Miraculously, the building immediately under the hypocenter was not incinerated. After much debate, the building’s remains were stabilized and left in place as a reminder of the terror of that day. It’s now called the Atomic Bomb Dome (for obvious reasons if you look at pictures of the building). Almost everything else for 2 kilometers in every direction evaporated.

At the hypocenter, the ambient temperature instantly jumped to approximately 7,000 degrees F. By way of reference, the kind of steel that is typically used in modern construction melts at 2800 degrees F.

An eighth of a mile from the hypocenter a man sat on the stairs of a bank, waiting for the doors to open. He was vaporized where he sat. The surface of the stone stairway he was sitting on was bleached nearly white by the immense heat. The place where he sat just a moment before was made completely empty but for his outline, a shadow left behind because his body absorbed the heat. Today, you can see those same steps and that man’s shadow in the Peace