Eyeballs melted by atom bomb explosion's heat

[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.