Early nuclear weapons testing photographs
 

When We Tested Nuclear Bombs - Alan Taylor - In Focus - The Atlantic

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Fascinating article and pictures, thanks for posting.

That is great stuff...many pictures I've never seen. Thanks.

I love the vertical ship in the water column in your OP.

"Set Circle William...nevermind".

What is amazing is those were in the kiloton range, they're now in the megaton range. As a kid, one of my Dad's friends was Harold Edgerton, (co-founder of EG&G) who invented the strobe light and I believe the high speed cameras used in the filming of the first milli-seconds of nuclear blasts.

It's funny, Hugh, after my father stopped running around in the boonies, he became a nuke...taught in Idaho and later, as a civilian SES, managed the Savannah River Plant in SC.

We'll have to compare notes...he spent a lot of time at Oak Ridge, Livermoore, Scandia, etc.

As a kid I lived in the Boston area, with my Dad at MIT, and we also lived in Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge in my youth. In the early 1960s my Dad had visitors over to our house who were Russian nuclear scientists enjoying an American BBQ. As an 8-10 year old I didn't appreciate the significance of this.

My grandfather was an editor with National Geographic and was in the viewing bunker for Trinity. Sadly it was also suspected as the cause of his death years later.

"Suspected" I know a TV Producer whose father filmed a few nuke blasts in the 1950's he died of cancer at 39. The amount of radiation those observers got was off the charts.

We lived in Boston when my Dad did the MIT nuke masters thing. 1958ish.

He went back to Rangers for a Bragg tour after that...then Idaho.

I'm well versed in math and science yet still I'm amazed at the energy released from such a small amount of material.

Bombs, bombs, bombs
 

Take a look at Youtube video for "A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto". Watch the months and years ratchet up in the right hand top corner and the country that set it off. This is impressive to say the least. Yea, I was around for all of these but a hand full or two. If someone could attach it to a reply it would help make it easier for others to check out. Not sure how to to do the video attachement thing yet. The video takes a while but well worth the look

What is amazing, is how small that material really is...milligrams!

Thanks for posting.

Its amazing how these short lived explosions pale in comparison to the constant nuclear reaction millions of miles away that zap us.

That answers one of the two things I've always wondered about these tests from the 50s and 60s. The other is how the radiation released from the bombs hasn't affected anyone over the following years? I mean, Nevada isn't exactly the south pole. Even back in the 50s there must have been 10s of millions of people within a few hundred miles of the desert. In the news lately we've heard about slight increases in radiation in Hawaii, even on the west coast of North America, from Fukushima. Surely wind would've blown really dangerous amounts of radiation from the Nevada desert into populated areas, no?

quite a few Nevada ranchers say they or their wives had problems, and so did their live stock (mostly sheep)

maybe the worst effects on US civilians from the Atom Bomb program were the "downwinders" in Wash. & Idaho from operations at Hanford -- so far at least (there is still a giant subsurface pool of contamination that is slowly working its way to the Columbia River... )

it's hard to get a real good read on the effects b/c of govt. secrecy, alarmism, and the lack of definitive studies

I'm not a nuclear engineer or even anything close. But I did stay at a Hilton last night (not a Holiday Inn). When the Plutonium fissions, it essentially burns (think combustion, but not really) and in the process emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation (think heat from combustion). That is what blasted those observers. Since the fission is not 100% perfect some residual Plutonium, and radioactive daughters, are left over which will drift downwind and continue to emit alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Those radioactive solids are relatively dense, especially Plutonium, and they settle out into the food chain. The radioacitve daughters like Thorium and radioactive (heavy) Iodine, Potassium and Carbon are easily picked up by the body; as was seen with the Japanese nuke accident when people in the USA were trying to buy Iodine supplements for fear of thyroid cancer. There is possibly a measurable statistical increase in cancer in the World from that (as RWebb correctly noted, gubmit security clouds those findings). The exposure/risk drops off relative to a gaussian plume dispersion model. What that means is think of smoke coming from your barbeque, and how that smoke disipates as you get farther away from the BBQ. Its the same sort of dispersion but on a global scale. Which is why they see high concentrations of radiation at the nuke plants in Japan, but not much in Hawaii and even less in Los Angeles. Maybe someone else can explain it better.

The half life of radioactive iodine (Iodine-131) is 8 days.

Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive element that is abundant in the earth's crust, about 4 times more common than uranium.
In pure form it goes pyrophoric and burns up in air.
They use it to make tungsten filaments and electrodes last longer because of it's high melting point. I have some of it in my garage, in my TIG welding electrodes.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Funny how they don't tell us those kinds of details in the 10 second news sound bites designed to scare the crap out of the uninformed and ignorant.

