Ray
Bradbury
Visions
of the
Bradbury's writings are often set in the
future as he foresaw it in the 1950s.
Unlike many other science fiction
writers, he focused on the
consequences new technologies and
machines would have on mankind.
Common themes among his
futuristic stories are mankind's
ever growing ability to utterly
destroy itself. Man is
determined, he says, to gobble
up as much of his world as
possible. It is when a man is
overwhelmed by technology that
he becomes both greedy for the
world around him and
“
There Will Come Soft Rains” is one of Ray Bradbury's
most famous stories. The story was written and
published in Bradbury's highly acclaimed collection of
stories,
The Martian Chronicles
, in 1951.
Written in an era in which many people were
concerned about the devastating effects of nuclear
weapons, the story depicts a world in which human
beings have been destroyed by nuclear force. The
central irony of the story is the fact that humans
have been destroyed rather than saved by their own
The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and
Hiroshima, Japan, were recent memories in
1951, and many readers and critics found Bradbury's
images of a desolate planet haunting and cautionary. In a further moral lesson, Bradbury shows how human
technology survives a nuclear blast, yet is
ultimately destroyed by
nature, a force which prevails over all others. The story, which
happens in the future but takes its title from a poem by Sara Teasdale, is a prime example of how science fiction literature can
encompass moral and philosophical concerns.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
A
shockwave
rushes out
from the
ball of fire
like a solid
steel wall;
behind
this wave
comes a
great wind
Much of
the
bomb’s
energy is
released
as
radiation –
heat and
light-
which
shoot out
from the
fire ball a
fraction of
Five miles
away, the light
glares as
brightly as 100
suns. Virtually
everything
within one half
mile will be
Heat waves
will sear
Within one mile, many fires will be started
by the heat radiation or broken gas lines
and electrical short circuits. Broken water
Trapped at first within the fire ball, deadly
gamma rays (nuclear x-rays) burst forth.
These rays are powerful enough to penetrate
concrete walls two feet thick and kill or injure
The flash in visible wavelengths is so intense that
it can produce
permanent blindness
even when
viewed through sun filters. The infrared (heat)
flash of even a small atomic bomb can be felt on
the skin
ten miles away
. Up close, it is instantly
lethal. Some of the most dramatic artifacts from
the Hiroshima bomb were the carbon –
particle human silhouettes etched into
stone – all that was left of those within the
Nuclear Fallout
Fallout carries radiated particles of dust and debris for hundreds of miles. Even if people survived the initial blast, they would likely get radiation poisoning. The first signs of radiation sickness include:
nausea vomiting headache
some loss of white blood cells
Effects of Radiation Exposure on Human Health
Many people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki died not directly
from the actual explosion, but from the radiation released as
a result of the explosion. For example, a fourteen-year-old
boy was admitted to a Hiroshima hospital two days after the
explosion, suffering from a high fever and nausea. Nine
days later his hair began to fall out. His supply of white
blood cells dropped lower and lower. On the seventeenth
IN ORDER TO END WORLD WAR II, THE UNITED STATES
DEVELOPED AND DECIDED TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB. IN AUGUST OF 1945, WE DROPPED TWO OF THESE BOMBS IN JAPAN. THE FIRST, CODENAMED
“LITTLE BOY,” WAS DROPPED ON
HIROSHIMA. THE SECOND, CODE
THE FOLLOWING PICTURES WERE TAKEN IN
THE
AFTERMATH OF THE THESE TWO
NUCLEAR
EXPLOSIONS
. THEY SHOW THE RESULTS
OF
THE
FIRE BALL, BLAST WINDS, HEATED
WAVE,
