–(The patterns of clothes burnt by the heat rays of the atomic bomb.) “Kid, they
–(The patterns of clothes burnt by the heat rays of the atomic bomb.) “Kid, they dropped atom bombs. Uncle Sam threw a piece of the sun at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killed a million people. One great big flash…”“I saw it”“Kid? Did it light up the whole sky? Could be.”[…] “But a flash of light filled the stadium, flared over the stands in the southwest corner of the football field, as if an immense American bomb had exploded somewhere to the northeast of Shanghai. The sentry hesitated, looking over his shoulder as the light behind him grew more intense. It faded within a few seconds, but its pale sheen covered everything within the stadium: the looted furniture in the stands, the cars behind the goalposts, the prisoners on the grass. They were sitting on the floor of a furnace heated by a second sun.” –J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun “ ‘Physics has taken a bad path,’ he wrote. […]"Did he foresee the forces locked within the heart of the elements?[…]"Does one stop the compulsion to defeat […]? In our culture […] the neurosis of glory is the first served, […] One does not stop this progress, this progression, this climb, no, this descent into the Underworld. One fine day, this route to the summit became atomic escalation, the old and new thanatocracy, the power of and through death. […] One does not stop this volcano, its lava flow and rain of ash. One climbs the sides of the crater; falls into the chimney.” –Michel Serres, Biogea -- source link