Daddy during the I LOVE IKE years was part of the development team that made a Atom Bomb simulator. I have the 16mm footage of the test.

Daddy also helped develope a chemical dosimeter.of which I have one lying around here somewhere.

When I was 10 I was part of a tour of a uranium processing plant...I remember a room full of Yellow Cake with some guys inside raking it.

As I said, I'm not a nuclear engineer or even anything close. But I did stay at a Hilton last night (not a Holiday Inn).

I'm just giving a layman explanation to a question.

We shipped a spent component of our facility to the Nevada Test Site for burial last week. There's no other place we can send stuff...

one of the MOST COMPELLING and SCAREY things we saw after our 6 months of waiting for our security clearance to come thru for entry into project mercury, was when we left the town of project mercury, and saw the baseball bleachers and the distance from the blast sites.



if you notice in the films of the era, dignitaries and others were invited for the "really big show".



if you also notice the distance of the foxholes/trenches from the giant azz'd holes in the ground from various weapon delivery systems(arty,ground explosion/air explosion) of the time, you will realize very quickly how many GI's were exposed to insane amounts of radiation.


why? they DIDNT KNOW! this was an entire new ballgame and nobody knew the short/mid/long term effects of radiation.


i got ahold of a website a few years back, cant remember the name , but it was a in depth weather analysis of prevailing winds and locations where radioactive crap fell. during i think 1957-1960. a couple shots with the prevailing winds of the day carried radioactivity all the way down to phx in light doses. obviously hurricane , utah was always in the middle for high doses and this is where john waynes movie crew got nailed by radioactivity big time.


some scarey scarey stuff and the world changed forever when trinity lit off that one morning in july. a guy i used to work with lived in belen new messiko and stated the "SUN CAME UP TWICE THAT DAY"!

My sister is the lead environmental lawyer for the DOE for the WIPP in Carlsbad, New Mexico and for the facility in Deaf Smith County, NV that Obama has defunded. Nuclear waste disposal is not a technical issue, its a political issue. As someone who grew up in a Nuclear family (not the societal definition, but someone whose Dad was a Nuclear Engineer) I find it incredible that this and all other countries didn't develop a nuclear waste management program 50 years ago. How the heck can you develop a highly dangerous materials program and put off the management of the disposition of that product for such a long period of time? Ah, politics.

ahhhh i dont miss the days of machining RADIATED PARTS @ los alamos after signing my life away that i would not sue the u.s. gubbermint if i was ACCIDENTLY RADIATED!


this hit home one day, when suddenly the main drag into los alamos was closed off and DOE armed guards came thru along with a lowboy semi truck with a CNC lathe that got radiated. it had its own sarcaphogus. it was completely contained and it was big. where they were taking it, we never found out. we used to machine parts for the low level radioactive WIPP at carlsbad n.m. and parts for the uber high level radioactive containers that you WILL SEE sooner or later transiting across the u.s. via railroad.


i think youtube has some of the testing video of these high level containers being involved in train wrecks, falling off flatbed cars being pierced, being immoliated in fire etc, to show how really built they are to contain high level radioactive waste.


yep sooner or later they have to face this nuklar monster . and nobody wants it in their backyard.

For more amazing photos see "100 Suns" (kinda anti) and "How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb" (neutral).

The guys that shot the above ground tests are dwindling in number every day.

Such a history!

Excellent photos, thanks for the link. The power is simply staggering, incomprehensible.

if you ever get the chance to go into project mercury or trinity site like myself............DO SO!


i will have hit the TRIFECTA if i ever make it scubee-doobee diving off of bimini which is a fer sure on my "bucket list".



the immense mind boogling craters left over, will make you think real hard the next time you see a "boomer" sub somewhere. and they carry MULTIPLE WARHEADS!


i was in henderson nevada, when they did the last test shot at mercury. the hotel shook like a mutha for quite some time.



would be a GREAT PLACE TO GO DIRTY BIKING!

There was a documentary on discovery channel a few years back where they went scooby diving in the bikini atoll lagoon and detected no radiation beyond normal background levels.
They were surprised because scientific predictions suggested it should be highly radioactive for a gazillion years or so after they blowed up a couple-a nukes there.
It cracked me up when they were looking for evidence in the marine life, like three-eyed fishes and such.
Didn't find anything like that.
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In a study performed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in late 1995, they summarized the following:

What About Radiation on Bikini Atoll?

