Motherboard

In the early morning hours of July 16, 1945, some of the greatest scientific minds of a generation gathered in the New Mexican desert to watch the results of their unprecedented, world-changing experiment: to build the most powerful weapon in the world. But when they pressed the button on their bomb, nicknamed “Gadget,” they understood how it worked: they just weren’t quite sure what would happen.

The general consensus was that the bomb would yield energy equivalent to 5,000 tons of TNT (the actual result as it was finally calculated was 21,000 tons). Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, had bet ten dollars against scientist George Kistiakowsky’s wager, with his entire month’s pay, that the bomb would not work at all. Enrico Fermi offered a wager on “whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world.”

Three weeks later – sixty-five years ago today – the world’s second atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, would be dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, devastating the city and killing as many as 130,000 citizens. Three days later on August 9, a third atomic bomb, Fat Man, destroyed the city of Nagasaki and killed approximately 45,000 more Japanese.

While the U.S. had previously dropped leaflets warning civilians of air raids on 35 Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the residents of Hiroshima were given no notice of the bomb.

Early in the morning, the Enola Gay (named after pilot and Commander Colonel Paul Tibbets’ mother), accompanied by two other B-29s – The Great Artiste, an instrumentation plane, and Necessary Evil, a photography plane – took off for Hiroshima from Iwo Jima. At 8:15 AM, the Enola Gay dropped the bomb.

After falling for 45 seconds, Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet directly over Shima Surgical Clinic, creating a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT, with a radius of total destruction about one mile. Fires spread across four and a half square miles of a city mostly built out of wood; 69% of Hiroshima’s buildings were destroyed.

It’s estimated that 70,000–80,000 people, or some 30% of the population of Hiroshima, were killed instantly. Because most of them were in the downtown area where the bomb went off, over 90% of the doctors and nurses in the city were killed or injured.

(See the documentary about the aftermath that the U.S. suppressed for decades)

If they weren’t incinerated when the bomb detonated, residents of Hiroshima would suffer for the following months from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness.

Excerpt from BBC’s “Hiroshima: Dropping the Bomb”

After the bombing, President Truman issued a statement announcing the U.S.’s new weapon, and making an ultimatum:

If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.

On September 2, the Japanese surrendered. The war was over. A new age had begun.

The tests continued

Even though no country has used a nuclear weapon on people since then, Pandora’s box hasn’t been closed. Since that first test, over 500 atmospheric tests have been conducted, for the purposes not just of determining how nukes behave and how materials can withstand them, but also as an indicator of scientific and military strength. Most countries have announced their arrival into the nuclear club with a test.

(See a time lapse video of every nuclear test ever.)

Though the Limited Test Ban Treaty banned nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space, the treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. After the last atmospheric test, by China in 1980, the United States continued underground testing until 1992, it’s last test. (The Soviet Union’s last test was in 1990, the United Kingdom’s in 1991, and both China’s and France’s in 1996). The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 saw the end of nuclear testing for those states, but non-signatories India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998, while North Korea detonated the last nuclear weapon on May 25, 2009.

While the effects of 11,000 excess deaths, most caused by thyroid cancer linked to exposure to iodine-131.

The reasons for maintaining nuclear arsenals in 2010 continue to center around deterrence. But this tactic on its own, as Henry Kissinger and a few prominent experts wrote in 2007, "is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”

Do it again?

Even those in the U.S. who say nukes are bad still endorse the use of the weapons in Japan. If exceptions have been made before, they can be made again.

At the Nation, Greg Mitchell writes offers an example:

Before our attack on Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1990, then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney said on TV that we would consider using nuclear weapons against Iraq but would hold off “at this point”—then specificially cited President Truman’s use of the bomb as morally correct. Some polls at the time showed strong support from the American public for using nukes if our military so advised.

The attempts by the U.S. to curtail nuclear arsenals are valiant but also incredibly difficult. And as the first users of the bomb in war, the U.S. will always have itself partially to blame.

Death from above

In a 1965 interview with NBC, Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, quoted from the Bhagavad Gita, which he had once read in the original Sanskrit:

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

Dr. Kenneth Bainbridge, site director of the Trinity test, was blunter: “Now we are all sons-of-b*tches.”