GROUND ZERO

11 September 2001

Mr Cucaracha was on Ground Zero. 

He was covered in white ash.

Looking around, all he saw was devastation.

There was rubble and paper flying. 

Dead bodies -- some whole, some dismembered but all burnt, were strewn around. 

Along with the smells of burning fuel, wood, plastic and melting metals, the stench of burning bodies and death was thick in the air. 

The flames had erupted when suicide bombers had crashed commercial passenger planes into the buildings.  

Cucaracha was a bit weak but had survived. 

He was lucky he did not get directly exposed to the fire and flames.  

It would have been RIP!! 

He would have become, ’Late Mr Cucaracha.’

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When the suicide bombers had attacked he was on the  85th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre complex in Lower Manhattan. The first plane an American Airlines Flight 11 had hit his building between 93 and 99th floor.

Seventeen minutes later the South Tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 175. 

Fires were caused by the impact of the flights and the explosion of its fuel.

These fires burned for nearly 7 hours, compromising the building's structural integrity.

Both 110-story towers collapsed. 

The South Tower collapsed having burned for 56 minutes.

His Tower collapsed after burning for 102 minutes.

He came down with the rubble. 

He came down shaken but ’live and kicking.’

Looking at the scene now he knew this was another Ground Zero.

He remembered stories of his relatives surviving man-made and natural disasters as far as the Far East.

Disasters as far as Japan. 

Decades back they were there on those deadly Ground Zeros. 

They had survived.

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Among all his relatives his grandfather was a legend. 

This was his paternal grandfather. 

He was there in the New Mexico desserts when the word was first coined.

A term that had been conceptualised decade’s back.

His grandfather physically lived on the land that became ZERO -- GROUND ZERO

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June 1942 

ZERO

They had decided on the name for the spot chosen for the test. 

They were surveying the area at the Jornada del Muerto Desert. 

The tower would be built here.

Ground Zero was used to designate the point on the ground directly beneath the point of detonation. 

Oppenheimer was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He became the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory.

He is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project and Trinity.

It was a US Top Secret project. It was the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons.

This was what Trinity was all about.

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device. Everything was in codes.

A billion dollars worth of plutonium would be exploded here. 

Here on Ground Zero.

The desserts name given by the Spanish conquerors years back, of the basin and the particularly dry 100-mile stretch of a route through it from Las Cruces to Socorro, New Mexico, was uncanny.

Jornada del Muerto loosely translated came up as "Single Day's Journey of the Dead Man" or even "Route of the Dead Man. 

The modern literal translation is closer to "The Working Day of the Dead".

Very uncanny.

As a team they were here, surveying this site. 

It was a perfect location.  

The only structures in the vicinity, about 2 miles to the southeast, were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings. 

It would make a perfect Ground Zero. 

Cucaracha’s grandfather lived here.

His grandfather remembered, further to the site visit, all the activity that went behind the experiments. 

Grandfather remembered the mushroom cloud. 

He also remembered the results.

It was the birth of two monsters. 

They were oddly named ’Fat Boy’ and ’Little Man’.

He also clearly remembered the year, month, date and the time.

After all, he had survived it.

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16 July 1945 -- 5:29 a.m. 

दिवि सूर्यसहस्रस्य भवेद्युगपदुत्थिता।

यदि भाः सदृशी सा स्याद्भासस्तस्य महात्मनः।।॥११–१२॥

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one ...

Oppenheimer had read the Bhagavad Gita. 

He thought of this verse  and it was going through his head while witnessing the explosion.

A controlled atomic explosion that had just taken place here.

For him and his country it was an overwhelming success.

He just had a vision of divinity and the ’mighty one’ at this first ’Ground Zero’. He bowed his head in reverence.

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25 July 1945 

Orders were issued for atomic bombs to be used. 

The war in Europe had concluded and  Germany had surrendered to the Allies weeks back on the 7th of May.

However, the Pacific War was in full swing. The Allies now turned their full attention to this theatre.

They prepared for a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing campaign.

The Allies called for the unconditional surrender of the Imperial Japanese armed forces the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". 

Japan ignored the ultimatum.

The Allies had to now drive home their threat.

They finally found the Ground Zeroes for their atomic bombs. 

They were Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki.

These targets were chosen because they were large urban areas that also held militarily significant facilities.

On 6 August, a Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, to which Prime Minister Suzuki reiterated the Japanese government's commitment to ignore the Allies' demands and fight on. 

Three days later, a Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki.

There was devastation and loss of life all around. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki.

Unfortunately, the two bombings were responsible for the death of around 226,000 people. 

However many of Cucaracha’s distant cousins, aunts and uncles had survived in both of these Ground Zeros.

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11 September 2001

Cucaracha started crawling slowly and assessed the heap he was in. He said a silent prayer for all the humans that had lost their lives here on 9/11.

He said a silent prayer to have survived the devastation of this Ground Zero.

Looking at the visuals he wished that there would not be any more Ground Zeros.

Looking back at his families resilience he was happy he was born into this family as Cucaracha.

His family had witnessed the evolution of humankind. They had roamed with the cavemen.

They had an eerie ability to survive and thrive in extreme weather conditions. They could not be crushed easily as they have capacities of withstanding forces more than 900 times their body weight without sustaining an injury. 

They have a reputation for being one of the toughest and most flexible creatures planet earth has ever known. 

According to urban legend, cockroaches have the grit to withstand and outlive even a nuclear disaster. 

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He said a silent prayer to Thank God that he was alive today.

He said a silent prayer to Thank God that he was born as Cucaracha. 

He said a silent prayer to Thank God that he was born a cockroach.

Credit for image -- Internet.