Found this interesting piece of info I have never seen. Oppenheimer named the bomb Trinity, after this poem.

I had a history teacher in junior high school in New Mexico in the 1950s who had been an observer of the first test while in the Army. He brought a piece of glass from the fused sand near ground zero to school in his pocket and told us about the test. He passed it around for the class to see. I heard after I had joined the Navy from my sister that he had died from testicular cancer.

Go to the site. Tours are twice a year.

Trinity Test Site Tour

WSMR Info
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Originally posted by LimaCharlie:
I had a history teacher in junior high school in New Mexico in the 1950s who had been an observer of the first test while in the Army. He brought a piece of glass from the fused sand near ground zero to school in his pocket and told us about the test. He passed it around for the class to see. I heard after I had joined the Navy from my sister that he had died from testicular cancer.

From bringing that to class in his pants pocket no doubt.

He should have had that tested. Of course, being an observer at the site probably had a bigger impact on him getting cancer, maybe.

It could be said that the first nuclear explosion happened around 2500BC.

During a seminar he was giving on the development of nuclear weapons, a college student asked if that blast (which Oppenheimer had nicknamed “trinity”) had indeed been the first detonation of a nuclear device on planet Earth. Oppenheimer’s answer: “Well, yes, in modern times.”

My dad was navy crew at the Operation crossroads tests. He said they sailed out one day bomb was set off and they sailed back into what was left of the island the next day. He died of cancer some years ago.

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Originally posted by .38supersig:
It could be said that the first nuclear explosion happened around 2500BC.

Huh?

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Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:

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Originally posted by .38supersig:
It could be said that the first nuclear explosion happened around 2500BC.

Huh?

That's exactly what I was thinking. Huh?

Uh, no. No ancient nukes, no ancient nuclear war. Although, to be fair, that just includes Earth....

Most accounts of Trinity mention Alamogordo as being near the site of the test. Actually Socorro was the city closest to the site, about thirty five air miles from it. San Antonio was actually the closest settlement to it.

I lived in Socorro from the late 70's through the late 80's. At that time there were still a lot of people there that experienced the test. I talked to a lot of them over the years. Heard the stories of the cattle turned white, waking up to the sun rising, setting and rising again. Heard the stories of windows breaking, the ground shuddering and the story of the blind girl seeing the flash and asking "what was that?" Did not meet her but did meet her brother, he was driving her to UNM in Albuquerque that morning. One of the buildings in town, an old machine shop had a hoist mounted to a beam, the beam was a piece of leftover steel from the construction of either the bomb tower or the tower for Jumbo, the steel vessel that originally was designed to contain the bomb. I was told that by the one time owner of the building. Fortunately Jumbo was not used as a containment device, that would have added tons of vaporized radioactive steel to the mix.

Trinitite is the result of the sand fusing into glass, the colors due to the various minerals added to the mix. From what I have read, the shinier the glass the higher the radiation count. People were pretty naive about the dangers, I would imagine that there is still a lot in the area that "migrated" out of Ground Zero.

I also heard of the Cancer stories in the area. While some radioactivity did affect Socorro, towns to the east of Trinity fared much worse. Bingham, Claunch, Carrizozo to name a few. A canyon nearby was called Hot Canyon due to the fallout concentrated there.

1980's I kind of got an idea what it was like out there. At WSMR they were doing testing with commercial explosives in the amount to simulate a bomb blast,this was during the Reagan era. The test was IIRC 100,000 lbs of explosives on a wooden platform. When the blast went off in the early afternoon we in town heard it, felt the air blast and felt the ground shock wave shortly after. And in the distance to the southeast a dust mushroom cloud ascended skyward.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:
It could be said that the first nuclear explosion happened around 2500BC.

During a seminar he was giving on the development of nuclear weapons, a college student asked if that blast (which Oppenheimer had nicknamed “trinity”) had indeed been the first detonation of a nuclear device on planet Earth. Oppenheimer’s answer: “Well, yes, in modern times.”

Can we avoid the science fiction stories, please? Great way to get a thread locked.

Yeah, Oppenheimer. Had his cake and ate it, too. Got almost unlimited funding from the US Gov't to build the most destructive device ever invented, and then when he succeeded, started in on the "Oh, what have I done? I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds" horse shit.

Had his cake and ate it, too. He Goddamn well knew what he was unleashing, long before it was built. He knew it. For him to act as if he didn't realize what he was doing until it was done is intelligence-insulting horse shit.

Oppenheimer may have said something quotable at Trinity but it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t say shit, someone contributed it to him and Ollie was either apathetic to it or thought it cool.

As the grandson of one of his team members, I can relay a first hand account that All of the scientists & engineers at Los Alamos were excited about building one Big Ass Bomb. Hollywood and the Libs like to change history and have grossly perverted many historical accomplishments, this particular one included.

BTW if you're ever in Albuquerque you've got to visit the Nuclear Museum

It's just off of Interstate 40. I toured it last year and I'm going to stop in again 2 weeks.

It's absolutely worth the time. If you want to see and learn, this is a great place.

From Wikiquote:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

You know what they all REALLY thought after that thing went up...

"Holy SHIT!!!!!! It WORKED!!!!!!"

After reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (by Richard Rhodes - EXCELLENT book), it seems most of the scientists involved spent most of their efforts in creating it out of scientific curiosity, and spent almost no thought at all on the consequences. To quote Malcom from the first Jurassic Park, "they tried to see if they *could* without thinking if they *should.*

Only after Trinity did they seem to consider the effects their 'science experiment' would have on a human target. . . Of course, by then it was too late.

It cracks me up thinking how so many hippies/anti-nuke people blame the military for the Cold War and arms races. Yet, it was SCIENTISTS, not the military, that let the nuclear genie out of her bottle.