The Real Environmental History of the King of Monsters

Godzilla wields one of the elemental powers of the universe - fission radiation.  Godzilla’s unique biology must be understood in context of real physics in order to explain why he is so important to our understanding of global fear and anxiety about nuclear war, and humanities problematic relationship with the natural world. 

Long Live The King!

In order to clarify, comparisons will be made directly with the atomic bomb used to destroy the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.  This is useful because if compared to modern 21st century nuclear weapons it was a relatively small and delicate device.  Therefore, the following comparison model is as also as small as possible.   The explosive yield of the Hiroshima device was approximately 15 kilotons.  A kiloton is equal to 1,000 tons of TNT. 

TNT is a non-nuclear, conventional chemical explosive.  Ionizing radiation released by the device expanded away from the core of the Hiroshima device at nearly the speed of light.  15% of the energy released was radiation in different isotopes, and strengths.  Roughly 50% of the energy created by the device was blast energy directed against the surface of the earth, and bouncing between features on the ground like waves in a pond.  the remaining 35% of energy created in the explosion was thermal energy.  In a nuclear explosion the thermal energy reaches temperatures you can only find inside stars - 180,000,032 degrees Fahrenheit.  The temperature of the Chernobyl core during melt down reached 4,700 degrees Fahrenheit and was still enough to lift the roof off the building and project radiological material into the atmosphere.  It is important to remember that the sun is 92.036 million miles from Earth, and yet it can still give you a burn in 10 to 15 minutes.  Technically a sun burn is a radiation burn.

A "small" atomic explosion 9 seconds after detonation.

Godzilla uses the energy of fissile radiation as a personal weapon.  For argument’s sake let's say that Godzilla can only muster 1/2 of the energy of the Hiroshima bomb - a weak specimen of nuclear weapon.  That would mean the concussive power of his nuclear blast would still equal 500 tons of TNT (500 tons of TNT is equal to 1,000,000 pounds of TNT.)  500 tons of TNT may not sound like a great amount, but it would still produce an explosion that would be difficult to conceptualize. According to the FEMA Reference Manual to Mitigate Potential Terrorist Attacks Against Buildings an explosion of 100,000 pounds of TNT will cause total destruction of most buildings - including reinforced concrete structures - at 500 to 1,000 feet from the explosion.  The FEMA figures do not go higher than 100,000 pounds because it is inconceivable to think a scumbag terrorist could deliver 1,000,000 pounds of TNT in a truck.  Think of it like this: that terrorist's truck bomb would irreparably damage or outright obliterate a reinforced concrete building 1/5 of a mile from the epicenter of its explosion.  Obviously, bone, tissue, and anything organic fractures,

Melted nuclear fuel pooled in Chernobyl basement.

The next, and more important factor is the thermal energy released in Godzilla's nuclear blast.  Let's say that Godzilla can only muster 1/1000 of the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.  That would mean that thermal energy in the blast would reach temperatures of 180,000.32 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than 1,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun.  Man-made materials cannot withstand these temperatures.  Steel melts at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.  Concrete melts at 1550 degrees Fahrenheit.  When the Chernobyl reactor melted down the steel casing, and control rods of the reactor melted right through the protective concrete basin beneath the unit and dribbled like toothpaste into the basement.  In Hawaii, magma coming out of Kilauea averages 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you were to jump into such a volcano from the rim, the radiant heat would burn you to death before you hit the magma at the bottom.  According to the American Burn Association, 3rd degree burns happen in 1 second at 155 degrees Fahrenheit.  above 155 degrees 4th degree burns kill.  The thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb killed 100% of unshielded people within 13,123 feet of the explosion.

Humans have trouble relating to animals directly.  This is a function of the historical effect of a Judeo-Christian religious system, biological distinctiveness, and our psychological need to protect our assumed position in the universe.  The irony is that we still hold tight to images and characters that reference the savage complexes buried inside each of us.  We can easily accept an ape as a heroic, or noble character, where another animal would seem bizarre.  A giant radioactive lizard has found its place in this complicated human dialogue.  It's easy to get behind Godzilla when he is kicking the hell out of an alien, or some kind of alien-controlled killer robot.  If we are all honest, most of us laughed right out loud watching Godzilla defeat Ebirah.  Check out the picture.  Yes, that is a real Kaiju.  And nobody lost their jobs, or was sentenced to hard labor for creating it either! 

Ebirah begging Godzilla to end his misery.

Destroying ridiculous monsters is no problem at all.  Unfortunately, here is where it also gets a little uncomfortable - US audiences generally don't seem to have much of a problem when Godzilla is assaulting the Japanese either.  Godzilla is the result of a society that was the target of a nuclear attack.  Just imagine for a second the obvious psychological implications of a Japanese person generating Godzilla as a villain for consumption by movie audiences.  Godzilla for the Japanese clearly started as a horror story designed to confront lurking nuclear fears by a people that actually have experience which such things.  The alarming irony is how popular Godzilla became in the United States.  US audiences obviously did not get the point.  US distributors dumped brief vignettes of well known (and cheap) American actors into their dubbed export versions so Americans would actually go see the movies.  The actual term for this is "Americanization."  In the translation, the horror aspect of the earlier movies is watered down, and eventually lost.  You have to consider the early Godzilla films in historical context to see what evolved in the pop culture of giant monster movies and why it is significant to how we understand how the world processed the anxiety and fear of the Cold War.

