"user314" (user314)
07/16/2020 at 12:15 • Filed to: Historylopnik, history, trinity site, Trinity
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"user314" (user314)
07/16/2020 at 12:15 • Filed to: Historylopnik, history, trinity site, Trinity | 8
| 25 |
The first mushroom cloud in human history
75 years ago today the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! atomic bomb was detonated on the USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (Now part of the White Sands Missile Range), ushering in the Atomic Age.
Constructed under the auspices of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Trinity device, nicknamed “the gadget” was a plutonium implosion type, functionally identical to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomb !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! over Nagasaki, Japan just three weeks later.
Louis Slotin and Herbert Lehr with the Gadget, July 13th 1945
A 100 foot tall tower was constructed to house the Gadget prior to detonation.
At 0529 Mountain War Time, the Gadget detonated, releasing a blast equivalent to 22 kilotons of TNT ( mas o menos ). The explosion produced a crater 30 feet wide and 5 feet deep, and sand from the surrounding area was drawn into the mushroom cloud and melted, raining down on the site and forming !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (also called atomsite or Alamogordo glass).
Close-up of a piece of Trinitite, showing structure.
After the explosion, Kenneth Bainbridge, physicist at Harvard and part of the Manhattan Project, said to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! : “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Oppenheimer himself recalled two verses from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu holy book: “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 ...” and that used as the title of this piece.
Immediately after the explosion two Sherman tanks, their hulls lined with lead, trundled into the crater to take samples. Despite the lining, the tank crews received considerable radiation doses, with film badges indicating between 7 and 15 !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
The same day, the cruiser !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! left San Francisco for Tinian with the components for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomb on board (the Little Boy’s ‘gun-type’ design was better understood than the implosion-type, and did not require a test shot).
For Sweden
> user314
07/16/2020 at 12:20 |
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Hot take: nuking fascists was preferable to their continued existence .
CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
> For Sweden
07/16/2020 at 12:23 |
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Did we nuke any Fascists? It wasn’t fascism in the usual sense at least.
haveacarortwoorthree2
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
07/16/2020 at 12:31 |
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Japan was m ore authoritarian than fascist.
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For Sweden
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
07/16/2020 at 12:34 |
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The Manhattan P roject was started with the plan of nuking Nazis.
Japan combined extreme authoritarian right-wing government, racial chauvinism, wars of conquest for racial hegemony, and an alliance with fascists. They also had a million soldiers fighting in China when the Americans bombed Hiroshima.
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user314
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
07/16/2020 at 12:34 |
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I mean, there probably were some people in Nagasaki or Hiroshima with fascist beliefs; but yeah, the Empire of Japan wasn’t a fascist country.
Then again, I don’t take what For Sweden says at face value; their wit is subtle and dry enough to fall deep into Poe’s law territory.
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For Sweden
> user314
07/16/2020 at 12:37 |
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Minimizing Imperial Japan to own the libs
My X-type is too a real Jaguar
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
07/16/2020 at 12:43 |
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It was a t
otalitarian
military run country with no checks and balances that keep a small group of people from ordering people to their deaths
benn454
> For Sweden
07/16/2020 at 12:53 |
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Preferable to 600,000+
US casualties and untold millions of Japanese casualties expected during Operation Olympic/Downfall, at least.
koawaft1
> user314
07/16/2020 at 13:01 |
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The site is open to visitors twice a year. Or was pre Rona. I did go once slightly interesting in person. No big hole or anything dramatic it was a small t est. You do get a feeling that it is a “special” place. I almost want to use the word sacred but that is not right. I compare it to going to an old place.
There is a rock shop nearby where you can by trin itite. Recommend not keeping it in your pocket for long periods of time. On a shelf would be perfectly safe.
Family lore is my grandfather helped build the tower. He was a welder.
Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
> user314
07/16/2020 at 13:06 |
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Imperial Japan was pretty fucking terrible to their own people and surrounding geographic area.
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user314
> Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
07/16/2020 at 13:20 |
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Oh absolutely. The Empire was arguably worse than the Nazis in a lot of ways. It’s important to note though that such vile actions were n’t exclusively the domain of fascism /Nazism
ttyymmnn
> For Sweden
07/16/2020 at 13:41 |
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I know that the original plan was to nuke Berlin, but I have always wondered if Americans were more comfortable with nuking “the yellow bastards” tha n their own European ancestors.
davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
> koawaft1
07/16/2020 at 13:42 |
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A place wherein the world was forever changed...
Merkin Muffley
> user314
07/16/2020 at 13:52 |
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It still amazes me they were confident enough in the gun-type configuration to skip the test process...
Ive forgotten what the management considerations were in running dual design tracks.
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Merkin Muffley
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
07/16/2020 at 13:53 |
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The victims of the rape of Nanking beg to differ...
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Merkin Muffley
> For Sweden
07/16/2020 at 13:55 |
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The military leaders had basically usurped the Emperor during the 1930s as well. The generals were running the show
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Merkin Muffley
> ttyymmnn
07/16/2020 at 13:58 |
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Still not sure about that. We did a number on Dresden and didn’t even think twice about it....
Other than NRL research on ways we could replicate "that cool firestorm effect" that accidentally occurred at Dresden
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CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
> Merkin Muffley
07/16/2020 at 13:58 |
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An atrocity (or many) does not make you Fascist
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Merkin Muffley
> koawaft1
07/16/2020 at 13:59 |
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I still want to visit the Sedan shot crater. It's open a few times a year too. "Bring your own water and no cameras..."
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Merkin Muffley
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
07/16/2020 at 14:01 |
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But the management philosophy and style of the conquerors does. The occupying military government clearly fell into the fascist definitions.
Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> user314
07/16/2020 at 15:41 |
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I did a visit to the Trinity Site a couple years ago . Kinda boring, but cannot ignore the historic significance of it.
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user314
> ttyymmnn
07/16/2020 at 16:08 |
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Nah, if Hitler was still alive in August of ‘45 I’m sure at least bomb would have been dropped on his head. Remember, we nuked Japan as much to demonstrate our power to the Soviets as we did to end the war. Nuking Berlin (or whatever hole Adolph would have crawled into) would have really driven the point home to Stalin too.
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user314
> Merkin Muffley
07/16/2020 at 16:15 |
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Enriching uranium for a gun-type was easier than producing plutonium. Matter of fact, the US had not planned to use the gun-type after the end of the war, but ran into issues with the breeder reactors used to make the plutonium, and had to hurriedly assemble a dozen or so Little Boys. If need be, they could be dropped by specially modified P2V Neptune patrol air cr aft from Midway -class carriers:
gmporschenut also a fan of hondas
> ttyymmnn
07/16/2020 at 22:06 |
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Does it really matter if the firestorm is one bomb or a thousand?
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gmporschenut also a fan of hondas
> user314
07/16/2020 at 22:12 |
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Interestingly there is a site in the Sahara, with glass believed to be from an meteorite aerial explosion.