It’s still really hot here, but I learned that I should close the windows during the day, to keep the hot air out. It helps a little. I thought the open windows would create a draft and cool air would blow in — WRONG!!!
Maybe the fact that for the last 22 years I have lived fairly close to Los Alamos, the site of the Manhattan Project, gives this date more significance. It’s only about 25 miles or so as the crow flies, and over 60 miles by car, because the region in-between is mountainous and covered by the Santa Fe National Forest. Whenever I visited the little town it gave me the creeps — I felt like being in a version of The Truman Show, a film about a man who grows up in a fake city which actually is a TV set. Unbeknownst to him, his every move is being recorded 24/7 and broadcast to a fascinated audience. The stores, the Library, several gymns in Los Alamos looked similarly set up to me, to give it a “normal” appearance while hiding something more sisinster.
What happened on July 16, 1945, 78 years ago, at the Alamogordo Test Range which was 210 miles south of Los Alamos in the aptly named Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the Dead) desert in New Mexico, was the first-ever explosion of a plutonium bomb. By that time, most of the uranium bomb “Little Boy” (a gun-type fission bomb) which was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was already on its way to the Pacific. The Trinity Test bomb was an implosion-type fission bomb, the same kind that was used on August 9, 1945, and dropped on Nagasaki (“Fat Man”).
The scientists involved with the Manhattan Project, most notably J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, had decided that a test of the plutonium bomb was vital; some thought it could be a complete dud, while others feared that all life on earth could be wiped out.
The actual explosion, on a Monday morning at 5:30 am, detonnated the equivalent of about 21 kilotons of TNT. The test was considered a huge success and led to President Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs to force a Japanese surrender.
The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima (“Within minutes 9 out of 10 people half a mile or less from ground zero were dead.”) and Nagasaki (“The best estimate is 40,000 people died initially, with 60,000 more injured. By January 1946, the number of deaths probably approached 70,000, with perhaps ultimately twice that number dead total within five years.”) killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. When I lived in Japan from 1973 to 1977, I heard about the hibakusha, “survivors of the bomb” or “people exposed to radioactivity”. Supposedly, some of them were kept away from public view because they were deformed and disfigured. I don’t know if this was true, but it is what people told me.
Whether the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to force the Japanese Emperor to surrender and thus justify the horrific casualties the bombs caused, or whether atomic weapons are fundamentally immoral and the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway, is still today subject of debate.
What really worries me is the development of nuclear weapons and their proliferation. While the power of bombs such as Little Boy and Fat Man was measured in kilotons, today’s hydrogen bombs (thermonuclear weapons) can yield up to 10 and 15 MEGAtons — which means 10,000 and 15,000 kilotons respectively. In other words, it’s way beyond any realistic imagination, besides the obvious fact that the destruction would be unfathomable. Add to that the fact that there are several countries with nuclear weapons that are NOT recognized or included in the Non-Proliferation Treaty which entered into force in 1970, and it becomes morally imperative to ask to abolish these weapons worldwide. I know, this sounds naive, and yet: it’s the only ethical stance I can support. Which is not at all reassuring.
Sadly, I don't think nuclear bombs will ever voluntarily go away... It seems humans are destined to self-destruct - either through weapons of mass destruction or the constant destruction of nature and global warming. I know it's a cynical take, but realistically, it seems obvious to me...
the hydrogen bomb is way beyond what any sane person could imagine