Eyeballs melted by atom bomb explosion's heat

[foolsguinea]

Do crystals have special powers? Could a super-bright light cause blindness?

Cecil is asked if a bright light can cause instant blindness, and offers this off-the-wall answer:

In his book Hiroshima John Hersey describes some victims: “There were about twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. (They must have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off; perhaps they were anti-aircraft personnel.)”

And they were alive? It’s unclear here. I mean, that’s a high temperature, to pop eyeballs. Was it fatal, as one might expect, or not, leaving them eyeless and thus blind?

[Fear_Itself]

They were alive. Here is a little more context:

On his way back with the water, he got lost on a detour around a fallen tree, and as he looked for his way through the woods, he heard a voice ask from the underbrush, “Have you anything to drink?” He saw a uniform. Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with the water. When he had penetrated the bushes, he saw there were about twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. (They must have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off; perhaps they were anti-aircraft personnel.) Their mouths were mere swollen, pus-covered wounds, which they could not bear to stretch enough to admit the spout of the teapot. So Father Kleinsorge got a large piece of grass and drew out the stem so as to make a straw, and gave them all water to drink that way. One of them said, “I can’t see anything.” Father Kleinsorge answered, as cheerfully as he could, “There’s a doctor at the entrance to the park. He’s busy now, but he’ll come soon and fix your eyes, I hope.” . . .

[foolsguinea]

:shudder: Years ago, I saw a movie set right after the atom bombings. In it, a man points to the wreckage and says, “Never let this happen again.” That came to mind on reading your excerpt of the scene.

[Fear_Itself]

I first read Hershey’s Hiroshima in the seventh grade. I remember it to this day, and consider it a formative book in my life.

[dropzone]

This afternoon I saw a British Antiques Roadshow in which someone brought pottery that his dad had collected six miles from Ground Zero. The glaze was melted, meaning that the temperature reached 1300C. Hot enough to melt glazing is hot enough to fuck up your eyes.

ETA: Maybe not “melting,” as we know it, but thoroughly messed up. There is a point where the details stop mattering.

[Senegoid]

I’ve also wondered: Do eyes really “melt” or something like that? And OP asks, if so, is one still alive by the time that happens?

Just recently, I saw another news story saying the same thing about Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko. It was a retrospective article about the up-coming 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, and there was also a story in gruesome detail about the death of Gus Grissom, which led to yet another story about the even more gruesome death of Valentin Bondarenko. (Sorry, no cites, can’t find the articles today.) One of these articles did mention that Bondarenko’s eyes were melted out (it used the word “melted”), and the rest of him was substantially incinerated from head to ankles, yet he was conscious (and begging for pain-killers) for eight (or sixteen?) hours before he died.

Okay, here’s an article I just found: This one also mentions that his eyes were gone, although doesn’t actually use the word “melted”:

In 1984 St. Martin’s Press published a book, entitled “Russian Doctor”, by the Russian emigre surgeon Dr. Vladimir Golyakhovsky. He described the death of a cosmonaut trainee in a pressure chamber fire. Half an entire chapter was devoted to the incident – and with authority – since, incredibly, Golyakhovsky (a specialized surgeon-traumatologist) had apparently been the emergency room doctor at the prestigious Botkin Hospital when the dying cosmonaut was brought in.

As Golyakhovsky remembered it, a severely burned man identified only as “Sergeyev, a 24-year-old Air Force Lieutenant,” was brought in by stretcher. “I couldn’t help shuddering,” Golyakhovsky recalled. “The whole of him was burnt. The body was totally denuded of skin, the head of hair; there were no eyes in the face. … It was a total burn of the severest degree. But the patient was alive…”

Golyakhovsky saw the man’s mouth moving and bent down to listen. “Too much pain – do something, please – to kill the pain” were the tortured words he could make out.

“Sergeyev” was scorched everywhere but the soles of his feet, where his flight boots had offered some protection from the flames. With great dimculty the doctors inserted intravenous lines into his feet (they couldn’t find blood vessels anywhere else) and administered painkillers and medication. “Unfortunately, Sergeyev was doomed,” Golyakhovsky remembered realizing immediately. “And yet, all of us were eager to do something, anything, to alleviate his terrible suffering.” The man lingered for sixteen hours before dying.