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The Star
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Star
The risk of nuclear war waned after the Cold War. It's back with a vengeance
WHEN the first nuclear bomb test took place 80 years ago, the scientists who gathered to observe the explosion in the New Mexico desert recognised they were playing with fire. Physicist Enrico Fermi tried to break the tension by taking bets on whether the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world. J. Robert Oppenheimer wagered US$10 the bomb wouldn't work at all, and Edward Teller conspicuously applied sunscreen in the predawn darkness, offering to pass it around. The bomb exploded in a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun, producing far more destructive power than the scientists anticipated. Within weeks, the United States nuked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of World War II while killing more than 200,000 civilians. The bomb hasn't been used since, apart from test blasts, and after the Cold War ended in 1991, the risk of nuclear war mercifully declined. Now the risk is back on the rise, as an alarming new nuclear age dawns. Today, we are in a 'uniquely dangerous moment'. The nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. For starters, the main players are no longer two global superpowers. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union largely controlled the potential for conflict, which made the risks relatively straightforward to analyse. These days, the politics of nuclear arms have become more complicated and unpredictable. Nine nations are said to possess the weapons today, including the rogue state of North Korea, and others could build them quickly. Most people have forgotten that South Africa once developed a bomb but gave up its programme voluntarily. Iraq and Libya also had active nuclear-weapon programmes that were stopped under intense international pressure. At the moment, the focus is on Iran's nuclear programme, which the US bombed on June 22, alongside Israel. The US launched its attack even though Iran continued to pursue diplomacy about its nuclear ambitions. Iran may conclude that it needs a nuclear capability for self-defence, to deter future attacks. The same could be said for other states threatened by nuclear- armed rivals. Consider Ukraine, which voluntarily gave up the nuclear arms based on its soil after the fall of the Soviet Union. Would Russia's 2022 invasion still have occurred against a Ukraine bristling with doomsday weapons? Doubtful. Besides the chilling political calculations, the weapons used to deliver nuclear warheads have become more dangerous. Hyper-sonic glide missiles could elude defence systems before striking their targets with practically no warning, while smaller, low-yield nukes threaten to blur the lines between conventional and nuclear warfare, making all-out war more likely. Defence spending is soaring across the globe, and with it, faster and deadlier weapons are likely to be deployed. At the same time, treaties restricting nuclear arms are in decline. The most impactful of them – the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – was undermined in 2003 when North Korea withdrew from it and built an atomic arsenal. It's time for the targets of these terrible weapons – us, that is – to rise up and say, 'No!' The 1980s witnessed mass demonstrations demanding a nuclear freeze. Today, the threat of nuclear war is beginning to enter the public consciousness again. The movie Oppenheimer about the Trinity bomb test 80 years ago was a boxoffice hit. The 2024 book by journalist Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario, became a bestseller. Star movie director James Cameron has committed to making Ghosts of Hiroshima , a Japan-set movie said to be a nightmarish look at the A-bomb blasts. During the Cold War, pop culture helped convince everyday people to stand against the march towards Armageddon, and here's hoping it can do so again. For 80 years, the world has lived with the threat of nuclear destruction. Let's act now to curb it, before it's too late. — Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service
Daily Mirror
5 days ago
- General
- Daily Mirror
British POW who witnessed Hiroshima atomic bomb was 'dangled in hell and hauled out'
On this day in 1945, the world was changed forever when the USA dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing thousands of civilians within seconds Eighty years ago today, the unthinkable happened. A new deadly weapon was unleashed for the first time in human history, closing the final bloody chapter of the Second World War. Just before 11am on the morning of August 6, 1945, American B-29 bomber the Enola Gay flew high above the Japanese city of Hiroshima and opened its bay doors. The innocuous-looking atomic bomb nestled inside, nicknamed Little Boy, was the result of years of top-secret planning and painstaking research by Allied scientists working under the Manhattan Project, masterminded by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Enola Gay's crew knew they carried significant cargo. But none of them could have predicted just how fateful their flight over the bustling city, with its large military garrison, would be. Little Boy was released from its cradle, rolled out of the plane and plummeted towards the ground. Its parachute unfurled, stalling its fall for several seconds, until the moment it exploded 1,900ft above Hiroshima. Within seconds, 40,000-odd people were dead. Many were vaporised by the extreme heat, leaving only the impression of their shadows burnt onto whatever concrete surfaces remained. More than six square miles of the city were reduced to rubble, and fires immediately broke out, consuming the undefended timber-framed buildings. Some of the blazes raged for three days, trapping and killing those who had survived the initial blast. A British prisoner of war (POW) working four miles away from