why is Nagasaki and Hiroshima livable?

Question

at school I was told that after nuclear explosion it would take centuries before people could come back to such place.
Japanese people never moved out. I know about victims, birth defects. But people live there and most of them seem to still live and have one head, two arms and two legs.

Answer 1

What you see are survivors, those remaining after sickness and disease have culled out the less resistant members of the group.

Answer 2

The school told you wrong. The radiation from the nuclear explosions decayed fairly rapidly, and because the explosions were high in the atmosphere, most of the fission products stayed in the air rather than hitting the ground near the cities. (The fission products eventually blew out to sea and mostly fell in the oceans as rain.) The US government has published several references on the subject.

Answer 3

A good question. The bombs were exploded about 1700 feet up, so the heat flash would do the most damage. If they'd exploded at ground level, those cities would still be uninhabitable like Chernobyl. The human race got off lightly back in 1945. God help us all if bunker-busting nukes are ever used by anybody.

Answer 4

At least two factors are at work here.
1) the bombs exploded in the airspace above the city, minimizing the effects of radiation.
2) the bombs were relativity inefficient as compared to current technology.

The fact is the remaining population suffered greatly from radiation exposure. The effects continue to this day. The problems are mostly increased levels of cancer.

Answer 5

some nuclear residue is still there, but most of it is gone. not gone off of the earth, but rather has be carried elsewhere by winds and other means. nuclear residue never disappears, it just dissipates over the earth.

Answer 6

it is livable but some damage re still in the genes