Only one nuke detonation on the White Sands Missile Range, the other place in the US that atmospheric test were done is near Mercury, NV at the Nevada Test Site. There were underground tests in Colorado, Mississippi, Alaska, and the Nevada Test Site, with the vast majority being done at the Nevada Test Site.
Trinity site October 19, 2024
- Thread starter wwillson
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My dad worked at LASL in the 70s and 80s as a draftsman (everything done by hand). I can't remember if it was on site or a museum in Los Alamos, but I remember viewing replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man. I was awestruck thinking something of that size could wipe out an entire city.
I have/had family members who were Downwinders. They and many others from their communities, died from various cancers. They even had pictures of the family smiling, with a mushroom cloud from the Nevada Test Site in the background.
Viewing the detonations was actually encouraged. Las Vegas used them as a tourism draw.
https://www.grunge.com/494856/the-tragic-history-of-nuclear-downwinders/
Viewing the detonations was actually encouraged. Las Vegas used them as a tourism draw.
https://www.grunge.com/494856/the-tragic-history-of-nuclear-downwinders/
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I have been to the Trinity site. Usually it is open open first Saturday in April and October.
My dad’s company made the casings for the early atom bombs. He was invited to one of the Nevada tests. Not close, but close enough to blow his hat off.
My dad’s company made the casings for the early atom bombs. He was invited to one of the Nevada tests. Not close, but close enough to blow his hat off.
This visit is definitely on my to do list and has been for a while. Thanks for sharing, now I want to go even more.
Did you see any trinitite in the wild? What color(s). Apparently they can ID which part of the bomb / structure there from based on color.
Did you see any trinitite in the wild? What color(s). Apparently they can ID which part of the bomb / structure there from based on color.
I looked for about 20 minutes and this is the only piece I found, it's about the size of a dime.
Most of it is greenish but there was some rust colored areas from the iron in the tower.
People still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. Kind of surprised that the site hasn't been turned into suburbia already.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed at a couple thousand feet altitude. The radiation remained mostly in the air and as fallout that spread around a large area. They say that today the background radiation is no higher than elsewhere, if "they' are to be believed. However lots of people living there during the bombing are still alive to this day.
Interestingly, a lot of Chernobyl people are still alive as well - at least the people from the townsite. The workers that spent time on site I think most suffered a worse fate.
Trinity site is in the middle of nowhere anyway, and belongs to the US military I believe, so there is no incentive to develop it. It is still radioactive - I guess because it was concentrated and the left over trinitite? A one hour visit is something like getting an X-ray, or something to that affect.
A lot of western movies were made near the Nevada Test Site during the 50s and 60s while the fallout was still fresh and highly radioactive. The actors and crews suffered considerable radiation exposure. Everyone smoked cigarettes back then so it is hard to conclude that it caused a lot of cancer.
The Trinity site is on an active military base and is 20 miles from anything in the middle of the desert. It's not going to be developed into anything in our lifetimes and not likely ever.
One plutonium bomb only(Fat Man). The uranium bomb(Little Boy) was a more simple device and scientists believed it had an average chance of producing a nuclear explosion. And that was the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
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