Fat Man and Little Boy - Movie Review Example

Introduction

This historic-based factious film that narrates the creation of first atomic bomb as well as the key players involved during the Second World War. The story revolves between scientist J. Roberts Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) and General Leslie Gloves (Paul Newman) the military representative in charge of Manhattan Project. The film is marked by clash and resolution from both sides in pursuing a common goal.

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Title: Fat Man and Little Boy

The scientists may be driven by a common goal which could ethically lead towards gray areas. Fat Man and Little Boy- a 1989 film reenacts a Manhattan project - a secret allied endeavor to build the first nuclear weaponry during the Second World War. The film title Fat Man and Little Boy is derived from the two weapons, detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively in August 1945. The code names were actually originally derived from the characters in Dashiell Hammett's work. Consequently, the film focuses mainly on the frequently strained affiliation between the two characters.

The Manhattan Project: Fat Man and Little Boy

From the plot of the film, we learn that in September 1942, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers General Leslie groves who oversaw the edifice of the Pentagon is assigned the role to mastermind the American top-secret Manhattan project. This project was spearheaded to beat the Germans Atomic Bomb project. The gloves picked J. Robert Oppenheimer a Berkeley physicist at the University of California as the project team leader as he was familiar with the northern part of New Mexico as his folks once owned a cabin in the same area. Mr. Oppenheimer picked a remote part adjacent to the valley of Alamos Canyon on the Northwest of Santa Fe for the project's research facility.

Fat Man and Little Boy - Tickling the Dragon

The project faces a series of challenges as a product of the series of differences between the scientists and the military personalities from the gloves in keeping the project on track. Moreover, Oppenheimer also faces a series of defies from the fellow scientists who seek to know if they should remain pure researchers or if their personal liabilities should enter into the project. At some point Kathleen Robinson, a nurse and Michael Merriam, a young physician questioned what they were doing. Later during an experiment named Tickling the Dragon's Head, Michael is exposed to radiation when he drops and retrieves a radioactive component with bare hands so as to avoid collateral damage as they are working in an environment with little protection. Nurse Kathleen succumbs to the deformation and swellings caused by related radioactive exposure.

Fat Man and Little Boy: Bombs

With the Americans wary of a foreign espionage from communist sympathizers, the Americans undertake the military investigations as they solve the project's technical problems. The delays and technical problems encountered in the project sites across the America soil cause strife, mayhem and tension. Two separate bombs were designed as a part of a plan to avoid a single point of failure. Heavy plutonium was imploded with shaped charges (Fat Man) and another design for a less heavy and a thin uranium bomb prompted in short gun design (Little Boy). The live detonation took place the Trinity site Alamogordo desert where its development culminated and in awe everyone watched the mushroom clouds and roaring winds as both the bombs ushered I the atomic age.

On August 6th the pilot of a plane names Enola Gay plummeted an atomic bomb Nicknamed little boy that created an explosion equal to 15,000 tons of TNT over Hiroshima. The aftermath of the atomic bombs a high number of the innocent civilians including the children and a long term health effects for the survivors. The atomic radiation biology was in its infancy stage and no one anticipated the effect of such exposure.

Effects of the Little Boy and Fat Man Bombs

The Manhattan project had both positive and detrimental effects on the human race. The core engineering disciplines in the Manhattan project triggered the revolution of the atomic age and led to revelation and discovery of the atomic and subatomic wonders. With the motivation of the world crisis and knowledge of atomic chemistry Booth and Dunning managed to separate two isotopes of uranium to overcome the challenges of unleashing the nuclear energy which had led to delay in the Manhattan project. This new and purely scientific discovery was asked with ending the word war and construction of nuclear reactors of deployable sizes. Feet of engineering have been accomplished as a result of the use of the theory of gasses through the principles of chemistry and physics pursued later by the Manhattan project at Oakland.

Morally, the Manhattan project was irrefutably a success. However, it is inconclusively debated to date about the justification of the use of the atomic weapon by the United States in World War II. Most of the key stakeholders supported the decision and the authorization of the use of the weaponry by president Truman arguing that it was the least devastating option available. The non-military exposure of the radioactive waste went largely loose in the first decade after war. Nevertheless, the Hanford scientists ensured plant radioactive waste never got to the Columbia River ecosystem as the dying fish would economically affect the fish industry.

An ecologist tracking radioactive waste at the Manhattan project discovered that the radioactive waste went up the food chain up to possibly lethal levels. Another legacy for the Manhattan project is the Mars Rovers which are powered by plutonium. There is still a dash on a debate over the morality of the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki between the hard headed statesmen and the remorseful scientists as the Japanese through their literature witnessed that the bombardment of lethal x-ray caused deaths to thousands of citizens among other devastating effects in the human race. These bombs that had atrophied so much of the world had guaranteed the fact that the people of the world had to unite as one or else they would perish.

The use of the atomic bomb was inhuman as the children and women with no democratic rights to oppose such military government were heated up and turned into blobs of carbon impaled by flying debris and soaked with the radiation. Both the entire family and the whole neighborhood were wiped out. The Japanese outside Hiroshima and Nagasaki were too ignorant about the effects of the diseases. They were ostracized and shunned from Japanese society. Some of the victims could not withstand the trauma and they were left untreated thus finally committed suicide. Most of the people thought that the use of barbarous atomic weapons in Japan was of no material aid in the war against Japan. Notably Japan was already defeated and ready to surrender and therefore America made the worst out of such a war against the women and children.

Conclusion

In conclusion, 1945 was a year of engineering effort as the studies were finalizing with the Fat Man plutonium an implosive bomb and Little Boy a uranium gun assembly bomb. There was collaboration of chemical, mechanical, materials, civil and electrical engineering and the field of physics mathematics and chemistry to take the previous knowledge to the next level and discover a remarkable engineering success.