Dragon Fire

Bombay/Mumbai, India

The temperature was 36°C, the day was clear with visibility of more than twenty-five kilometres and a light wind blew in from the south at 8.33 k.p.h. It was one of the hottest days of the year and many workers had stayed inside their air-conditioned offices for lunch away from the heat and humidity.

Those outside who instinctively looked towards the flash had their eyes burnt out. The ones who survived — and not many did — were blinded with third-degree burns to their eyes. The breeze whipped up into erratic gales which flung pedestrians at more than 160 k.p.h. to their deaths. Within about 0.1 milliseconds after the explosion, the radius of the fireball was about 14 metres. The ground at the centre exploded with heat. Tiles, granite, glass within a radius of 1,500 metres melted. Fires leapt out of wherever there were flammable materials, so that just about every building was alight, even four or five kilometres from where the warhead went off, forcing millions out onto the streets. Their clothes burst into flames as well, and afterwards bodies were found with clothing patterns etched onto their skins. The first thought of most was to head for water and thousands sought refuge on the sweeping beach along Marine Drive, or Sasoon Dock near the Gateway of India. The explosion had set off tremors in the ground like an earthquake and the sea swelled angrily around like water in an unsteady bowl. The sand exploded like popcorn, burning their feet and driving them towards the water. As they swam out, the fires proved to be faster and stronger. The victims were eventually incinerated by leaping fireballs which seemed to bounce out to sea in all directions killing everything in their paths. One moment the beaches were filled with the sound of shouting and crying. The next they were quiet apart from the roars of conflicting winds created by the nuclear explosion. Then, people would appear again chasing sanctuary until the next fireball engulfed them.

The citizens of Bombay were being killed by three direct impacts from the explosion: blast or shock, thermal radiation and prompt nuclear radiation. On top of this, there were the effects of the electromagnetic pulse in which they felt as if they were being smashed in the back by a hammer, then immediately hurled into boiling water or an inferno. Thousands more were cut up and killed by flying glass and debris or in secondary explosions of cars, motor-scooters and domestic gas cylinders.

Within twenty minutes of the explosion a circle of three kilometres radius from the blast was ravaged by the same type of firestorms as ripped through Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo following the incendiary attacks during the Second World War, and of course, through Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear attack. The temperatures were 300°, 400°, no one ever knew. Those who did not flee their buildings were suffocated with carbon monoxide poisoning and died where they hid.

The fires created a massive vortex which sucked in air from the areas around it, building up yet more unpredictable winds, drawing in oxygen to feed the inferno at speeds of up to 80 k.p.h. At that stage, no one could survive.

It was then, almost half an hour after the missile struck, that satellite pictures picked up the first formation of the mushroom cloud. As the winds brought in fresh oxygen, the heat was pushed upwards, taking with it vaporized debris which became lethal, highly radioactive dust. Water droplets from the sea also condensed around radioactive particles and hours later fell to earth again, many kilometres away, as black rain.

Whether the missile had been targeted on the Fort area so the radiation cloud would be blown north over the highly populated areas of the city would remain a moot point for years to come. The Chinese claimed the coordinates were 19°02′ N, 72°56′ E, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay twenty kilometres north-east of the main Fort financial district. Two of the research heavy water reactors there, the Cirus 40 MW and the Dhruva 100 MW, produced plutonium at the rate of 30 kilograms a year, enough for up to five nuclear bombs. Therefore, argued the Chinese, the site was a legitimate military target.

The fact was that the single 15 kiloton warhead exploded 185 metres directly above Fort, at a lower altitude but with the same velocity as the American strike on Hiroshima. The BARC complex was put out of action and the prevailing winds blew the fallout due north over the most heavily populated areas of Bombay. Just about every building was destroyed from the west coast to the east coast, the Sea of Arabia to Harbour Bay and from the southern coastal point in Colaba north through Fort, through the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus to the shacks of the Mohatta Market. Hardly anyone escaped alive — and that was only in the first hour.

The population density in the most crowded areas of Bombay was as high as 40,000 people per square kilometre. Given that it was lunchtime on a working day, the number of people in Fort was at least that. No one ever came up with even a roughly accurate figure, but for the record, the Indian government put the number killed in the first hour of the explosion at 200,000.