'Nuther view of that boom at Bikini where they blowed up ships in 1946:
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Here's the 11 megaton fussion boom in 1954 at bikini:
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there is so much naval history in bikini atoll its pathetic. german cruisers japanese mega ships, our carriers, destroyers,cruisers,subs etc etc.


vast majority is reasonable simple dives.


but some are NITROX dives which entail quite a bit more thought re: SAFETY .


yeah that was a great documentary. was glued to the screen.



bikini/truk/ and just about any island invaded will yield wrecks.


and trust me................there aint nothing better than taking pics of wrecks. in barbados we got to dive on a french tug from the 1880's, a british cargo ship from the 1920's or so. a wwII liberty ship that had its bow blown off by a u-boat in bridgetown harbor(then refloated/refitted w/bow and then sunk on murmansk run), a british coaster unknown date 50's or 60's maybe.



wreck diving is the katz azz bar none!

if you get a chance, watch the movie 'trinity and beyond.' excellent footage, wonderful music.

Iffn i remember right they went really deep in that documentary, like 160 feet for a record or something?

My haid hurts when I go to the bottom of my pool and it's 5 feet at the deep end.

EDIT:

On OJU's trifecta, Trinity is sort of unimpressive. Kinda a "cool,I've been here" place. The part of Nevada that we made look like a golf ball is something to see. Would love to see the big Pacific shots -- a guy in my team at work got to dive Bikini and Tinian, lucky jerk...

well heres the deal for those who like to get up in the morning EARLY! and see trinity site. once to twice a year the air force(who retains control of land) allows civilians in. in my case we were working at hollomon a.f.b. on a super secret squirrel project(f-117 wing flap actuators). it was an upgrade thing, and we were down on the flight line over a period of a coupla months coming back and forth from al-burr-turkey, getting our tooling ramped up.


got to know this tech sargent and shot the breeze with him often. about the most exciting thing ya can do around hollomon is watch the sleazier than sleazed holiday inn bar band for excitement. anyway one day he asked me if i had ever been or heard of trinity site. he stated that this coming sat. they had a tour. so i dragged my sorry azz out of the hotel, made the main base gate, presented my secret squirrel ID and secret decoder ring, and was admitted and ordered to go find a seat on a nice old clunk mobile air force bus.


after what seemed like forever, driving thru sage brush NW of the town of alamagordo we arrived. the building oppenheimer worked/slept is still there, and the remains of the tower where the bomb was suspended is there. the entire blast area is cordoned off with barb wire, danger radiation signs, and is a NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE.


anyway we buzzed around, took pics, and listened to the stories of the area. all the time guarded by m-16/m-9 air police with geiger counters checking everybody for "trinitite" which is the fused sand/dirt at the exact point of detonation. basically the high temps fused the dirt/sand/rock into its very own mineral for all to marvel at. but if you steal some you will be guilty of a fed felony as the mineral will make the geiger counters still go off the charts as it is STILL HOT after all these years.


during the building of the "happy bomb" quite a number of people were involved in the logistics of this project in the middle of freeking nowhere "rattlesnake-ville". chow was hard to come by, you were basically camping out for quite some time and living conditions sucked. well the powers that be allowed the grunts to supplement their chow by hunting. well that was a POO-GIGGLE" for the stir crazy grunts. deer and antelopezzz flourish there. but with all fun things sooner or later it gets screwed up royally.


the problem was new messiko had a few a.f. bases that did training flights in the valley. one day some of the grunts were off hunting and a squadron of B-24's came thru at low level on bombing strafing runs and killed some of the grunts hunting. this didnt bode well with the "power gone mad" generals and the entire area was declared off limits..................TO THIS DAY! see victorios apache gold mine stories for more stories behind the wire at the area surrounding trinity site.


somewhere earlier(search) i posted some pics of my worthless azz young and frisky and dumb, standing in front of the fencing surrounding the blast sight with pictures they took at like .0000000000001 per pico second, from the exact point of ignition all the way sequenced thru the mushroom cloud.


the entire thing was passed off to the civilian populace thruout the state as AMMO DUMP BLOWING UP!(note to self do not TRUST GUBBERMINT!)

