki
As Mr Hinge reveals, the Hiroshima pyrocumulus firestorm cloud, even in the most credible sources, is more often misidentified as a nuclear detonation mushroom cloud.
Here is another photo of the Hiroshima pyrocumulus cloud:
https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/effects/firestorms.html
Congressional hearings (1946) reviewing the effects of the Japan bombings emphasize the Nagasaki fire effects, below; a clear indication it was a mass fire:
“The only actual fact that we could get at the end of the second month of study, at the beginning of October, was that at Nagasaki they had recorded the burning and cremation of 40,000 bodies.”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c109105422&view=1up&seq=547&q1=509
These (below) are photographs of the aftermath of that mass fire, (photos from a Nagasaki Prefecture Report):
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/bombing-survey/section_II.html
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasaki_temple_destroyed.jpg
In summary, it is evident that the long-standing presumptive fact no firestorm was initiated by Fat Man is contradicted by the evidence. Any analytic factoring as to how many nuclear detonations in cities will produce a firestorm should be 100%. Firestorms are a physical fact of the ballistic effects of nuclear weapons when used on urban and suburban targets. All exposed fuels will burn and mass fires will occur.
I would, perhaps cynically, but realistically suggest that the omission of this “technical” historical fact about nuking cities is due to the distaste for the reality that nuclear weapons are, in urban areas, equally if not more lethal as fire bombs than as blast (ie pressure) bombs. Their thermal radiation instantaneously ignites a wide area (ie beyond the blast radius) of any exposed flammable materials. That is followed by a rapid conflagration, the adjacent ignition of any remaining flammables, the subsequent eruption into a mass fire, with hurricane-force winds, --- creating a complex self-propagating “firestorm”. A firestorm is usually identifiable at a distance by its pyrocumulus, firecloud.
(Note: But that may not be the only physics by which Black Carbon can enter the stratosphere. Apparently, Black Carbon may also enter the stratosphere by radiative forcing without a pyrocumulus event: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/2901/2023/ ).
The record reveals Fat Man triggered a mass fire in Nagasaki. The photographs indicate the presence of a pyrocumulus, smoke cloud. The question to ask in terms of inputs to a Nuclear Winter calculus is not how many urban and suburban nuclear detonations will produce firestorms. That will undoubtedly always be 100%. Instead, the question is, how many of those firestorms will be events that inject soot into the stratosphere? And in the case of mass fires, where they don’t end up cooling the troposphere, they will warm the troposphere by amplifying the greenhouse effect .
Ethical considerations: Bring this conversation down to earth
Here is a descriptive simile for Nagasaki, in an award-winning article by Douglas Fox, where he quotes observations of the effect of the WWII Allied bombing intended to create firestorms in German cities.
“The winds swirled into flaming tornadoes that swept up people and turned them into “human torches.” Balls of fire shot out of buildings. Within 60 minutes, a spiraling pillar of smoke had swelled into an anvil-shaped thunderhead that towered 30,000 feet over the city.”
Note: Project Flambeau—“flambeau” is French for “torch”, and literally means “beautiful flame” or “beautiful light”. Below the URL will take you to the article, “Inside the Firestorm”, by Douglas Fox, High County News, 2017, where he poignantly connects the firestorms of war with the firestorms of today’s climate change-driven super fires (ie Ft McMurray, Camp Fire/Paradise, Los Angeles et al)
https://www.hcn.org/issues/49-6/inside-the-dangerous-and-unpredictable-behavior-of-wildfire/
TW
Dear Tedd,
Thanks for the comment and engagement, but I’m not sure the sources you list demonstrate that there was a firestorm at Nagasaki (which, if true, would raise the concern about nuclear winter at the margin).
Certainly, there was a huge fire at Nagasaki—much like large scale forest fires and other mass conflagrations—and your sources support that fact. However, such fires do not seem to inject stratospheric soot in the absence of a firestorm—it was predicted for both Iraqi oil well fires and conventional mass forest fires where ultimately a stratospheric soot injection/climate shock did not manifest.
Instead, it really seems to need a firestorm. This is not just a big fire that kills many people and burns many things—as a nuclear weapon is certain to do over a city. A rolling fire may burn the same area or event kill as many people, but it will not inject the same soot, it is the self reinforcing firestorm “cell” that is the key here.
Claiming Nagasaki was not a firestorm is an observation about the nature of the fire that formed, and the resulting soot lofting (notice, the iconic photo of Hiroshima’s soot “anvil” was not matched to my knowledge by a similar photo from Nagasaki—as there wasn’t a firestorm to loft it, just a massive conflagration). I carried out no battle damage assessment at Nagasaki—and I have no basis to do so, I’m simply going on what was reported—if you have a source that explicitly reports a firestorm cell forming above Nagasaki I would be very interested to read it. However, the academic consensus seems to be that there was not one—and from what I understand planners were even disappointed by the fact, there doesn’t seem to be any form of coverup if that was your concern?
If you do think that Nagasaki resulted in a firestorm and soot lofting however, that would push concerns upwards for a climate shock in the event of a nuclear conflict—which I am certainly concerned about too.