US Marines boiling Japanese skulls in the Pacific.

The residual military racism from World War II rears its ugly head with the ravenous consumption of Godzilla movies in the US.  Wholesale destruction of people, and cities seems normal, or reasonable to an audience that just fire-bombed Japan into the stone age.  They must be guilty and deserved it - they are Japanese, and the Japanese are sneaky and uncivilized.  For most, the hilarity and glee at seeing Japanese people roasted alive and crushed under the feet of a giant lizard is not a conscious default of character.  It is however, the understandable offspring of a recent war of extermination, especially one with such lopsided results.  Japan and the United States found themselves locked in a war of extermination in the Pacific theater.  Excesses were the normal for both sides.  US Marines routinely turned Japanese bodies, and body parts into objects of dark humor and crude entertainment.  Conversely, the unreal cruelty and barbarity of the Japanese Army in the field is legendary.  There was no way for Japan to conceal from its citizens, or anyone on earth after the 9th of August 1945 that they were in an utterly unsustainable war with an enemy possessed of weapons that could literally exterminate them as a people.  Global peril only sharply increased.  Simple atomic weapons like the one dropped on Japan in 1945 were bad enough, but by 1954 the United States had devised the hydrogen bomb.  Russia followed immediately with a hydrogen bomb in 1955.  It's no mystery that Japan created Godzilla that same year

Global nuclear destruction.

The self-titled Japanese version, Godzilla was released in 1954.  Raymond Burr, playing reporter Steve Martin (no relation) was inserted into the 1956 American version (titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters) of the first film.  His monologues are clearly not describing a giant lizard to his radio listeners.  He is saying nuclear weapons, without using the words and thus giving life to an expression of the tension and fear growing in the early Cold War.  The opening line of the American version reads like a warning:  

"This is Tokyo. Once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of Man's imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world." [...] "For the living the horror of last night was over. The only thought left was the paralyzing fear that it could happen today or tomorrow." (emphasis mine.)

The oxygen destroyer.

Every single person hearing that bit of dialogue in 1956 would instantly recognize the implications - instant death delivered anywhere on the planet.  Unsettling to the extreme.  Godzilla is ultimately defeated in 1954 through the use of a weapon even more terrible than the ones that gave rise to the monster.  The "oxygen-destroyer" is designed to assault mother nature herself.  Its destruction is so extreme, and so final that its creator, Dr. Serizawa, must be destroyed along with the prototype.  This suggests that there is no limit to the suicidal self-destructive inventiveness of mankind.  These weapons will end up destroying us all.

An apparently very, very well-fed Burr was Americanized again for the film Godzilla 1985 (The Return of Godzilla in the U.S.)  By the time this film was released, Godzilla had 29 years of global mayhem to his credit.  The Cold War itself is a character in Godzilla 1985, and the utter futility of nuclear weapons is demonstrated in explicit detail.  Fear and anxiety about the health and continuity of the natural world was well on its way to surpassing mutually assured destruction by 1985.  No one knew it at the time, but the mighty Soviet Union itself would be dead within 7 years.  Certainly, runaway militarization and nuclear proliferation were part of the 80s discussion about the danger mankind posed to the natural world, but the focus of the dialog was already undergoing a clear change thanks to the likes of Rachel Carson, David Brower, Benton MacKaye, Love Canal, Greenpeace, the EPA (via Richard Nixon,) and all manner of related legislation.  Speaking in 1985, Steve Martin (no relation) explicitly compared Godzilla with environmental concerns while downplaying the earlier fixation with nuclear fire, and death:

“Godzilla's like a hurricane or a tidal wave. We must approach him as we would a force of nature. We must understand him. Deal with him. Perhaps, even, try to communicate with him.” Martin goes on: “Nature has a way of sometimes reminding Man of just how small he is.  She occasionally throws up the terrible offsprings of our pride and carelessness to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, and earthquake, or a Godzilla.  The reckless ambitions of man are often dwarfed by their dangerous consequences.” (emphasis mine.)

The following year at Prypiat in Ukraine the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Plant visibly punctuated Martin’s argument.  There is a reason that Godzilla is a giant unstoppable monster spewing radiation.  How else do you safely conceptualize the fears and very real horrors of nuclear war.  How else do you safely conceptualize the fears and very real horrors mankind has inflicted on the natural world?  The old lizard does an excellent job capturing the sheer scale of the whole mess.  Godzilla is the perfect product of our collective experience of the dawning of the atomic era - for better or for worse.  V1.N5

Coming soon: King Kong Nazi Stooge?