I just learned that less than a month passed between the trinity test and “little boy” being used on Hiroshima. That seems like not enough time to be fully aware of the effect of nuclear fallout. Obviously everyone involved in the creation of the bombs wass a lot smarter than me, but was anyone aware of the lasting impacts of the nukes beyond the initial explosive destruction? Were the people that ultimately decided to use the nukes fully aware of the totality of the destruction they were about to unleash?
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u/restricteddata has written about this; his comment can be found here.
As he notes, Sean Malloy’s paper “A Very Pleasant Way to Die”: Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan is seminal to any discussion of the topic.