the blast epicentre had a 'ring-side view' of the bomb. In an intelligence report produced by the Admiralty's Naval Intelligence Division in November 1945, the witness - an unnamed Petty Officer who had survived the HMS Exeter's sinking and was held captive in Fukuoka Camp No. 11 - said the flash generated by the explosion 'would have lit up the whole of England had it been dark instead of daylight'. The light was so brilliant that it appeared to 'blot out the sun', and the heat emitted so intense that it held the eyes open for eight seconds, the POW recalled, giving him 'the impression of being dangled in hell and hauled out'. It took 22 seconds for the shockwave to reach the hillside where the POW and his fellow inmates were gardening. They watched, speechless, as four square miles of factories, buildings and houses flew into the air and came down as dust and molten metal. The Mitsubishi steel works, one of the largest and most significant manufacturing plants in the city, was razed to the ground. Its metal superstructure melted in the heat, while a mile from the epicenter, train engines weighing 100 tonnes were lifted from their trucks and thrown 300 yards away. Four minutes after the explosion, the now-familiar sight of the mushroom cloud appeared, rising from the devastation underneath. It was, said the POW, a 'dense white cloud… a man-made cloud of terrific density, so dense that smoke from thousands of fires created by the bomb could not penetrate it, but arose in huge columns in outer extremities of this pure white cloud'. 'A little later, looking through a pair of common sun-glasses at the cloud, colours appeared that I have never seen before; it looked like a giant catherine wheel, only very slowly revolving and milling, green merging into purple and reappearing as blue as Arctic ice pack, only to disappear and reappear as blood red,' he added to the intelligence report, which is now held by the National Archives in Kew. Six-thousand miles west, newly elected British prime minister Clement Attlee was taking in news of the bomb's aftermath. Two months prior, British scientist Sir Henry Tizard had delivered a report on the future of warfare, and what technological advances might be available in the next 10 to 20 years of conflict. The Tizard Mission report's main conclusion related to the potential of atomic bombs, pointing out that 'the practical achievement of the release of atomic energy is likely to bring about an industrial revolution and have an immense influence on technology in peace and war'. But the use of atomic energy in peace and war, it concluded confidently, 'is only in its very infancy'. 'This was a high-level submission that was sent to Washington, DC,' explains Dr Will Butler, Head of Modern Collections at the National Archives. 'It really highlights Britain's lack of awareness, to some extent, of how far the development in atomic warfare had come.' Attlee had been told days earlier by US President Harry Truman that the US Air Force was ready to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. Under the terms of the Quebec Agreement signed by the US and UK in 1943, nuclear weapons could not be used against another country without mutual consent. Attlee would have had to agree without a full briefing of the Manhattan Project's secret weapon. 'Of course, at the time we knew nothing,' Attlee told his ex-press secretary Francis Williams 15 years later. 'I certainly knew absolutely nothing about the consequences of dropping the bomb except that it was larger than an ordinary bomb and had a much greater explosive force.' Tizard refreshed his report a year later, updating it with calculations of how many nuclear bombs the USA could produce, and the number of bombs the UK and Canada could make if they had the same technology. It also pointed out that the USSR would be able to harness nuclear technology should Stalin get his hands on it. But thanks to the Soviets' extensive spy network, Stalin had known about the atom bomb project for the past three years. British physicist Klaus Fuchs had been passing on information about Britain's atomic research since late 1941, and continued handing over detailed information about the design of the nuclear bomb when he moved over to the Manhattan Project - and wasn't caught until 1950. In the days and weeks after Hiroshima - and after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, on August 9 - Britain and her allies would have to reckon with the new reality of their post-nuclear bomb world. On August 28 of that year, Clement Attlee wrote a note for his Cabinet declaring that the United Kingdom and United States of America 'are responsible as never before for the future of the human race', adding that he believed 'only a bold course can save civilisation'. He echoed those sentiments a month later in a note to President Truman, writing: 'Ever since the USA demonstrated to the world the terrible effectiveness of the atomic bomb I have been increasingly aware of the fact that the world is now feeling entirely new conditions…The emergence of this new weapon has meant, taking account of its potentialities, not a quantitative but a qualitative change in the nature of warfare.' 'I've always been struck by Attlee's comments around the bomb, that he feels we are now responsible for the future of the world,' says Dr Butler. 'Britain is well aware that this development massively changes their estimations about what warfare will look like in the future, but also changes policy almost overnight. 'We have to rethink civil defence, how Britain defends herself, what a bomb dropped on a British city might look like. It changes everything.' Just three months after the destruction of Hiroshima, wartime leader and then-Leader of the Opposition Winston Churchill declared that Britain should turn its attention to its own nuclear bomb development. 'This I take it is already agreed, we should make atomic bombs,' he said in Parliament - and no one challenged him.
