Greg Mitchell: Secrecy and Deadly Radiation: On the Birth of the Nuclear Age 65 Years Ago
[Greg Mitchell is the former editor of Editor & Publisher and author of nine books, including "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq;" "Why Obama Won"; "The Campaign of the Century"; "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady"; and (with Robert Jay Lifton) "Hiroshima in America" and "Who Owns Death?" He was senior editor at the legendary Crawdaddy during the 1970s.]
While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, N.M., with the top-secret Trinity test. Its 65th anniversary will be marked – or mourned, if you will -- this Friday, July 16....
In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren’t sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Bomb,” worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain....
Still, it could have been worse; the cloud had drifted over loosely-populated areas. “We were just damn lucky,” the head of radiological safety for the test later affirmed....
Read entire article at The Nation
While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, N.M., with the top-secret Trinity test. Its 65th anniversary will be marked – or mourned, if you will -- this Friday, July 16....
In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren’t sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Bomb,” worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain....
Still, it could have been worse; the cloud had drifted over loosely-populated areas. “We were just damn lucky,” the head of radiological safety for the test later affirmed....