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The Nuclear Age 'Begat'


On 75th Anniversary of the First Test of a Nuclear Bomb


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Trinity Test Ground, New Mexico

Dawn, July 16, 1945

The barren landscape was named "Jornada del Muerto" for the deaths it had brought Conquistadors who'd arrived centuries earlier looking for Aztec gold. The European invaders found no native treasure and the desert's harsh conditions took their toll. Ragged survivors threw away their armor and staggered back to native Mexico.

In the New World, in New Mexico, the Spanish who remained gained a foothold and centuries later in Los Alamos, a group of physicists built a bomb, an atomic bomb, a first-of-its-type nuclear weapon. They named it "Gadget."

The first atomic bomb test, triggered by the Los Alamos scientists led by Robert Oppenheimer, left a 800 meter diameter deep crater with a "glistening encrustation of blue-green glass". The scientists huddled the night before in the distance in a bunker had been wagering whether the nuclear explosion would 'catch the atmosphere on fire'. It didn't and those who gambled it would, lost.

After recording what had happened that day, the military quickly covered over the crater with desert sand 'for security reasons', burying the remnants of the molten blue-green crystalized debris that would later be given the name -- "Trinitite".

Today, the clock ticks as humanity determines if, how and when to use the power of atomic weapons.


"Trinitite"


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On that day in July 1945 everything changed.

The official line of the US Army was that the explosion was an "accident", an "ammunition dump" had exploded in the New Mexico desert south of Albuquerque.

The flash in the sky was noted in the news -- then forgotten until the Hiroshima blast on August 6, 1945.


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(2015)


GreenPolicy360 Siterunner, Steven J. Schmidt

Recalling My Father's Nuclear Flyover and Training Mission'


My father, Joseph Schmidt, in World War 2 was a bomber pilot who toward the war's end was trained to fly "secret missions." He spoke to me, on rare occasions, about his training and B-17/29 "special" assignments in New Mexico.

One day and one story stands out in my memory, a day he recalled flying his crew over "White Sands" and a "crater in the middle of nowhere". Posterity tells me to share his story as my dad has passed away. These are war stories of a young man from a Kansas farm, now a skilled construction engineer in Los Angeles. My father was talking to me of bomber training... flights across Texas and New Mexico to Marfa, Roswell and then there was Ardmore/Clovis/Alamogordo -- B-17s and B-29s -- and he spoke of missions to the Pacific...

It was in July 1945. At that time my father was a Lieutenant based in New Mexico's Clovis Army Air Field. He was scheduled, as I look today at his yellowing papers with orders in his Army Air Force trunk, to transfer to Alamogordo on July 23rd. Curiously, I see a number of destinations on his orders are blank. I remember how he told me that he knew and his crew knew, in their own way, about the first test of a nuclear weapon. They knew it had happened not far from their base and on July 17th newspapers in New Mexico had reported that a "munitions storage depot" had exploded. This was the official line to explain the bright flash in the sky at dawn on July 16th, south of Albuquerque.

The initial testing of the first nuclear weapon was at Trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test) in a barren area of New Mexico known as Jornada del Muerto ("Journey of the Dead Man"). The desolation made it the choice of the Army and scientists who had secretly developed the bomb at the isolated nuclear physics laboratory at Los Alamos.

The B-17 crew that flew that week from Clovis decided (in a departure from the official planned flight path) to veer "off course" and to take a look at the area where the bomb went off... not a good decision, but in those days many of the pilots and crews were strong willed to put it mildly. This crew chose to go where they thought the site of the blast was... They scanned the horizon and in the distance they saw a bright glistening spot in the desert.

They flew over it. He told me it was both frightening and beautiful. It was a crater scattering radiating beams of light up.

The crater from the blast shocked them into silence he remembered. The sand had turned liquid then fused and fallen back to earth. The crater was coated with a 'glass' that would be called "Trinitite".

They flew on without talking, he said. The power of the weapon all too evident. No more fly-boys on a run.

Now they knew what their bomber group, their B-29s, and their special runs with unusual maneuvers were being equipped to do. The military covered over the crater and evidence of the blast.

Then they heard the news, August 6th and 9th, 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.


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Today it's August 2015, seventy years on and I remember how my father told me of his relief there were to be no more atomic bombings -- and hopefully no more wars with nuclear weapons.

He had trained as a warrior with nuclear weapons. He said it had gone too far. He was, we were, fortunate to not suffer the consequences as others have, even as a sword of a Damocles or worse continues to hang over our heads as a result.

Generations in the future have to deal with the potential consequences of the nuclear age.

The words of the head of the atomic weapon project for the U.S. continue to echo…


"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Oppenheimer -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lb13ynu3Iac


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Nuclear Legacy of Hiroshima:

How the Hiroshima Bombing Is Taught Around the World


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More from GreenPolicy360 on Nuclear Weapons


Nuclear Weapons


On Nuclear Weapons from GreenPolicy360's Associate --

Strategic Demands

www.StrategicDemands.com
Cold War 2.0 / Coverage @ Strategic Demands


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2020


Via GreenPolicy360's associate, Strategic Demands


A MAD STRATEGY


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Nuclear Weapons testing again...May 2020... madness.jpg


2020 / Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Month to Month



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Pope Francis: With deep conviction I wish once more to declare that the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home. The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as I already said two years ago. We will be judged on this. Future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth. How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?”


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2019, New Nuclear Arms Race



(2018 / More on Nuclear Weapons at #StrategicDemands)


Proliferation and Counter-proliferation


WASHINGTON / May 2018 — For the White House, these have been dramatic days for nuclear disarmament: First President Trump exited the Iran deal, demanding that Tehran sign a new agreement that forever cuts off its path to making a bomb, then the administration announced a first-ever meeting with the leader of North Korea about ridding his nation of nuclear weapons.

But for the American arsenal, the initiatives are all going in the opposite direction, with a series of little-noticed announcements to spend billions of dollars building the factories needed to rejuvenate and expand America’s nuclear capacity.

The contrast has been striking...


The US President, Commander-in-Chief

Catastrophic Danger of Nuclear Weapons Use



GreenPolicy Siterunner / The imminent US Nuclear Posture Review brings additional danger in its proposal for new 'usable' tactical nuclear systems and launch capabilities. The so-called current US Nuclear Triad is in fact much than a three-pronged delivery system and new so-called limited yield, 'dial up' nuclear weapons and expanded delivery systems is a recipe for disaster. The US Congress and public need to look at these new systems more closely before they are funded/developed and/or deployed, as in the case of the F-35 nuclear cruise missiles and 'smart' guided nuclear warheads.

Nextgen tactical (as opposed to strategic) nuclear weapons, if used, will bring catastrophic consequences...

The notion that the current president would have usable nukes under his singular authority to launch should be a cause for alarm in itself.

Strategic Demands has proposed legislation to address this -- as has the US Congress, having held its first hearing in over 40 yrs on nuclear command and control.

The proliferation of nukes is the issue of issues...


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From GreenPolicy's Associate -- Strategic Demands (2017)



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MIC / Military-Industrial Complex


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