Politico
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
The Beginning of the Nuclear Bomb: An Oral History
Eighty years ago this week, a group of physicists and military leaders changed warfare — and the world — forever. From 1942 to 1945, the Manhattan Project had operated in secret to develop a weapon more fearsome than anything the world had ever seen. Now, in mid-July, they were ready — or at least, they hoped so. Top officials gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion. They gave the operation codename Trinity. You know the story from the 2023 blockbuster, Oppenheimer, which dramatized J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, in his troubled quest to reach the dawn of the nuclear age. What you may not know, however, is how the men who participated in that quest would describe it, in their own words. In my upcoming book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb, I assembled an oral history of the Manhattan Project, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in the Pacific, told through the voices of around 500 participants and witnesses of the events — including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer and political figures like President Harry Truman. History projects, government reports, memoirs and innumerable other documents tell the story of the Trinity test in exacting detail, from the fears that the atmosphere would catch fire to the sleepless Oppenheimer fretting about everything that could go wrong. Those details are as important now as ever. Multiple countries around the world are considering expanding or starting nuclear weapons arsenals. Tensions rose in the Middle East when the United States bombed Iran in June to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon — an endeavor that reportedly only set the program back a few months. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly hinted at the use of nuclear weapons in his ongoing war on Ukraine. With the nuclear age reaching its hottest point since the Cold War, a look back at its origins provides a stark reminder of just what's at stake. The following has been edited for length and Gen. Leslie Groves, director, Manhattan Project: By May 1945, we reached the conclusion that our estimates of being ready early in August were reasonable and that we should have accumulated enough material for one bomb by late July. July 24 was finally set as the deadline date. And by the end of that day, enough uranium — and a little bit more — had been shipped to Los Alamos for the manufacture of the first bomb to be dropped on Japan. Herbert L. Anderson, nuclear physicist, Manhattan Project: It was recognized that no amount of experimental work would yield as much information as an actual explosion, and plans were made for such a test, under a code name of 'Project Trinity.' J. Robert Oppenheimer, director, Los Alamos Lab: Why I chose the name [Trinity] is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: 'As West and East / In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, / So death doth touch the resurrection.' That still does not make Trinity; but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God;—.' Beyond this, I have no clues whatever. Kenneth T. Bainbridge, director, Trinity Project: Oppenheimer asked me to be director of the Trinity Project. John Williams was appointed as deputy director to oversee that the installation and construction of facilities for instruments and shelters conformed to the scientific requirements and were completed on time. In succeeding months increasing numbers of scientists and Special Engineer Detachment soldiers from Los Alamos were assigned to the Trinity Test Project as confidence rose that the implosion method might be practicable and sufficient core material might be available in June or July. Otto R. Frisch, physicist, British delegation to the Manhattan Project: We all went in cars and buses to the test site, code-named 'Trinity' in the desert near Alamogordo, also known as El Jornado del Muerte, Spanish for the Journey of Death. William L. Laurence, reporter, The New York Times: I had been with the Atomic Bomb Project a little over two months. I had visited all the secret plants, which at that time no one mentioned by name — Oak Ridge, Hanford, Los Alamos; the Martian laboratories at Columbia, Chicago and California universities. I had seen things no human eye had ever seen before, things that no one had ever thought possible. I had watched men work with heaps of Uranium-235 and plutonium great enough to blow any city off the map. I had prepared scores of reports on what I had seen — every one of them marked 'Top Secret' and locked in a special top-secret safe. Otto R. Frisch, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: A steel tower, about 100 feet tall, had been constructed to carry the explosive device. When it finally arrived and was being hoisted to the top I was standing there with George Kistiakowsky — our top expert on explosives — at the bottom of the tower. 'How far,' I asked him, 'do we have to be for safety in case it went off?' 'Oh,' he said, 'probably about 10 miles.' 'So in that case,' I said, 'we might as well stay and watch the fun.' William L. Laurence: The bomb was set on a structural steel tower 100 feet high. Ten miles away to the southwest was the base camp. This was H.Q. for the scientific high command, of which Professor Kenneth T. Bainbridge of Harvard University was field commander. Here were erected barracks to serve as living-quarters for the scientists, a mess hall, a commissary, a post exchange and other buildings. Here the vanguard of the atomists, headed by Professor J. R. Oppenheimer of the University of California, scientific director of the Atomic Bomb Project, lived like soldiers at the front, supervising the enormously complicated details involved in the epoch-making tests. Here early that Sunday afternoon had gathered Major General Leslie R. Groves, commander-in-chief of the Atomic Bomb Project; Brigadier-General T. F. Farrell, hero of World War I, General Groves' deputy; Professor Enrico Fermi, Nobel Prize winner and one of the leaders in the project; President James Bryant Conant of Harvard; Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; Dean Richard C. Tolman of the California Institute of Technology; Professor R. F. Bacher of Cornell; Colonel Stafford L. Warren, University of Rochester radiologist; and about 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: After arriving at the Alamogordo base camp on July 15, a brief review of the situation with Oppenheimer revealed that we might be in trouble. The bomb had been assembled and placed at the top of its 100-foot-high steel tower, but the weather was distinctly unfavorable. