Just an historical footnote - the A bombs rendered a land invasion of the Japanese mainland unnecessary. This event would have been as least as devastating, or even more so, than the nucs to the civilian population.
Estimates at the time were for 750,000 to one million US casualties and minimum 5x Japanese casualties (and that seems low to me) in the invasion plan.
The end result is we may never know as the Japanese decision makers and military people in power at the time, are long gone.
Many historians were actively researching such questions after the war; Gordon Prange, for example, interviewed every surviving decision maker and military leader, on both sides, after the war.
You can't really consider the events in isolation. Without them all surrender would have come later. The first bomb, then the Russian declaration of war, then the second bomb, left the Army command too paralyzed to stop the Emperor's surrender decision, or even decide if they wanted too.
The effects described above are from bombs much smaller than anything currently in inventory.
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