Hersey continues his objective, journalistic style in Chapter 2. Throughout this day, Hersey shows the results of the atomic bomb on the people, living and dead, in the city of Hiroshima. The devastation does not stop after the bomb explodes; it goes on relentlessly in the form of fires, whirlwinds, and unnatural acts of nature. Surviving the initial bombing is not the end, but rather the beginning of more horror. Hersey unflinchingly presents the pictures of destruction and death and allows his six survivors to tell the story through their own eyes. The sweeping catastrophe of the bombing is impossible for the mind to take in; on the other hand, the suffering of six individuals in the wake of the devastation can be grasped somewhat. Their survival, along with their desire to find safety and help others, seems to be a result of both fate and volition.
Hersey steps in intermittently during this chapter to add some factual explanations of what the survivors cannot know. He uses the actual description of the bomb to show that it has completely altered the atmospheric environment and nature itself, emphasizing the devastation that has occurred. He also explains technical aspects of the bomb's fallout and gives the reader a broader picture of the lack of medical assistance in the city, which of course leads to more death. He explains the fires, dust, smoke, houses burning, abnormal water droplets, and other phenomena resulting from the bomb. The abnormal water droplets, for example, are actually condensed moisture from the dust, heat, and fission fragments already in the upper atmosphere. These are pieces of the puzzle that the survivors do not know.