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: The weather that evening was quite blustery and misty, with some rain. William L. Laurence: Base Camp was a dry, abandoned reservoir, about 500 feet square, surrounded by a mound of earth about 8 feet high. Within this mound bulldozers dug a series of slit trenches, each about 3 feet deep, 7 feet wide and 25 feet long. Three other posts had been established, south, north and west of Zero, each at a distance of 10,000 yards. These were known, respectively, as S-10, N-10 and W-10. Here [at base camp] the shelters were much more elaborate — wooden structures, their walls reinforced by cement, buried under a massive layer of earth. S-10 was the control center. Here Professor Oppenheimer, as scientific commander-in-chief, and his field commander, Professor Bainbridge, issued orders and synchronized the activities of the other sites. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: There was an air of excitement at the camp that I did not like, for this was a time when calm deliberation was most essential. Many of Oppenheimer's advisers at the base camp were urging that the test be postponed for at least 24 hours. I felt that no sound decision could ever be reached amidst such confusion, so I took Oppenheimer into an office that had been set up for him in the base camp, where we could discuss matters quietly and calmly. Edward Teller, theoretical physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Rain — in the desert in July! Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: The first possible time for the detonation of the real bomb had been set for 2 a.m. July 16, and the Arming Party was scheduled to arrive at Point Zero — the tower supporting the bomb — before 11 p.m. July 15. At that hour, Don Hornig would connect the cables to the bomb and detach the detonating unit used in rehearsals. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Oppenheimer and I agreed to meet again at 1 a.m., and to review the situation then. I urged Oppenheimer to go to bed and to get some sleep, or at least to take a rest, and I set the example by doing so myself. Oppenheimer did not accept my advice and remained awake — I imagine constantly worrying. Boyce McDaniel, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: When I heard of the delay, I went back to the barracks to try to catch a little nap. That was a fruitless endeavor. To sleep during the excitement was impossible. I finally arose and went outside to check on the weather. It was still drizzly and overcast. I could hear one of the observation planes above the clouds trying to locate the site. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell, chief of field operations, Manhattan Project: For some hectic two hours preceding the blast, General Groves stayed with the Director, walking with him and steadying his tense excitement. Every time the director would be about to explode because of some untoward happening, General Groves would take him off and walk with him in the rain, counseling with him and reassuring him that everything would be all right. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: About 1 a.m., Oppenheimer and I went over the situation again, and decided to leave the base camp, which was 10 miles from the bomb, and go up to the control dugout, which was about five miles away. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: The scene inside the shelter was dramatic beyond words. In and around the shelter were some 20-odd people concerned with last-minute arrangements prior to firing the shot. The shelter was cluttered with a great variety of instruments and radios. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: When the time came to go to Point Zero, I drove [Manhattan Project group leader] Joe McKibben and Kistiakowsky in my car; I had selected them to be in the Arming Party. On the way in, I stopped at S-10 and locked the main sequence timing switches. Pocketing the key I returned to the car and continued to Point Zero. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: While the weather did not improve appreciably, neither did it worsen. It was cloudy with light rain and high humidity; very few stars were visible. Every five or 10 minutes, Oppenheimer and I would leave the dugout and go outside and discuss the weather. I was devoting myself during this period to shielding Oppenheimer from the excitement swirling about us, so that he could consider the situation as calmly as possible, for the decisions to be taken had to be governed largely by his appraisal of the technical factors involved. Berlyn Brixner, optical engineer, Manhattan Project: By 3:00 a.m. we were at our camera stations preparing to photograph the explosion. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule. Edward Teller: The night seemed long and became even longer when the test was postponed. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I was extremely anxious to have the test carried off on schedule. Every day's delay in the test might well mean the delay of a day in ending the war. