At Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb was first used against the Japanese, the temperature at the site of the explosion reached approximately 5,400 F. People within a half mile of the fireball were turned into "bundles of smoking char in a fraction of a second," noted Richard Rhodes in the book The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Such black bundles numbered in the thousands ? the shadows of destroyed souls. In the explosion of a much more powerful H-bomb, the fireball can expand to three miles in diameter, claiming the souls of tens of thousands.

That the creation of a sun on earth could destroy souls is consistent with mythology. The sun god is often represented by a falcon or other raptor, symbolizing the soaring spirit. The earth goddess is usually depicted with a snake, representing the powers of the flesh and the generation of life. The god and goddess thus represent the duality of soul and body. The angry goddess would destroy the body; the angry god would destroy the soul.

The scientists who created the nuclear bomb were not unaware of the spiritual or mythic dimensions of their actions. Moments after the explosion in the New Mexico desert, Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, recalled a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavadgita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In communications with each other, physicists considering the ethics of the bomb cited the Old Testament, the teachings of Buddha and various works of literature, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Yet, for all their soul-searching, apparently none of the physicists in the Manhattan Project ever considered the possibility that a nuclear inferno would destroy both body and soul.

The decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately rested with the Commander in Chief, President Harry Truman, who apparently spent little time contemplating the unique destructive power of the atomic bomb. Hitler killed millions of people, but at least the essence of those people ? their souls ? lived on in the afterlife or through reincarnation. Truman was the first person in history to rob people of both body and soul, and thus he was worse than Hitler. Unless, of course, you believe killing souls is a good idea.