I have the DVD, awesome, cool, scary stuff

now for project mercury that was like 6 months PLUS or so to get our clearance arranged, before we got our secret squirrel/weasel badges and papers(yo papers please).


when we arrived at the gates north of lost wages, we were greeted by HEAVILY ARMED PEOPLES IN UNIFORM and OUT OF UNIFORM! since we were dressed in our polo dress shirts with jerry garcia ties and slacks and penny loafers looking and feeling our best, we really looked like dorks. anyway the rental car was searched top to bottom in and out and we were strip searched. cell phones(shoe boxes then) confiscated and given the warning and this is ver-feeking-batum, " DO NOT GO PAST THE WHITE BARRIERS-YOU WILL BE SHOT! DO NOT PICK ANYTHING UP! DRIVE TO 1st MACHINE SHOP(white a/c trailer), PRESENT YOUR PRODUCT AND HAVE 1ST SHOP CALL 2nd SHOP. 2nd SHOP WILL CALL 3rd SHOP(rampart mesa-i think) AND YOU WILL RETURN BY 4:30PM OR WE ARE COMING LOOKING FOR YOU! AND IT AINT GONNA BE GOOD!


so with that fine welcome wagon dribble we drove thru the town(yes a town) OF MERCURY! and it has everything a super duper secret sqquirrel/weasel would want. drab tan buildings, drab gubbermint green buildings, lots of DOE blue vehicles running around, and our fave................ARMORED DODGE POWERWAGONS WITH 3" THICK BULLETPROOF RED FRONT WINDOWS and LOTS OF REAL LIVE GUNS!

now we are in the belly of the beast, wez getting an eyeful and its cool. as we drive thru town heading east on a 2 lane black top we see the bleachers as mentioned and also lots and lots of trenches. and we start seeing REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG HOLES IN THE GROUND AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE! like if ya fell in.............you were a DEADMAN!


but the kick in the azz to us...................along the road was every kind of booze bottle can that you can imagine littering the road. everywhere! no different than some crap hole indian rez or messiko or some other 3rd-5th world crap hole! i will never forget it as long as i live. apparently not alot to do out there either except drink. and nobody gave a damn. so i think drinking, kind of goes with nuklar fish-un!


anyway we did our presentations of our tooling, and finally came to 3rd machine shop(white trailers with a/c and some buildings at base of mesa). at the mesa we could see horizontal bores big enough to fit 2-3 railroad engines side by side. remember vertical shots were over due to it being a PITA recovering instrumentation. HORIZONTAL SHOTS were in vogue as it was easier to bore into mega mesas, and set the damn thing up, build multiple blast doors and have a few toddys and watch the fun.

when we were done, we drove back, sometimes real damn slow, sucking in ALL THE INSANITY mankind has created and about POOING OURSELVES AT THE SIZE OF THE FREEKING GOPHER HOLES! all the while being watched by secret squirrels,gophers, and of course on every ridge top a ARMORED(dual ma deuces) DODGE POWERWAGONS doing perimeter security.


and that was one hell of a day in my nuklar life.

My dad worked at white sands a gazillion years ago.
He took us out there a bunch of times as kids and we played in the sand (in the natl park). He was drivin us around giving us a tour from quite aways away and he pointed to an area inside the base grounds and said can't go there, radioactive.

no idea what made it that way, just that peoples didn't go there. that was in the 60's.
I never heard of any nuke boom testing there or any accidental release.

white sands is south of trinity. only known to me detonation was at trinity. but hell with all the miss-kill testing at white sands range who the hell knows what mishaps occurred.


a must see is the miss-kill museum at white sands and the atomic museum at kirtland a.f. b. home of the "trestle" which on final approach to alburr -turkey airport you will see. used to bombard b-52's w/electro magnetic pulses simulating a nuke going off on electronics gadgets. also note on approach all the weapons bunkers built into foothills.


my fave is the "davy crockett" backpacker nuke device. designed for a secret squirrel to be dropped behind enemy lines to blow up dams power stations, stealth magic carpet mfgs. and run like a MO-FO!

low life span for these dudes. "feetz dont fail me NOW!"

Aahh... the SADM. Funny they called it the backpack bomb - they actually hung it between their legs when coming in by air. Like a some-odd-kiloton testicle!

Amazing we survived 1945-1989. Life today is pretty safe in comparison to then - luckily back in those days both us and them realized that neither of us were crazy...

These days the proliferant countries are the scary ones. Had to happen - the physics were worked out in the 1920s. The only thing that the Manhattan project and the cold war did was to work out the minor engineering details and get a production line running for the material.

Those "minor details" are a running joke between some of us engineers with the physicists here in LA. Very little of the stuff done back then (or now) was minor in any way.

I added it to my Netfix streaming cue. I am going to watch it tomorrow when the baby takes her nap.