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: Finally, just before 4:45 a.m., [Chief Meteorologist Jack] Hubbard gave me a complete weather report and a prediction that at 5:30 a.m. the weather at Point Zero would be possible but not ideal. I called Oppenheimer and General Farrell to get their agreement that 5:30 a.m. would be T = 0. Rudolf Peierls, physicist, British delegation to the Manhattan Project: Finally, the news came through that the test would proceed. Berlyn Brixner: By 5:00 the weather was clearing, and shortly thereafter the countdown started. Otto R. Frisch: Now it would be only minutes before the explosion took place. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Once the decision was made to go ahead, no additional orders were needed. At 30 minutes before the zero hour, the five men who had been guarding the bomb to make certain that no one tampered with it left their point of observation at the foot of the tower. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: After turning on the lights, I returned to my car and drove to S-10 arriving about 5:00 a.m. I unlocked the master switches and McKibben started the timing sequence at -20 minutes, 5:09:45 a.m. At -45 seconds a more precise automatic timer took over. At the final seconds another circuit sent out electronically-timed signals for the still more precise pulses needed by many special instruments. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Leaving Oppenheimer at the dugout, I returned to the base camp. William L. Laurence: At our observation post on Compania Hill the atmosphere had grown tenser as the zero hour approached. We had spent the first part of our stay eating an early morning picnic breakfast that we had taken along with us. It had grown cold in the desert, and many of us, lightly clad, shivered. We knew there were two specially equipped B-29 Superfortresses high overhead to make observations and recordings in the upper atmosphere, but we could neither see nor hear them. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied. Rudolf Peierls: We had been given pieces of dark glass through which to look at the McDaniel: Finally at t-minus-10 minutes, all of us at the base site crouched on the ground behind an earthen barricade watching the light glowing on top of the tower. Otto R. Frisch: The very first trace of dawn was in the sky. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: As the time interval grew smaller and changed from minutes to seconds, the tension increased by leaps and bounds. We were reaching into the unknown and we did not know what might come of it. Joseph L. McKibben, group leader, Manhattan Project: Sam Allison was the announcer on the radio and gave the countdown. He had a wonderfully senatorial voice. When I turned on the automatic timer at minus 45 seconds, a bell chimed every second to assist in the countdown. Berlyn Brixner: I removed the waterproof covers from the Mitchell and other cameras on the roof of my bunker, sat down behind the Mitchell and listened on the intercom to the countdown from the timing station at S-10. I shivered partly from thoughts about the expected explosion and partly from the wet cold desert air. Then, at minus 30 seconds the cameras began to run. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant. Val L. Fitch, technician, Special Engineer Detachment, Los Alamos: About half a minute before the scheduled moment of detonation my boss, Ernest Titterton, a member of the British Mission to Los Alamos, suggested that since there was nothing more for me to do I might as well go outside the bunker to get a good view. This I did, taking with me the 2-by-4-inch piece of nearly opaque glass which someone had handed me earlier. Edward Teller: We all were lying on the ground, supposedly with our backs turned to the explosion. But I had decided to disobey that instruction and instead looked straight at the bomb. I was wearing the welder's glasses that we had been given so that the light from the bomb would not damage our eyes. But because I wanted to face the explosion, I had decided to add some extra protection. I put on dark glasses under the welder's glasses, rubbed some ointment on my face to prevent sunburn from the radiation, and pulled on thick gloves to press the welding glasses to my face to prevent light from entering at the sides. Boyce McDaniel: I remember thinking, 'This is a very dramatic moment. I must concentrate on it so that I can remember it.' I looked around me at the leaders of the program and at my friends. I remember especially I. I. Rabi, Fermi and Bacher, each staring intently into the darkness. William L. Laurence: Suddenly, at 5:29:50, as we stood huddled around our radio, we heard a voice ringing through the darkness, sounding as though it had come from above the clouds: 'Zero minus 10 seconds!' A green flare flashed out through the clouds, descended slowly, opened, grew dim and vanished into the darkness. Otto R. Frisch: I sat on the ground in case the explosion blew me over, plugged my ears with my fingers, and looked in the direction away from the explosion as I listened to the end of the count. Edward Teller: We all listened anxiously as the broadcast of the final countdown started; but, for whatever reason, the transmission ended at minus five seconds. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: As I lay there, in the final seconds, I thought only of what I would do if, when the countdown got to zero, nothing happened. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: My personal nightmare was knowing that if the bomb didn't go off or hang-fired, I, as head of the test, would have to go to the tower first and seek to find out what had gone wrong. Edward Teller: For the last five seconds, we all lay there, quietly waiting for what seemed an eternity. Otto R. Frisch: . . . Five . . . J. Robert Oppenheimer: Years of hard and loyal work culminated on July 16, 1945. Otto R. Frisch: . . . Four . . . George B. Kistiakowsky, Director, X Division (Explosives), Los Alamos Lab: The Trinity test was the climax of our work. Otto R. Frisch: . . . three . . . William L. Laurence: Silence reigned over the desert. Otto R. Frisch: . . . two . . . Rudolf Peierls: The big moment came. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: The blast came promptly with the zero count on July 16, 1945. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: The bomb detonated at 5:29:45 Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: In that brief instant in the remote New Mexico desert the tremendous effort of the brains and brawn of all these people came suddenly and startlingly to the fullest fruition. Robert Christy, theoretical physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Oh, it was a dramatic thing! Val L. Fitch: It took about 30 millionths of a second for the flash of light from the explosion to reach us outside the bunker at south 10,000. William L. Laurence: There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. Joseph O. Hirschfelder, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: All of a sudden, the night turned into day. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: My first impression was one of tremendous light. Warren Nyer, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: The most brilliant flash. Otto R. Frisch: Without a sound, the sun was shining — or so it looked. The sand hills at the edge of the desert were shimmering in a very bright light, almost colorless and shapeless. This light did not seem to change for a couple of seconds and then began to dim. Emilio Segrè, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: In fact, in a very small fraction of a second, that light, at our distance from the explosion, could give a worse sunburn than exposure for a whole day on a sunny seashore. The thought passed my mind that maybe the atmosphere was catching fire, causing the end of the world, although I knew that that possibility had been carefully considered and ruled out. Rudolf Peierls: We had known what to expect, but no amount of imagination could have given us a taste of the real thing. Richard P. Feynman, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: This tremendous flash, so bright that I duck. Joan Hinton, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of light. We were bathed in it from all directions. Marvin H. Wilkening, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: It was like being close to an old-fashioned photo flashbulb. If you were close enough, you could feel warmth because of the intense light, and the light from the explosion scattering from the mountains and the clouds was intense enough to T. Bainbridge: I felt the heat on the back of my neck, disturbingly warm. Hugh T. Richards, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Although facing away from ground zero, it felt like someone had slapped my face. George B. Kistiakowsky: I am sure that at the end of the world — in the last millisecond of the earth's existence — the last man will see what we have just Hinton: The light withdrew into the bomb as if the bomb sucked it up. Otto R. Frisch: That object on the horizon, which looked like a small sun, was still too bright to look at. I kept blinking and trying to take looks, and after another 10 seconds or so it had grown and dimmed into something more like a huge oil fire, with a structure that made it look a bit like a strawberry. It was slowly rising into the sky from the ground, with which it remained connected by a lengthening grey stem of swirling dust; incongruously, I thought of a red-hot elephant standing balanced on its trunk. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Oppenheimer's face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief. William L. Laurence: I stood next to Professor Chadwick when the great moment for the neutron arrived. Never before in history had any man lived to see his own discovery materialize itself with such telling effect on the destiny of man, for the immediate present and all the generations to come. The infinitesimal neutron, to which the world paid little attention when its discovery was first announced, had cast its shadow over the entire earth and its inhabitants. He grunted, leaped lightly into the air, and was still again. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: As Bush, Conant and I sat on the ground looking at this phenomenon, the first reactions of the three of us were expressed in a silent exchange of handclasps. We all arose so that by the time the shock wave arrived we were standing. Val L. Fitch: It took the blast wave about 30 seconds. There was the initial loud report, the sharp gust of wind, and then the long period of reverberation as the sound waves echoed off the nearby mountains and came back to us. William L. Laurence: Out of the great silence came a mighty thunder. Edward Teller: Bill Laurence jumped and asked, 'What was that?' It was, of course, the sound of the explosion. The sound waves had needed a couple of minutes to arrive at our spot 20 miles away. Otto R. Frisch: The bang came minutes later, quite loud though I had plugged my ears, and followed by a long rumble like heavy traffic very far away. I can still hear it. Robert R. Wilson, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: The memory I do have is when I took the dark glasses away, of seeing all the colors around and the sky lit up by the radiation — it was purple, kind of an aurora borealis light, and this thing like a big balloon expanding and going up. But the scale. There was this tremendous desert with the mountains nearby, but it seemed to make the mountains look small. William L. Laurence: For a fleeting instant the color was unearthly green, such as one sees only in the corona of the sun during a total eclipse. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies had split. Joseph O. Hirschfelder: The fireball gradually turned from white to yellow to red as it grew in size and climbed in the sky; after about five seconds the darkness returned but with the sky and the air filled with a purple glow, just as though we were surrounded by an aurora borealis. For a matter of minutes we could follow the clouds containing radioactivity, which continued to glow with stria of this ethereal Christy: It was awe-inspiring. It just grew bigger and bigger, and it turned purple. Joan Hinton: It turned purple and blue and went up and up and up. We were still talking in whispers when the cloud reached the level where it was struck by the rising sunlight so it cleared out the natural clouds. We saw a cloud that was dark and red at the bottom and daylight on the top. Then suddenly the sound reached us. It was very sharp and rumbled and all the mountains were rumbling with it. We suddenly started talking out loud and felt exposed to the whole world. Joseph O. Hirschfelder: There weren't any agnostics watching this stupendous demonstration. Each, in his own way, knew that God had spoken. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: Unknown to me and I think to everyone, Fermi was prepared to measure the blast by a very simple L. Anderson: Fermi later related that he did not hear the sound of the explosion, so great was his concentration on the simple experiment he was performing: he dropped small pieces of paper and watched them fall. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: There was no ground wind, so that when the shock wave hit it knocked some of the scraps several feet away. Herbert L. Anderson: When the blast of the explosion hit them, it dragged them along, and they fell to the ground at some distance. He measured this distance and used the result to calculate the power of the explosion. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: He was remarkably close to the calculations that were made later from the data accumulated by our complicated instruments. Joseph O. Hirschfelder: Fermi's paper strip showed that, in agreement with the expectation of the Theoretical Division, the energy yield of the atom bomb was equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. Professor Rabi, a frequent visitor to Los Alamos, won the pool on what the energy yield would be — he bet on the calculations of the Theoretical Division! None of us dared to make such a guess because we knew all of the guesstimates that went into the calculations and the tremendous precision which was required in the fabrication of the bomb. Berlyn Brixner: The bomb had exceeded our greatest expectations. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: I had a feeling of exhilaration that the 'gadget' had gone off properly followed by one of deep relief. I got up from the ground to congratulate Oppenheimer and others on the success of the implosion method. I finished by saying to Robert, 'Now we are all sons of bitches.' Years later he recalled my words and wrote me, 'We do not have to explain them to anyone.' I think that I will always respect his statement, although there have been some imaginative people who somehow can't or won't put the statement in context and get the whole interpretation. Oppenheimer told my younger daughter in 1966 that it was the best thing anyone said after the test. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: All seemed to feel that they had been present at the birth of a new age. J. Robert Oppenheimer: 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 [a principal Hindu deity] 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 have become death, the destroyer of the worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. George B. Kistiakowsky: I slapped Oppenheimer on the back and said, 'Oppie, you owe me 10 dollars,' because in that desperate period when I was being accused as the world's worst villain, who would be forever damned by the physicists for failing the project, I said to Oppenheimer, 'I bet you my whole month's salary against 10 dollars that implosion will work.' I still have that bill, with Oppenheimer's signature. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: Shortly after the explosion, Farrell and Oppenheimer returned by Jeep to the base camp, with a number of the others who had been at the dugout. When Farrell came up to me, his first words were, 'The war is over.' My reply was, 'Yes, after we drop two bombs on Japan.' I congratulated Oppenheimer quietly with 'I am proud of all of you,' and he replied with a simple 'thank you.' We were both, I am sure, already thinking of the future. Norris Bradbury, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. I didn't. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.
DW
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
Oppenheimer After Trinity – DW – 07/17/2025
American physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer is regarded as the father of the atomic bomb. Delving into his complex mind, this prize-winning documentary explores what happened before, during and after the testing of the world's first atomic bomb in the deserts of New Mexico in July 1945. After this first atomic bomb test, events unfolded quickly, setting a course of action that's still debated today, more than three-quarters of a century later. Using declassified military documents and interviews with eyewitnesses, the film provides a unique insight into a critical moment in human history. 'Oppenheimer After Trinity' is a thought-provoking and insightful documentary that also offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the mind of Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer. Through archival interviews with the man himself, the documentary tells a deeply personal story and sheds light on what it means to be responsible for building a devastating weapon. But the film also serves as a reminder that the potential for both destruction and progress lies within us. DW English SAT 26.07.2025 – 11:03 UTC SAT 26.07.2025 – 22:03 UTC SUN 27.07.2025 – 05:03 UTC Lagos UTC +1 | Cape Town UTC +2 | Nairobi UTC +3 Delhi UTC +5,5 | Bangkok UTC +7 | Hong Kong UTC +8 London UTC +1 | Berlin UTC +2 | Moscow UTC +3 San Francisco UTC -7 | Edmonton UTC -6 | New York UTC -4
Chicago Tribune
14-07-2025
- Science
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: The risk of nuclear war waned after the Cold War. It's back with a vengeance.
When the first nuclear bomb test took place on this date 80 years ago, the scientists who gathered to observe the explosion in the New Mexico desert recognized they were playing with fire. Physicist Enrico Fermi tried to break the tension by taking bets on whether the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world. J. Robert Oppenheimer wagered $10 the bomb wouldn't work at all, and Edward Teller conspicuously applied sunscreen in the predawn darkness, offering to pass it around. The bomb exploded in a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun, producing far more destructive power than the scientists anticipated. Within weeks, the U.S. nuked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of World War II while killing more than 200,000 civilians. The bomb hasn't been used since, apart from test blasts, and after the Cold War ended in 1991, the risk of nuclear war mercifully declined. Now the risk is back on the rise, as an alarming new nuclear age dawns. This week, the University of Chicago will host what it's billing as a 'Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War.' The conference will take place near the campus location where Fermi oversaw the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the run-up to that fateful July 16 bomb test. Even just the conference agenda makes for an alarming read. Panel One will explore how a public once acutely aware of nuclear arms' catastrophic effects has largely forgotten those Cold War-era fears and lost its focus on avoiding nuclear war at all costs. Panel Two outlines how artificial intelligence and cybersecurity breaches stand to increase the likelihood of nuclear war. Subsequent panels cover the alarming history of nuclear 'close calls,' the weaponization of space and how the disarmament efforts of 30 years ago have fizzled — which brings us to what one of the organizers calls today's 'uniquely dangerous moment.' Unfortunately, the nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. For starters, the main players are no longer two global superpowers. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union largely controlled the potential for conflict, which made the risks relatively straightforward to analyze. These days, the politics of nuclear arms have become more complicated and unpredictable. Nine nations are said to possess the weapons today, including the rogue state of North Korea, and others could build them quickly. Most people have forgotten that South Africa once developed a bomb but gave up its program voluntarily. Iraq and Libya also had active nuclear-weapon programs that were stopped under intense international pressure. At the moment, the focus is on Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. bombed on June 22, alongside Israel. The U.S. launched its attack even though Iran continued to pursue diplomacy about its nuclear ambitions. Iran may conclude that it needs a nuclear capability for self-defense, to deter future attacks. The same could be said for other states threatened by nuclear-armed rivals. Consider Ukraine, which voluntarily gave up the nuclear arms based on its soil after the fall of the Soviet Union. Would Russia's 2022 invasion still have occurred against a Ukraine bristling with doomsday weapons? Doubtful. Besides the chilling political calculations, the weapons used to deliver nuclear warheads have become more dangerous. Hypersonic glide missiles could elude defense systems before striking their targets with practically no warning, while smaller, low-yield nukes threaten to blur the lines between conventional and nuclear warfare, making all-out war more likely. Defense spending is soaring across the globe, and, with it, faster and deadlier weapons are likely to be deployed. At the same time, treaties restricting nuclear arms are in decline. The most impactful of them — the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — was undermined in 2003 when North Korea withdrew from it and built an atomic arsenal. It's time for the targets of these terrible weapons — us, that is — to rise up and say, 'No!' The 1980s witnessed mass demonstrations demanding a nuclear freeze. Today, the threat of nuclear war is beginning to enter the public consciousness again. The movie 'Oppenheimer' about the Trinity bomb test 80 years ago was a box-office hit. The 2024 book, 'Nuclear War: A Scenario,' became a bestseller. Star movie director James Cameron has committed to making, 'Ghosts of Hiroshima,' a Japan-set movie said to be a nightmarish look at the A-bomb blasts. During the Cold War, pop culture helped convince everyday people to stand against the march toward Armageddon, and here's hoping it can do so again. At the same time, events like the University of Chicago conference can help to get actionable recommendations into the hands of global decision-makers. For 80 years, the world has lived with the threat of nuclear destruction. Let's act now to curb it, before it's too late.
